Wednesday, January 26, 2011

Set me Straight, Sparks. Set Me Straight.

It’s been awhile since I dabbled in some uninformed smack talk and I do believe today I am in a smack talking mood. As you may recall, this is a chance for me to criticize an author or book which I have NOT read, in an unnecessarily obnoxious fashion.

And today’s winner is… Nicholas Sparks!!!!!

If I was going to write Nicholas Sparks a letter, it would go a little something like this:

Dear Nicholas Sparks,

Why do you hate women? Why do you want us all to be depressed? Did you sign a pact with Jodi Picoult to write the most depressing stories known to mankind? Perhaps when you were a kid, someone threw a shoe at your head while watching the Love Boat, and henceforth you are unable to differentiate between romance and horrible life crises? Help me understand, Mr. Sparks. How do you write a book that is simultaneously sappier than a Canadian maple tree, cheesier than the Green Bay Packers and more depressing than those dog commercials featuring Sarah McLachlan?

Sincerely,
Steinho

You may think I’m being overly dramatic myself, but allow me to present a few bits of evidence. I took a sampling from Sparks’ books and it was a rare occurrence where everyone made it out alive. In “Message in a Bottle,” the hero starts out with a dead wife. In “A Walk to Remember,” a young religious girl falls in love, and then promptly dies of leukemia post-wedding. Because every woman wants to believe that her teenage husband would spend the rest of his life mourning her when she kicked it at seventeen. No deaths in “Dear John,” but a woman does leave her true love after 9/11 causes him to re-enlist in the military. The main character in “Nights in Rodanthe” endures a sick father and a depressed daughter before she finally is able to fall in love again. And then what happens? Her lover dies in Ecuador! Sorry sweetheart. You don’t get to be happy. This is a Nicholas Sparks story. You’re lucky to have all your limbs and organs! Which brings me to my final victim, the novel I consider to be the epitome of Sparks’ villainy. “The Notebook.”

Ahh, “The Notebook.” If I can get one comment from an angry Rachel McAdams fan today, then I know I’ll have done my job. I get what he’s trying to do here. The whole, wedding “In sickness and in health” vow. I would LOVE to believe there is a beautiful man out there who is spending his whole life preparing to help me through any life traumas and then woo me with his care giving skills and strong shoulders to cry on. But I’m afraid Sparks’ dictionary was missing the “O” section. Clearly, he doesn’t get the concept of overkill.

For those not familiar with “The Notebook,” it’s about an elderly husband (dying of cancer) who reads his wife (who has Alzheimer’s) a story of how they fell in love, with the hopes of jogging her memory. I think I hate this story line for the same reason I hate the movie “A Beautiful Mind.” Love doesn’t cure schizophrenia, and it doesn’t cure Alzheimer’s either. Alzheimer’s means you don’t have enough neurons, not that you didn’t ever get a chance to make out in the rain with Ryan Gosling. It’s a horrible disease, and frankly, the use of it in this schmaltzy love story makes me want to vomit.

Maybe it’s the combination of one dimensional and saccharine characters coupled with depressing plot lines that offends me. I really don’t mind romances, even overly dramatic ones, if they’re done well. I love the book “Wuthering Heights,” and everybody ends up screwed in that story. The difference I suppose, is that Heathcliff and Catherine are dark and complicated characters, driven by passion into making devastating life choices. Or maybe, I just like “Wuthering Heights” more because it’s a classic, and Nicholas Sparks books can be bought in a grocery store.

Tuesday, January 18, 2011

I Knew There Was A Reason Children Frightened Me

Eva, a dear friend of mine, leant me a few books awhile back, one of them being “Little Children” by Tom Perrotta. I recalled there had been a film adaptation of the book sometime in the last five years starring Kate Winslet. It was a “sad modern drama,” the sort of movie I rarely go to see unless it’s nominated for a million awards, and often not even then. The book sat on my shelf, staring at me, reminding me that if not for my friend, never in a million years would I have picked it up or even considered reading it. But I trusted Eva, and Kate Winslet, not to steer me wrong.

“Little Children,” is a simple story in plot, but a complex story in terms of the human’s ability to mess up their own life. The novel focuses on three characters: Sarah, a disheveled and unhappy young mother; Todd, a gorgeous stay at home dad; and Ronald, a pedophile recently released from prison. Rest assured, this is not one of those depressing stories like Sapphire’s “Push” where children are abused and raped and then overcome obstacles. I don’t want to trivialize such things when they happen in real life, but too frequently do screenwriters and novelists, who know nothing of such dark experiences, try to capitalize on human tragedy and end up turning it into wretched melodrama. “Little Children” is free of that kind of exaggerated horror. Sarah and Todd meet on a playground, and feel an instant connection, each offering the other something missing in their, if not miserable, then at least mediocre lives. An affair proceeds and falls apart over the course of a summer. Again, so simple, and yet so loaded with emotion and experience.

As I began the novel, all I could think about was how much it made me NOT want to have children. When Sarah forgets her three-year-old daughter’s snack at the playground, she can only sit, hopeless and numb, as the little girl screams her head off. Todd finds himself getting jealous of his own son when his wife refuses to move the boy out of their bed so they might have an intimate night together. What affected me the most on a personal level was when Perrotta discussed Sarah’s decline into failure. As a young, feminist college student, Sarah dreamed of teaching young women, changing their lives. But time passes, she drops out of grad school, and is still working at Starbucks into her late twenties. Maybe it’s a post traumatic stress flashback to my retail days. All I kept thinking was how such a life could have happened to me. I have creative dreams, and I’m grateful for the opportunities I’ve been given. Watching someone who had such spirit as a youth crumble into such a generic suburban drone made me want to cry. I have nothing against people having children, if they want kids. Some people should have them and some people shouldn’t. For those that do, I would love to hear their perspective on such a book as this. I have to wonder, how much of my horror at Sarah’s plight came from my own fears projected onto the text. Or was that the author’s intent? All I know is that the further I read, the more anxious I became.

The power of excellent writing, and this is excellent writing, dear little blogflowers, is to convince readers to feel a certain way, when it goes against every natural instinct. For example, even though Sarah is the other woman, the one ruining lives and wrecking homes, I was still on her side. Perrotta makes Sarah so vulnerable and sad, and Todd’s wife confident and beautiful in contrast, that it made me happy when he cheated on her. Now in real life, my feelings on cheating are very clear. It’s basically a zero tolerance policy. Yet, I hated Todd’s wife. I hated her for her model good looks, and how she was constantly nagging Todd to take the bar exam so she could be a stay at home mom. I wanted Todd to leave her. I felt like she deserved it. Isn’t that odd, the emotional connections we often have to art.

Then there’s that whole little bit about the pedophile. Every time another character belittled or abused Ronald, my gut instinct was to feel bad for him. Then almost in the same breath, Perrotta would make Ronald say or do something so despicable, you’d almost feel disgusted with yourself for feeling that moment of sympathy.

I should have hated this book. It was depressing and offered no happy ending, no silver lining, just pure unadulterated life. You may be as resistant to read this book as I was, but trust me, the writing is two hundred dollar wine. For a few days of reading, it will make you feel more thoughtful and in turn, smarter than everyone else you know.

Wednesday, January 12, 2011

Shakespeare Probably Was An Alcoholic Too

What’s better than an old British man? How about a drunk old British man? And what’s even better still? Four drunk old British men. That seems to be the motivation behind Robert Sellers’ four part biography “Hellraisers: The Life and Inebriated Times of Richard Burton, Richard Harris, Peter O’Toole and Oliver Reed.”

Now, I knew Peter O’Toole had a history as a drunk. Even if I didn’t, I’ve seen “Lawrence of Arabia,” and frankly, no one could be that attractive in his youth, and turn into what he is today without what you call some “hard living.” The others, however, I had no idea. In fact, I knew very little of their histories in general. Burton was just that classical actor married at one time to Elizabeth Taylor. Oliver Reed was the dude who died during the filmmaking of “Gladiator.” I remember reading an article about how they had to finish using a body double and then pasting his face in with CGI. Richard Harris, of course, I knew as the original Dumbledore in the first two Harry Potter movies. It seems there are so few parts for older British actors in the American film industry. You’re either a villain, or a wizard. Or in Alan Rickman’s case, both.

The biography cycles through the four actors, each starting from rather grim beginnings, and meandering down a steady river of liquor, drugs and women on their way to success. I swear, these men were in a competition to see who could die first. Richard Burton consumed so much alcohol that he started having severe back problems. You might wonder how such an injury could possibly be caused by drinking, other than by accidentally falling out a window while inebriated. Apparently, if you imbibe as much booze as Burton did, the alcohol can start crystallizing on your spine, causing crippling pain. What I want to know is how did his liver not fail first? He eventually died from a brain hemorrhage at the moderately young age of 58, but considering he also started smoking at age eight, how did he even make it that long? I suppose it is a mystery of the ages.

What fascinated me most about the whole book was how obnoxious these four fellows were at times, and how year after year, directors continued to cast them in their films or hire them for their plays. Even when the producers had to hire entire entourages to keep them, not just sober, but working at all. They were all notorious for performing in entire movies while intoxicated, on occasion not even being able to recall the filmmaking process. Sellers tells an anecdote about Peter O’Toole and a young Michael Caine. At the time, Caine was cast as O’Toole’s understudy for a play. Every night, Peter O’Toole would go out to the bar, and remain there up until minutes before he was needed to go on. Each night, Caine would sit in anticipation, thinking this was finally the night O’Toole would arrive too late, and he could replace him. It never happened. O’Toole always came back just in time, one time even shouting to the crew “Not to let that boy onstage,” as he stumbled into his costume.

If “Hellraisers” suffers from any flaw, it is that of repetition. One can only take so many witty tales of debauched buffoonery. Over and over, Sellers dissects each bender, each on-set blowup, and the frequent accidents or hospital trips that followed. The stories are often painful to read, simply because you can’t help but sympathize with the actors or family members suffering at the hands of Burton, O’Toole, Harris or Reed’s drunken antics. Even as Burton‘s first wife, Sybil Williams, would rush to his side in times of emergency, she‘d be faced with not one, but often two mistresses also waiting to take care of her husband. Sellers goes into great detail about Burton’s constant shuffling of his women to ensure they never came in contact with each other.

Throughout it all, not one of the pack ever seemed particularly apologetic about their misbehaving. While they often showed remorse for hurting the ones they loved, they rarely acted sorry for the deeds themselves. There were attempts later in life to curb their bad habits, but never the flat out denial of a problem that you see in so many drunken young stars today. In a way, I suppose that is refreshing.

Tuesday, January 4, 2011

Someone Get Me Some Smelling Salts, Because I'm Horrified.

My first new year lesson to you, my dear little Blogflowers, is that just because a book has a picture of Oscar Wilde on the cover does not mean that it is going to be full of delight, wit and beautiful men making out with each other. What an utter disappointment.

No, I did not expect pornography from Gyles Brandreth’s novel, “Oscar Wilde and a Death of No Importance,” but maybe that would have helped liven up this otherwise dull mystery. It would seem that I never cease to be fooled by the clever marketing and synopsis writing of publishers. The book promised Oscar Wilde solving the murder of a beautiful young boy whore, along with the help of his dear friend, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. This should have been manna from my deranged heaven. The only thing worse than a terrible novel is a terrible novel created from a quite clever idea. In the spirit of Wilde’s dramatic life and writing, let me offer you this overly dramatic and wailing lament to the tragedy that has befallen dear Wilde in the pages upon this novel. (This is the part where you should picture me fainting onto a chaise lounge with a frilly handkerchief to my forehead.) That horrid prison, where the great man was subjected to hard labor, could not have more successfully stripped him of his soul than the words within this novel.

The first thing that struck me was the presentation of Oscar Wilde. Yes, he was a fancy chap. He was known for his sense of style and aesthetics, a lover of poetry and art and beauty. In this novel, he is portrayed as a petulant child, moody, deceptive and manipulative, neurotic and almost mentally unstable at times. My historical knowledge of Wilde is minimal, so I will not try to argue a point as to his true persona. Speaking purely from my gut instinct, Brandreth’s Wilde irritated me. He came off as the sort of person I would make fun of, had he been in my creative writing workshop in college. You know who I’m talking about. The guy who wears a ponytail and doesn’t bathe because Hemingway didn’t and writes on Moleskine notebooks because Mark Twain did. Yes, that guy. A poser. Nearly every time the fictional Wilde encountered a new character, Brandreth made a point of mentioning how quickly Wilde’s fine speaking, nobility and grace, charmed his new friends. Perhaps the real Wilde might have, but not this Frankenstein creature, patched together from the dead pieces of previous authors. Byron’s club foot, perhaps, or Keats’ consumptive lungs. I’d say the only person this Wilde is charming is the waiter. I swear, he spent half the novel shoving food down his face. Brandreth must’ve been terribly hungry while writing this book because in every other sentence, he has Wilde beckoning his friends to join him for oysters and champagne or mutton or goose liver. Certainly Oscar Wilde lived a decadent life, but if you really wanted to talk that much about food, write a cookbook. Do not waste my time and sully the persona of one of my favorite authors while you’re at it!

Then there’s the little matter of Wilde’s sexual persuasion. Your humblest pardons if I have my Victorian authors confused, but I am quite certain Oscar Wilde was engaged in a homosexual love affair with Lord Alfred Douglas. Honestly, I don‘t blame him. The guy makes Jude Law look like the dead squirrel my friend once stepped on in a gutter. Not only does this novel seem to suggest that Wilde never had any inappropriate relationships with men, but even makes the killer a secretly homosexual man, driven to murder after his own young lover is slain by his wife. The narrator goes on and on about how nervous it makes him that his dear friend Oscar should associate with the sort of fellow who likes to hang out with pretty young men. Thanks, but no thanks. My fluff reading should not make me feel obliged to make a political speech on my blog page about civil rights and stereotypical judgments.