A Man Rides Through

Since this is a book that my book group will be discussing, this will be a shorter than usual posting.

A Man Rides Through is the second half of the novel begun by The Mirror of Her Dreams, by Stephen Donaldson. This second half hews more closely to conventional high fantasy tropes than the first half, which to my mind is something of a relief. After feeling brow-beaten by Terisa's inadequacies in The Mirror of her Dreams, I was relieved when she discovered what her talent is and acted on it. I was also grateful to get some changes in the construction of the story: we get different narrators than Terisa and the action actually moves out of the single setting it had used for the entirety of the first book.

One of the strengths of Donaldson's story is the introduction of a new kind of magic—that of imagery, or the magical use of mirrors (it may not be the first, but it is the first I am aware of). Some of the possibilities of this magic are revealed in the first book, but it is in the second, as Terisa comes into her own and is more or less adopted by the world's practitioners of imagery, that we see its full potential. Once the parameters of the power have been set, various uses of it through A Man Rides Through are just ingenious.

I'm conflicted, however, on the development of the main antagonist. At times, his machinations seem ripped straight out of the book of Iago, and I'm impressed by the planning and bile that he displays (this is me not naming the antagonist so as not to spoil anything…). But at others, the character becomes a caricature of bad villains, preening and prideful, so tritely written, in fact, that I expect the Snidely Whiplash twirling of mustachios. Clearly, except for Terisa who seems just overwhelmed by the charisma-power like character of this man, he is a foe you want near you soliloquizing rather than off on his own making hideous plans.

I'm also a little conflicted on the overarching plan of the king, the plan that was so flawed that it allowed any of the story to happen. While everyone in the story appears to have forgiven the king by the end of A Man Rides Through, mainly because of his heroic demeanor in battle, I'm not entirely sure that I would be so forgiving. There's more than a little martyr complex in the king's motivations, and the plan is so wonky that several people are martyred literally rather than the figurative martyrdom the king receives. I have trouble believing how easily the effects of the plan's fruition are waved off, not only in its personal cost but also in the emotional cost to the people the king felt he could not trust. When a plan relies on the turning of formerly loyal countrymen, it just seems to me that the plan needs serious rethinking.

The end result is that I set the book down feeling pretty blah about it all. The writing is not tight and is often long-winded and repetitive. After a half-promise of being groundbreaking, there is very little new territory uncovered by the book. It remains a compelling read, because I wanted to find out how things got resolved, but the resolution left me pretty flat. The last few paragraphs are especially trite, compounding the flatness I felt upon finishing the book. I'm glad I've read this again with a more experienced set of eyes, but I deeply suspect it will be the last time I will open the books.

The Book of Eli

The title of this movie reflects the intention by the movie's crew to be really clever. "Book of Eli" can be read in so many different ways—is it a book about Eli, a book written by Eli? Is it perhaps Eli's book? Unfortunately this ham-handed cleverness drives what could have been a (more) thoughtful movie, making it only merely entertaining.

There is a comparison to be made here to the far more successful Avatar, in that the movie is taking a tried and true genre of speculative fiction and trying to move past the trap of just appealing to fan boys and doing something with the genre. Avatar took the planetary romance and livened it with spectacular visuals, not being so concerned with the details of the story and being comfortable with awestruck viewers who later realized that the plot was rather thin. The Book of Eli on the other hand, takes a speculative fiction and now cinema staple, the post-apocalyptic story, and attempts to go somewhere beyond "gee, wouldn't that suck?". That goal should be appreciated, and it buys the filmmakers some points for bravery. However, while believing on the one hand that their viewer could get to a theme that was more thoughtful than the end of the world, they seemed to think that the same viewer was not a very good reader/viewer and must be bashed repeatedly in the head with what the movie is trying to mean. And then there is an extra layer of misdirection at the plot level, which does nothing so much as obscure the point the movie was trying to make.

From the opening sequence, we are supposed to be impressed both with Eli (played strongly by Denzel Washington) and with the cinematography. In the opening scene, Eli is hunting against a background that is either night or a very washed out day. He makes an amazing shot with a footbow, and we should be impressed by his skill at a weapon that is rarely seen. We also discover that everything in the movie will be washed out, filmed in shades of gray and brown, presumably the result of whatever caused the world as we know it to come to an end. We follow Eli for about a day, watching his habits and patterns—his reading and his constant attempts at cleanliness in these worst of conditions. Eli's reading consists of the Bible, which I could wish was a spoiler, but the trailers and commercials all give it away and, in fact, given the movie's focus, the real spoiler would be if it w as any other book at all. We also get to see Eli go up against a gang of cannibals, dispatching them with something like regret despite his tremendous hand-to-hand skill.

Eventually he arrives in a town run by Carnegie (Gary Oldman), and we watch Carnegie go through a stack of books brought to him by another gang, disgusted that what he wants is not among them. Questioned by an assistant, Carnegie talks about the power of words and how he could shape the town to his ends if only he had The Book to which he could point as the authority behind his power. It should be ridiculously obvious that The Book is The Bible, and how fortunate that Eli has just arrived in town with one. But it's not at all clear how this should work; in his diatribe about trying to find the Bible, Carnegie talks about how a war broke out and all the Bibles in the world were destroyed as a result of the belief that it led to the war. So if the Bible were feared or hated so much, why would its reappearance now be of any benefit at all? And the movie makes it clear that almost everyone left is illiterate, so why does it have to be that particular book—wouldn't just holding up any book and pretending to quote from it be enough to convince the uneducated masses of the validity of his rule? It appears there is supposed to be ambiguity about Carnegie, that perhaps he is only doing what he must to survive, especially since at one point Carnegie asks Eli to pray for him. But that one request does not balance well against the rest of the movie where he is corrupt, spiteful, and just mean. I think the point is that this is the kind of man that claims to follow the Bible, but the extended metaphor is very dicey throughout the film.

Eli eventually escapes Carnegie with his step-daughter Solara (Mila Kunis) in tow. He still has his Bible, refusing to give it up since he is carrying it westward because a voice has told him so and Carnegie's town is not the rightful resting place for it. Eli reads from the Bible and quotes it to Solara, sounding more and more mystical as the film goes on. The stark contrast between Carnegie and Eli makes the point for the movie—the power of the Bible lies not in its words but in the actions it causes it readers to take. And of course, those words can be (have been) twisted to the user's end, but if one is merely open to the meaning behind them, …insert your fluffy ending here. You'll be one with the Buddha, you'll get your just reward, the world will be a better place…whatever. Such a morality is good so far as it goes but it takes too much responsibility off people. It's far too simplistic to blame the actions for individuals on the books they read because it is far harder to understand why a person does what he does. Yet the movie doesn't seem to get its own point since Eli is determined to hang on to the Bible, whereas if the meaning of the book were more important, he could be able to let it go. It all seems so straightforward as you watch it unfolding, with its interesting cinematography and wildly improbable combat effects. It just doesn't stand up to very much scrutiny as we admire Washington and Oldman doing what they do best—Washington being stoic and taciturn and Oldman chewing scenery.

And then the movie does its twist ending—actually a double twist. And with those twists, everything the movie has been trying to accomplish is thrown into doubt. Suddenly Eli, who we feel we know somewhat, is someone else. It's really difficult to talk about the ending at all without spoiling it, so I'm not going to try. But it does have an interesting effect—on the one hand, it seemed awful simplistic such that I was disappointed. But on the other hand, its very simplicity calls into question the rest of the movie—surely they couldn't have meant to be so obvious…but if not, what are they trying to say? The result is that while I have had more conversations about Avatar than The Book of Eli, the more interesting conversations have been about Eli, including discussions of meaning and symbolism with people who don't usually seem to be very interested in such conversations.

So I am left with both a disappointed feeling as the movie seems to fail at what it wants to say so ham-handedly, but it's a near-miss, causing people to talk about what happened, which I expect any creator would be delighted with. As for recommending the movie, it's hard to say. It's a fairly standard adventure yarn, predictable but stylish, until suddenly it isn't. And what it becomes is either unbelievable tripe or a conversation starter. I think cinephiles and end-of-the-world fans should make an effort to see The Book of Eli while it is in theaters, but if you fall outside those categories, it's still worth a rental.

Iorich

How does one go about reviewing the twelfth book in a series?

I've started this blog entry a number of times since I finished Steven Brust's latest entry in his Vlad Taltos series, and each time, after a few paragraphs, I've found myself stuck and unable to go forward or back. If I consider the reviewer's role to help the reader decide if the subject matter is worthy of attention, it sort of speaks for itself, doesn't it? It's the twelfth book in a series—clearly something must be going right for it to go this far. Enough people like it that they continue to buy it after a number of years (since 1983 in this case). And so immediately, the review splits in recognition of the audience being automatically divided—those who are reading the series and those who haven't picked it up. Managing those very different audiences is the balancing act that has had me stumped.

If you haven't read any of the books, you should know that Vlad Taltos is human, a minority in Dragaera, where the dominant race is bigger than us and more long-lived than us. In fact, due to magic, people can be returned to life after death, so long as their brains are not too damaged or they have not been killed using a special weapon. Dragaeran society is divided into groups that act a great deal like clans, usually based on birth, with the clans affecting everything from the jobs one can have to the color of the clothes one wears and how one looks. Moving from one clan to another is extremely difficult, with the exception of the two classes open to non-Dragaerans: the Teckla (the lowest class, laborers) and the Jhereg (the criminal class). Vlad had been a Jhereg, but he betrayed the criminal brotherhood and has been on the run. In Iorich, he returns to the capital city of Andrilankha to help a friend who may not even want his help. His return allows a reunion with friends and his wife and child, but it also puts him in the sights of the Jhereg. But that's just who he is.

The strength of the Vlad Taltos series is Brust's characterization and the interaction between those characters: I'm not sure there is a more fully round character in all of speculative fiction than Vlad Taltos (of course, Brust has had 12 books to make him so). Vlad is whip-smart, charming, witty, very sure of himself, and also capable of the most tremendous self-delusions. He is also a magician and one of the greatest assassins in Andrilankha (perhaps just behind the remarkable Mario). All of his books are nearly entirely narrated from his point of view, including his internal monologue; as a result we are given a remarkable vision into a singular character, a vision that includes Vlad's own bias when he deals with other characters. And with Iorich, Vlad has returned home to interact with the people he knows the best, falling into familiar patterns of interplay with people who aren't necessarily intimidated by him. With this book, Brust writes more comfortably than in the more recent books; Vlad just doesn't deal well with strangers and he isn't really a country person. While confident in his own abilities, he had been forced to try to read people in contexts he doesn't entirely understand, making him less sure than usual. A troubled Vlad actually put a cloud over some of the more recent books that I didn't recognize until it was removed in Iorich: Vlad wasn't being himself.

Back home, Vlad is clearly in his element, and the reader can see how his exile has changed him. On the surface, he seems to be the same as he ever was: wise-cracking and generally getting swept up in mayhem not necessarily of his making. But with our internal view of him, it's clear that he's grown up. The passages when he visits Cawti, his wife, and his son Vladimir are especially poignant—the palpable distance that he has to maintain from his family is telling in that the free-wheeling wise-cracking assassin is replaced, even in his own head. All of the snarky things that he says to himself, even about people he considers friends, are gone; he is focused on absorbing as much from their limited interactions as he can. It's also more clear than ever that Vlad's narration and characterization have their roots in the classic detective noir stories, now that his travels and troubles have worn him down. His narrative voice is world-weary and cynical even while his appearance seems easy-going.

If you have been reading the Vlad series, I don't know how you can't pick up this book, turning the page as it does on an important segment of Vlad's life and leading into what appears to be the last leg of the series. I have several ideas regarding where the series is going to end up, but given Brust's penchant to surprise and confound, I could be completely off base. It doesn't matter though; it will be fun getting there. The reader just has to remember how ground-breaking this work was when it was first published more than 15 years ago because Brust's run of excellent writing just gets taken for granted. Vlad's is a pretty unique voice in speculative fiction, and it's remarkable how apparently effortless it is for Brust to pull off. It is too easy to take the craftsmanship that Brust has for granted in the anticipation for the next book in the series.

Whether or not I can recommend this book to someone unfamiliar with the series depends on their tolerance for continuity. For instance, there are only references that Vlad's departure from Cawti and his child have to do with the Teckla and the Jhereg; for some readers they can get by without knowing the details because it only influences how we got to this point without directly contributing to the plot of Iorich. For others, it might be maddening to not know why two people so clearly in love cannot be together. There are references to past events that a new reader might not even now are references, and if that reader does pick up the possibility, they will also be unaware that Brust loves to make references to events in Vlad's life that have not been written yet (and may never be). On the one hand, I am hesitant to tell folks they need to go pick up 12 books and expect at least five more in the series. But on the other, this really is some very fine writing, easy to get into and rewarding the closer that you read.

Ultimately, the best recommendation I can make is that I constantly watch the forthcoming release lists to find out when the next book by Brust is coming out. Now that I have finished Iorich, I'm impatient for the next book. And I often recommend Brust to folks who are looking for good fantasy. It's solid writing and the story is very compelling. I'm pretty sure that, even if someone were to start with Iorich it would not be long after that they would be trying to find the earlier books as well.

RIP, Permanent Damage

I won't take it personally, but the links I put on my page seem to fold after a bit. I suppose everything folds after a bit, but it saddens me since (obviously) I think enough of the links that I am putting up that I, you know, point them out to other folks. First was The Absorbascon, a well-written blog from a comic store owner in DC. Over the fall he decided to close the store down and he took the blog down with him. And then this morning, I took my regular Thursday stroll over to Comic Book Resources to read Steven Grant's always-excellent Permanent Damage. And he announced he was overwhelmed with his writing tasks and so had to drop something, the loser being his weekly column.

What originally attracted me to his column was a long-term insider's viewpoint of the latest comic news. Grant's perspective on news and ideas in the comics world were fresh, ironically, because they were not from the newest voice in comics but based on the experience of someone who had seen every new thing for decades. His ability to put comics issues in historic context was powerful stuff, and abetted by critical insight into pop culture in general, his columns never failed to entertain, if not inform. He had nothing to sell and had no desire to become friends with the people he talked about, so there was no agenda in his commentary but to bluntly tell it as he saw it. In some ways, he was the grand old man of comics—the patriarchal figure I looked to in order to gain a different perspective—and always a voice of reason.

And if it was a slow comics week, Grant's column usually included a short recap of other news and his commentary on it as well. Grant applied the same sort of insight, applying reason and experience to point out the patterns of the most important economic and political news of the day. Yes, it was a bizarre mix—comics and politics—but it worked, mostly because Grant used the same voice and process for both, giving them same attention and respect. It was, very much, like sitting down to breakfast with an uncle and discussing current events (I'm pretty sure Grant would hate that analogy). Somehow it even felt Socratic though there was no way there could be a dialog. And while I did not always agree with his positions, I did learn something from the differences.

I'm not sure anyone could ask for a better review.

So I'll miss Permanent Damage, and I seriously doubt there is any voice out there that will come close to the kinds of insights it offered. If anyone has suggestions, I'll gladly try them out.

And if you should happen to see I have linked your web site over there in the left navigation, it really is intended to be a compliment and not the virtual kiss of internet death.

Some have greatness thrust upon them…

In the last quarter of 2009, I spent a lot of internal dialogue on a question of aesthetics that formed itself from ongoing thoughts and conversations about the media in my life. First, I had read Murakami's The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle (http://perrynomasia.blogspot.com/2009/10/wind-up-bird-chronicle.html) and, needing a pattern to shape my thoughts around and against, I did a little research into the criticism of the novel. With few exceptions, the praise was effusive though I often found that analysis was missing—there was not much by way of examples from the text about why it was so good. But I also recognized as I read it that it just had a feel of "greatness," somehow the book was making me feel like it was supposed to be good, which is a strange metafictional artifact and pretty difficult to express, let alone quantify.

Similarly, much to the distress of Mrs. Speculator and my friends, I just don't understand the fascination with the TV series, Mad Men. I've watched every episode of it now, and while I can appreciate the talent of the writers and some of the actors, it all seems to be in the service of something I am just missing out on. Repeatedly I am told—by friends whose opinions I trust, critics I value, and award shows—that this is good drama and that I should appreciate it more than I do. And all I can see is a particularly well-written soap opera set in an earlier time (which used to be a regular point but is rapidly becoming just a gimmick). Why is Mad Men nearly universally seen as great television? What quality of it makes it good? And again, I keep getting the feeling as I watch it that I am supposed to think it is good, that it is explicitly trying to impress me with how good it is.

I recognize that part of the issue here is going to be semantics: defining "good" is a difficult process, especially since it relies so much on personal values. But in some cases (especially with Mad Men) there is an air of snobbery—if you don't get why it's good, you're just unaware of what good really is. This is never explicit but my well-meaning attempts to understand by asking questions like "What makes it good?" are met with dumbfounded stares or their virtual equivalents. If the conversation evolves beyond that impasse, I often am told that it's very literary, as if that's more easily defined than "good." And since I have degrees in literature and write and talk passionately about books, clearly I should know what "literary" is and that it is the goal to which all story-telling aspires.

And then, over the fall, the speculative fiction community took a long look at itself after some critical remarks were made about how the literary awards never seem to have genre fiction as their nominees, even though the books that do get nominated are rife with themes and plots that would otherwise qualify them as speculative fiction. This all started when Ursula le Guin reviewed Margaret Atwood's latest novel, The Year of the Flood, questioning Atwood's determination not to be "pigeonholed" (http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2009/aug/29/margaret-atwood-year-of-flood). In it, Le Guin talks about some of the manufactured differences between "literary fiction" and genre fiction. Embedded in those distinctions is the belief, or perhaps fear if you view it from a marketing perspective, that genre fiction can never be good, while literary fiction is always good. And taking it a step further, if something puts on the trappings of being literary—calls attention to itself as being literary—then it also implies that it is inherently good. It's like the brick and mortar book stores have been divided into sections: science fiction, mystery, westerns, and over there is the good section. And yet I find myself thinking of Michael Chabon who rejoices in his genre roots, even announcing his genre intentions as his books get placed in the good book section.

So all of these thoughts whirling about in my head eventually led me to ask myself what the heck "literary" means and why literary equals good. What do these literary things have in common and do they really somehow proclaim their own literariness?

On the surface, Murakami and Mad Men have pretty much nothing in common. The novel deals with a young man hitting a crisis in his personal and professional life while the TV show is about a 1960s ad agency, focusing on a troubled protagonist but including threads from all the characters. The book is ethereal and sometimes fanciful, and the series is usually visceral and grounded, but with moments of something else. I wrestled with this for a while—the use of language is different, symbolism is different, the themes are different. What do these things have in common?

Denseness. Not of the reader/viewer, but of story-telling. Layer upon layer of narration, multiple story threads weaving around one another. Not, usually, denseness of language, but complex (not necessarily complicated) stories. In The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, instead of the usual single-thread narrative of a man's life—all the events that relate to the story the writer wants to tell—we are given nearly every facet of the protagonist's life, from the moment he wakes up and considers what his breakfast might be until he lays his head down on his pillow. And we meet every person he meets and are given part of their stories as well. On Mad Men, the plot revolves around as many as ten characters and their families/lovers, showing the depth of relationships and of personality since no one acts exactly the same way around every person they know and when alone. And the main character is especially rich in his experiences and decisions if not particularly deep. The dense storytelling, looked at another way, could also be called verisimilitude: the stories show the breadth of real people and their range of experiences, even if those experiences are ridiculous (is it irony that we want our fictional people to feel real?).

And denser storytelling usually makes for harder reading/viewing, making the consumer work for the pleasure they get out of it. There's an underlying relationship there: we're supposed to like the things we work hard for—we want our efforts to be spent judiciously—so we are inclined to like it. We may even want to like it, biasing ourselves from the start.

There are some interesting corollaries to this equation. For one thing, associating literariness and goodness to density neglects all the other things that make good writing. I enjoy good stories, but good writing makes me swoon. Powerful language, style used to an intent, narrative structure—all these are just as important as the plot. Critics argue, maybe rightfully, that Neal Stephenson is not very good at plots, but his language and sentences are delightful. Is that not literary? Iain Banks is masterful at narrative structure. China Mieville is brilliant at world-building. And while these authors are recognized as good, they live cleanly on the verge of literariness in the public eye. Maybe it's because they are so clearly genre writers as well (but that's a topic for another time). Arguably, these other aspects are more difficult than good plotting.

Following this line of reasoning, there must be literary things that are not good. Cultural things that are not good rapidly pass from our awareness, unless they are so not-good that they become known and honored for it. I know this is true for TV and movies, but I can't think of an example of bad books becoming beloved for their badness—though I suppose it could be argued that anything by Dan Brown fits the bill. As a result, perhaps, merely having a major publishing house put "literary" or "literature" on the spine of your book or having major chains put it in the literary section becomes a sort of self-fulfilling prophecy (again, in the mind of the consensus).

There's a parallel with "art" here. It's art so it must be good…and I have to like it. And if I don't like it…I just don't get it. And more so than books (and definitely more so than TV), people are explicitly snobby about their ability to "get it" with art.

Which leads to my final corollary—there are good things that are not literary! Why do I feel ashamed that Empire Records makes me smile? Why am I embarrassed to tell people I love Edgar Rice Burroughs? Because the consensus perception is that they are inherently not good—they have no value beyond entertaining me, as if there is something wrong with faithfully and regularly entertaining people. Oh, I do it too—I did it above. People love Dan Brown, and he gets bashed over and over by critics. Even now I'm struggling to write these words—perhaps he deserves some credit for entertaining so many people.

So I hereby resolve to recognize "literary" as another style, another identifier for media, but not a descriptor of value. Literary things are not inherently good. Being a literary movie is not inherently better or worse than being a popcorn movie. What matters is how well the book/movie/TV show pulls off its goal. If it has literary aspirations, has it met them? If it was designed solely to entertain, did it? And then, the critic's real job, why did it or did it not?

And I will no longer be cowed by Mad Men; it's a dang soap opera.

The Mirror of Her Dreams

This is a book (or the first half of a book, if you'd like to be picky) that I am reading for my book group, so this blog will be intentionally sparse.

I think I was about 14 when I was first introduced to Stephen R. Donaldson via The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant's first book Lord Foul's Bane. I knew very little about it but remember being very excited to receive it for Christmas, since it was an explicit recognition of my individuality—someone gave me a speculative fiction book as a gift, noting that I didn't follow the mainstream (if I recall the same person also gave me The Stars My Destination, so they either had terrific taste or were just pretty darned lucky). But immediately upon starting the book, I ran into difficulties. I remember rereading the first twenty pages four or five times to try to get "into" the book and just not succeeding. There was something off-putting about the rhythm, which as I look back more critically would be something of an accomplishment, since it would be an implied reflection of the most off-putting protagonist in speculative fiction, Thomas Covenant himself (hmm, off-putting protagonists, Thomas Covenant and Gully Foyle—perhaps my poorly remembered benefactor had a plan in mind…).

It was obvious to even my young critical powers that Donaldson was attempting to create the anti-epic fantasy novel, by just completely overthrowing the tropes from the outset. Thomas Covenant is a vile man, though extraordinarily human and thus perhaps understandable. Having lost his family due to their inability to cope with his leprosy, Covenant finds himself transported to a world where not only has he been healed but he has tremendous power, wrapped up in the symbol of his failure, his wedding band. Overwhelmed by his health and power, his first real act in this world is to rape a woman for which the world forgives him because he is obviously a hero come to save them from their mortal danger.

After I got past the hitch that stalled my reading, I devoured the book and its companions in the series, even going so far as to buy the last few books in hardback in order to not have to wait for them. The world was vibrant and different, the supporting characters were wonderful, and even in his ugliness, I could recognize that Covenant was richly developed, though as I recall, the narrative spent a lot of time in his head, which I found to be off-putting.

The Mirror of Her Dreams is the first half of a novel, Mordant's Need, that Donaldson wrote outside of The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant. In it, Donaldson returns to part of what made his first series so powerful: a seriously flawed protagonist. Only this time, around, Terisa Morgan is not quite so thoroughly developed and her flaw is emotionally based rather than physical, and thus that much harder to accept in its complexity: a victim of emotional abuse throughout her childhood, Terisa is not convinced she actually exists.

I admit that I can't make sense of this purely existential question; it's the opposite of solipsism, a game I used to play in school wherein everyone else exists and I am merely a figment of their combined imagination. But while my theoretical philosophical state was just a game, for Terisa, it is a lifestyle, an ethos that paralyzes her in the most inopportune moments. Since Donaldson continues to use internal narration as a lynchpin for the entire novel, and since Terisa's interior monologue is centered on a mental state I can't quite comprehend, her repeated protestations of inability and ineffectiveness just become annoying, quickly. I think Donaldson is solid in his representation of what moving from a world of modern technology to medieval magic would do to an average person, especially in the situation that Terisa finds herself in—a king who is apparently mad and his country under attack from two known enemies and one unknown, and people scurrying to try to save themselves and their land. Comprehending just those two levels of problem is made far worse by the people's insistence that Terisa will save them, such that I don't understand what feels to me to be another, unnecessary layer—Terisa's debilitating emotional state.

The world that Terisa finds herself in is skillfully crafted, and I admire the thought and work that went into it, especially the genre-bending idea that the king knows he is being attacked but that his best course of action is to do nothing. The vehemence with which King Joyse throws himself into this role and the few moments where we can see him mourn the cost of his inactivity are tremendous. It also carefully creates a comparison to Terisa's own involuntary inactivity. The supporting characters are pretty good too, but seem a little flat to me, each really displaying a single characteristic more than any sort of fullness. But it is powerful writing beyond my particular nits, if a little heavy-handed in its genre-bending. But it is also decidedly the first half of two parts, and I am relatively eager to see how it gets resolved—I care about the characters enough to hope they survive their crisis relatively unscathed. However, given Stephenson's history, I rather expect there will be some scathing.

Up in the Air

A great deal of critical space has been used describing how Up in the Air, a Jason Reitman-directed movie, is a parable for our times of tragic economic conditions and big-scale cutbacks by corporations. George Clooney stars as Ryan Bingham, a corporate "transition specialist" which is a euphemism that means he is hired by companies to come in and fire people when the companies themselves are too scared to do it. Of course, business is booming, and Bingham actually offers some humanity in the face of a horrible task. The film never focuses on the rightness or wrongness of the task itself, but in how it is performed. The film also focuses on Bingham himself, not only in how he performs this task with grace and even compassion (even though he seems to speak with the corporate line), but in how he survives—even thrives—in the setting he finds himself in: travelling 322 days a year. Discussions of Up in the Air that focus on this aspect of the movie are missing the forest for the trees. Up in the Air doesn't really make a commentary about the tragedy of job loss, but uses it as a metaphor to describe the stories people tell themselves to get by with their daily lives.

Clooney's Bingham tells himself he doesn't need a home, or the people associated with a static location. He is very good at everything he does—the scenes of his travel preparations are edited to mimic military precision of squads in formation—and his interactions with the people he has been hired to fire are graceful and delicate, even if just underneath them there is a tension because he is paid to say the compassionate thing rather than he feels the need to. He is a consummate traveler and the best at his job, and because of this expertise, he has told himself he doesn't need ties that bind. But he meets the lovely and equally gifted Alex Goran (played by Vera Farmiga) in a hotel bar and discovers what appears to be a similar soul. They connect and then they bond over their similarities (and because they are two outrageously attractive people who are alone). Their tentative exploration of the possibility of a relationship is charming for its apparent innocence handled by two very world-weary adults.

Another bond is forced on Ryan when fresh up-and-comer Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick) is dropped on him by his company. Natalie has come up with the idea of outsourcing firing so that it can be performed via the internet using webcams and microphones. Of course, the company loves this idea since it will save them scads of money. Ryan's objections are not what one might expect—that it's inhumane; instead he argues that on the one hand not having the interaction personally cannot account for the actions the other person might take and on the other, that Natalie has no experience firing people and so should have to do it for a while before trying to change the process. His company agrees and teams Keener with Bingham as they travel about the country, letting her learn the ropes so she can revise her initial plans. And it's true, Natalie is just out of college and very bright, but she has no real-world experience, which is reflected in the story that Natalie has told herself about her life: she'll be married in her early 20s to a man for whom she has exacting specifications and lead the fulfilling life of working mom, with adoring children awaiting her return each workday and a doting husband. Attempting to fulfill this vision of herself lands her in Omaha, rather than in San Francisco at her dream job, but it is a sacrifice she feels she has to make. Ryan recognizes the self-delusion in Natalie's story, and the slow revelation to Natalie herself is played lightly and with comedy.

At the same time, however, Natalie tries to show Ryan the self-delusion in his own self-story, trying to impress upon him that loneliness is poor life choice. And grudgingly, Ryan begins to see the wisdom of her arguments: clearly something is growing between he and Alex, something he likes, and perhaps he should have better goals than to become only the seventh person to achieve American Airlines's ten million mile frequent flyer club. And so Ryan and Alex goes to the wedding of his estranged sister in Wisconsin, where he proves to himself (and to his astonished family) that he is still capable of having and perhaps deserving a home. But Ryan and Natalie never consider that Alex might have her own story about herself, and that story is revealed with haunting repercussions.

Up in the Air begins and ends with interviews supposedly with people that have just been fired. Their responses are tough to endure and lead to the conclusions I mention above, that this is a movie about job loss. But these people too are having their stories unraveled before them—their responses indicate how they are being forced to change their world-views and views of themselves as a result of what has happened to them. And what makes Ryan so good at his job is how he helps them with this paradigm shift; his interview with the great character actor J.K. Simmons demonstrates the kinds of questions and self-understanding that changing self-stories require, again with a frisson of bile since Ryan is being paid to say these things and only reveals a tiny smattering of concern about these people outside of the room where he so deftly changes their lives.

Up in the Air does not come to a definitive conclusion—there are no tidy endings in life. What we do get to see is people closing chapters of their life and revising their self-stories. Whether they are better or worse off at their stories' conclusion is unknowable: it depends on what they do with the new direction they have been given and how the viewer feels about the original stories the characters arrive with. If there is a message in the movie, it's that life goes on—people take life's worst blows and deal with them (with one excruciating exception), continuing their stories with new possibility and direction. This is a subtle film: there are no sustained guffaws or operatic tragedies. It's just the life of people you might pass by every day and never know the twists and turns their life has given to them. And in this subtlety, in this honest witness into people's lives, it does not judge the characters, though it makes it exceedingly easy for its audience to do so. But it challenges the viewer to not make that judgment but to just experience, for a few moments, those lives. The result is a powerfully effective movie, one that reminds me of Lost in Translation for its understated emotional impact, as we learn to care for slightly odd characters doing the things that make them who they are, as we learn the stories they represent to the world.