Previously on LOST

Yesterday Facebook was buzzing with Inauguration Day chatter and commentary. These days, even the most exciting news gets old quickly, so I thought I'd make light of the big day with this post on a thread at a new friend's page.

ME

"now we can focus on the real issue- where did the island go on LOST?"

PERSON I DON'T KNOW
"huh? Ohhhhhhhh....I don't watch T.V. it'll rott your brain"

Don't you just love getting lectured by someone you've never met? I wanted to say something about how LOST, unlike most shows, actually stimulates lively conversation, encourages reading of the classics and exploration of history, etc. but I also didn't want to get into it with a stranger from San Francisco on someone else's page.

Later on down the thread, I did get a kick out of a follow-up post by the same person.

PERSON I DON'T KNOW

I do enjoy the forensic shows though:}

So which is it? "Kill Your television" people who still watch multiple cop shows are kinda like vegans who smoke cigarettes. Which one is it gonna be, because you can't be both and still ride the high horse!

Anyway.

I forgot about that brief exchange until this morning when I was thinking about LOST in the shower. Sorry if that's TMI, but the Season 5 Premiere is tonight.

Maybe my brain is showing signs of "rott" after all...

I was thinking about why the show still holds so much interest to me, and I think it goes beyond the usual razzle-dazzle of the much-discussed mysteries of the Island, the Numbers, the Dharma Initiative, the Hanso family, the Smoke Monster, the Donkey Wheel, etc.

It's about people.

Yes, I know how cheesy that sounds, but bear me out here. I have become a big believer in the importance of reaching a point in one's life where you can no longer point your finger at anyone else for your failings, and you only have to look in the mirror to see the source of your successes. That may be an idealistic state of mind, but it seems to me that even striving for it is extremely beneficial because of the burgeoning awareness gained that you can no sooner change your parents or your genes than you can change your past.

The Dharmacakra, symbolizing the path to enlightenment, is featured prominently on LOST.

But what you can change is the future. That is, unless, you continue to let the unchangeable past dictate who you are today.

Someone close to me has let the phrase "I've had a hard life" enter the conversation a few times lately. Now, it's not up to me to determine the veracity of that statement, and even if I could, those kinds of statements are all relative. But what I feel I can determine is how much the belief that one's life has been "hard" up to now hinders one's ability to create a less "hard" life from this point forward.

What I want to say is "That may be true, but a lot of people's lives have been hard. Would you rather have an excuse ("You've had a hard life") for your present state of unhappiness, or would you rather achieve happiness and use that same statement to signal how it used to be BEFORE YOU TOOK CONTROL OF YOUR LIFE and did what you had to do to make your hard life easier and more enjoyable?"

People win despite being dealt bad hands all the time, and the same is true for people dealt fabulous hands finding a way to lose anyway.

***LOST SPOILERS FROM SEASONS 1-4 AHEAD****

Our characters on LOST all have "daddy issues" that they are being forced, one way or another, to overcome. And isn't that a good thing? I don't recommend literally killing the father figure, as Ben Linus and Kate and Locke and Sawyer have, but isn't some sort of ceremonial dumping of those issues necessary for one to really flower as an adult?

Virtually all of the characters have endured struggles directly related to their socioeconomic status as well. The poorer have either compromised themselves by turning to crime (Sawyer, Kate, Eko) or to status-seeking (Jin, Desmond). The richer have felt it constricting (Sun, Jack), divisive (Boone, Shannon) or downright dangerous (Hurley, Charlie).

On the island, all material things are stripped away so that everyone is playing the same game with the same tools. To borrow the marketing tagline for this season, destiny has called every single one of them, and we will see who answers the call.

This sensation is the primary correlation with my own life and, I think it's fair to say, all of our lives. Destiny is calling every one of us, and we all have the tools inside of us to hear the call and to embark on a life that we make our own.

To me, life is the best possible combination of fate AND free will.

A quick look at the name "Dharma Initiative", the organization that I believe tried to harness the island's power to force people to evolve into a higher state of consciousness, is revealing:

dharma
noun
1 Hinduism: the principle of cosmic order.
• virtue, righteousness, and duty, esp. social and caste duty in accord with the cosmic order.

initiative
noun
1 the ability to assess and initiate things independently :
2 [in sing. ] the power or opportunity to act or take charge before others do :

LOST is so compelling because I believe one of its major underlying themes is that no matter where one is from, every individual must take charge of their own lives in a virtuous way if collectively we are ever going to overcome the suffering of this world.

Well, that and the time travel and cool monsters and stuff.

Dog Ears #16: 361

For a while, Dog Ears #16 was going to be H.P. Lovecraft's The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories, but I was unable to even read half of the Lovecraft collection. It seemed like a natural follow-up to Screaming Mimi, as Lovecraft was discovered in pulp horror magazines like Weird Tales and only later gained literary respect.

Ah, to be able to read with 11-year-old eyes again...

I found him painfully gothic, too overblown and repetitive and not creepy enough, although he certainly had his moments of inspired gruesomeness. Maybe his work has been plundered by later-20th century masters of the supernatural like Rod Serling and Stephen King to the point where it seems retroactively trite.

From the Introduction, p.xix

At its best Lovecraft's work becomes a kind of incantation, seducing the mind into a momentary acceptance of the fantastic incidents being related. At its worst it becomes pompous and bombastic.

Too often I sided with the latter, and the book was shelved before I could even finish the titular story Cthulhu. Maybe I need to revisit the 1985 Lovecraft adaptation RE-ANIMATOR, which I remember being disgusting in all the best ways when I saw it in high school.

Title is taken from Roget's Thesaurus's numbered entry for "Killing"

Anyway, when I ditched Cthulhu I had three newly ordered Hard Case Crime paperbacks to choose from so I picked Don Westlake's 361 and dove in. 361 really hit the spot. I can't articulate why, but sometimes there's nothing like the cathartic violence in a bleak tale of revenge to make you feel a touch more alive.

I was lucky enough to meet Don Westlake (who in addition to a celebrated career as a novelist was Oscar nominated for writing THE GRIFTERS) last December at a holiday party in Ancram, NY. I was introduced and asked him a few questions about writing, mostly about the great POINT BLANK (1967) which was based on his book The Hunter (written under the pseudonym Richard Stark). Westlake recounted how the film's star Lee Marvin was in a terrible place personally during the shoot, still apparently affected by the trauma of serving as a sniper in the Marines in WWII and fighting in the Pacific. He also remarked that, as is true with most writers being adapted, he didn't have much to do with the film's production at all. He was very gracious to me and I walked away with the buzz you feel when you meet a legend.

"I bet you're a big Lee Marvin fan, aren't ya?"

Here are some choice excerpts from 361, originally published in 1962 and re-released in 2005 after being out of print for over 40 years.

p37 hang fire phrase
delay or be delayed in taking action or progressing.

p42 "I got the eye from the dresser and went into the head. I washed my face and watched myself put the eye in."
- the protag Ray loses his eye early on and has to get used to a glass eye. I don't know if his wordplay here is deliberate or not, but I got a good chuckle.

p59 "Linda, the little girl, came over and started asking stupid questions. She was like her mother, interesting until she opened her mouth."

p129-30 "To begin with, every man has to have either a home or a purpose. Do you see that? Either a place to be or something to do. Without one or the other, a man goes nuts. Or he loses his manhood, like a hobo. Or he drinks or kills himself or something else. It doesn't matter, it's just that everybody has to have one or the other."

p140-41 "Aren't you gonna help him out of the water?"
"No, I wasn't playing. I don't play."
- I love that people were saying "I don't play" 45 years ago!

p173 "William Cheever's name was fourth of four on the frosted glass panel of the door. It wasn't a law firm, it was one of those set-ups where a number of unsuccessful professional men get together to share the rent and the receptionist and the futility."

p203 "I went into the first bar I came to on Lexington Avenue, but it was lunchtime and full of bland smooth people."


BONUS DOGEARS from The Call of Cthulhu and Other Weird Stories

p9 cenotaph |ˈsenəˌtaf|
noun
a tomblike monument to someone buried elsewhere, esp. one commemorating people who died in a war.

p16 mésalliance |ˌmāzəˈlīəns; ˌmāˌzalˈyä n s|
noun
a marriage with a person thought to be unsuitable or of a lower social position.

p24 (from the story Celephaïs)
"There are not many persons who know what wonders are opened to them in the stories and visions of their youth; for when as children we listen and dream, we think but half-formed thoughts, and when as men we try and remember, we are dulled and prosaic with the poison of life."

Dog Ears #15: The Screaming Mimi

Summertime is time for "beach reading", so I picked a book from my list that I hoped had no redeeming qualities other than sheer entertainment. Fredric Brown's 1949 pulp The Screaming Mimi hit the nail luridly on the head.

Not to be confused with the NYC vintage store"Screaming Mimi's"

Fellow Cincinnatian Brown's book has been adapted for film at least twice, first in 1958's SCREAMING MIMI (starring legendary looker Anita Ekberg as the stripper Yolanda) and then as the uncredited inspiration for Dario Argento's 1970 shocker THE BIRD WITH THE CRYSTAL PLUMAGE. Particularly for a book almost 60 years old, Mimi's world of smart-ass narrators, hard-drinking beat reporters, sleazy underworld figures and psycho killers feels gritty and authentic (even during its many flights of fancy).

The writing is hard-boiled and often hilarious, and if I were still angling to produce movies I would go off to a motel in the desert, pound out another adaptation of this sucker and get it to Brad and Angelina ASAP. They would be perfect as binging Bill Sweeney and his curvy obsession Yolanda (which reminds me, the tagline for the 1958 MIMI was "Suspense around every curve!", which is pretty damn good methinks).

Starring Anita "La Dolce Vita" Ekberg (aka Anita "Va-va-voom" Ekberg)

If you decide to do that, please thank me in the credits.

p1 (the first lines of the book)
"You can never tell what a drunken Irishman will do. You can make a flying guess; you can make a lot of flying guesses."

"There's murder before the story proper starts, and murder after it ends; the actual story begins with a naked woman and ends with one, which is a good opening and a good ending, but everything between isn't nice. Don't say I didn't warn you."

p6 crease |krēs| verb [ trans. ]
2 (of a bullet) graze (someone or something), causing little damage : a bullet creased his thigh.

p10 "It's the easiest thing in the world, Sweeney. Take rich men. Easiest thing in the world; anybody can get rich. All you got to do is want money so bad it means more to you than anything else. Concentrate on money and you'll get it. If you want other things worse, you don't."

p20 "There are strange things in the world and then there are stranger ones."

There are strange films in the world, and then there are Dario Argento films.

p22 "Sweeney headed for the Blade. There's a nice pun in that, if you don't mind your puns obvious. The Blade. If you saw that pun yourself, forgive me for pointing it out. You got it, yes, but somebody else would have missed it. It takes all kinds of people to read a book."

p30 "'Well,' said Sweeney, and thought it over. He had to get some nourishment into him somehow, a little at a time, until his appetite came back and he could look at a full meal without flinching. 'Beer with an egg in it, I guess.'"

nictitating membrane |ˈniktiˌtāti ng |
noun Zoology
a whitish or translucent membrane that forms an inner eyelid in birds, reptiles, and some mammals. It can be drawn across the eye to protect it from dust and keep it moist. Also called third eyelid .

p32 "Isn't civilization a marvelous thing, Mr. Sweeney? That two men can sit around like this and insult one another, amicably but sincerely, and enjoy the conversation?"

p111 "He... knocked on a heavy door. It opened a few inches and a face looked out, the eyes–and they weren't nice eyes–well above the level of Sweeney's head. Under the eyes was a broken nose, and under the nose was a pair of thick lips that said "Yeah?" and showed broken teeth between them."

complaisant |kəmˈplāsənt|
adjective
willing to please others; obliging; agreeable : when unharnessed, Northern dogs are peaceful and complaisant.

p118 "Unconsciously, one judges others by comparison with oneself; and two people both of whom have eaten onions cannot smell each other's breath."

151 goldbrick informal
noun
a thing that looks valuable, but is in fact worthless.
• (also goldbrick or goldbricker) a con man.
• a lazy person : [as adj. ] hardworking Amos and goldbrick Andy.
verb (usu. goldbrick) [ intrans. ]
invent excuses to avoid a task; shirk : he wasn't goldbricking; he was really sick.
• [ trans. ] swindle (someone).

156 "He strolled over to Clark Street, stopped in at Ireland's and ordered a lobster."
- i don't know what it is about that sentence, but there's something magical and transporting about it for me...

Finally, a bonus Dog Ear that I found at Brown's IMDB page. Brown is credited with writing the shortest horror story of all time:

"The last man on earth sat alone in a room. There was a knock at the door."

Dog Ears #12: The Third Policeman

To honor my Irish heritage and the arrival once again of St. Patrick's Day, I read The Third Policeman by celebrated Irish author Flann O'Brien (the pen of name Brian Ó Núalláin, who also wrote as Myles na gCopaleen).

The cover art feels poorly illustrated... until you hit page 52 and things begin to fall into place

Wellll... O.K., it's only a coincidence that I'm writing this two days before St. Patrick's Day. The real reason I selected this book is that I'm a big LOST nerd and a few years back one of the writers (Craig Wright) remarked, after the book was seen in Desmond's bunk in The Hatch, that the book "was selected for a reason" and contained key insights into the show.

There were some interesting echoes between the two, but the primary possible connection (which I will discuss in a moment) seems to already have been discounted by LOST honchos Lindelof and Cuse.

*THE THIRD POLICEMAN SPOILERS AHEAD*

I'm not a big fan of spoilers, but in this case I feel I can't avoid talking about them. The reason? The Introduction to The Third Policeman gave away the twist ending.

The Introduction!

p.vii (taken from a 1940 letter from O'Brien to William Saroyan):

When you get to the end of this book you realize my hero or main character (he's a heel and a killer) has been dead throughout the book and that all the queer ghastly things which have been happening to him are happening in a sort of hell which he has earned for the killing.

How can it be OK to divulge this kind of information in the Introduction, especially for a book that isn't widely known and therefore not something that everyone pretty much has heard of before à la what happens at the end of Romeo and Juliet or Of Mice and Men? Or maybe the better question is, are we not supposed to read the Introduction until after we've read the book proper? I'm at a loss here- anyone knowing the proper reading and writing etiquette please chime in.

Since the folks at LOST have repeatedly denied that the scenario we've been watching for four seasons now is a representation of limbo or the afterlife, the "big" connection doesn't resonate. That said, there are some interesting minor connections in the dog-ears to follow.

SEE! Desmond was reading it RIGHT HERE and, and it has to mean something, right?

One more (proper?) nugget from the Intro before we smooth back the dog-ears. This bit of information completely endeared me to the author before ever reading a line of his work:

He could not face the humiliation of telling Dublin that his second novel had been rejected in two continents, so he took a desperate step. He pretended that the sole typescript of the novel had been lost and that he could not write it again. Donagh MacDonagh was the only friend to whom he confided the truth. The book was not published till 1967, a year after O'Brien's death.

O'Brien wrote what is now considered a minor masterpiece in 1939-40, but he lived with feelings of deception and shame about it until his death twenty seven years later... when it was promptly published to great acclaim!

Life's a bitch and then you die and then you get published.

With no further ado, here are my selections from this most unusual, Seussian, frustrating, Escherian, frightening, Carrollian, bicycle- and pancake-obsessed and realistically surrealist novel:

p21 "The softening and degeneration of the human race he* attributes to its progressive predilection for interiors and waning interest in the art of going out and staying there. This in turn he sees as the result of the rise of such pursuits as reading, chess-playing, drinking, marriage and the like, few of which can be conducted in the open."

* the "he" in question is the deep-in-left-field (and fictional) philosopher de Selby, who the unnamed narrator is obsessed with, committing murder to bankroll his pursuit of writing a definitive commentary on de Selby's life. It says a bit about the narrator that some of de Selby's core beliefs are that the world is not round, but "sausage-shaped," and that the dark of night is brought on by an accumulation of "dark air" from "a staining of the atmosphere due to volcanic eruptions too fine to be see." This may also be a good time to point out that the author O'Brien is described as "a natural alcoholic" and writes as though he were crazy in the coconut.

p24 "In the darkest corner of the room near the window a man* was sitting in a chair, eying me with a mild but unwavering interest."

* the description of this man Mathers is eerily reminiscent of LOST's favorite apparition Jacob.

p44 (the one-legged narrator discusses the value of life with the one-legged thief Finnucane):

Is it life? Many a man has spent a hundred years trying to get the dimensions of it and when he understands it at last and entertains the certain pattern of it in his head, by the hokey he takes to his bed and dies! He dies like a poisoned sheepdog.

p47 desideratum | diˌsidəˈrätəm; -ˈrātəm; -ˌzidə-|
noun ( pl. -ta |-tə|)
something that is needed or wanted : integrity was a desideratum.
ORIGIN mid 17th cent.: from Latin, ‘something desired,’ neuter past participle of desiderare (see desiderate ).

p48 factivity/factive |ˈfaktiv|
adjective Linguistics
denoting a verb that assigns the status of an established fact to its object (normally a clausal object), e.g., know, regret, resent.

p50 "Of all the many striking statements made by de Selby, I do not think any of them can rival his assertion that 'a journey is an hallucination'."

De Selby's theory of night bears a strong resemblance to the island's "smoke monster"

p59 "'The first beginnings of wisdom,' he said, 'is to ask questions but never to answer any. You get wisdom from asking and I from not answering.'"

p66 sempiternal |ˌsempəˈtərnl|
adjective
eternal and unchanging; everlasting : his writings have the sempiternal youth of poetry.
DERIVATIVES
sempiternally |ˈˈsɛmpəˈtərnli| adverb
sempiternity |-ˈtərnitē| |ˈsɛmpəˈtərnədi| noun
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Old French sempiternel or late Latin sempiternalis, from Latin sempiternus, from semper ‘always’ + aeternus ‘eternal.’

p72 "It was so faultless and delightful that it reminded me forcibly, strange and foolish as it may seem, of something I did not understand and had never even heard of."

p75 acatalectic |āˌkatlˈektik| Prosody
adjective
(of a line of verse) having the full number of syllables.
noun
a line of verse of such a type.

p83 banjaxed/banjax |ˈbanˌjaks|*
verb [ trans. ] Brit., informal
ruin; incapacitate : he said the scheme was banjaxing the tourist industry.
ORIGIN 1930s: originally Anglo-Irish, of unknown origin.

*"banjax" is offically my new favorite word. Please, don't make me banjax you.

p 105 pari passu |ˌpärē ˈpäˌsoō|
adverb
side by side; at the same rate or on an equal footing : early opera developed pari passu with solo song.
ORIGIN Latin, literally ‘with equal step.’

nolle prosequi |ˌnälē ˈpräsiˌkwē|
noun Law
a formal notice of abandonment by a plaintiff or prosecutor of all or part of a suit or action.
• the entry of this in a court record.
ORIGIN late 17th cent.: Latin, literally ‘be unwilling to pursue.’

p123

'And he lay looking at the map for five years more before he saw that it showed the way to eternity.'
'To eternity?'
'Certainly.'
'Will it be possible for us to come back from there?' I whispered.
'Of course. There is a lift.'

p133

'How big is all this place?'
'It has no size at all,' the Sergeant explained, 'because there is no difference anywhere in it and we have no conception of its unchanging coequality.'

p138 "'But the secret of it all-in-all,' continued the Sergeant, 'is the daily readings*. Attend to your daily readings and your conscience will be as clear as a clean shirt on Sunday morning. I am a great believer in the daily readings.'"

*do you get the sense that Locke was a big fan of the "daily readings" before he screwed the pooch at the end of Season Two?

p158 "'Strange enlightenments are vouchsafed," I murmured, 'to those who seek the higher places.'"

Dog Ears #11: Against Nature (A Rebours)

Coincidentally, the protagonist of Zeroville, the last book I read, was obsessed with making a film based on Là-Bas, which was written by Joris-Karl Huysmans, the author of the next book in my to-read stack Against Nature (A Rebours). Against Nature was published in 1884 and caused a major stir in the literary community for its break with Naturalism, glorifying of Decadence, general blasphemy and controversial explosion/expansion of the scope of a novel.

Haven't we all known guys like this?

Huysman's fin de siècle novel has only one character, virtually no narrative storyline, and exists primarily to catalogue the scathing musings of its misanthropic protagonist, the solipsistic and effete aesthete Des Esseintes, who is a barely-fictionalized version of Huysmans himself.

In other words Against Nature is Huysman's blog, his forum for hating on the unworthy and loving on his faves and generally saying "look at how clever I am!" Fortunately for Huysmans, he was an enormously talented (and tormented, and viciously funny) writer and Against Nature holds up as a mammoth treatise on life, misery and the pursuit of the unattainable. Any fan of Oscar Wilde's The Picture of Dorian Gray should read Against Nature, the "poisonous French novel" that sends Dorian down the path of debauchery and madness.

One final note, this book is the inspiration for Steely Dan's 2000 album Two Against Nature, and I imagine any Dan fans who've read up about the personal lives of Mssrs Becker and Fagan and/or listened closely to their lyrics will agree it's an inspired choice.

From the Introduction by Patrick McGuinness

p xvi "Perhaps the belief that there was nothing new was itself a necessary prelude to creating the new."

p xxxiii "How could a novel so ending-obsessed, plotless and gridlocked by description be seen as liberating? In certain respects, it was a version of Flaubert's dream of a book 'about nothing'."
- perhaps Jerry and Larry were fans of Against Nature too?

From Against Nature

p21 higgledy-piggledy|ˈhigəldē ˈpigəldē|
adverb & adjective
in confusion or disorder : [as adv. ] bits of paper hanging higgledy-piggledy on the furniture and walls | [as adj. ] a higgledy-piggledy mountain of newspapers.
ORIGIN late 16th cent.: rhyming jingle, probably with reference to the irregular herding together of pigs.

p22 "Nature, he used to say, has had her day; she has finally and utterly exhausted the patience of sensitive observers by the revolting uniformity of her landscapes and skyscapes."

Don't get Des Esseintes started on Gustave Moreau...

p28 caesura |siˈ zh oŏrə; -ˈzoŏrə|
noun
(in Greek and Latin verse) a break between words within a metrical foot.
• (in modern verse) a pause near the middle of a line.
• any interruption or break : an unaccountable caesura: no deaths were reported in the newspapers.
ORIGIN mid 16th cent.: from Latin, from caes- ‘cut, hewn,’ from the verb caedere.

prosody |ˈpräsədē|
noun
the patterns of rhythm and sound used in poetry : the translator is not obliged to reproduce the prosody of the original.
• the theory or study of these patterns, or the rules governing them.
• the patterns of stress and intonation in a language : the salience of prosody in child language acquisition | early English prosodies.

p56 aquarelle |ˌäkwəˈrel; ˌak-|
noun
a style of painting using thin, typically transparent, watercolors.
• a painting in such a style.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from French, from Italian acquarella ‘watercolor,’ diminutive of acqua, from Latin aqua ‘water.’

p75 casuist |ˈka zh oōist|
noun
a person who uses clever but unsound reasoning, esp. in relation to moral questions; a sophist.
• a person who resolves moral problems by the application of theoretical rules to particular instances.

p76 "For several days in succession, his brain was a seething mass of paradoxes and sophisms, a tangle of split hairs, a maze of rules as complicated as the clauses of law, open to every conceivable interpretation and every kind of quibble, and leading up to a system of celestial jurisprudence of positively baroque subtlety."

an illustration by Arthur Zaidenberg from the 1931 Illustrated Editions issue of A Rebours

p94 "... and it is of course true that, just as the loveliest melody in the world becomes unbearably vulgar once the public start humming it and the barrel-organs playing it, so the work of art that appeals to charlatans, endears itself to fools, and is not content ti arouse the enthusiasm of a few connoisseurs, is thereby polluted in the eyes of the initiate and becomes commonplace, almost repulsive."

p110 ritornel/ritornello |ˌritərˈnelō|
noun ( pl. -nellos or -nelli |-ˈnelē|) Music
a short instrumental refrain or interlude in a vocal work.
• a recurring tutti section in a concerto.
ORIGIN Italian, diminutive of ritorno ‘return.’

p118 "Once again, he told himself, the solitude he had longed for so ardently and finally obtained had resulted in appalling unhappiness, while the silence which he had once regarded as well-merited compensation for the nonsense he had listened to for years now weighed unbearably upon him."

p125 trencherwoman/trencherman |ˈtren ch ərmən|
noun ( pl. -men) [usu. with adj. ] humorous
a person who eats in a specified manner, typically heartily : he is a hearty trencherman, as befits a man of his girth.

p141 panegyrist/panegyrize |ˈpanəjəˌrīz|
verb [ trans. ] archaic
speak or write in praise of; eulogize.

p145 purblind |ˈpərˌblīnd|
adjective
having impaired or defective vision.
• figurative slow or unable to understand; dim-witted.

p161 "Yet, the staff of a tavern were every bit as stupid and mercenary, as base and depraved, as the staff of a brothel. Like the latter, they drank without being thirsty, laughed without being amused, drooled over the caresses of the filthiest workman and went for each other hammer and tongs at the slightest provocation."
- I hereby promise to try and start working "go at it hammer and tongs" into conversation

p170 sudorific |ˌsoōdəˈrifik| Medicine
adjective
relating to or causing sweating.
noun
a drug that induces sweating.
ORIGIN early 17th cent.: from modern Latin sudorificus, from Latin sudor ‘sweat.’

p183 hieratic |ˌhī(ə)ˈratik|
adjective
of or concerning priests : he raised both his arms in an outlandish hieratic gesture.
• of or in the ancient Egyptian writing of abridged hieroglyphics used by priests. Compare with demotic .
• of or concerning Egyptian or Greek styles of art adhering to early methods as laid down by religious tradition.

p193 Des Esseintes, while fantasizing about never eating again while receiving all of his nourishment in the form of "peptone enemas", mutters:

"What an absolute release from the boredom that invariably results from the necessarily limited choice of dishes! What a vigorous protest against the vile sin of gluttony! And last but not least, what a slap in the face of Mother Nature, whose monotonous demands would be permanently silenced!"

From Appendix II

p222 alembicated/alembic |əˈlembik|
noun
a distilling apparatus, now obsolete, consisting of a rounded, necked flask and a cap with a long beak for condensing and conveying the products to a receiver.

p223 (from Emile Goudeau's 1884 review of Against Nature):

M. Huysmans, with a remarkable talent and stupefying erudition, has put together in his book Against Nature all the elements of human despair. He has solidly spat on every pleasure, and kept for himself the terrible joy of abolishing human joy. An unhealthy book, but artistically very beautiful, perfectly crafted and skillfully wrought.

Empathy for the Devil

HEDLEY LAMARR
My mind is a raging torrent, flooded with rivulets of thought
cascading into a waterfall of creative alternatives.

TAGGART

God darnit, Mr. Lamarr, you use your tongue
purtier than a twenty dollar whore.

Too often I find myself thinking like Hedley and speaking like Taggart. Hopefully I write somewhere in between.

The solution to all life's riddles can be found in BLAZING SADDLES

My mind HAS been flooded with a variety of rivulets lately, and they seem to be begging me to tie them together somehow.

Here they are, separately:

1. A desire to finally write down definitions of classically descriptive terms like "pathos" and "bathos" that I (and many others) seem to misuse and often misunderstand.
2. A desire to finally write down translations of still-in-use Latin phrases that I (and many others) seem to misuse and often misunderstand.
3. A desire to finally write down crib-sheet style descriptions of all the philosophers and thinkers overtly referenced in the character names in LOST in preparation for the Season 4 premiere next Thursday.

We'll see, I suppose, if there's a connection other than the tenuous one that they were all in play at one time or another as I pursued my BA in Poli-Sci. Hopefully, at the very least, they'll look purty all wrote out in a row.

pathos: Greek for "to suffer".

1. The aspect of something which gives rise to a sense of pity.
2. In its rhetorical sense, pathos is a writer's attempt to persuade an audience through appeals involving the use of strong emotions. In this sense, pathos is not strictly limited to pity. In its critical sense, pathos denotes an author's attempt to evoke a feeling of pity or sympathetic sorrow for a character.
3. In theology and existentialist ethics following Kierkegaard and Heidegger, a deep and abiding commitment of the heart, as in the notion of "finding your passion" as an important aspect of a fully-lived, engaged life.

The urge to make a groan-inducing pun with the word "bathos" is all-but overwhelming

bathos: Greek for "depth". Used metaphorically from 1638 (Robert Sanderson). First used ironically by Alexander Pope (Bathos, 1727), in contrast to "sublime".

1. Depth, Bottom.
   
2. An abrupt change in style, usually from high to low; an unintended transition of style; an anticlimax.
3. Triteness; triviality; banality.
4. Overly sentimental and exaggerated pathos.
   

pathetic:
1. arousing pity, esp. through vulnerability or sadness : she looked so pathetic that I bent
down to comfort her. See note at moving .
• informal miserably inadequate : his test scores in Chemistry were pathetic.
2. archaic relating to the emotions.

empathy:
1. the intellectual identification of the thoughts, feelings, or state of another person
2. capacity to understand another person's point of view or the result of such understanding

sympathy:

1. A feeling of pity or sorrow for the suffering or distress of another; compassion.
2. The ability to share the feelings of another; empathy.
3. (psychology) A mutual relationship between people such that they are correspondingly affected by any condition.
4. (physiology) A mutual relationship between organs such that a condition of one part causes an effect in the other.

a priori: deductive reasoning, from cause to effect

a posteriori: inductive reasoning, from effect to cause

factotum: one who does everything

sine qua non: fundamental cause; necessary precondition

flagrante delicto: in the heat of the crime
(I always thought this had a more lurid meaning...)

persona non grata: an unacceptable person

cogito ergo sum: I think, therefore I am (first busted out by ya boy René Descartes in 1637)

amor fati: (this one I've been thinking about a lot lately because of the beautiful Nietzsche quote I stumbled across, so excuse the lengthier wikipedia definition in this already lengthy post)

Amor fati is a Latin phrase that loosely translates to "love of fate" or "love of one's fate". It is used to describe an attitude in which one sees everything that happens in one's life, including suffering and loss, as good. That is, one feels that everything that happens is destiny's way of reaching its ultimate purpose, and so should be considered good. Moreover, it is characterized by an acceptance of the events that occur in one's life.

The phrase is used repeatedly in Nietzsche's writings and is representative of the general outlook on life he articulates in section 276 of The Gay Science, which reads,

I want to learn more and more to see as beautiful what is necessary in things; then I shall be one of those who make things beautiful. Amor fati: let that be my love henceforth! I do not want to wage war against what is ugly. I do not want to accuse; I do not even want to accuse those who accuse. Looking away shall be my only negation. And all in all and on the whole: some day I wish to be only a Yes-sayer.

John Locke is named after John Locke (1632-1704) the Enlightenment philosopher who dealt with the relationship between nature and civilization, later to have great influence on founders of democratic governments. He believed that, in the state of nature, all men had equal rights to punish transgressors; to ensure fair judgment for all, governments were formed to better administer the laws.

Anthony Cooper is John Locke's father. It seems he's based on two Anthony Coopers:
Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1621-1683) was an English politician who was the mentor and patron of real-life philosopher, John Locke.

Anthony Ashley-Cooper (1671-1713) was an eighteenth-century moral philosopher who posited that people are basically good, and that morality is a foundational (if not innate) part of humanity.

"Desmond" David Hume is named after David Hume (1711-1776). Hume was the first great philosopher of the modern era to carve out a thoroughly naturalistic philosophy. This philosophy partly consisted in the rejection of the historically prevalent conception of human minds as being miniature versions of the Divine mind; a notion that has been entitled the ‘Image of God’ doctrine. This doctrine was associated with a trust in the powers of human reason and insight into reality, which powers possessed God’s certification.

Danielle "Rousseau" is named after Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), a philosopher and composer of the Enlightenment whose political philosophy influenced the French Revolution, the development of both liberal and socialist theory, and the growth of nationalism. With his Confessions and other writings, he practically invented modern autobiography and encouraged a new focus on the building of subjectivity that would bear fruit in the work of thinkers as diverse as Hegel and Freud. His novel Julie, or the New Heloise was one of the best-selling fictional works of the eighteenth century and was important to the development of romanticism.

I think Alpert's backstory will go a long way in telling us if time travel is in play on LOST

Richard Alpert (the eyebrowish "Other" who recruited Juliet to the island) is named after Dr. Richard Alpert (born April 6, 1931), also known as Baba Ram Dass, is a contemporary spiritual teacher who wrote the 1971 bestseller Be Here Now. He is well-known for his association with Timothy Leary at Harvard University in the early 1960s, both having been dismissed from their professorships for experiments on the effects of psychedelic drugs on human subjects. He is also known for his travels to India and his association with the Hindu guru Neem Karoli Baba.

Mikhail Bakunin (aka "Patchy") is named after Mikhail Bakunin (1814-1876) was a well-known Russian revolutionary and anarchist philosopher. He "rejected governing systems in every name and shape", every authority figure, including God, or a sovereign. Bakunin denied the concept of "free will" and advocated a materialist explanation of natural phenomena. Bakunin believed that the proper form of social organization is that of free association between individuals and between communities. Thus, "The freedom of all is essential to my freedom."

Whew. I feel better now. Thank you to Wikipedia, Wiktionary, Apple's Dictionary, Latin Phrases & Quotations by Richard A. Branyon, and Lostpedia.

Finally, for other LOST fans beginning to loosen up their theory-belts for Season 4, check out this intriguing line of thinking at Lost in Shangri-La.

Dog Ears #9: Blood Meridian, or, The Evening Redness in the West

Sad but true: it often takes having a major writer's work adapted into a feature film in order to get me off my duff and into his canon. Sometimes even more than one film.

I imagine this is the look on Cormac McCarthy's face while he's writing

Such was the case with Cormac McCarthy and the Coen Brothers' 2007 adaptation of his 2005 novel No Country For Old Men. For many years I've heard McCarthy's praises sung by people I liked and/or respected, but fair or unfair I decided to steer clear of him after Billy Bob Thornton's 2000 adaptation of his All The Pretty Horses, on the basis that I thought All The Pretty Horses was an atrocious title and the movie (which I've still never seen) looked lame.

Despite my misgivings about the title of his latest adaptation, I took the plunge, saw NO COUNTRY, and liked the first two-thirds enough to buy the paperback of what I understood to be McCarthy's masterpiece, Blood Meridian.

Well one thing's for certain, Ridley Scott's 2009 adaptation of Blood Meridian won't have roles for Matt Damon, Penelope Cruz or Elliot from E.T.: Blood Meridian is a filibuster of bloodlust and malignancy.

Naturally, things being what they are, atrocities beyond your wildest imaginings are transformed into epic poetry thanks to McCarthy's blistering, almost psychedelic prose. I certainly didn't enjoy reading Blood Meridian (first published in 1985), and for almost half the book I was barely aware what was happening in a narrative sense (thanks largely to his freakshow thesauraus, disdain for punctuation, and penchant for Spanish), but I won't soon forget the trail of blood blazed by the kid and the judge.

Blood Meridian = Hieronymus Bosch + 1850's Old West

The book contained far too many words I wanted to look up and noteworthy passages to dogear in the traditional sense, so I turned down page corners in haphazard fashion, hoping I wouldn't regret the ears undogged...

p.52 "Already you could see through the dust on the ponies' hides the painted chevrons and the hands and rising suns and birds and fish of every device like the shade of old work through sizing on a canvas and now too you could hear above the pounding of the unshod hooves the piping of the quena, flutes made from human bones, and some among the company had begun to saw back on their mounts and some to mill in confusion when up from the offside of those ponies there rose a fabled horde of mounted lancers and archers bearing shields bedight with bits of broken mirrorglass that cast a thousand unpieced suns against the eyes of their enemies."
(it was about this point that I realized I was in over my head, reading-wise)

p.141 "But no man can put all the world in a book. No more than everthing drawed in a book is so."

p.153 "Notions of chance and fate are the preoccupation of men engaged in rash undertakings."

p.189 withy: noun ( pl. withies or withes |wiθs; wiðz|)
a tough flexible branch of an osier or other willow, used for tying, binding, or basketry.
• another term for osier .
(I included this for all the Scrabble players out there!)

p.193 posada: noun
(in Spanish-speaking regions) a hotel or inn.
• (also Las Posadas) a ritual reenactment of Mary and Joseph's search for a lodging in Bethlehem, performed just before Christmas.
ORIGIN Spanish, from posar ‘to lodge.’
(I thought Yankee haters and Yankee fans alike would be interested to know this)

p. 198 suzerain: noun
a sovereign or state having some control over another state that is internally autonomous.
• historical a feudal overlord.

This is the rarely seen "centroid of peace"

p.218 "Glanton's eyes in their dark sockets were burning centroids of murder and he and his haggard riders stared balefully at the kid as if he were no part of them for all they were so like in wretchedness of circumstance."
(I reread this sentence a few times the first time around- I just couldn't believe the audacity of a writer actually typing "burning centroids of murder"!!!)

centroid: noun
Mathematics- the center of mass of a geometric object of uniform density.

p.247 "In the neuter austerity of that terrain all phenomena were bequeathed a strange equality and no one thing nor spider nor stone nor blade of grass could put forth claim to precedence."
(that's one austere desert my friend)

p.249 "Men are born for games. Nothing else. Every child knows that play is nobler than work."
(this line of thinking reaches its, and perhaps the entire book's, apotheosis at the end of the page with-)
"War is the ultimate game because war is at last a forcing of the unity of existence. War is god."

p.252 "Your heart's desire is to be told some mystery. The mystery is that there is no mystery."

p.330 "He poured the tumbler full. Drink up, he said. The world goes on. We have dancing nightly and this night is no exception."

Dog Ears #8: Backstory 4

There was a time not too long ago when even the thought of reading anything in the Backstory series made me feel all icky inside. The four installments of Backstory are collections of interviews with screenwriters of different eras (1 is "The Golden Age", 2 is 1940s and 1950s, 3 is 1960s, and 4 is 1970s and 1980s) compiled and edited by Marquette film professor Patrick McGilligan. Thanks to my own efforts and the gift-giving prowess of Mrs. Word Player, I now have all four books in the excellent but largely out-of-print series, but after a really rough time writing my fifth screenplay Blood is Thicker (still unfinished after working on it for 11 months of '06 and early '07) I couldn't stomach reading all these success stories for a while.

You can't make this stuff up

Thankfully, time heals wounds of this sort pretty efficiently, so when I peeked into the one volume I hadn't read yet a few weeks ago I was happy to discover that my appetite for intimate conversations with working writers had returned. It's funny how the same words can be exasperating one day and inspiring the next...

The following are anecdotes, insights, self-recriminations and new lingo taken from Backstory 4: Interviews with Screenwriters of the 1970s and 1980s.

ROBERT BENTON
p. 29 "The banalities of married life are, for me, far more interesting and more poignant than the intensity of romance. There's something I find deeply moving about ordinary life."
re: his script for NADINE (1987)

p. 35 "There are two models (of screenplay structure). In one, plot grows out of character. This is the (Howard) Hawks model. In the other, character grows out of plot. This is the [Otto] Preminger model. When I do the architecture on a script of my own, I follow the Hawks approach. I do it so that characters become more complex, and they don't tell you where they're going until they get there."

LARRY COHEN
(Cohen's script for PHONE BOOTH, ultimately made in 2002 with Joel Schumacher at the helm, was once considered by Alfred Hitchcock.)

p. 77 "(Hitchcock) seemed very, very intimidated by Lew Wasserman and the Universal executives, who had more or less undermined his confidence in himself. While making him a very rich man, they'd also destroyed him as an artist. Hitch had severed his ties with [composer] Bernard Herrmann, for example, who had been a close friend and great collaborator, and mainly it was the Universal executives who poisoned his mind against Herrmann and convinced him he needed somebody like Henry Mancini to write songs and a hipper musical score. Which he never got, by the way."

BLAKE EDWARDS
p. 91 tsuris: |ˈtsoŏris; ˈtsər| noun, informal
trouble or woe; aggravation.
ORIGIN early 20th cent.: from Hebrew.

p. 95 "Therefore I consider that slapstick–literally slapstick–is not entirely what I do. Only some of it turns out to be slapstick. Slapstick comes from vaudeville–it comes from what they called "the slap stick" (slapping sound as he demonstrates), which made that sound."

WALTER HILL
p. 106 roustabout: noun
an unskilled or casual laborer.
• a laborer on an oil rig.
• a dock laborer or deckhand.
• a circus laborer.
ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: from the verb roust

"All of this taught me one important thing that carried over to writing. If you are capable of making a living out of your talent and imagination, you are a privileged soul. As to the actual writing, you learn about writing by reading. And then you learn to make use of your own particular attitudes, gifts, and skills by–writing, writing, writing."

p. 113 "I don't pretend to be a scholar about the history and evolution of screenwriting, and I think you have to approach it as a craft rather than an art. But it's the old story; if the craft gets good enough, it is an art."

p. 116 "My clearest impression is that (Michael) Eisner wanted movies to be a kind of pleasantly flavored chewing gum and was almost physically uncomfortable in dealing with anything about the dark side of the human heart."

Remind me to tell you my Harry Dean Stanton story some day

p. 122 (re ALIEN) "I named her "Ripley" (after "Believe It or Not"); later, when she had to have a first name for ID cards, I added "Ellen" (my mother's middle name). I called the ship Nostromo (from Conrad: no particular metaphoric idea, I just thought it sounded good). Some of the characters are named after athletes: Brett was for George Brett, Parker was for Dave Parker of the Pirates, and Lambert was Jack Lambert of the Steelers."

p. 128 "My favorite description of the dilemma of screenwriting comes from David Giler, "Your work is only read by the people who will destroy it."

RUTH PRAWER JHABVALA
p. 151 "What I do realize is that I mustn't have a single word that's not absolutely necessary, no "Oh yes, I see," nothing like that. You have to compress and compress and just give them the essence."

LAWRENCE KASDAN
p. 170 "That's what the STAR WARS saga is about–it's about following those things which are strongest in you and imposing them on the world. Making a career in Hollywood is like that if you want to do your own work. If you want to do what they want you to do, it's easy. You just say yes. But if you want to do what you want to do, you're constantly manipulating the chaos of the system."

p. 176 "That's what all great tragedies are about for me–that in this adherence to a single idea, we sometimes sacrifice everything."
re: his script for BODY HEAT (1981)

ELMORE LEONARD
p. 217 "What's amazing to me when I think about it, is that while Hollywood in general prefers plot-driven stories (they ask, "What's it about?"), thirty-three of my thirty-five books, all character-driven and talky, have either been optioned or bought outright for film."

PAUL MAZURSKY
p. 229 "I'm very sympathetic to those characters. I feel that the middle class is not treated in terms of tragedy. You have to be very rich or very poor to be thought of as a tragic figure."

Thulsa-Thulsa Doom y'all

JOHN MILIUS
p. 296 colloquy: |ˈkäləkwē| noun ( pl. -quies)
1 formal: a conversation : they broke off their colloquy at once | an evening of sophisticated colloquy. See note at conversation .
2 a gathering for discussion of theological questions.
ORIGIN late Middle English : from Latin colloquium ‘conversation.’

p. 299

PM: Was Robert Shaw really as drunk as they say, shooting the scene?
JM: He was totally drunk.

(Shaw had just been busted screwing the nanny by his wife, and kept interjecting his drunken thoughts about the situation into the Indianapolis scene from JAWS, a scene that Milius wrote as a favor to Spielberg. What we see in the final product, of course, has all the nanny bits cut out.)

FREDERIC RAPHAEL
p. 328 (this next bit speaks to questions I had after viewing TWO FOR THE ROAD (1967), written by Raphael)

PM: What was the genesis of the film you did make next, TWO FOR THE ROAD?
FR: (My wife and I) used always to just pack up and travel together. While we were driving down to the south of France from London on one of these trips, I said, "Imagine if we met ourselves as we were ten years ago," and of course the idea revealed itself as a movie.

DONALD E. WESTLAKE

p. 381 confrere: noun
a fellow member of a profession; a colleague : executives from the four broadcast television networks, along with their cable confreres.
ORIGIN mid 18th cent. : French, from medieval Latin confrater, from con- ‘together with’ + frater ‘brother.’

"The difference between a movie and a novel is that a movie is just the surface of things, and the meanings and emotions can only be implicit."

Islands in the Stream of Consciousness

"Sail away with me, to another world..."

In March, some friends turned us on to the late comedian Mitch Hedberg. Following an outdoor afternoon of food and beverage, we piled into the car and listened to some tracks from Hedberg's record MITCH ALL TOGETHER. We loved it- he sounded like a more energized Steven Wright. The high of enjoying new comedy in tight quarters quickly crashed when we were informed that Hedberg was dead (3/29/05, acute toxicity from heroin and cocaine) and left few recordings behind despite a relatively long and successful touring career.

Bummer.

Despite the rock star look, Hedberg suffered from crippling stage fright.

When we got home, I added Hedberg's lone DVD to our Netflix queue and didn't think about him again until a few days ago when it finally made its way to the top and into our mailbox. His comedy didn't have the same impact watching and listening as it did in purely audio state, and part of that was due to how he looked (eerily like a strung-out River Phoenix) combined with knowledge of how he died. Still, the performance really came alive toward the end after he finished his new material and launched into a crowd-pleasing review of more time-tested jokes.

Afterwards, I was surfing around curious to know more about Hedberg when I came across this doozie of a description at Wikipedia:

His routines featured elocutive but often short, sometimes one-line, observational jokes on everyday life, mixed with absurd and at times hylozoistic and paraprosdokian elements as well as non sequiturs.

I wonder if Hedberg himself would even have been able to easily digest that one! For my and your edification, here's a breakdown of the five dollar words.

elocutive: this word is actually NOT in the dictionary (yet another reminder not to believe everything you read!), but it seems pretty clear that its taken from the word elocution, which means:
1 : a style of speaking especially in public 2 : the art of effective public speaking

absurd: "absurd" is a commonly-used word that most of us use with ease, but I'm a believer in occasionally looking up words you think you know just to make sure, so:
1: ridiculously unreasonable, unsound, or incongruous 2: having no rational or orderly relationship to human life : meaningless ; also : lacking order or value 3: dealing with the absurd or with absurdism

I thought it was interesting that absurd means "no rational or orderly relationship to human life" considering the above description that his humor was largely "observational jokes on everyday life" (and that I personally find at least 51% of human life intensely absurd).

Heraclitus was down with hylozoism.

hylozoistic: taken from hylozoism, which is "a doctrine held especially by early Greek philosophers that all matter has life." Furthermore:

Although there is a distinction between possessing soul (panpsychism) and possessing life (hylozoism), in practice this division is difficult to maintain, because the ancient hylozoists not only regarded the spirits of the material universe and plant world as alive, but also as more or less conscious.

paraprosdokian: a figure of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected in a way that causes the reader or listener to reframe the first part. It is frequently used for humorous or dramatic effect, sometimes producing an anticlimax. For this reason, it is extremely popular among comedians and satirists.

Does it get any better than Rufus T. Firefly?

Here are some good examples of paraprosdokians (say that five times fast)- Hedberg's discovered connection to one of my all time favorite comedians (Groucho Marx) further explains my newfound affinity for him...

Where there's a will, I want to be in it.
"I've had a perfectly wonderful evening, but this wasn't it." — Groucho Marx
"Time flies like an arrow; fruit flies like a banana." — Groucho Marx
"I want to die peacefully in my sleep like my father, not screaming and terrified like his passengers." — Bob Monkhouse
"I haven't slept for ten days, because that would be too long." — Mitch Hedberg

non sequitur: a conversational and literary device, often used for comical purposes (as opposed to its use in formal logic). It is a comment which, due to its lack of meaning relative to the comment it follows, is absurd to the point of being humorous or confusing. Its use can be deliberate or unintentional. Literally, it is Latin for "it does not follow." In other literature, a non sequitur can denote an abrupt, illogical, unexpected or absurd turn of plot or dialogue not normally associated with or appropriate to that preceding it.

Non sequiturs often appear to be disconnected or random comments, or random changes in subject, especially socially inappropriate ones. When non sequiturs are used frequently for comic effect this can be called "absurd humor".

(ah HAH!)

The non sequitur can be understood as the converse of cliché. Traditional comedy and drama can depend on the ritualization and predictability of human emotional experiences, where the theatre of the absurd uses disjunction and unpredictability.

Dog Ears #6: A Prayer for Owen Meany

His vocal chords had not developed fully, or else his voice had been injured by the rock dust of his family's business. Maybe he had larynx damage, or a destroyed trachea; maybe he'd been hit in the throat by a chunk of granite. To be heard at all, Owen had to shout through his nose.

"It is Owen who made me a believer."

So we hear from narrator John Wheelwright on page 3 of John Irving's 1989 novel A Prayer For Owen Meany. So the reader never forgets this unusual method of speaking, John's best friend Owen's dialogue is IN ALL CAPS FOR THE DURATION OF THE BOOK.

At first I found this authorial choice almost too mannered (even for Irving), but the deeper I push into the book (I'm little more than halfway through on p.350) the more I recognize that it's pivotal to never forget Owen's physical peculiarities as the mystery of his "purpose" is slowly revealed to us through the narrative.

I admit the book has been slow going the last 100 pages or so, but the book's reputation as a classic and my faith that Irving is building to some wonderful fireworks in the Third Act are keeping me going.

That, and the beautiful writing of course.

I'm nervous about how Vietnam will figure into the story of Owen and John

Before I get to some of the many, many dog ears from the first half, I'm wondering if anyone else has noticed a great deal of similarities between Owen Meany and Max Fischer from Wes Anderson's RUSHMORE (1998). I'll have to watch the film again after I finish the book, but off the top of my head Owen and Max both:

1. attend a tony private all-boys school, but only with financial assistance
2. become enraged when Latin is removed from the curriculum
3. suffer from delusions of grandeur
4. feud with the school's headmaster
5. are the central figure at the school's newspaper
6. are central figures in local/school productions of dramatic plays

and I'm sure there are more. I'm also curious to know if the book's quasi-official film adaptation SIMON BIRCH (also 1998) is worth watching. Apparently, John Irving sold the film rights, but only with the stipulation that the title never be used. Irving himself came up with Owen's replacement name "Simon Birch."

Weird.

OK, on with the prose.

p.7 "–but every study of the gods, of everyone's gods, is a revelation of vengeance toward the innocent."

p.34 "Your memory is a monster; you forget–it doesn't. It simply files things away. It keeps things for you, or hides things from you–and summons them to your recall with a will of its own. You think you have a memory; but it has you!"

p.38 "And in addition to being an almost perfect mother, I also know that she was a happy woman–and a truly happy woman drives some men and almost every other woman absolutely crazy."

p.57 "It's a no-win argument–that business of what we're born with and what our environment does to us. And it's a boring argument, because it simplifies the mysteries that attend our birth and our growth."

p.83 red-letter: of special significance
Function: adjective
Etymology: from the practice of marking holy days in red letters in church calendars
Date: 1704

December is chock full of red-letter days

p.111 "... Mr. Merrill was the most appealing because he reassured us that doubt was the essence of faith, and not faith's opposite."

p.128 "Mrs. Hoyt was the first person I remember who said that to criticize a specific American president was not anti-American; that to criticize a specific American policy was not antipatriotic; and that to disapprove of our involvement in a particular war against the communists was not the same as taking the communists' side. But these distinctions were lost on most of the citizens of Gravesend; they are lost on many of my former fellow Americans today."

p.292 "And Hester was committed to irreverence..."
(what an outstanding commitment! Hester the Molester, I salute you!)

p.309 "Don't ask for proof–that was Mr. Merrill's routine message.
'BUT EVERYBODY NEEDS A LITTLE PROOF,' said Owen Meany.
'Faith itself is a miracle, Owen,' said Pastor Merrill. 'The first miracle that I believe in is my own faith itself.'"

p341 "'IT JUST TAKES A LITTLE MORE FAITH.'
'It takes more practice,' I told him irritably.
'FAITH TAKES PRACTICE,' said Owen Meany.