Calvin and Hobbes was an essential part of my childhood. Sometimes today I will write something, say something, or do something, only to realize that I was just ripping off Calvin and Hobbes. Bill Watterson’s drawings effortlessly captured the atmosphere of an idyllic suburban childhood, and though Calvin’s vocabulary and personality made him anything but a typical 6-year old, he managed to strike a chord with millions of readers. Calvin and Hobbes was childhood as viewed from adulthood—a long montage of snowmen, wagon rides, long summer days, and imaginary dreamscapes all rendered in some of the most beautiful artwork ever seen in the Sunday papers.
Recently I learned of a new book, Looking for Calvin and Hobbes, set to come out this fall. The author, Nevin Martell, is a longtime Calvin fan and the book promises to be an interesting search for the strip’s reclusive creator, Bill Watterson. It looks like it will be a great fix for Calvin and Hobbes fans like me who have been dying for any scrap of new information for years now.
Watterson is an oddity in modern pop culture—his creations were hugely popular, yet no official merchandise exists. Even stranger, there are almost no interviews or photos of him, and we know nothing of his personal life. My opinion of him tends to vary day to day and year to year—when I was a kid I admired his rejection of all things commercial (and I still do), and I still think he has a right to privacy, but to completely turn one’s back on an achievement like Calvin and Hobbes seems a bit, dare I say, arrogant.
Do artists owe anything to their fans? Or should the work completely speak for itself? That’s a long, long discussion, and probably one for another time. Ten years of great comics is probably enough to ask of one person, so I’m inclined to let the guy be a crazy recluse if he wants. Watterson has been a huge influence on me, both in his attitudes and art, so odds are if I ever get successful at writing I’d prefer to stay as far away from the spotlight as possible. Then some seldom read blogger can call me arrogant.
I do hope Looking for Calvin and Hobbes sheds some light on Bill Watterson and the creation of Calvin and Hobbes. Of course I doubt Martell will let us know whether he actually got in contact with the elusive author until we read the book, but I’m sure the search will be worth reading. I plan to read the book as soon as it comes out. I’ll try to stick up a review come October, and maybe write a bit more about the joys of Calvin and Hobbes.
In the meantime, the only source at all for any real info on Bill Watterson remains the excellent Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book. Watterson writes a mini-commentary on several select strips, giving us a great insight into the creative process and his own struggles with commercialism. (This was my first introduction to what is the basically the concept of a “director’s commentary” and I’ve enjoyed listening to creative types yammer on about their creations ever since.) Watterson’s insights are honest, sometimes frustrated, often funny, and always entertaining. It’s a wonderful book for anyone interested in art, literature, or simply the thought process that went into the creation one of the greatest comics ever drawn.
Lost is one of those shows that intimidates me as an aspiring writer. I don't think I'm a bad writer by any means, but when I see something that is so well plotted, so intricate, and so entertaining week after week, I can't help but get a little nervous. I'm just not sure I'd ever be able to do something like that.
But who knows. Part of the appeal of Lost is the myth that it's all perfectly constructed and planned out (much the way George Lucas insists on claiming Star Wars was all perfectly constructed and planned out). It's part of what makes the show fun. What we don't see, though, is the team of writers banging their head against the wall every week, tossing idea after idea into the trash, and generally despairing of ever coming up with a satisfying moment. The pressure these guys are under must be enormous.
Writing, thank God, is not like landing a plane. You get a lot of chances to get it right, and in the case of TV writing, a lot of colleagues to bounce ideas off of. What seems brilliant now came from a lot of false starts, dead ends, and bad ideas. One of the real tricks in writing is knowing when you're done, when you've finally got something as good as you can make it. This is where the Lost writers excel. Writing is a process--just because we're lucky enough to see the end result doesn't mean the road to get us there wasn't bumpy, chaotic, and filled with mediocre ideas.
I was actually going to post my thoughts on this season's finale, but the internet is already awash with plenty of opinions and theories. This article goes into more depth than I would ever have time to. Suffice to say, the series will once again keep me interested all through the summer.
One of my goals for 2009 has been to ready more books. As a kid I was a voracious reader, often guzzling down a few books a week. That wasn’t so terribly long ago, but even in the 90s we didn’t have constant internet, Tivo, etc. to distract us at every turn. All the innovations, plus the added pressures that come with being an adult, make it more and more difficult to sit down and spend time with a good book. This is a shame, because unlike a lot of the stimuli we have available in the 21st century, reading is an entirely intellectual, interactive pastime. (Though they get a bad rap from many, video games may be the closet modern parallel. But that’s a topic for another day.) So far I’ve been doing pretty well with books this year, though I wish I had the time to read even more. One of my favorites so far is the poorly marketed and classified but ultimately enjoyable Drood by Dan Simmons.
Simmons has been a popular horror and science fiction writer for a long time, but I (along with many others) first became aware of his work with the phenomenal 2007 historical horror novel, The Terror. This book combined the real life story of the doomed Franklin Expedition which disappeared without a trace on a mission to explore the Arctic in the 1840s, with supernatural horror to fantastic effect. With their ships frozen in the ice, the crew’s struggle for survival gets increasingly desperate; all the while they are threatened by a terrible, polar-bear like monster that seeks to tear them limb from limb in the best horror tradition.
Simmon’s prose is so rich you can feel the sting of the -40 degree temperatures and see the blood of the monster’s victims as it streaks across the ice—all this set against a backdrop of beautiful and absolutely terrifying isolation at the top of the world. Even with the horrors of the climate and the monster to contend with, the real danger comes from within the crew itself, and as the struggle for survival becomes more and more desperate, the crew members begin to turn on one another. I’ve never read a book with a character more loathsome than Cornelius Hickey, who commits actions against his fellow men far more disgusting than anything perpetrated by the monster.
To watch this vile man ruin the crew’s hopes for survival time and time again is heartbreaking. In modern fiction it has become too much of a cliché that villains are the most sympathetic and wronged characters—in Cornelius Hickey, Simmons created a monster that was just that: a monster. All the worst instincts of humanity squished together in a horrible package. It is a testament to Simmon’s skill as a writer that this character was so utterly detestable, and The Terror is stuffed to the brim with similarly well drawn characters, moody descriptions, and a plot that makes it’s 700 plus pages fly by.
Drood is not that good.
Don’t get me wrong. I loved the book. But after an achievement like The Terror, it’s only natural that the follow up is somewhat disappointing. Most of the problem is in the way the book is marketed. On the cover we see a shadowy figure against the familiar backdrop of Victorian London, and from the description inside the jacket Drood seems to be another historical horror tale in the exact same vein as The Terror. It is even placed in the horror section of the bookstore, so the reader can be forgiven for coming to the book with a certain set of expectations. There are horror elements, for sure, and some of them are quite terrifying, but this book is far more history than horror. Instead it takes a cue from Simmon’s portrayal of Hickey and makes its monster not some external nightmare creature, but that most ugly and disgusting of human emotions: Jealousy.
I will go ahead and damage my English major credibility by admitting right of the bat that before I read Drood, I knew very little about the novel’s two main characters, Charles Dickens and Wilkie Collins. Of course I knew who Dickens was and had read a few of his books, heard the stories of the people waiting at the docks for the latest installment of his tales, and had used the adjective ‘Dickensian’ in multiple situations over the years. But I knew almost nothing about the man. As for Wilkie Collins, the book’s narrator and central protagonist? Sadly, this was the first I’d heard of him.
Like I said, I went into this book expecting a tale of Victorian horror; something along the lines of Dracula or Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, with perhaps a bit of A Christmas Carol or Oliver Twist thrown in for good measure. I’ve always been a fan of the time period, and when I was in high school I even attempted a god-awful Victorian novel of my own, something about the true story of Jack the Ripper. (I think my brilliant original take on the idea was that Jack was actually the sympathetic hero of the story, and the world simply didn’t understand, i.e., the Anakin Skywalker explanation of evil).
In any event, the first few chapters of the book definitely met my expectations, both for a horror novel and for a successor to The Terror. Dickens explains to Collins in vivid detail the events of the Staplehurst rail crash of 1865—a horrific disaster in which Dickens’ train jumped the track and hurled into a ravine, killing many. Dickens and the book’s title character, the mysterious, corpse-like Drood, flit among the dead and dying, doing their best to help (?) the survivors. It is a scene of wrecked fuselage, shattered bodies, severed limbs, and the desperate moans of the wounded. Hovering above it all is the mysterious figure of Drood, who we later learn was traveling by coffin. Is he a man? A zombie? A vampire? These are the questions the first section of the book lays out for us.
And then they’re not answered. Or they are answered, but after the first hundred pages or so they hardly form the focus of the book. It becomes much more historical and biographical, and, some have argued, less interesting. But I disagree. If you can divorce yourself from expectations, what you will find in Drood is a story of two men, both of them writers, and their competition with one another. Wilkie Collins is Dickens’ friend, but, more importantly, he is jealous of the older, more famous writer, who he calls the Inimitable with no small amount of sarcasm.
This jealousy, combined with Collins’ growing addiction to opium, forms the basis for increasingly twisted ideas, visions, and actions. We never quite know which of Collins’ hallucinations are real and which are false. They all share one thing in common, though: The signs of a jealous, sometimes petty man who would believe in anything except his own inferiority. Whether this is a massive character assassination on the real life Wilkie Collins I will never know, but for me our narrator’s cruel cynicism and selfishness came off poorly against Dickens almost childlike joy at everyday life.
This is a book for writers. It gives physical manifestation to the all too common reality of professional jealousy, and both main characters have an intimate understanding of the writer’s life. In one of my favorite passages, Collins writes:
When the last autumn of Dickens’ life was over, he continued to work through this final winter into spring. This is how all of us writers give away the days and years and decades of our lives in exchange for stacks of paper with scratches and squiggles on them. And when Death calls, how many of us would trade all those pages, all that squandered lifetime-worth of painfully achieved scratches and squiggles, for just one more day, one more fully lived and experienced day? And what price would we writers pay for that one extra day spent with those we ignored while we were locked away scratching and squiggling in our arrogant years of solipsistic isolation?
Would we trade all of those pages for a single hour? Or all of our books for one real minute?
There is no one who has lived the life of the writer who has not had these thoughts from time to time—some more than others, of course, but thoughtful passages like this keep the often reprehensible Wilkie from coming off as completely despicable. Writing can be a lonely profession, and often one that brings with it no clear signs of reward, at least not immediately. What I love about this passage and this book is that you can tell it was written by someone who takes writing seriously, who knows all to well the pain and setbacks and frustrations that come with failure, but also, in the person of Dickens, the beautiful joys that come with effort. Unlike Dickens and Collins, most writers are both Dickens and Collins—at one moment frustrated by loneliness or lack of recognition, and at others overcome by the overwhelming joy that comes with being creative, with creating characters and stories, with the simple use of words and language.
Another favorite moment is earlier in the book, when Collins takes an unfinished draft of his upcoming novel, which he plans to call “The Serpent’s Eye (Or, possibly The Eye of the Serpent).” Dickens loves the novel, he says, but then lays into poor Wilkie with a list of possible corrections and changes. This moment is very real and well done, and anyone who’s ever tried to do anything creative has been there. Listening to someone else easily rattle of possible changes and alterations to something you’ve been working on for months is difficult in any situation, but oftentimes, as is the case with Dickens, those suggestions are right on the money. It’s a wonderful little moment, us alone together with these two great writers, watching them work, watching as Wilkie’s resentment of Dickens builds and builds despite the obvious wisdom in his suggestions. In the end, Wilkie takes the advice, and the result is a better, more popular novel.
Eventually, and by slow degrees, Wilkie’s jealousy descends into madness. As I’ve said, we are never sure which of his delusions are real. I would have liked some more explanations and follow up to certain things, certainly (Just what was in the servant’s stairs at Wilkie’s house? Some type of Lovecraftian horror? Or another delusion?). But in the end, that’s not what the book is about. Drood has far more in common with the movie Amadeus than with a horror novel. There were many moments in the book, such as the revision scene above, when I was reminded of the final moments of Amadeus: Mozart on his deathbed, composing another masterwork with baffling ease, while Salieri can only look on in awe and wonder. If you go into this book expecting The Terror II you’re bound to be disappointed. If you go in expecting Amadeus with writers instead of musicians—well, that’s exactly what it is.
Writing, like music, like all art, is mostly subjective. You can learn various rules, sure, but what makes people fall in love with a movie or a poem or a story or a painting? That is unknowable. Sometimes it can seem unfair. In the final pages of the novel comes what I consider the book’s most powerful scene. After Dickens has died, Wilkie rummages through some of Dickens old books, trying to prove to himself Dickens’ inferiority. He finds problems with characterization, plot, and more, but finally, in a passage in Bleak House, he comes face to face with the Charles Dickens the world saw and loved:
Dickens had gone on by having the fog in the harbor lift over Esther’s shoulder by writing, “these ships brightened, and shadowed, and changed…,” and I knew in that instant…merely passing over these few words in these short sentences, that I would never—not ever, should I live to be a hundred years of age and retain my faculties until the last moment of that life and career—that I would never be able to think and write like that.
The book was the style and the style was the man. And the man was—had been—Charles Dickens.
Simmons is a master at portraying the ugly side of human nature, and this ability is on full display in Drood. There is perhaps no human emotion worse than jealousy and the book is an excellent look at the hideous manifestations of that at once understandable and reprehensible feeling. In many friendships and professional relationships there's a very fine line between love and hate, and this is a book that explores that line wonderfully. Don’t go in expecting a horror story, and you just might find a lot to like.
Like the Oscars, I’m not sure how relevant the Grammys ever were, but I have to congratulate Robert Plant on winning a bunch last night, especially after the general disrespect the music industry showed Led Zeppelin during their heyday. Though his album with Alison Krauss came out well over a year ago, it’s quite good as far as mellow country-tinged albums go. Great to listen to while writing or just sitting around the house.
I’ve been a little bummed out about the direction of the music industry lately. It may just be that I’m getting older. Let’s face it—most music these days is geared towards the 14-18 crowd. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but over the years it’s led to music becoming more disposable. Today Britney Spears and Justin Timberlake are old pros, and though they’re both talented I can’t see them standing the test of time. My generation never had a Beatles, a Led Zeppelin, a Guns N’ Roses—even Pearl Jam and Nirvana were a little before our time. While we can still enjoy the old music, there hasn’t been a seminal event in music for decades, and the old styles are becoming more and more tired.
This could all just be due to the fact that I’m out of touch. Apparently Chris Brown got into some kind of trouble that prevented him from attending the awards last night, and to be honest with you I’m not 100% sure who that is. People come and go now without my noticing. As Grandpa Simpson once said, “I used to be with it, but then they changed what ‘it’ was. Now what I’m with isn’t it, and what’s it seems weird and scary to me.” There’s a good chance I’m already far down that road. Have I become the kind of joyless old man who screams out “Bring on Sha-na-na!” at Woodstock? I hope not.
But I don’t think I’m mistaking in the lack of passion in the industry today. Musicians tend to hop in and go with the flow, and individual expression falls by the wayside. During the entire 8 years of the Bush administration, there was a deafening silence in anti-war songs or any serious statements from mainstream musicians (with few notable exceptions), and it’s strange that something as liberating as music has become, in an odd way, so conservative.
Yet there’s no way to give up on music. Arthur Machen once called it “the perfect art,” and I couldn’t agree more. As writers, “We are forced to devise incidents and circumstances and plots, to ‘make up a story;’ we translate a hill into a tale, conceive lovers to explain a brook, turn the perfect into the imperfect.” Musicians, on the other hand, have the power to speak directly to an emotion, without covering it up in the mechanisms of plot. For a writer to express a broken heart, for example, she has to create characters and a story and work her way to the emotion indirectly; a musician can strum the right notes and we instantly feel what they feel. Bruce Springsteen’s song, “The Wrestler,” conveys everything in three minutes that the movie spends two hours and millions of dollars showing us.
But we might just be experiencing a lull right now. There are great musicians out there, great songs are still being written. The whole world moves at a faster and faster pace, and it’s easy for great music to get buried as the industry moves on to someone else. This kid gives me a lot of hope, and he might just be on to something.
As Eric Cartman once so eloquently put it, “Real guitars are for old people.”
And travellers now within that valley,
Through the red-litten windows, see
Vast forms that move fantastically
To a discordant melody;
While, like a rapid ghastly river,
Through the pale door,
A hideous throng rush out forever,
And laugh--but smile no more.
That’s a quote from “The Haunted Palace” by Edgar Allen Poe, who celebrates his 200th birthday today. It was later quoted in “The Fall of the House of Usher.” Does it have any relevance to our current political or economic situation? Nope. Does it have some special relationship with what’s going on at my life at the moment? Not really. But it still gives me chills. It’s writing like this that likely inspired me on my ill-advised path to become a writer.
I’ve always been drawn to Romanticism (you’d have to be to name a blog after an Arthur Machen story, right?) and especially the Gothic Romance. There’s something about decaying castles, forgotten ruins, and other fantastic sights that hit just the right nerve. When I first read Poe in the forced readings of 7th and 8th grades, I thought I was reading the best of the best. The stories were enriched by their age—they felt like authentic slices of an archaic American past; even the very young country, it seems, had a place for ancient ghosts and decayed aristocracy. That first impression has never really changed, though I’m likely more of a Lovecraft man these days.
My early writing, then, was a mess of description and atmosphere. I would go on for pages and pages about a house or field, pouring out every word of description I could think of to bring the place to life. Nevermind that I had no idea who lived in the house, what happened there, or why anyone should care. It was enough to paint a picture with words. In the intervening years of searching for a writing identity, I’ve gone all the way from that flowery prose to free-verse poetry to clipped, dialogue heavy stories, back to overwriting again, on to stream of consciousness nonsense, and just about everywhere in between. But it was always, for good or ill, in the realm of heightened description and heavy sensory imagery that I felt most at home.
I’ve read some Poe recently, and what once seemed the very image of perfection now seems a bit stuffy, overburdened with ostentatious erudition, as Abigail Adams (Laura Linney) might say. Had I continued writing in that vein, I might have been very popular in the 1850s, but I doubt I would have much impact today. But in all that erudition there is a real sense of beauty and, oddly enough, joy in the world around us. People don’t write pages and pages of description anymore, but that spirit, the spirit of using writing to help transform the world into something magical that is the heart of Romanticism, is still alive and well.
In that way, I think, I’ve come to peace with the Romantic in me. Every book about writing will make a point of finding your voice, and that’s certainly relevant advice. The next challenge, however, after you’ve found that voice, is to embrace it and make it work for you. No screenplay will ever get read that has paragraphs upon paragraphs of description, of course (as it should be), but a well written, tight description of a place or person can go a long way towards creating an atmosphere. A screenplay, is, after all, a blueprint for images. “Like a rapid ghastly river…a hideous throng rush out forever…” is, in only a few words, about as visual of an image as you can get. It's not about running from your own writing style, then, in search of the "right" way to write. It's about finding ways to make that style speak to your audience, whoever they might be.
Edgar Allen Poe was born 200 years ago today, and with all the styles and writing philosophies and movements that have come and gone in those 200 years, his stories are still a blast to read. I can’t think of a better birthday present than to tell him thank you for making me a writer—a flowery, ostentatious, old-fashioned, Romantic writer. Really, I wouldn’t have it any other way.
(Actually a better birthday present may have been a cure for rabies, cholera, syphilis, or whatever it is that killed him at age 40. That would probably be more immediately helpful than knowing you inspired some dude living 160 years later. But I do what I can.)
(Unrelated note: Isn't this picture of Poe's mother the most frightening thing in the world? Seriously, right?! No wonder he was so odd.)
