Tabloid City

Pete Hamill's New York City is very New York City, a bubbling stew of every flavor and every color. The rich and the poor rub shoulders and mix and mingle. The sense of a village that is both large and small is strong enough to make all the crosspaths of the characters believable. Like New York itself, the novel hits all your senses, including the nose and tongue.

Thinking about the structure, I realized that this is essentially a "flat" novel. Obstensibly there is a temporal direction in the narrative that covers a period of two nights and one day in between. In reality it is primarily of a static cross-section of New York, describing the lives and points of view of a dozen characters, each occuping a social/ethnic stratum and a neighborhood.

The forward narrative, involving a half-hearted attempt at a murder mystery and thriller cliche, is the weakest part of the novel and poorly constructed. I wish he had more faith in the vitality of his characters' "static" snapshot, so as to let go of the mystery/thriller cliche altogether.

Story Ideas

在大学里的时候有个很逗的有机化学老师老喜欢跟同学开玩笑：医生与药剂师谁更来钱？药剂师，因为他们会配制一本万利的毒品。现在回想起来，Valdez 老师看上去很象在家抽草的脾气。不过他的笑话很有预言性，前几年AMC拍摄播出的电视系列剧Breaking Bad就是讲一个中学化学老师怎样堕落到躲在trailer里制造毒品。这剧我还没看，据说很好。

最近关于奥运会运动员服用 performance enhancement 药物的争议甚为热闹，让我心里发痒。作为一个遵纪守法胆小怕事的人，我自然不会去加入地下工业，亲手研制帮助运动员变超人的药物，但是这个题材太诱人了，我想把它写成故事会多么有趣啊。各种重要的戏剧元素都有：犯罪，金钱，名誉，帅哥美女，还有药理学！太适合我了。

推理

最近几天浑身发痒，从头皮到腿，而且是那种不太具体的痒，头皮没有头屑，身上有四个看上去象蚊子的包，但是所痒之处不限于蚊子包。于是，第一，先把床单和枕套扔进洗衣机里用最热的水洗一遍，无效。第二，在蚊子包上厚厚涂一层可的松软膏，蚊子包倒是好点了，但是浑身其他各处还是时不时发痒。第三，最近天热粘嗒嗒的，一天洗两次澡 ，更痒了。这两天又热又痒，搞得我心情烦躁暴跳如雷。

今天上班时开始胡思乱想，在网上查了半天 bedbugs, mites 的信息，越看越浑身发痒且心惊肉跳，差一点就要约时间看医生。还好残存一丝理智，打电话给某同学问他有无发痒有无红包，某同学表示一切正常。我还不放心，回家后掀了床单把床垫细细摸一遍，确认无 bedbugs 迹象。

最后终于推理出真相：四个蚊子包应该是蚊子包，因为上周末刚刚到河边去走过一圈。浑身发痒应该是最近每周两次去游泳，加上洗澡太勤，皮肤过分干燥的结果。去药店买了 oatmeal 洗澡水，希望用了之后可以缓解症状。

痒是一种心理成份很重的现象，我发现，越看 bedbugs 的文章和网站，身上就越痒，绝不是幻觉，或者也许所有的痒都是心理作用。忽然发现痒和 paranoia 有本质上的近似之处，如果有人做一下 MRI 扫扫脑子，说不定能发现二者集中的区域是一样的。

Slowly Reading Maugham

More than anything, Maugham perfected pacing and structure, especially his short stories and novellas. The tone is often casual and intimate, almost leisurely, but underneath the chatty voice there is a force that propels the dramatic tension from the first moment to the ending. His use of suspense is extremely subtle, almost subliminal, but it instills an irresistible urge that compels the reader from the first page to the last. Fantastic.

I'm re-reading some of his short stories very slowly, mulling over sentences and paragraphs, hoping to absorb some of his skills by osmosis.

Voiceover in J. Edgar

Of all the reviews I have read about this movie, none, nil, zip, nada made any mention of the use of Hoover's voiceover in the movie. Curious, isn't it? Is it because I've lived in China or I've had a brief encounter with bureaucrats that I picked up on this ironic device in this movie?

The first clue is the narrative frame, structured as Hoover dictating his memoir to a young underling. One has to regard the voiceover as an aging and outdated bureaucrat desperate to preserve his legacy. The voiceover brackets certain segments of the flashback as his "official memory." Because these segments are mixed with demostic scenes that are NOT bracketed by his voiceover. The distinction is critical and subtle. In fact, Eastwood is so careful not to push the point (afraid of it?) that it ends up flying under the consciousness of every movie reviewer I have read. Geez, I hope I am not the only person to have picked up on this --- the voiceover segments are associated with all the claims of Hoover's own achievements, the absolute necessity for the bureau's power to fight communists and anarchists in the 1920s and of gangsters in the 1930s, his prophetic "discovery" of scientific methods, his Sherlock Holmesian detection of the Lindberg case, his bravery and courage and extraordinary greatness ... Oh yes, he was the Cassandra that sacrificed for and saved the motherland, but was unjustly rejected by the ungrateful people and politicians. He alone stood between America's survival and destruction.

Hidden but not completely excised, I suspect the irony might have been oozing out of the screenplay but was largely scrubbed out by the cautious director. Still, it is there, kind of. For example, Hoover's claim of the imminent danger of communism in 1960s is juxtaposed with his claim of the same danger (mark the voiceover) in the 1920s. Obviously he was paranoid and self-serving in the 1960s, drumming up fear and extorting more power for himself from that fear. Are we to believe that his retrospective claim about the 1920s were completely truthful? This juxtaposition might explain the logic underlying the fractured segments between the present (1970s) and the past (flashbacks) and between the official and domestic sides of Hoover's life.

Yes, that is what I am saying. The way voiceover is used in J. Edgar may be similar to the way voiceover is used in The Usual Suspects. At least in the portions subtly marked with the voiceover, Hoover is no more trustworthy than Keyser Soze.

So why was Eastwood so cautious, so afraid to let the irony show, so ... paranoid? Is he afraid that  the movie would draw the ire of right-wing mouthpieces and moviegoers who still worship Hoover as their hero? Like Hoover and his humanity, the movie hides its nature so well that the intent is lost in the shuffle.

The Rest is Furniture

I have been told that science fiction is all about solving problems, and non-problem-solving stories need not apply. I always thought there was something wrong in this claim, but it wasn't until tonight that I saw GRRM put it best ---

Motor cars or horses, tricorns or togas, ray-guns or six-shooters, none of it matters, so long as the people remain. Sometimes we get so busy drawing boundaries and making labels that we lose track of that truth. Casablanca put it most succinctly. “It’s still the same old story, a fight for love and glory, a case of do or die.”

William Faulkner said much the same thing while accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature, when he spoke of “the old verities and truths of the heart, the universal truths lacking which any story is ephemeral and doomed---love and honor and pity and pride and compassion and sacrifice.” The “human heart in conflict with itself,” Faulkner said, “alone can make good writing, because only that is worth writing about.” 

We can make up all the definitions of science fiction and fantasy and horror that we want. We can draw our boundaries and make our labels, but in the end it’s still the same old story, the one about the human heart in conflict with itself. 

The rest, my friends, is furniture.  

Chekhov

Charlie Rose is on TV interviewing Judi Dench. She is talking about how theater is for her and film is mere diversion. Suddenly I get an urge to see a Chekhov play. Perhaps somewhere Cherry Orchard is on.

In the past couple of years I've slowly learned to appreciate theater and enjoy the intensity of it. It's hard to explain --- intensely alive is perhaps the right phrase. Palpable, like strong gushes of blood in the arteries, so hot and loud that one can hear it. Film can never be like that.

I'd like to see a Chekhov play soon.