Conspicuous Acts of Cultural Consumption

Where I talk about books, movies, television, art, pro-wrestling and other forms of culture and pop-culture

Talking to the Spokesbear About Recent Reading: The Lathe of Heaven

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“You read The Lathe of Heaven?” To his credit, the Spokesbear manages to say this without making it sound like an accusation. Of course, he immediately proceeds to sniff the cover like one of the drug dogs you see at the airport, which kind of undoes his momentary attack of self-control. “You don’t like Le Guin and you’ve had that book sitting on your shelf for six years without reading it. What gives, dumb-arse?””

“I don’t like Earthsea. That’s not a condemnation of her work in its entirety.”

The Spokesbear made a nervous coughing noise in the back of his throat. “People will kick your arse for not liking Earthsea. You know that, right?”

“I’ve locked the door and taken the phone of the hook. I can drag the shotgun out of the in-case-of-zombie-apocalypse kit if we need it.”

“Sure.”

I fidgeted as I made coffee, uncomfortable under his stare. “Fine,” I said. “It’s short. I need short books. I promised myself I’d read 104 books by the end of July, most of them written by women, and I’m falling behind.”

The Spokesbear doesn’t look convinced. “That theory doesn’t work so well when you don’t like the book, kid. You have to *want* to read things.”

“I liked Lathe of Heaven.”

He sniffed the cover again, pulled a face like he’d discovered a stash of rotten eggs instead of literary cocaine. “This? It’s had a bookmark living at the end of the first chapter since your first attempt to read it back in 2006.”

“Well, I liked some of it.”

“Some of it?”

“The last half.”

He gave me a flinty look. I’m not sure how he managed that, given his eyes are plastic beads and designed to give the impression of cuteness. Call it a quirk of his character, the stern thread of iron beneath his floppy exterior.

“Look,” I said. “It’s a slow starter. It got better, when I gave it a chance.”

He quirked an eyebrow. “Better how?”

“Rule of three,” I said. “Conflict between two characters, no matter how intense and meaningful, becomes far more interesting when a third character is introduced to take sides and provide contrast. Plus Heather gives a personal stake to the philosophical conundrum at the core fo the book. And the second half of the book has dream-diving alien turtles. You can do no wrong with dream-diving alien turtles.”

“Turtles trump the considerable metaphorical depth of the first half? Really?”

I sipped my coffee. “Really. Turtles are fun.”

“You really wouldn’t be an SF fan if Star Wars hadn’t come along, would you. Style and fun trump substance in your head.”

“Not entirely. I mean, if that were true, I would have liked the remake of Star Trek.”

“They’re going to take away your geek badge,” the spokesbear said.

I didn’t have anything to say to that. I finished my coffee, pondering the book and the conversation.

“For what it’s worth,” I said, “I think the dislike of Earthsea has more to do with the person who recommended it to me than the book itself.”

“Teacher?”

“Ex-Girlfriend.”

“Which one?”

I gave him a name. He listened, shaking his head.

“If that were really true, you’d dislike Angela Carter.” The Spokesbear looked smug. “Is that checkmate, dumb-arse? Can we stop talking about the book and go back to work now?”

It was. We could. I did.

Whip It and Writing

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1) Whip It

I’ve been toying with the idea of writing a blog post-reviewy thing about Whip It for about two weeks now, and I’ve come to the conclusion that it’s just not going to happen. Not because I think it’s a bad film – it’s utterly charming in its ability to recognise that something can be simultaneously camp as hell and the most important thing in the whole damn world – but because it fits into the same space as contemporary art where I find my critical vocabulary isn’t really up to the task of expressing what I’m thinking about after seeing the film.

My short, haphazard take on the film goes something like this: it’s endearing. Specifically, the kind of awkward-coming-of-age endearing you find in Taylor Swift film-clip, only Whip It comes without the puritanical undercurrent that usually causes me to froth at the mouth when encountering Swift’s oeuvre (and thus, Whip It comes closer to having actual substance).

The film actually reminds me, very strongly, of Bring It On (another film that didn’t seem like something I’d like that somehow turned out to be highly entertaining) and I kinda wish it existed in a world where Bring It On didn’t because there’s far to many parallels there.

The sound-track is phenomenal in its eclecticism, but gets bonus points for including both the Ramones and Yens Leckman.

The acting is solid. The most irritating thing about the film is Drew Barrymore’s character, but only because it’s exactly the same character she played in the Charlie’s Angel’s films with a tendency to act stoned on top. Plus it has Ari Graynor in a minor role (Graynor seems to have become the new incarnation of the cinematic past-time once dubbed “Breckin-Meyer-Spotting”)

It’s also a goddamn spectacular film to watch from a writing point of view because there’s not a damn subplot in the whole thing that doesn’t get a resolution in the end. Admittedly this doesn’t seem like a big deal, but there’s something powerful about knowing that if a film introduces conflict it will provide resolution to it, even if said conflict is just a five-second scene between the protagonist and a minor character in the opening minutes of the story. While Whip It telegraphs a lot of punches on the macro-level (I doubt anyone can’t pick the father’s final scene in the film a full hour before it happens), it gets a pass on this because the resolution of the really minor conflicts are also dragged back into the main plot and made meaningful.

It’s a neat trick, and one I’m gleefully lifting given that I’m in the midst of writing the second draft of Black Candy and dealing with a dozen or so minor characters who walk onstage and do very little after their first appearance.

Seriously, though, you can probably ignore all that and go with this instead: my friend Chris and I are the kind of snarky, mid-to-late-thirties blokes who are continuously disappointing by films and prone to venting our disappointment in Waldorf-and-Statler type critiques. As a general rule, it’s a bad idea to go and see film you think you’ll like when either of us are around.

Both of us hit the end of Whip It and said “Yeah, I need to own a copy of this.”

 2) Minimally Acceptable Levels of Productivity

So I set myself the goal or writing 14,000 words words last week. I didn’t succeed. In fact, I struck a point significantly below success:

On the plus side, it means I’ve hit the minimum accepted levels of productivity for seven straight days now (aka if Peter doesn’t write a thousand words a day he ceases to feel like a human being and makes life miserable for everyone) and actually started to live like a real human being again. There are even parts of my house that are clean, and food that isn’t ordered from the Domino’s website.

That largely means the weekly goal achieved what it needed to achieve, right in time for the rewrites of Cold Cases to land in my inbox.