The Feminist Thing that Irritated the Hell Out of Me about GRAVITY

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If a female scientist is intelligent and tough enough to qualify to spend months on a mission with NASA, she should not need a male scientist to tell her EVERY SINGLE THING SHE HAS TO DO. 

Including HOW TO BREATHE.

To the extent that she GIVES UP and SETTLES DOWN TO DIE until he COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD to tell her this one piece of information that she needs to get back to the earth.

Seriously. He COMES BACK FROM THE DEAD with this info, because DEAD MEN apparently have more knowledge and common sense than living women, even living scientist women. And Ryan Stone, Sandra Bullock's character, is so EMOTIONAL and FEARFUL and in need of a MAN to direct her that she would never survive without Mental Ghost Matt Kowalski.

Or maybe Manic Pixie Dream Astronaut Matt Kowalski, as he's the quirky (country music!), grounded, life-loving dude who awakens Ryan's desire to live again. But that again highlights what a void Ryan is herself, how little we know of her besides her role as a grieving mother . . . and of course the movie makes her a mother, one of the most safe and unthreatening things a woman can be, and lets that role take precedence over whatever knowledge and intelligence she should have as a scientist. When she makes it back to earth, it's not thanks to any such knowledge and skill (she flunked the flight simulator, as she reminds us repeatedly), but all down to a manual and dumb luck, it seemed to me. This feels like an almost systematic diminution of any power the character could claim, and reader, it made me ANGRY.

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My rational, analytic, critical mind knows all the caveats and other interpretations on this. There is the character history angle:  It's her first time in space, while he's the jokey veteran; of course he knows better what to do. There is the character investment/plot angle:  If she knew exactly what to do the whole time, we wouldn't fear for her as much as we do, and as the film operates pretty much entirely on suspense, the entire movie would fall apart with her knowledge. There's the personal angle:  Yes, if it were me, I would be too terrified to think straight, likewise unable to breathe in the little sips that would preserve my oxygen, and grateful for any direction. (This is why I am not an astronaut, and why I expect better of the people and characters who are.)

There is the emotional-journey angle:  As the good people of The Dissolve point out, the movie can be read as a metaphor for depression, where Ryan has been floating in a void of grief since her daughter's death, and a good friend and the task of surviving call her back to earth. There is even a completely opposite, equally feminist angle that is DELIGHTED to see a woman at the center of the action, to have a man in the Manic Pixie role (sacrificing himself for her rather than the other way around), to discover Ryan's emotions eventually informing her survival rather than being locked away, Strong Female Character-style. All of these things are true, and I can acknowledge them.

But none of them change the root of my near-rage on this subject, which is not just a feminist's anger at seeing a man given all the intelligence and ability in a movie, but a story-lover's anger at not being able to respect my protagonist fully -- a failure of narrative architecture in a plot like this one, as I kept being knocked out of that all-important suspense by thinking, "For God's sake, Stone, GET IT TOGETHER. You are an ASTRONAUT. You should be BETTER THAN THIS."

Alfonso Cuaron should also be better than this. All scripts should be better than this. The movie is a visual wonder and a filmmaking achievement; that gets no argument from me. But until Hollywood starts giving us not just female protagonists, but ones with the same brains and resourcefulness as the male characters in their films, I am going to be irritated.

To conclude, I hereby propose a new tagline for the move:

Breaking Down Bond -- James Bond.

This week on The Narrative Breakdown, James and I go beat-by-beat through this delightful scene from the 2006 version of Casino Royale. We chose this scene because it never ceases to please me extremely in its wit, sexiness, and -- as you'll hear us realize in talking about this -- really well-done power dynamics. Not to mention it offers excellent characterizations, perfect scene structure, a great example of subtext-becoming-text, and of course, discussion of Daniel Craig's derriere. So if you are interested in learning about any of those things:

Subscribe in iTunes 

Listen on the show page

Shamefully for us, we did not give credit to the screenwriters within the episode:  They are Robert Wade and Neil Purvis, who have together written all of the Bond movies in the last thirteen years, and more interestingly, Paul Haggis, who also wrote Crash, Million Dollar Baby, and many episodes of The Facts of Life. My sincerest thanks to them.

New Episode of THE NARRATIVE BREAKDOWN now live!

This time, James and our friend Jason Ginsburg discuss generating and developing science-fiction and fantasy story concepts and ideas. I had the pleasure of seeing both The Avengers and Prometheus with Jason and James this summer (and Jason's wife Wendy), and our guest host knows his stuff. Please check it out on iTunes, and rate and review the show if you enjoy! 

While I'm here, a quick Summer Movie Report Card:

The Avengers:  A-. Maybe a little bit too long, but Joss Whedon's dialogue and sense of humor + great relationships + terrific action + shawarma = the most enjoyable thing I've seen this year, I think.

Prometheus: D+ -- and even that is entirely based on how pretty the whole thing was, most especially Michael Fassbender (though still not as wonderful as he was as Mr. Rochester, because my word, his Mr. Rochester!). The characters were idiots (especially as scientists!) and the plot made no sense at all. But truly a nice use of the film's CGI budget. Maybe it will be redeemed in the Director's Cut.

The Dark Knight Rises:  B-? After the brilliant intensity of The Dark Knight, that thrilling and terrifying examination of the worth of human beings as a class and as individuals (through the Joker's nihilism vs. Batman's goodness vs. Harvey Dent's whole journey), this came off as a little bit scattered to me, with too many stories to cram in, not enough time to develop any of the relationships, an all-over-the-place economic vision, and not as much thematic coherency as the previous movie. I also think the story put itself at a disadvantage by having to spend so much time convincing Batman to come out of retirement . . . It starts slow and then has to cram things together later, with many, many plot holes along the way. But wonderful visuals, as ever, and all the actors acquitted themselves nicely, especially Anne Hathaway.

If you're a Christopher Nolan fan, you must see this -- useful for punctuating conversations as well: The Inception Button.

Ruby Sparks:  B+. I have quibbles with the ending, but up until then, this is a smart and thoughtful take on writing, relationships, and the dangers of creating or applying the former through/to the latter. I loved the sequence where he was creating Ruby's character especially. And hooray for a female screenwriter and co-director! Highly recommended for writers and people who love them.

Beasts of the Southern Wild:  I don't even know how to grade this movie, it's so unlike anything else I've ever seen. An A for its heroine and her performance, for sure; an A for the beauty of its visuals; an A for originality and imagination; a N/A for plot structure.

The Amazing Spider-Man: B+. The best parts of this by far to me were the conversations between Peter and Mary Jane, when the real spark between Andrew Garfield and Emma Stone seemed to imbue their characters as well. Those also seemed like the only times Andrew Garfield smiled -- I wanted to love him, wanted him to be my fun-loving Spidey superhero, but his performance seemed to actively resist offering any emotional warmth to me as a viewer, which left me a bit confused. But a good, creepy villain and Martin Sheen being wise are always pleasures.

Still would like to see (and now might have to catch on DVD):  The Bourne Legacy, Premium Rush, The Campaign, Brave, Seeking a Friend at the End of the World, Snow White and the Huntsman, Searching for Sugar Man. Anything else you'd recommend?

A Ramble: June Joys and #YASaves

(The fourth in what should be a monthly series of blog posts in which I write for an hour about whatever comes to mind.)

Happy summer! I spent the weekend in Shenandoah National Park in Virginia, at the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI Novel Revision Retreat. It was a beautiful venue—a 1930s woods lodge, with gorgeous views of the Shenandoah mountains out every window, including the room in which I taught my sessions. The talks were more or less the “Quartet” talks from Second Sight. . . . These are my usual retreat talks, because they cover all three major elements of fiction (Character, Plot, and Voice), but every time I give them I find something new to say in addition to all the material that’s already there, so I’m going to have to ask the organizers to grant me two hours for every session the next time I do them. (Or I should learn to edit myself and say less; but then I do like being thorough, to transfer as much of my brain to attendees’ brains as possible. Someday technology will evolve enough that we can just do a mass Frankenstein hookup and be done with it, and then we can all spend the weekend writing instead.)

Some neat things in the last month:

• Before I went to the revision retreat, I took a delightful road trip with my equally delightful author Sara Lewis Holmes, who wrote Operation Yes. When Sara heard that I was coming to central Virginia for the retreat, she insisted that I should visit the American Shakespeare Center in Staunton; and I ended up asking her if she'd be willing to come with me, which she very kindly was. And it was one of the neatest productions of "As You Like It" that I've ever seen, performed in the style (though not the costumes) of the Bard's time, with full light for the whole play, which in turn facilitated some very neat audience-actor interaction. The actors were great, the music was fun, I loved their interpretation of the play, Staunton as a town is terrific, and it is well worth the road trip for you too, should you be anywhere in Virginia.
• On a trip to visit some wedding venues, I lost my beloved little Samsung Rogue phone; so I now have a HTC Incredible 2 (an Android phone), which is fast becoming even more beloved than my Rogue was.
• I read Holly Black’s White Cat and Red Glove recently, and they were just delicious—tightly written, darkly sexy, fully backstoried fantasy full of con men and women and clever, clever twists. They’d be great beach reads this summer.
• A recent realization/articulation that came out of reworking my plot talks: Stakes not only can change in the course of a novel, but they very probably should, as the character comes to know and understand more of the world and their values change likewise. So in StarCrossed by Elizabeth C. Bunce, the stakes begin as Digger’s survival; but as her world and affections widen to include all the people in her eventual destination, the stakes change to the survival of those people, and the cause they’re all fighting for. So as you’re looking at your novel, think about the stakes at the beginning vs. the stakes at the end, and how the character gets from one to the other.
• My next SCBWI appearances will be in October, in Wisconsin, on plot; and November, in New Jersey, hopefully on voice, if they'll let me talk for two hours.
• Some recent films I enjoyed: Fast Five; Win Win; Beginners; Bridesmaids.
• To expand a little more on the reasons I enjoyed Bridesmaids: One, it had one of the most likeable and flawed female protagonists I’d seen in a long time, a fully rounded woman who had a career that mattered to her, friends, and a family, as well as romantic confusion. . . . It is a little depressing how rare that is, that we'd see a female protagonist in all of those dimensions, and yet, there she was, so let us celebrate that. And second, despite all the wedding trappings, the emotional plot was really about female friendship: what it’s like to have a best friend, how you hang out and talk and exercise together and then eat dessert; the little jealousies and larger issues that can create distance; and the relief and pleasure when you connect again. The climax of the movie was not Kristen Wiig’s getting together with the cute Irish cop, but her reconnecting with Maya Rudolph at last, and I found myself getting almost teary-eyed in thinking about all my dear girlfriends and seeing that sort of true warts-and-all friendship at the center of a story at last. (The one exception to my enjoyment was the infamous barfing scene, which I just kept my eyes closed for, so as not to emulate it in turn.)
• Whenever there is entertainment for women vs. entertainment for men—or, in children’s literature, boy books vs. girl books—there’s a debate about whether males will embrace female stuff, with the general understanding that the answer is “No.” So then do we harsh up our girl stuff to attract the men, as Bridesmaids did? Or do we own our girl stuff and accept that men won’t come? (This is apparently not an option for Hollywood studios, or one that they’re willing to accept in only limited doses; it’s easier for publishers, as the financial stakes are so much smaller.) Or do we tell men/boys to stop being idiots and start respecting women’s/girls’ stuff? I don’t know that that would work, but it’s certainly my favorite option, and I think it is worth bringing up every time, to remind all of us that it’s sexism afoot here, and what we need to change is our selves (or sexist guys) more than our stuff. Hrmm.

I was also interested in the recent #YASaves discussion. Some commentators online noted that we have this discussion about every two years, where the children’s/YA lit community has to defend itself against charges of being too dark, usually as a result of an article in the major media like this one. The responses tend to fall into these forms:

• A) This writer is an idiot who doesn’t really know anything about the genre and hasn’t looked hard enough. (Usually true.)
• B) Discussion of the need for dark material in YA literature, given that it reflects the real darkness in teens’ lives and psyches. (Also usually true.)
• C) Writers defending their writing this kind of work, based on (B), often including descriptions of all of the letters they’ve received from teenagers who appreciate seeing their realities at the books’ hearts.
• D) Sighing over the fact that YA is still regarded primarily as a didactic genre by the major media, and doesn’t get respect as an art form in and of itself.
• E) In response to (D), writers (or at least Barry Lyga) saying “Forget you, it’s my art and I’m going to own it and practice it, and I don’t have to defend it to you, fool.” I think this is a new wrinkle in the discussion, but I was glad to see it, for reasons I’ll discuss below.
• F) A few brave souls who dare to agree with the theoretical point of the original article, even if the writer was an idiot in practice.

I think that first of all, we need to stop taking major media disses to children’s and YA lit personally—the Today Show stiffing the Newbery/Caldecott winners, the New Yorker (which I love) or the Wall Street Journal (which I don’t) thinking of our genre as primarily a didactic one. These venues think children’s and YA lit is fundamentally inferior to adult lit either because it doesn’t make as much money or because they perceive it as only didactic; they do not get that it is an art form; therefore, they will always get describe it wrongly, and we should stop wasting energy being surprised and offended every time. After all, with the magazines specifically, because these articles are generally scare articles, they generate a lot of page views (from concerned parents and librarians as well as offended members of our community) and off-page discussion (cf. all the response blog posts and the whole Twitter campaign), and those make too much money and buzz for the publication in question for the editors who assign/accept such columns to give them up. (“YA Is Art” isn’t controversial enough to get the same response.) So let’s concentrate on writing our own smart articles investigating the art of our genre, or finding ways to celebrate our own people’s achievements far and wide, and not waste time rewarding stupid ideas.

And then with #YASaves itself . . . Is there dark stuff in YA, all about sex and death? Sure. But there is also I Now Pronounce You Someone Else and StarCrossed and Eighth-Grade Superzero and July’s The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills, to name four books off my own list that are terrific and smart and not at all about angst; and I feel a little bit frustrated that YA is being tarred as a dark genre when there is such an incredible diversity that people just aren’t educated to see. (Or they can’t find the books in stores, because the darkness is what sells and therefore what gets on shelves.) If you’re scared about the darkness, by goodness, do more to celebrate the light. Read review magazines or YA blogs to find titles you approve of. Tell your local bookstore (whether a chain or an independent) that you’re looking for those kinds of books. Request specific titles, if you need to, and then buy them. Give those as gifts to friends whom you’re trying to educate about the genre and to teenagers.

(And of course the whole discussion is yet another iteration of the unfortunate literalist strain in American Puritanism, the inability to look beyond the factual existence of whatever "sordidness" these critics perceive to the deeper emotional pain that drives that behavior, and the humanity of that pain, which in turn deserves sympathy. . . . Writers, of course, have a responsibility to bring out that humanity, to make the experience of reading these books more than pain tourism for the readers; and if writers don't do that, well, then they deserve the criticism.)

Finally, the hard fact I always come back to whenever discussions like this come up: We (meaning writers, editors, publishers, even booksellers and librarians) cannot control readers’ reactions to the books they find through us. There may be readers who read books about cutting or bulimia or feeling suicidal (to pick three forms of darkness at random) and use them to start or continue those practices themselves. This is horrifying and sad but true. There will also be readers who already practice cutting or bulimia or who feel suicidal, who will truly benefit from seeing their experience reflected on the page and given that recognition by someone else; who will connect with that character, and be helped by seeing that character start to move back toward hope and out of the sickness, and may start to take that step themselves. This is inspiring and brave and also true.

A book is an object made of ideas, and like any object, it can be used for both good and evil. . . . I think we have to be honest and acknowledge the possibility of that evil happening, and perhaps do what we can to diminish the chances of its coming to be, to offer hope or resources in real life, if our books deal with that material. (I am contradicting my own statement about didacticism above, but as Samuel Johnson says, “Inconsistencies cannot both be right, but imputed to man, they may both be true.") But those who see only darkness also have to acknowledge the possibility of connection and hope; and I still feel we shouldn’t shy away from showing (albeit never celebrating) that darkness, as it is an important part of our overall human experience. Our responsibility is to write (or edit and publish) as well and honestly and full of human sympathy as we are capable of, without rewarding darkness for darkness's sake; and to hope in the end that all books find their right readers who will hear the right things in them, as we can't do any more.

All Aflutter

This has been a good and busy week, and promises only to get more so. Some quick things, first non-booky (for a change) and then all-booky:

• I finished "Downton Abbey," and oh my goodness: What period, characterful, conspiracyful, Englishy goodness! Someday I aspire to wear dresses like Lady Sybil and bite off words like the Dowager Duchess. (And more immediately to write a blog post comparing the series to "Mad Men" for all the things they have in common: a large ensemble cast; of multiple social classes, with the attendant conflicts and resentments; on the cusp of (or even in the midst of) gigantic, sweeping societal changes they don't quite grasp, even as they inadvertently bring them about; also on the cusp of a war whose seriousness they cannot possibly foresee; with many buried secrets revealed over time, and liaisons right and left; all while wearing teeth-gnashingly envy-inducing* clothes (though really I suppose I should remember: corsets).)
• * This phrase courtesy of Joanna Pearson's The Rites and Wrongs of Janice Wills, out in July. You read/edit a book enough times, its phrases naturally leap into your brain and writing. . . .
• I'll be teaching a Master Class on Plot at the Kansas SCBWI conference the first weekend in May. There are, I think, exactly six spots left as of this writing, so book quickly if you're interested!
• My other upcoming appearances: the Mid-Atlantic SCBWI Novel Revision Retreat in June, and Lit Day at LeakyCon 2011 in July. The Lit Day lineup is insane -- insane! -- and features Arthur's first appearance/speech at a Harry Potter fan convention ever, so it's well worth attending if you can make your way there.
• And I loved, loved, loved the new "Jane Eyre" adaptation, partly for the fabulous period clothes and design, yes, but mostly because Mia Wasikowska and Michael Fassbender bring terrific passion and intelligence to the roles of Jane and Rochester, and make Charlotte Bronte's sometimes unwieldy or ethereal dialogue sound perfectly natural in their mouths, sweeping us viewers up in their passions as well. When I reviewed the Keira Knightley "Pride and Prejudice," I contrasted what I called Romantic and Rationalist romances, and faulted that P&P for shooting a Rationalist romance as if it were a Romantic one. Well, "Jane Eyre" is a Romantic romance par excellence (and the film gives that all the brooding atmosphere it warrants, to delicious effect) -- but I had forgotten, till I saw this adaptation, how much it is a Rationalist romance too, how much its unique intensity derives from Jane's absolute control over herself, and how much hotter the love burns for it. I want to see it again already; get your own taste on the movie page here.

Now the Second Sight stuff:

• When I go home to Kansas City for the Kansas SCBWI conference, I'll also have a public book party in Belton, Missouri, on Thursday, May 5th; e-mail me at asterisk.bks at gmail dot com if you're interested in attending.
• Jennifer Bertman interviewed me for the Creative Spaces feature on her website, where I talk about my writing process, my workspace, and the regrettable lack of a magic bullet for making someone a good writer.
• Donna at the First Novels Club and Kate Coombs at Book Aunt each reviewed Second Sight and said some kind things.
• Apparently people have started to receive their books! I hope you enjoy them. If you find typos (sigh), please e-mail me with them at asterisk.bks at gmail dot com. (I've found two, which I regret, but so it goes.) Also, if you had trouble ordering via Mybookorders.com earlier, there's now a direct-order phone number available on the order page, and copies should be available to ship from Amazon.com within the week.
• And to end on a yummy note, James, my darling boyfriend, got me a cake to celebrate the publication of the book; here I am with it in my office.

A Ramble: Eastern Standard Time

When I glanced back over the 2010 posts on Brooklyn Arden, I felt a little depressed, because I blogged less often and about less-thoughtful things this past year than I have in any year since the blog’s inception in 2005. Not that I expect readers missed me much, by any means, but writing here is one of the ways I think, and the lack of blogging was a sign of how little I felt like writing, and how little time I had to think for pleasure, if that makes sense, in 2010. . . . I wrote a lot of speeches and editorial letters and other important things, many of which turned out well, I’m glad to say, and of course I did all the revising on my book; but that wasn’t restful thinking for me, talking out loud about things that interest me—which was how this blog started, as my one-sided continuation of a lost correspondence, and how I always love it most, when it gives me a chance to know what I think when I see what I say, to paraphrase E. M. Forster. So with this post, I hope to start a tradition of letting myself write for one hour every Sunday, to put down what’s been happening in my life and on my mind; and if you all find things in it that are useful for you, wonderful, and if not, well, you know what you’re in for with future posts. This one is more of a catch-up, newsy post than I hope most of those future posts will be.

• Holidays! In the last ten days, I visited these cities in order:  New York; Belton, Missouri; Treynor, Iowa; Belton, Missouri; Hemet, California; Santa Barbara, California; Los Angeles, California; New York, and as much as I love all the people in all the other places mentioned, I am very glad to be home again. 
• And in truly major news, James and I won the Frog again in team play! (The Frog, for those of you joining us just now, is the traveling trophy in my family's Killer Klein Croquet Tournament; and Killer Klein Croquet is basically croquet meets Calvinball, played with great enthusiasm and emotion and no skill whatsoever. See prior reports under the "Frog" label at right.) I thus become the winningest KKCT champion ever -- neener neener neener, family! -- at least until James and I have the chance to defend his Brooklyn sojourn in May.
• (And I have now set an impressively high bar for maturity in these Rambles by actually saying "neener neener neener." Look for "I know you are, but what am I?" in future posts.)
• True Grit contains probably my favorite scene from any film this year:  Mattie Ross’s negotiation with the horse trader, her calmly wearing him down till she gets exactly what she wants and a thank-you for it. Its well-written rat-a-tat dialogue between two equally matched opponents reminded me of one of my favorite film scenes of all time, the opening exchanges between James Bond and Vesper Lynd on the train in Casino Royale (“How was your lamb?” “Skewered. One sympathizes.”)—though True Grit was much less sexy, of course. Jeff Bridges and Hailee Steinfeld are getting all the awards buzz, as far as I can tell, but I loved Matt Damon for investing the at-first-foppish La Boeuf with real dignity and character. I would have liked a bit more emotional payoff at the end, I think, but so the Coen Brothers go.
• Black Swan was a potentially fascinating movie about the quest for perfection in ballet and its mental cost, made risible (to use J. Hoberman’s word) by ham-handed horror-movie plotting, details, and filmmaking techniques. Also, Darren Aronofsky has apparently never met a close-up of a bloody [insert your own body part here] that he didn’t like. But other than that, it was beautifully shot, and it made me want to see Swan Lake, which I never have. . . .
• One of the good things in 2010:  I fell in love with making homemade granola, inspired by the amazingly simple Mark Bittman recipe in How to Cook Everything Vegetarian (where he recommends toasting the oats and nuts first, which I endorse). The recipe is easy, tasty, and capable of endless variations; my version tonight has dried cherries, sunflower seeds, almonds, vanilla, and molasses as a sweetener (though the all-time best sweetener truly is maple syrup, I think). If you have suggestions for mix-ins, I’m happy to hear them.
• Congratulations to Erin McCahan and I Now Pronounce You Someone Else for the book’s being named a Cybils YA finalist! I love, love, love romantic comedy, which is partly why I wanted to publish INPYSE; but it’s a category that doesn’t get recognized much come awards time, because the seeming lightness of the atmosphere and subject matter (and, perhaps, the fact that it’s a genre most often about, created by and consumed by women) make it easy to blow it off in the face of IMPORTANT books or movies about war or boxing or dystopias or whatall. But the real subject matter of all good romantic comedies are relationships and moral values; and the atmosphere in which those things are made coherent, consistent, realistic, and amusing, and in which they matter, even in the face of war or boxing or whatall, is in fact incredibly hard to create and sustain. Erin not only accomplishes that creation, she walks the line between the development of a relationship and the development of a self, and sharp wit and real pain, with truly impressive skill; and as an editor and romantic comedy fan, I wanted to say thank you to the Cybils judges for recognizing that accomplishment. 
• If you have a blog or other publication and you'd be interested in reviewing my book, Second Sight:  An Editor's Talks on Writing, Revising, and Publishing Books for Children and Young Adults, please e-mail me at asterisk.bks at gmail dot com with your name, blog address, and any other pertinent information. Not all respondents will be sent copies of the book, but all interest is appreciated.  
• Pleasure reading this holiday:  Jennifer Crusie’s Maybe This Time (devoured in 36 hours over the Christmas weekend) and George R. R. Martin’s A Clash of Kings. At a going-out-of-business sale, I bought a second copy of J-Crusie's Welcome to Temptation, probably my favorite contemporary romance novel ever; The Audacity to Win, David Plouffe’s memoir of managing the Obama campaign, for 2008 nostalgia in the face of 2011 House horror; and Story by Robert McKee, because I’ve always felt like a bit of fake for talking about McKeean principles (well, really Aristotelian ones) without ever having read his actual book, and now this shall be corrected. 
• My New Year's Resolutions have always been less about specific behaviors I want to have than specific things I want to accomplish:  to run a 10K, to learn to knit, to try three new cuisines . . . all of which lead in turn to those specific behaviors, as I have to run regularly to be ready for a 10K, I have to develop a new skill with the knitting, I have to get out of the house more in order to find the cuisines. I haven’t created a proper list since 2006 or so, but this year I want to try it again, to help get myself back on track. So I want to run another half-marathon; finish the baby blanket I started knitting in, um, 2007 (and haven’t touched since then, for the record--this is not a monster blanket four years in the making); publish my book (which should go to print as soon as the designer and I hash out the final details on the cover); eat less sugar; finish reading War and Peace; and write these Rambles once a week. Best of luck with your new year and resolutions as well!

Movie Recommendation: HOWL

Last night, somewhat through random good luck, James and I went to see a new movie called Howl, about Allen Ginsberg and the obscenity trial over his famous 1955 poem. The screenplay for this movie is entirely taken from transcripts of the court trial, interviews with Ginsberg, and the text of Howl, and the film cuts among those three different story strands, with the text portrayed through both a recreation of the first public reading of the poem and gorgeous animations illustrating its images and themes. James Franco plays Ginsberg in the interview and the reading; Jon Hamm, David Straithairn, Bob Balaban, Mary-Louise Parker and Jeff Daniels play various figures in the trial.

And it is just an immensely intelligent, passionate, and well-acted film. I felt as if I were getting to know Ginsberg, and came to really like his humility and honesty, through the interview bits (and I learned a lot about the Beat Generation besides); I fell in love with the poem, which I don't think I'd ever experienced in full before, through the reading and the animations (which have been collected into a graphic novel); and the trial portions coalesce into a splendid defense of a writer's right to speak in the language that comes naturally to him, and the importance of writerly freedom in expanding the boundaries of literary art. (I thought more than once of the #Speakloudly campaign.) As the poem is frank in its sexual language, so is the movie, and if that would make you uncomfortable, it's not for you; but for everyone else, and especially lovers of poetry and haters of censorship, very highly recommended.

See My Friend's Movie!

When I was a senior in college, I was selected to attend the Telluride Film Festival Student Symposium, where I met my friend Jeff Reichert. He and I both ended up in New York after graduation, and while I immersed myself in publishing and children's books, he became a fixture in the world of independent film and film criticism, working in marketing for several indie distribution companies and cofounding an excellent film journal called Reverse Shot.

Then a couple of years ago, Jeff decided to take the plunge:  He quit his job and became a full-time documentary filmmaker. His subject:  gerrymandering, the manipulation of Congressional district lines for political gain.



This process happens every ten years, after the Census numbers come in, so it was a film tailor-made for 2010, and Jeff worked terrifically hard to get the film done in time. He interviewed Arnold Schwarzenegger in California, lawmakers in Texas (the famous group of Democrats that hid out in Oklahoma for days to prevent the Republicans from redrawing district lines), and a representative from our neighborhood here in Brooklyn. He shot and edited and shot and edited and essentially went into a two-year filmmaking cave.

This week, all that hard work is paying off as Gerrymandering hits theatres. I saw its world premiere at the Tribeca Film Festival last spring, and it's smart, sharp, funny and passionate -- a film guaranteed to get both Democrats and Republicans talking, while offering some nonpartisan solutions to this knotty political problem. The reviews have been great, and it's even been talked up for the documentary film Oscar! Gerrymandering is showing in a series of one-night stands across the U.S. this week, and then opening in New York, Los Angeles, San Francisco, and San Diego on Friday, before spreading wider later this fall. If you're a fan of politics, passion projects, or just really smart filmmaking, please check it out. And yay, Jeff!

Insert Your Own Title Here

Because it's summer, which means I'm too lazy to come up with a proper blog title, much less a thoughtful post. Fortunately, I have awesome authors who make hilarious videos:



Lisa's Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) is now in paperback, by the way! And Bobby the Brave (Sometimes) will be out next month. More on that (and all our fall releases) soon. (And did you know you can friend Arthur A. Levine Books on Facebook?)

Speaking of the fall, I'm going to speak at three different SCBWIs in the next three months:

• Utah-Southern Idaho SCBWI, September 11 in Boise
• New York Metro SCBWI, October 12 in Manhattan
  
• Nevada SCBWI, October 15-17 in Virginia City
  

I'm having a lot of fun giving my "Twenty-two* Revision Techniques" speech (*the number varies depending on the time allotted and how fast I talk), so that's likely the one you'll see at these events. (The book version contains a whole twenty-five!)

Martha Mihalick posted a very true and well-done "Editor's Choose Your Own Adventure" here.

Finally, I loved Scott Pilgrim vs. the World, as a lot of kidlit people did/do (I saw it with a colleague and ran into a party of two agents, two authors, and at least one other editor as I left the theatre). Why? Because it's everything most of us are looking for: It's got great characters; it brilliantly captures those characters at a key moment in their emotional development (in this case, that twentysomething "What the hell am I doing with my life and will I ever make a relationship work? Thank God for my friends while I figure it out" moment); the book art is unique, emotionally charged, and efficient; and -- the key thing, I think -- it has great moral development and consequently a really good character-plot structure, as Ramona and her seven evil exes force Scott into a place where he has to grow up and be a better man . . . exactly like the outline here, actually. The videogame stuff is all window dressing on that. And it's hilarious, besides (especially if you get the videogame stuff). Highly, highly recommended.

ETA: I forgot the other thing I wanted to say about the greatness of Scott Pilgrim: The fantasy served as a metaphor for a larger emotional situation or problem, as happens in nearly all good fantasy, I think (Fellowship of the Ring = World War I, Moribito II = coming to terms with the past, Harry Potter = facing death, the Chanters of Tremaris series = multicultures trying to work as one, etc. Quite often when I turn down a fantasy, it's because it's not going for this metaphorical level, so it just feels like the problems of some oddly named people in a made-up world). In SP's case, it's about working through the baggage of past relationships and figuring out how to establish an honest basis for moving forward in a new one.

The Brooklyn Arden 2009 Holiday Gift Guide

AKA, all my 2009 books and a few other favorite things. To wit:

Absolutely Maybe by Lisa Yee. Coedited by Arthur and me. CYBIL nominee.

Perfect for: YA readers; fans of hair dye or tacos; anyone who has ever worked a fast-food job; anyone with a crazy mother or charming best friend; people who like a mix of the funny and the bittersweet (that is, if you like laughing or crying); residents of Los Angeles, California.


Bobby vs. Girls (Accidentally) by Lisa Yee, illustrated by Dan Santat. Coedited by Arthur and me. Starred review in The Horn Book. New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.

Perfect for: Boys; girls; particularly the seven- to nine-year-old members of both genders; anyone who has ever felt puzzled by the behavior of a person of the other gender; people who like donuts.

The Circle of Gold (The Book of Time III), by Guillaume Prevost, translated by William Rodarmor.

Perfect for: Fans of time travel novels, literature in translation, or the first two books in the series.



Heartsinger by Karlijn Stoffels, translated by Laura Watkinson. Two starred reviews.

Perfect for: People who like fairy-tale flavoring in their stories; people who are thoughtful about love; people interested in unconventional novel structures; fans of translated literature, character profiles, magic realism, and the Dutch.


Marcelo in the Real World by Francisco X. Stork. Five starred reviews; Booklist Editors' Choice; Kirkus Best Book for YA; Horn Book Fanfare List; School Library Journal Best Book of the Year; Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year; New York Times Notable Book for Children; Washington Post Notable Book.

Perfect for: People interested in Asperger's syndrome, lawyers, how religion can affect everyday life, moral dilemmas, wonderful characters.

Moribito II; Guardian of the Darkness, by Nahoko Uehashi, translated by Cathy Hirano. Starred review in Publishers Weekly; USBBY Outstanding International Book.

Perfect for: Fans of fantasy, awesome female characters, martial arts movies, Japan, fascinating settings, literature in translation, or the first book, which was equally terrific and won the Mildred L. Batchelder Award for Translation.

Operation Yes, by Sara Lewis Holmes. Starred review in Booklist.

Perfect for: military families; rambunctious kids who get in trouble; kids interested in art or theater; precise kids who like to plan; teachers; people who take improv; people who love innovative, risk-taking children's literature,


The Snow Day by Komako Sakai. Four starred reviews; New York Times Best Illustrated Book; USBBY Outstanding International Book.

Perfect for: Fans of literature in translation; children with parents who travel a lot; anyone who longs for the peace and joy of a snowy day.

Wishworks, Inc. by Stephanie S. Tolan, illustrated by Amy June Bates. New York Public Library 100 Titles for Reading and Sharing.

Perfect for: People who like dogs; people who want a dog; fans of quality and charming chapter books.

+++++

And things I had nothing to do with creating but I loved in 2009 and recommend highly:

Adult books: Zeitoun by Dave Eggers; The Beautiful Struggle by Ta-Nehisi Coates; Agnes and the Hitman by Jennifer Crusie and Bob Mayer; The Learners by Chip Kidd; The Kid: What Happened After My Boyfriend and I Decided to Get Pregnant by Dan Savage.

YA novels: How to Say Goodbye in Robot by Natalie Standiford, an underappreciated gem about a girl and a boy who don't fall in love; Destroy All Cars by Blake Nelson, an even less appreciated gem about a girl and a boy who were once in love, with each other and with the environment, and have to figure out the complications of each fading away; The Spectacular Now by Tim Tharp, the most spectacular feat of voice I read this year.

Middle-grade novels: Emma-Jean Lazarus Fell Out of a Tree by Lauren Tarshis; Alec Flint: The Ransom Note Blues by Jill Santopolo; When You Reach Me by Rebecca Stead.

Movies: Up in the Air; District 9; Star Trek; Bright Star; (500) Days of Summer

Things: A DVR; a wireless mouse; and my Good Grips vegetable peeler, the single best household investment I have made in many a moon.

Love.

Happy holidays!

Midmonth Hello

Miss you, darlings. Some quick points:

• Hooray for Laini Taylor, whose AALB book Lips Touch: Three Times is a National Book Award finalist!
• I love Glee with the white-hot heat of a thousand suns. No musical ever dared plot twists like the pregnancy storylines; no high school soap opera was ever this funny; no over-the-top comedy ever had musical numbers that rocked as hard as this or were as gorgeous as this. And sometimes those things jar against each other, sure, or against the odd way the writers seem to think every episode must include a non-parodic moral, but for an hour of pure entertainment, I defy you to show me something better on television.
  
• The writer and blogger Caleb Crain recently defined "depth" on his blog as "a sense of the complexity of reality." That's precisely what I mean when I say I'm looking for a novel with literary depth: I want fiction that presents the complexity of reality (which could be a funny or romantic reality as well as a tragic one--indeed, most realities are in more than one mode), and writers who can make those realities tangible and meaningful.
• Olugbemisola Rhuday-Perkovich of the upcoming Eighth-Grade Superzero had a fascinating interview recently on the Writers Against Racism blog. (Francisco X. Stork was featured in September.) I understand the organizers are looking for more contributions from professionally published writers, illustrators, editors, and educators of all races; if you're interested, e-mail Amy Bowllan here with 350-word-or-less answers to the questions each interviewee has been posed.
• Harry Potter fans will appreciate the cartoon here.
  
• Where the Wild Things Are . . . The beginning and end in the real world felt pitch-perfect to me; the middle I was less sure about, because I'm not sure what the filmmakers intended by making the Wild Things so gabby and querulous. (In the book Max appears to leave more or less as soon as the wild rumpus ends; here he hangs around for forty minutes and discovers the compromises of adulthood, which Sendak spares him.) But a lovely film to look at all the way through.
  
• And Bright Star rekindled my long-dormant college crush on Keats. Three lovely quotes:
  

1. "Do you not see how necessary a world of pains and troubles is to school an intelligence and make it a soul?"
2. "I am certain of nothing but the holiness of the heart's affections and the truth of the imagination."
3. "several things dove-tailed in my mind, and at once it struck me what quality went to form a Man of Achievement, especially in Literature, and which Shakespeare possessed so enormously -- I mean Negative Capability, that is, when a man is capable of being in uncertainties, mysteries, doubts, without any irritable reaching after fact and reason -- Coleridge, for instance, would let go by a fine isolated verisimilitude caught from the Penetralium of mystery, from being incapable of remaining content with half-knowledge. This pursued through volumes would perhaps take us no further than this, that with a great poet the sense of Beauty overcomes every other consideration, or rather obliterates all consideration."

And with that I return to being the annoying gadfly to great writers and irritably reaching after fact and reason in their novels. Happy October!

HP, Jane Austen, Twilight, Recipes, LOST, Movie Pitches, Baseball, Cassons, Words, and Old Ladies/Politics.

In other words, everything ever in the history of the world! AND the results of the great Socks vs. Underwear debate.

• I had the great pleasure of being a guest on PotterCast this week for a live discussion of The Tales of Beedle the Bard at Books of Wonder. You can listen to the audio here. Thanks as always to the PotterCasters for having me on the show!
  
• During the discussion, I start to articulate a theory of what I think might be a personality test based upon which tale you like the best. "The Wizard and the Hopping Pot": You are cheerful and enjoy seeing justice done. "The Fountain of Fair Fortune": You're something of a romantic and probably supported Barack Obama (since we are the change we've been waiting for). "The Warlock's Hairy Heart": You have an unexpected Gothic streak. "Babbitty Rabbitty": You also enjoy seeing justice done, but by rabbits. "The Three Brothers": You like contemplating the big questions of life. (This is only the start of a theory, mind you . . .)
  
• A must-read if you're an Austen lover and/or Facebook member: AustenBook. (Thanks to Christina and Suzi for posting this on FB in the first place.)
  
• A very smart review of Twilight from the British newspaper The Guardian. I'm trying to read the novel this month (after not being captured by it back when it first came out), and so far this review seems spot-on. Do people who genuinely love the book and think it's good (as opposed to the legions who know it's bad but read it anyway) actually find Bella and Edward interesting as people? Hmm. (via child_lit)
  
• If you're having a holiday party, I highly recommend both this Hot Spiked Cider and the Caroling Wine.
• LOST fans, the videos posted beneath the comic here are hilarious, and for you.
• A list of Endangered Words (via Judith Ridge on child_lit). The voting on this is now closed, but the words are excellent: embrangle, nitid, skirr, fubsy . . .
• A seven-year-old plots Jurassic Park IV -- this time with Nazis!
• A fascinating essay about George Steinbrenner by my favorite sportswriter, Joe Posnanski.
  
• If you love the Casson books by Hilary McKay -- Rose has a blog! (via GraceAnne DeCandido on child_lit, which is where I evidently get everything)
• But this one is via Andrew Sullivan: Two old ladies, best friends for sixty years, blog about politics, Sarah Palin, family Christmas letters, and breastfeeding. Meet Margaret and Helen.
• Finally, I am very pleased to see that Underwear trumped Socks for both women and men in our highly scientific poll. Thank you for confirming my faith in humanity.
  

Brooklyn Arden Reviews: Two Modern National Epics

This weekend I took in two epics of national creation and definition, spaced a hundred and sixty years apart in time and a good distance farther than that in the mentalities that created them; but each demonstrating a genius of sorts for its particular genre and style, and each recommended for the right frame of mind. I am writing these reviews late at night, and I'm going to do them rather stream-of-consciousness, with very long sentences; so please forgive any errors in style or fact, as I'm writing them for the mere pleasure of making them exist at all. And spoilers ahoy!

So, first, The Astonishing Life of Octavian Nothing, Part I: The Pox Party, by M. T. Anderson. This volume wae the National Book Award winner for 2006, but I had -- not avoided it exactly, but never made time to read it, until the recent CCBC discussion and Times review of Volume II prompted me to pick it up. More out of a sense of duty than anticipated pleasure: for while I very much admired M. T. Anderson's Feed (the only previous novel of his I'd read), and I knew from that and from reviews of Octavian that he could accomplish extraordinary feats of voice, emotion, imagination, and historical recreation, his temperament and view of humanity seemed rather darker and harsher than mine, almost on the verge of nihilism. And it is always hard for me as a quasi-optimist to read pessimistic works -- not only are the events described unpleasant, and realer than I daily care to look at, I feel like something of a fool as I read, for this, the pessimists are telling me, is reality, and why don't I just face that fact and get on with it? Additionally, I'd read so much about Octavian at this point that I felt it was approaching the category of books that the first chapter of If on a winter's night a traveler would call The Books One Never Needs to Read Because So Many People Talk about Them That It Seems Like You've Read Them Already.

So I took up Octavian knowing most of its big surprises -- the nature of the experiment, that he would at some point lapse into inkblots, the eventual escape. And at first I read with attention mostly for the undeniable genius of the thing -- the deep knowledge of history and science, the construction of the voice, the fascination of the situation. (Not to mention the incredible feat of copyediting this book must have been, to get the ampersands and the spellings and the historical references right and consistent.) And that awareness of genius was so strong, and the events described so deeply inhumane (to Octavian; all too humanlike in other ways) and yet true, that I found myself reading more with aesthetic pleasure than emotional pleasure -- that is, I took pleasure in the excellent aesthetics of the book, but I had no pleasure being with Octavian inside the world created by those aesthetics. About halfway through, I would have liked to stop reading.

And yet I could not, Mr. Anderson's aesthetic genius having caught me up in caring about Octavian and made his world sufficiently real that I had to see how the experiment played itself out. If readers usually identify with main characters and have the pleasure of sharing in their experience, the experience and pleasure here felt like that of martyrdom: intense pain and also nobility, the one increasing the other. But once I gave myself over to that and accepted it, about the time of the Pox Party, I found some pleasure in sharing Octavian's burden, like we had to go through these awful things together. And more than that, I realized that I had misjudged Mr. Anderson, because anyone who feels such sympathy for the suffering (as I think he must to portray suffering so accurately and acutely) cannot be a nihilist: because in nihilism nothing matters, and he clearly feels that human suffering does, and should be alleviated. That does not mean it WILL be in the course of the book, of course, but it's nice to have something to believe in as a reader, and not feel like the author is simply leading you toward fictional misery and pointlessness (the better to underline the misery and pointlessness of actual existence).

So, oddly cheered, I flew through the last third of the novel, marveling still at the brilliance of the historical writing and the turnabout of the usual patriotic story; and hoping now, hard, for Octavian to escape and all to be -- if not well, or even peaceful (which would be foolish in a novel chronicling the beginning of the Revolutionary War), more resolute still in favor of this sense of the possible goodness of humanity. And while I understand Volume II will test this hope even further, I look forward to getting and reading it after I return to New York. All of the best novels I've read this year have been YA: Paper Towns, Graceling, Suite Scarlett, The Disreputable History of Frankie Landau-Banks, The Hunger Games, the Attolia trilogy; and now I will set Octavian Nothing among that company, as, if not the most pleasurable, certainly the most distinguished in imaginative and historical accomplishment.

(It strikes me that this is less a review than an account of my reading experience with random, very possibly pretentious-sounding philosophical bits thrown in. Ah well, I'm enjoying writing the bloviation, and I hope you don't mind reading it.)

Australia. Baz Luhrmann pulls various pieces of his country's mythology and history -- the colonization by the English, the incredible beauty of the Outback, the romantic independence of the stockmen, the shame of the Aborigines' treatment by the whites -- into an ungainly film that, despite the history and the setting, is still much more a Baz Luhrmann movie than it is an Australian one. By which I mean: Baz Luhrmann loves drama and the dramatic arts, loves good production design, and loves Love above all, and all of these things are in their usual massive profusion here -- Australia just happens to be the latest backdrop for his inquiries. Lady Sarah Ashley (Nicole Kidman) travels from England to her late husband's cattle station in the Outback, where she meets "the Drover," a cattleman played by Hugh Jackman, and a half-white, half-Aborigine boy named Nullah (Brandon Walters), who might at any time be taken away for reeducation as a white at the hands of the Australian authorities. Lady Sarah's husband was killed by the overseer of a rival cattle station, a man named Neil Fletcher (Bryan Brown), who tries to blame it on Nullah's wholly Aboriginal grandfather. In the first half of the movie, Lady Sarah bonds variously with Nullah, with Australia, and with the Drover as they drive the cattle from the station to Darwin in 1939. In the second half, set in 1941, she wrestles with the implications of Nullah's race -- his desire to go walkabout, the authorities' capturing him -- as the Japanese approach and eventually attack Darwin.

That all sounds much too serious, though. Luhrmann gives the film a frantic opening much like those of Moulin Rouge! or Romeo + Juliet -- he's so eager to get to the meat of the romance that he rushes us through the introductions to his characters, making them look ridiculous, to early unfortunate effect. But as in those previous films, once those lovers are onstage and working together, he calms down -- overindulging his fondness for the closeup, perhaps, but developing the story at a more logical pace, and unfolding several glorious romantic set pieces. Here he also displays a strong hand for action sequences (which, I guess, aren't so different from dance numbers), particularly in a cattle stampede about a third of the way in.

Still, the most prominent feature of the film is his unabashed sentimentality -- and more than that, his reveling in it, in the long shots of Lady Sarah and the Drover embracing against a gorgeous Australian sunset. The Aborigines are all magical, moral beings in touch with the earth (though, to be fair, this is probably true, certainly compared with the white colonizers). Someone says something like, "As long as we have love, everything will be all right." We never learn the Drover's real name; indeed, the film never even acknowledges the idea he has a real name, or the silliness of his being always "the Drover," as that might taint his mythic stature. And here is a one-line summary of the climax: a noble Englishwoman hears her adopted half-Aborigine son playing "Somewhere over the Rainbow" on a dead man's harmonica as her horseman-lover pilots a boat full of other half-Aborigine children through a bay filled with burning debris after an attack by the Japanese.

So Australia is melodramatic and ridiculous. But it is also, if you're willing to wait through the opening and shut up the realistic side of your brain, quite, quite delicious -- gorgeous production design, gorgeous scenes of the Outback, gorgeous Hugh Jackman (though I kept hoping he would break out in song). If any Australians read this, I would be curious to know what the reaction has been Down Under to the film. And for Americans, I recommend it as a highly enjoyable evening at the movie theatre, especially as it's an epic not our own.

You Can Check Out Any Time You Like . . .

. . . and I did manage to leave California! (Insert guitar riff here.)

Some things I rode on my recent vacation, more or less in order:

• A JetBlue plane to Oakland
• A hotel shuttle van
  
• The BART train
  
• The Caltrain to San Jose
• A rental car
• A Southwest flight to Orange County
• Many private cars of James's family and friends
• A boogie board in the ocean off San Clemente -- the first time I've swum in the Pacific
  
• The L.A. Metrolink commuter train
• The L.A. Metro subway -- so much cleaner and better at station (and Internet) communication than our New York subway system
  
• Many L.A. Metro buses -- ditto
  
• The Getty Center tramway
• The L.A. Metro light rail
• A taxi
• A Warner Bros. tram for the studio tour
• A JetBlue plane to New York
• And the Airtrain and the A and F subway trains to JFK and back -- not clean or communicative, but mine and therefore home.
  

On Wednesday we saw "The Dark Knight," which is marvelous and horrifying. "Iron Man" earlier this summer represented all the light and bright and sparkling parts of comic books: wisecracking heroes, and cool gadgets and superpowers, and cute redheaded assistants in heels, and big fights with clearly identified bad guys -- very BAM! POW! ZOWIE! (And hugely enjoyable: I saw it twice in the theatre.) "The Dark Knight" is the flip side of that, dark and serious and thoughtful: a hero who wants to give up his cape, who questions the wisdom and right use of his gadgets and superpowers, with a ladylove who's involved with someone else, and thematic and character doubling everywhere you look. It's the graphic novel as opposed to the comic book, or a superhero film as made by Ingmar Bergman, with late Hitchcock nodding in for the action sequences. Heath Ledger clearly looked deep into the abyss for his role as the Joker, and the skill of his performance underlines the tremendous loss -- that, possibly, he couldn't look away. Perfectly controlled, brilliant, terrifying. I wouldn't take anyone under the age of a very mature 12, as the Joker's nihilism and violence are deeply disturbing. But for adults, it is eminently worth seeing, for the intelligence and ambition of the plotting and themes, the quality of the performances, and the final sense of hope at the end -- not the individual exuberance of "Iron Man," but a communal hope tempered by the knowledge of the world's darkness, and strengthened in the knowledge of how that darkness can be overcome. Excellent film.

N.B.: I saw it in IMAX, and if it's at all possible for you to see it in IMAX, I strongly recommend you expend the extra effort and money for the aerial shots of Gotham City and Hong Kong alone. Other reviews: Scott Foundas in L.A. Weekly; Todd Alcott; Reverse Shot, which disliked it.

And the Warner Bros. studio tour was great fun -- I saw the exterior of the orphanage from "Annie" (my favorite movie when I was six); looked in the windows of Luke's diner from "Gilmore Girls" and walked around the Star's Hollow town square; at a distance, caught a little bit of a taping of "Pushing Daisies" (the great spoiler I can reveal exclusively here: Anna Friel will wear a yellow dress and step out of a door in a future episode); sat on the couch from "Friends"; and, most excitingly for me, found an entire floor of Harry Potter memorabilia in the studio museum. A model Acromantula! The flying Ford Anglia! Hermione's Yule Ball gown! The Sorting Hat (or whoever was running it) mistakenly named me a Hufflepuff (I'm straight-up Ravenclaw, baby), but it correctly identified James as a long-lost Weasley cousin and assigned him to Gryffindor.

Finally, on the reading/work front, I finished Away, which I very much admired, and A Civil Contract by Georgette Heyer, a most unusual romance novel, and I'm about two-thirds of the way through Brideshead Revisited, which I don't especially like but seem compelled to go forward with (much the same way the protagonist relates to the Brideshead family, actually). And I wrote the illustration notes and a solid first draft of my Terminus speech, and bought two excellent pairs of Clarks sandals on sale. So, altogether, a successful vacation.

All Good Things

• Jott, a phone/e-mail service that allows you to call a number, name a recipient, record a voice message, and then have that voice message delivered to the recipient as both a text message and e-mail, FREE. It's pretty amazing.
• Wall-E: What everyone else in the world has said.
  
• Hancock: Not a perfect movie by any means, but an altogether original take on the superhero mythos, with some laugh-out-loud funny moments and excellent performances. Worth seeing.
• Reprise: Or if you'd rather take in foreign-language cinema, which definitely needs your support more than those Hollywood blockbusters do, check out this rambunctious Norwegian film following two young men submitting their first novels for publication. One gets published instantly; one doesn't; and its vision of friendship, love, the literary life, and being artistic and serious in your twenties unfolds with wonderful truth and verve.
  
• Lyle Lovett live: He is touring, with his Large Band and a full gospel choir, and he is genius.
  
• Harry and the Potters: They are also touring, with the Unlimited Enthusiasm Expo, and they are also genius -- where else will you see Albus Dumbledore rapping about his love for tenpin bowling? The only sad moment of this concert for me was when tour partner band Uncle Monsterface launched into an unorthodox cover of "Like a Prayer," and I realized none of my fellow concertgoers were singing along to the lyrics because they were too young to know them. Kids today just don't appreciate the classics. (Though glory, that video has not aged well.)
  
• Sagamore Hill: Being history dorks, this weekend James and I took the Long Island Railroad out to Oyster Bay to visit Theodore Roosevelt's family home, which has been almost perfectly preserved as it was when he lived there. Every room was filled with interesting memorabilia (especially animal heads or skins), decorations, and especially books: Apparently at one point TR read three books a day! I came away with even more respect for his energy and courage, and I recommend his house to New Yorkers for a grand day out.
• Word Challenge on Facebook.
• Ice cream.
  

All Thou Writers for Children

Hie thee over to Todd Alcott's LiveJournal and read his reflections on E.T.: the Extraterrestrial. If E.T. were a book, it would be a perfect middle-grade fantasy novel, for all the reasons Mr. Alcott describes. Pay special attention to the advice (both Mr. Alcott's and Bob Dylan's) to "invert the cliche," and to the fact that all great fantasy has a larger emotional or moral metaphor working within it. . . . That's what separates the Rowlings and Pullmans and Constables from the people who play with elves and dragons.

That said, I can guess why Mr. Alcott's six-year-old son prefers Star Wars and Raiders of the Lost Ark to E.T. -- it is much easier and more pleasurable to identify with heroes and fighters against the Dark Side than it is to identify with Elliott, who starts out as your standard unpowerful (and kind of whiny) eleven-year-old middle child, and then achieves a domestic greatness (he helps a friend) rather than a lasting heroic one. That domestic greatness sets him on the way to later heroic greatness, certainly, but the pleasures of this particular journey may be better understood and appreciated by adults than by children. So perhaps E.T. wouldn't make a perfect middle-grade fantasy novel, but a perfect adult fantasy novel about a middle-grader -- the 1980s California alien equivalent of Jim the Boy. Hmm.

Title and Tittle-Tattle

Some days, I think about retitling this blog "The Usual Crazy," as that would more accurately reflect the everyday state of my mind than the calm verdure of a Brooklyn Arden. I aspire to that verdure, though. The trees there would be gorgeous and arching and delicate, like the sycamores over Poets' Walk in Central Park, and everyone would lie on blankets reading books or toss Frisbees to happy dogs or do yoga. Mmm.

• Returning to real life: I just accepted an invitation to speak at SCBWI-Illinois's fall conference in Chicago on November 15, 2008.
  
• I'm also going to be speaking at SCBWI-New Jersey the first weekend in June. I don't know what topics I'll be covering for either one, so your suggestions are appreciated.
  
• Actually, for June I was thinking I would do an updated submissions talk, since I haven't done one of those in -- yeesh! -- four years; or I would give the character speech again, since I haven't put it up on my website and therefore I can still use it. But I am a glutton for writing punishment, so if someone gives me a better idea I'll probably get all excited about that and go after it.
• Elizabeth Bunce's A Curse Dark as Gold is garnering marvelously good reviews, including a star from the BCCB. Yay Elizabeth!
• Last Friday James and I went to the movies together. We both saw a film about attractive young people in New York City, only his involved a rampaging, greedy monster without any apparent motive for the destruction, and mine involved Bill Clinton. (Republicans, you can thank me for that opening later.) His was Cloverfield; mine was Definitely, Maybe (not to be confused with Lisa Yee's next novel Definitely Maybe -- hers doesn't have a comma, and that makes all the difference). While D,M was a little contrived, it was both non-cloyingly sweet and yet admirably realistic about the occasional pain and confusion of romantic relationships -- the fact that you grow into and out of some people, and sometimes the timing isn't right, and there can be more than one true love for you in life . . . Altogether, a charming, nicely grown-up romantic comedy; and when James and I met up again outside the theatre afterwards, we were both perfectly satisfied with our selections. You can read an interview with the screenwriter/director of D,M here.
  
• I'm off to Chicago this weekend to visit my dear friend KTBB, who's in the country for a medieval history conference. We plan to see the Chris Raschka exhibit at the Art Institute and eat pizza while watching the Oscars.
  
• My Oscar picks: "No Country for Old Men"; Daniel Day-Lewis; Julie Christie; Javier Bardem; and, let's see, Ruby Dee, as the surprise sentimental vote. The thing I'm most looking forward to is the musical performance of the song from "Once," though. Love "Once."
  
• End of procrastinatory rambling.
  

There Will Be Milkshake Silliness

If you have seen the brilliant and inscrutable There Will Be Blood:

• Todd Alcott analyzes the movie (in four parts) with regard to Daniel Plainview's motivation and psychology and the image systems of the movie.
  
• You can listen to the "I drink your milkshake!" audio clip all day!
• And have it bring all the boys to the yard. (They're like, it's better than yours.)
• Damn right, it's better than yours.
• I'd teach you, but I'd have to charge.
• Ahem, sorry. Cool fact of the day: The milkshake line is actually rooted in real history -- the Teapot Dome scandal of the 1920s, when Senator Albert Fall explained oil drilling in the Senate by saying "If you have a milkshake and I have a milkshake and my straw reaches across the room, I'll just end up drinking your milkshake." P.T. Anderson took that and ran. (Source.)
  
• Finally: recipes.
  

Cinematic New York City Sightings

Before I forget, two fun location notes: The climactic faceoff in Michael Clayton occurs in the cavernous second-floor lobby of the Hilton at 53rd and 6th Ave. -- aka the location for the SCBWI Midwinter conference. You can stand where George Clooney stood!

(Mmm, George Clooney. . .




What? Oh. Sorry.)

And in I Am Legend, one scene takes place on Mercer Street between Prince and Spring Streets, directly behind the Scholastic building -- you can actually see the Scholastic Store sign off to the right. It's good to know Clifford the Big Red Dog survives the viral apocalypse.

Both films are highly recommended, by the way, the first for standout performances and crackerjack writing and plot construction, the second for incredible special effects, cinematography, and suspense. (James and I spent the half-hour after I Am Legend discussing our emergency plan in case of a terrorist attack, however, so don't go see it for a light good time.)

Lovely Laziness

I am still in my pajamas at 10:42 in the morning. Lord, I love vacation.

• The resolution of the mystery (which I'm sure has kept you all on tenterhooks): I went to Texas to visit my dear friend KTBB, who was staying with her in-laws in Fort Worth, and she and I took a girls' night at the Beaumont Ranch in Grandview. While we'd been attracted to the Beaumont because it promised a comfortable B&B experience on a real Texas ranch, it ended up being one of the most bizarre places I've ever stayed, starting with the spa/ranch combination, continuing through a reproduction 1880s Texas town on the property (utterly deserted), and culminating in a giant mural devoted to the Telecommunications Act of 1996. Eventually Katy and I pieced together the Ranch's provenance: The "Beaumont" of the name was Ron Beaumont, former CFO of the infamous telecom giant Worldcom, and the Ranch had originally been developed as his private retreat-cum-corporate conference center. After Worldcom melted down (Beaumont turned state's evidence and was never charged), the Beaumonts opened it to the public as a dude ranch/B&B/spa. They're still working on the B&B piece, however -- despite excellent food and good service, there were 23 dead crickets found in our room on arrival, holey sheets, and zero security at night. Thus Katy and I do not recommend the Beaumont accommodations, but we thank the ranch for giving us many more memories.
• From there I came home to Kansas City, where my Iowa family was waiting. Two inches of hard-frozen snow outside kept us from playing our usual game of Killer Klein Croquet, but because the Frog was at stake, my father and Uncle John devised a clever solution: They drilled holes in wood blocks to form standees for the wickets, and we played in the house, with inflatable plastic balls replacing the usual wooden ones. Everyone devised their usual impossible wicket setup (I created a ramp using a metal sign and a wooden "M"), and Melissa's dog and cat served as moving obstacles. It was a wonderful game, just as competitive and hilarious indoors as it always is outside. My cousin Hans came away with the victory and the Frog, which he will take to the Iowa caucuses on the 3rd before bringing it home to New York (upstate) later in January.
• James and I went to see "Sweeney Todd" on Wednesday. Every time I see this show (which is now touring the U.S. on stage, in the brilliant John Doyle revival) I'm struck by what a paradox it is: a story filled with murder, cannibalism, rape, near-pedophilia, obsession, and betrayal -- undoubtedly the most misanthropic musical in the canon, with all the worst and ugliest parts of human nature -- portrayed in what is highest and best in human accomplishment: soaring, searing, unforgettable music and lyrics. The movie captured both sides of this paradox respectably, though Tim Burton clearly takes more glee in the spurting fountains of blood than the more subtle aspects of Sondheim's score. But Helena Bonham-Carter and Johnny Depp were both suitably demented and Alan Rickman is a perfect Judge Turpin. . . . I feel sorry for Timothy Spall, who plays the Beadle, because his physiognomy so often regulates him to those ratlike roles; someone should write a romantic comedy just for him and have him get the girl.
• I love the Wii.
• Reading on vacation: The Subtle Knife; Sondheim & Company; The Lonely Planet Guide to India.
• I don't normally write about acquisitions here, but I wanted to note I just bought a manuscript that started as a SQUID: Olugbemisola Amusashonubi-Perkovich's (aka Mrs. Pilkington's) EIGHTH-GRADE SUPERZERO. Foremost among its many virtues are wonderful, wonderful characters and a terrific voice; I'm really looking forward to working on it and with Gbemi. Yay!