You can [find the meaning of your life] most effectively—and without too much obsessing—by assessing your life along three dimensions, which the psychologists Frank Martela and Michael F. Steger defined in The Journal of Positive Psychology in 2016:
Coherence: how events fit together. This is an understanding that things happen in your life for a reason. That doesn’t necessarily mean you can fit new developments into your narrative the moment they happen, but you usually are able to do so afterward, so you have faith that you eventually will.
Purpose: the existence of goals and aims. This is the belief that you are alive in order to do something. Think of purpose as your personal mission statement, such as “the purpose of my life is to share the secrets to happiness” or “I am here to spread love abundantly.”
Significance: life’s inherent value. This is the sense that your life matters. If you have high levels of significance, you’re confident that the world would be a tiny bit—or perhaps a lot—poorer if you didn’t exist.
You can think of these three dimensions as macronutrients: the elements that we need for a balanced and healthy sense of meaning in life. They might already be part of your spiritual diet. For example, Christians believe that life is significant because God loves us; that our purpose is to love and serve God and other people; and that God has a coherent plan for our lives, whether it is clear to us or not.
Anyway, today we have a librarian from the county come visit us and one of the things he pitched us was making zines. He left some office paper with a bunch of zine ideas printed on one side and instructions on how to foldup on the other.
I actually do this with my students every once in a while and so I have a collection of little minizines I’ve made over the years. The one I made today was inspired by yesterday’s reading. And since the meaning of life is relevant to all, I figured I’d share.
I hadn’t planned to post it here or I might have troubled myself to write a leeettle beet more clearly.
I had never heard of Taskmaster before an article in The Atlantica couple shows into the Jason Mantzoukas season (as we call it in America). I figured I’d watch a couple episodes and that would be it. After all, I don’t really watch tv. The only season of anything I’ve watched from beginning to end in the last couple years (other than, spoiler alert, Taskmaster) was the latest season of Andor. Not even Severence season two, even though I’m deeply excited about it, live in constant terror of it being spoiled, and know perfectly well it came out six months ago.
Anyway, other than occasional clips of Fool Us on YouTube, I never watch game shows or reality shows, so not for a moment did I think I would watch that entire season of Taskmaster as well as full seasons of Taskmaster New Zealand, Taskmaster Australia, and Taskmaster Junior.
And all those shows are good and have high highs, but the original Greg Davies remains the best of the Taskmasters and I think it’s for the reason the cognoscenti loves to go on about, a detail that I long dismissed as irrelevant but now suspect might be, in fact, exactly it: Greg Davies once worked as a teacher.
Presumably, from online chatter, he was a stereotypically strict and switch-wielding British schoolmaster—and who knows: maybe—but I can tell you that teaching certainly is excellent practice for finding clever and funny ways to offer criticism so people take their licks and willingly come back for more. I’ve spent approximately 20,000 hours in a classroom. I suppose thirty teenagers is similar chaos to five comedians.
You know, anytime I consume any kind of entertainment I think about where I would fit in as a participant. The obvious ones with Taskmaster are creating and completing the tasks, and the first many hours of watching I certainly imagined doing both. After all, both would be great fun and I believe I could do them well but, also, I don’t think I could do them better than any other reasonably talented individual. It’s come as a surprise to me, as I come near to finishing my fifth season of one Taskmaster or another to realize that my real strength would be in the role I had initially dismissed as the Taskmaster’s surface traits are being mean, bring rude, being cutting. But surface is the point. The episodes work because he is mean. The seasons work because you like the guy. In other words, it’s exactly like the first three weeks of AP Lit. At first I am scary and say awful truths about the quality of your writing you never wanted to hear. But I said them in a funny way that made it possible to keep listening. And then, by the end of the semester, you’re an English major.
Of course, my big disadvantage here is that I’ve never been a professional comedian, which is generally considered to be a requirement. And, having never been a professional comedian, I don’t bring a sizeable national audience. At best, you get my four thousand former students and maybe some of their parents, the ones who thought my share of back-to-school night was the best fifteen minutes of their week. (BTSN is improv night: parents through out suggestions and I perform in response. Or, in other words, it’s a Q&A.)
But, Little Alex Horne, if you’re listening, swing by my classroom sometime. Preferably at the beginning of a semester. Observe my endless bounty of facepunching metaphors.
You could do worse.
A couple other bullets:
1) I'm cheap. I only cost a SAG card, lodging for a week, and basically whatever minimum wage is for that job.
2) I don't have preexisting relationships with comedians to build on or to garner respect but hey. That's nothing new for me.
3) The Taskmaster is always a second job, so it's not like I'm relying on it. I'll keep teaching. Although maybe if it goes really well I'd make my first job writing books, but let's not hold our breath. I'll keep teaching. You can't get a better human-interest story than that.
4) I recognize that the Taskmaster also likely works as a writer on the show. While my experience in this field of writing is scant, I work well with others. It’ll be fine. Though it might be nice if the network paid for my sub?
First, apologies, Thubrina was blocked from Overdrive for reasons I’m told I received an email about but . . . did not. So you’ll have to wait for Hoopla if you want it from your library. Anyway. It’s still on Apple Books if that’s your thing. The print version’s still in utero.
(Incidentally, the link to Amazon is still sketchy after all these years!)
After Chadwick was inspired by Tyler Chadwick’s Field Notes on Language and Kinship, an excellent little book I can recommend without hesitation. I couldn’t read it without a notebook near me to write a few notes and many poems in response to Tyler’s language. I couldn’t help myself. His book inspired so many pieces from me I decided to make a little book of my own. Then I published it and didn’t write a single post about it. So in the last ten years at least I’ve gotten better at self-promotion?
But that was loose riff. While I suppose Thubrina too is “loose riff” it’s much more structured. Whatever Sabrina did, Theric had to follow. I have as many pieces in my book as she has in her album and they have the same titles.
Maybe that’s why Thubrina reminds me of Dorian’s endnotes? Those were determined by Nephi’s novel. Anything I felt justified an endnote became an obsessive little research project for me. And I learned fascinating things about the names of horses and pats of butter as I grew more and more obsessed with explicating aged facts to a new audience. I danced Nephi’s dance and thus the dance became my one.
I often say no. A lot of surrealist and dadaist and absurdist stuff offers waaay more pleasure to the creator than to the consumer. And while, in Thubrina, you’ll find an original short story about middle-aged people dealing with things like “business” and “death,” and a science-fiction sestina, you’ll also find things like this, the first stanza of “Sugar Talking“:
Put your lowboy where your mouthwash is Your sugar tallboy isn’t working tonoplast, oh Put your lowboy where your mouthwash is Yeah, your paralinguistics mean shiver to me Get your sorry assay to mine
I wrote this using the classic dada game n+7 in which all you need is an original text and a willing dictionary. The nonsense that results is certainly a pleasure and a joy, but is it art? Is it something someone should pay for? And, having paid for, should they read it? I can’t answer those questions.
But there is value in the process regardless.
I think of Tom Stoppard who has thubrinaed plays like Hamlet, Earnest, and Macbeth. And while some are masterpieces and some are good (one of these features a dadaist!), some are just . . . dada.
There are excellent reason Dada and Surrealist poems are remembered more for the ideas behind them than for the work themselves. And that’s because they get old real fast. The concept is better than the piece. And while that may work for grad school (screw you, James Joyce), the works themselves do not deserve immortality.
Thubrina has value right now in 2025 but it’s never ending up in my obituary and I’m not sure any its pieces will get collected in later collections of Thericonia. The value it has in the future is permission to play.
You all have permission to play.
Don’t wait.
Just play.
Especially play with what is big and popular because that stuff’s not special and it deserves to be kidded. And in a moment where certain powerful people are experimenting with curtailing your freedom to speak, now is an excellent time to write thubrinas all your own.
Back in the first Trump presidency, I wrote some “orange shovels”—golden shovels based on Trump tweets. I never did see any of them published (my hope was to publish three or four then publish a book’s worth, but finding a home for none meant I never wrote enough to make a book, more’s the pity), but lemme go find a short one to share now….
Orange Shovel #2: May 4, 2018
My sister stood by the door, holding her bag. “Going somewhere?” She nodded. “Today, finally, to stay with Dave.” I set down my phone and looked at her. “Dallas again? Already?” She laughed and shook her head (the only way, really, to respond to my, as she calls them, GREAT LAFFS). The truth is, I don’t even know who she’s with. “State his name!” is not the sort of thing a brother should ask after months of on again off again (even he were too from Texas) —a brother should know. Yesterday, tomorrow, today. And now all I can do is look at her half smile. Leaving me and afraid to confess she’ll see me—soon!
Another reason I never made a full book is because that much time with Trump’s nonsense ain’t good for the soul, but my point is:
We should start by stating the obvious: lyrics are not poems. They are not meant to be enjoyed on their own. They work in concert with melody and other musical traits. Which is why it’s possible to have stonecold rockandroll masterpieces with intensely stupid lyrics.
So I don’t think it’s fair to judge lyrics by the standard of words that stand alone. You can have a good song without intelligible lyrics.
Anyway. Let’s get to Man’s Best Friend.
Pretty much every song has at least one good line. Pretty much every song has some miserably bad lines. Some of those lines don’t even work with music like some of the times she tries to squeeze “responsible” into “Tears.”
I find it fascinating that a tradition that was born of super-regular lyrical forms (eg ballads, the blues) has evolved into something that rejects regular form entirely. The times her lyrics put together lines that have obvious metrical similarities are rare. If you didn’t have the music to listen to (as, recall, I did not), it can be a real bear to figure out what she’s attempting to do in turns of such musical basics as rhythm and the beat the beat the beat.
Many of her best images are, no surprise, sexual. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again but this is one of the horniest collection of words I’ve ever read. And when I say “best” images, what I really mean is that they’re simple but evocative. Speaking of “Tears,” the song’s about a woman “get[ting] wet” at the thought of her man doing the dishes or speaking clearly, ergo “tears run down [her] thighs.” But hold on! There’s another layer her! Because he’s hardly that sort of guy at all So tears also equals sadness, do you get it? do you get it? I get it. Those are sad vaginal juices. It’s very clever.
Sigh.
Anyway, there’s not much motivation, best I can tell, to get better at lyric writing. Or perhaps “better” can only refer to ease of singing along with and general simplicity? Sure Courtney Barnett and Jason Isbell get lots of props for the quality of their lyrics (and rightly so) but they don’t get every song on their album on the Hot 100 and dollars in the gazillions. So perhaps we’re overthinking this.
(I know I don’t give musicals this same leeway. So sue me.)
So, in my final analysis, the lyrics of Sabrina Carpenter’s Man’s Best Friend work well as something for a voice to do while engaging in pop melodies and they can provide titillating TikTok fodder, but they won’t hold up to, say, a half hour’s attention in a literature class.*
*(Obviously, this is untrue. Us literature people can find buckets to talk about in anything.)
If you read yesterday’s post, you’ll remember I was surprised to learn how heavily Sabrina Carpenter is leaning on Taylor Swift’s playbook. You may wonder what I think of Ms Swift’s lyrics as she has (I think?) a better reputations, lyricswise.
I’m a bit ashamed to say the only Taylor Swift album I’ve listened to through (let alone more than once) is this one. I did really like it though and sometime late pandemic when my wife started streaming Taylor Swift I was thus predisposed to give her a fair show.
I am notoriously bad at picking out lyrics without the words before my eyeballs so I can’t really say how clever she is. I suspect that “No Body, No Crime” is probably smarter than “Shake It Off,” but what do I know.
If you’re implying, however, that I should be prepping a second book on Showgirl and that it might be even more fun to work from a stronger lyrical base, hahaha, probably not.
I drafted an introduction to Thubrina in July and started working on the project proper a couple weeks before the album’s release on August 29 when the only lyrics available were to the lead single. (“Manchild,” my version of which was particularly time consuming and particularly mindless.)
I started in earnest working on the project after the lyrics were released and in total I spent, gosh, at least twenty hours on it all? Maybe a lot more than that? I don’t know. Longer than I expected but not long enough to feel bad when I don’t get Pulitzer consideration.
Perhaps because this was a music-based project for music I didn’t have access to, but sometime on maybe the fourth day working on it I realized that it was interesting (to me at least) what music I was listening to and I started to keep track for a note in the appendix. Of course, once I decided to do that, it became difficult to listen to what was natural and not what I wanted people to know I was listening to, but I think I did as well as possible.
Now that I look back at the final list of music-listened-to, I can make some statistical observations. For instance:
Male artist / male-fronted band: 2
Female artist / male-fronted band: 9
Band alternatively fronted by a man and a woman: 2
Female artist but I only listened to an instrumental album: 1
This is about what you would expect, given my history. I know who I am.
I’m a little surprised that there are two in the man-and-woman category as I don’t think of that as a particularly common category. But I didn’t listen to Arcade Fire or Belle & Sebastian or Shovels & Rope or The Beautiful South and somehow still ended up with two. That suggests to me it’s perhaps not as rare a category as I tend to think.
Anyway, as you may recall, I did release a playlist to support Thubrina recently. Those tracks are suggested to accompany each of the new pieces in my collection. Sometimes the track is inspired by Sabrina Carpenter’s lyrics, sometimes by my own version, sometime just because it felt right. I’ll share it again now:
And now the big news! As promised yesterday, I’ve finally listened to Man’s Best Friend!
Honestly, I liked it a lot more than I expected. It’s not terribly interesting or anything, but it was a pleasant little pop journey and while I probably won’t listen to it again, I’m perfectly happy with the time we spent together.
"Manchild" comes first and the opening notes have a fun 80s vibe. The lyrics and delivery seem like some later Taylor Swift.
I'm not expert in Taylor's work either but I do live with people who sometimes listen to her, so I can at least recognize her voice and name a couple songs I like.
If we can count that as a guitar solo, that's the first one to break the top ten since some Nickelback song twenty years ago. Something to think about.
I'll admit now this isn't what I was expecting. I was expecting more Beyonce than Taylor. I expected something too now to pass as being from anything longer than ten years ago, but this song has a chance as a time traveller.
Long fadeout. Something Gen X Producer is always weirded out by.
Tears
If (thanks to Thubrina) I didn't already know all the lyrics I would not be picking up on how deeply horny this song is.
This feels like a novelty song from 2003.
This is true of a lot of her lyrics, but she's having to cram a lot of syllables into certain corners of the song....
My Man on Willpower
"My Man on Willpower" like "Manchild" but not like the song about getting wet when I think of you and tears running down my thighs is EXPLICIT.
Too bad about the explicitness. The arrangements and her performance are very cute and sound kidfriendly.
This feels like a generic burner. The sort of song that makes people feel inchoate but SO IMPORTANT emotions no matter what year it comes out. The sort of song old people roll their eyes at and young people, when they get old, are nostalgic for. It's Sabrina's Journey song.
Sugar Talking
Although it's all heavily processed, it has a weirdly acoustic feel. Is one feeling I have. The other is that this song sounds like 90s Kpop.
Hang on. IS THIS A BRIDGE??? IN 2025?????
Given that all these songs are in the Top 20, it seems likely I'll eventually hear one or more again but so far they're . . . not very memorable. I'm honestly not sure I'll recognize any of them (so far) two weeks from now.
But I can see being 14 and this being IMPORTANT and having this entire record engraved upon my soul.
Also, when you know your audience is largely kids, why the "your paragraphs mean shit to me" type lines. It feels lazy and irresponsible.
We Almost Broke Up Again Last Night
"We Almost Broke Up Again" isn't any better lyrically but the musical swells feel more honest. Until the end of the chorus. That felt like a copout.
The start of the chorus is great, though. Honestly.
I rewrote this one, incidentally, but pulling out two lines and building a villanelle out of them. Listening to this song, I'm impressed I was able to salvage that much. I think maybe we've taken the cult of the singer-songwriter archetype too, too far.
Nobody's Son
This intimate conversational opening reminds me of what Zooey Deschanel's good at.
In my rewrite, this became a working man's anthem. Sort of a Depression-era memory rerendered.
It was tough though because I was trying match scansion and her use of meter is . . . creative.
I like the fun sort of fruit-flavored, bouncy melody.
Not lyrics to sing along with though....
Never Getting Laid
"Never Getting Laid" getting loungy on us.
This rewrite was one of the more fun ones.
She has a knack for the moving to small verse to big expansive chorus. She's definitely a student of 80s ballads.
I suppose this might explain the childish-but-sex lyrics (eg, "the girl with big tits"). They don't require much thought to ingest but they're saying something that is becoming real when you're, say, 16.
The musical change around minute three isn't just a lyrical reference to The Wizard of Oz---it's also a musical reference! This is like if Lana Del Rey did Dorothy.
When Did You Get Hot?
"When Did You Get Hot?" is ready for the club. It's the beatiest song so far. This is more what I expected them all to be like. It's kinda like some of Heather Nova's more beat-heavy tracks. Yet somehow even less subtle lyrically.
Yeah, it's like a mix of Heather Nova, Taylor Swift, with some nice attitude overlaid.
I suppose if I were interested in defending her album cover, I'd say this is her evening out the male gaze of the cover with some carnivorous female gaze here.
Go Go Juice
I turned "Go Go Juice" into a scifi story. Her version is much more grounded. It wouldn't take much to change this into a late-70s to mid-80s country (drinking) song.
Given the earthiness of the lyrics and I'm surprised she's still mostly spending her time as an ethereal specter.
It's nice to hear in the chorus that she can get her hands dirty though. Overall, in this album, sounds like she might float away.
think this might be my favorite so far. It's musical layers are more interesting and seem more like something that invites the listener to participate in.
Of course, that WOULD be the drinking song. 🙄
Don't Worry I'll Make You Worry
"Don’t Worry I’ll Make You Worry" I wrote by deleting three words from each line then going back later and adding three words like. Astonishing, really, how different our two versions ended up.
This is me again thinking about Sabrina Carpenter in terms of Lana Del Rey. Clearly a big influence.
This feels like a Driving a Socal Freeway song. Honestly, a genre I love.
This is a dreamy build up here at the end. They should've gone even bigger. Like, an entire WALL of sound....
House Tour
After "getting wet" and "when did you get hot," "House Tour" is out last "nonexplicit" song.
So many ""s required to say all that.
Oh ho ho.
NOW we're in the 80s FOR SURE
Like . . . 1988, I'm guessing?
Although the lyrics are much more modern conversational than 80s finetuned. And the spoken asides are super Taylor.
I suppose that's not the sort of thing you can copyright/trademark.
Except for the Taylory bits, I think if I just heard this, I'd assume it was by someone trying to horn in on Paula Abdul's territory.
Goodbye
I'm bringing in expectations for a title like this
This does feel like if the Von Trapps were escaping in 2020, this is what they'd sing as they went up the stairs. Except for the punching and ass parts
Now that we're here at the end, I can say that album is musically coherent. We're getting some Beatlesesque sound design in “Goodbye” (mariachi! sfx! noise!), but overall it's the same sound we've had along: sweet and pretty, unpretentious and safe.
Tell your library to get Thubrina on their Libby/Overdrive! (Coming to Hoopla soon.)
Lady Steed and I were at Target recently and saw a big vinyl this which stopped her cold:
And rightly so. Although the fans on Genius may argue that this image “pokes fun at the male gaze” or “highlight[s] Sabrina’s satirical brand” or “challenges misogynistic views,” at it’s core it’s a woman on her knees being dominated by a man. So Poe’s Law is in full effect here, making the image a very 2025 phenomenon. Some people will revel in the debasing of a female celebrity. Others will treat her ironic debasing as a victory for women. Third- and fourth-wave feminism meet in this image and explode, is what happens.
Anyway, Lady Steed was appalled. Women winning the right to receive abuse seems a pyrrhic victory at best.
I’m also appalled looking at her hand in the carpet. What happened to it? Did someone finetune this image with AI?
Anyway, in making the cover of Thubrina, my reference was to one of the alternate image covers. (You need lots of different physical versions of music in 2025 to maximize profits.)
This is Sabrina’s “approved by God” image. I didn’t attempt anything more than the hair and being black and white because let’s be honest: I didn’t spend my teenage years looking into the mirror working on my sultriness. Faces funny and scary were much more me.
Anyway, Thubrina is now available at most ebook outlets. Print will show up eventually for those who think five dollars is an insufficiently absurd amount to spend on a goofy little project like this.
Where you will not find it is on Amazon. This isn’t some big moral stance I’m taking (though perhaps I should claim so?); they just rejected it. I’m not sure why. They rejected Eternities of Cats for strange but clear reasons, viz., they apparently don’t carry multi-author works that include previously published work. Never mind that we could all make a list of exceptions you can buy on Amazon right now, but at least they gave me a reason. No reason for Thubrina. Is it part of some new quest to cut out plagiarism? Well, this isn’t plagiarism and I don’t know how it could have reached that conclusion instantly anyway. Is it because I noted there was some adult content? I doubt it. Otherwise, how did certain congressional candidates get their work on Amazon? Or Sabrina this exceedingly horny album? So it’s a mystery. But at least you can (now or soon) get Thubrina via your local library. Good on America.
AS PROMISED, having finished the publication process, I will now listen to Man’s Best Friend. I am about to do that right now, starting here in just a few minutes. Head on over to Bluesky if you want to follow along. Tomorrow’s Thubrina post will republish (some? all?) of this live commentary, but if you care and want to be part of the conversation, head on over now.
In honor of The Sound of Music being in theater’s this weekend, let’s start at the beginning (a very good place to start). While I’ll be promoting Thubrina with posts all this week, why not start with it’s own introduction?
Of course, this should have been released days rather than weeks after August 29, the day Sabrina Carpenter released her album Man’s Best Friend but I stupidly held off on getting the photograph done until I had access to her lyrics. That was silly. And then of course it takes a while for it to roll out to the various places you can buy or borrow books. (Still waiting on paper, but look: Barnes & Noble!)
Anyway, here we are, seventeen days late.
Alas.
But finally, here are the cover and the introduction:
Naturally, when I want to visit Thubstack, I start typing thubs into my browser, but if I foolishly assume that by now surely my browser knows where I’m going and just hit enter rather than deliberately choosing thmazing.substack.com, Firefox will helpfully suggest I watch the video for Sabrina Carpenter’s “Thumbs,” a song I know only from this context. (I did finally listen to “Thumbs” once, just to see what Firefox thought I should be giving my attention to, but I can’t remember anything about it now.) I have heard her “Espresso” enough times that I could probably recognize it (probably?), but that’s the extent of my knowledge regarding Miss Carpenter’s catalogue. This isn’t me being a snob or anything. I just figure she gets enough love from enough people that she doesn’t need me listening to her on Spotify in order to make her car payment. Perhaps I am wrong and her Range Rover is getting repossessed as we speak because I insist on being a hipster. If so, I apologize.
Anyway, in early June I was with some twenty-somethings and they were expressing amazement that Sabrina Carpenter was already releasing a new album and how could she possibly a) have anything new to say or b) the time to develop new aspects to her musical vocabulary. They were looking forward to discovering answers to these questions.
Me, since I knew nothing about her previous work, had no way to hypothesize regarding her new work. But then it occurred to me: Just as countless millions searching for Thubstack have been redirected to “Thumbs” and thus become Sabrina Carpenter fans, perhaps she owes me and I should redirect some of her traffic to me. And so this small volume in which I rewrite her new album Man’s Best Friend, song by song.
I’ve taken a number of different tacks while rewriting, which you can read about in the appendix.
Like Sabrina, Jesus was a carpenter, and he was born before me, even. So to make her and I seem more like contemporaries, I’ve illustrated this collection with details from oldtimey black-and-white life-of-Jesus illustrations.
Anyway, come for the Sabrina, stay for the Theric (or the Jesus, if you prefer).
Next week expect a bounty of content on my new book Thubrina, but right now I just want to pitch the very idea of doing cool and interesting things in your space, whatever that is. It's the only way cool and interesting things happen.
This is some of the worst writing I've read in a while. Even at a mere 108 pages (comics pages!) it was difficult to finish. The main character and her boyfriend are supposedly two years into a relationship but they talk like they're on week two. I mean—he sucks from first appearance. We're supposed to believe she hasn't noticed / he's been able to disguise his suckiness for two whole years? And his racist parents are strange. The father barely says or does anything. When he even appears he's difficult to distinguish from the boyfriend. The mother's face is the embodiment of an internet troll. You can't look at that face and believe for a moment that she's a real person. And their nonstop racism is so grotesque as to turn into self-parody.
There are occasional pages where there's narration about how to deal with racist people but it's usually thrice-chewed pablum and sometimes not even internally consistent. For instance, one page reads, "People will Only [sic] see racism when it's at its most extreme... / But racism is more than just slurs and violent acts. | I think it's important to be true to yourself. | If something feels wrong you should speak up."
What?
I mean, those are fine sentiments, but how do they connect together? How do they build into a coherent argument?
The colors were good.
two days
069) The Death of Ivan Ilyich by Leo Tolstoy (translated by Lynn Solotaroff), finished August 23
Knowing Ikiru was based on this novella, I expected more of the same, but really they're quite different. They have similar attitudes, similar tones. The main character works for the government and has a terminal illness. He has some sort of redemptive arc. That's about it, though. Ilyich's arc begins and ends in the final paragraphs while Watanabe's are the bulk of the film. Ilyich's story takes place, at first, in his social situation, then moves inside his body. We barely deal with Watanabe's death so directly.
And yet—
They both tell us to do something different with our life. Even if the world inside the story looks the other way.
If you'd asked me to make a Japanese connection to Death of and I hadn't known Ikiru was inspired-by, I would have gone to Silence. Like that novel, some of the most important moments occur when a mystical conversation breaks through God's silence.
Anyway, even though Ivan dies four years before my current age, I didn't quite have the flooring experience I was promised. I'll have to try again when I have the flu or something. Because I certainly see how, at the right moment, this novella could really beat you up.
two days
070) The Village Beyond the Mist by Sachiko Kashiwaba (translated by Avery Fischer Udagawa), finished August 23
It's funny to have read this over the same two days I read Ivan Ilyich—both of them are so different from the classic movies based on them! This one "inspired" Spirited Away but it's hard to argue Spirited Away was any more inspired by this story than by Alice in Wonderland—they are, all three, about young girls who end up in strange places and cope marvelously.
(Also, I'm not at all sure Miyazaki would agree that his movie was, ultimately, based on the novel: "There is a book for children, Kirino Mukouno Fushigina Machi [A Mysterious Town Over the Mist]. It was published in 1980 [actually 1975], and I wondered if I could make a movie based on it. This was before we started work on Mononoke Hime. There is a staff member who loved this book when s/he was in fifth grade, and s/he read it many times. But I couldn't understand why it was so interesting; I was mortified, and I really wanted to know why. So, I wrote a project proposal [based on the book], but it was rejected in the end.")
Regardless, it should be judged on its own merits.
And it's okay. Not surprised to learn it's her first novel. It has a great ending but it's just sort of a minipicaresque for kids as the hero helps out in one store after another in a little town peopled by the descendants of sorcerers.
It's actually a great deal like the of novel for English-speaking kids published in the decades before and after. It's very much of its time.
I can see loving this book as a child. I got my 8yrold started on it. Maybe she'll be one who does.
(Oh: the new illustrations by Miho Satake are clearly inspired by Spirited Away, I assume to emphasize the tentative connection.)
One of my favorite titles of the last few years. The cover's pretty good too.
This is a very short book, just over a hundred pages, but it took me a long time to read. Every page seemed vitally important and I would often put it down to think and not be ready to pick it up again for a long time. But in the days after reading, it wouldn't be unusually for me to throw a couple bombs in stake council or to reinterpret important aspects of Pride and Prejudice for my students.
Pack takes meritocracy to task, utterly dismantling it for the blasphemous heresy it is. In doing to, he forces me to reconsider such words as self-reliance, dependence and independence, and even work. No question we as a society are wresting scripture to our destruction, but it's startling to see it laid so bare.
I also learned a great deal about early Christian cultures, relevant rabbinical teachings, ancient gift cultures—some of this stuff sent me on paths of thought that, for instance, rather rewired by thoughts about the Garden of Eden. There's good soil here and you can plant a lot of seeds you already have in its ground.
To tell you all my thoughts I'd have to quote half the book and then write twice as much on top of it. And I'm not writing my own book.
I certainly need to keep studying this topic. I have another book I started then mislaid then never went back to, and another that just came in the mail this week. The Book of Mormon was written for our day and these are the issues it is most concerned with: being rich at the expense of the poor, becoming Zion, accepting Christ.
The purpose of becoming spiritually and temporally self-reliant is to better serve the Lord and care for others. The Savior invites us all to act, to stand independent, and to become as He is. He will help us. He has promised: “It is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. But it must needs be done in mine own way.”
The wild thing is, if you read that scripture in context, that is, without ending it mid-sentence, it actually says this:
And it is my purpose to provide for my saints, for all things are mine. But it must needs be done in mine own way; and behold this is the way that I, the Lord, have decreed to provide for my saints, that the poor shall be exalted, in that the rich are made low.
It kind of reminds me of Buster Keaton's Cops if it were a work of German Expressionism with a lot more sex, a lot fewer jokes, and a strong aroma of religious allegory.
I read this was a parody of God's Man but it would be more accurate to say it's a parody of the wordless-novel genre writ large. Although one of the bigger laughs was when his female lead suddenly appeared in full Lynd Ward–style glory:
And speaking of silent, films, I have to believe that Hundreds of Beavers was influenced at least a tad by the early scenes of this book. The middle scenes seems equal parts Chaplin and the parodied novels. The last act is parody of parodies of melodramas, down to the villain ties people to logs and feeding them to the sawmill. The ending provides a happy-ending coincidence of Dickensian proportions and all is well.
Although it may not be a direct commentary on God's Man, reading them back to back was kind of wonderful.
(Although it may be worth noting that the race-humor bits in He Done Her Wrong have, shall we say, aged less gracefully than the book as a whole.)
I'm reading through all my old woodcut novels because I'm on the hunt for one that can be read quickly and several times profitably by15yrolds.
This one is non-narrative, which is disqualifying on its own. But it's also about the city—largely how awful the city is. There are a couple mystical moments, some lovely moments, and it ends on a bit of grace, but the bulk is death and violence and abuse.
I need to find a nonparody sans nipples. Still looking!
So if I'm counting correctly, this is my fourth Palahniuk novel. I read Invisible Monsters and Lullaby (such a good cover) in my post-BYU Utah years (2002–04) and listened to Survivorin 2017 while driving solo to Scout Camp. I also read or listened to most or all of his collection Stranger than Fiction (probably) during the 2005–06 school year. That's it. I own a copy of Choke I haven't read. I think I'd call myself a fan, but perhaps it's more that I appreciate what he's good at.
And while he likes playing with language and his tales are rich in meaning, part of what he is good at is grotesquerie. What I remember most clearly from Lullaby, for instance, is the description of three-bean salad and the sex with dead people.
I picked up The Invention of Sound because I love foley—I hope some version of me out there in the multiverse has discovered that walking on popcorn while my feet are wrapped in prosciutto is exactly what some cinematic monster's breathing sounds like. I hope so.
Anyway, this is a book about a foley artist and everything from here on out is spoilers, so walk away if this 2020 novel is currently on your nightstand.
There are two primary threads. The first is the foley artist who specializes in exquisite screams that she, as per the family business's long tradition, obtains through torture and murder. The second is a fellow whose daughter was once murdered by the family business. These two threads will slowly come together. In the meantime, we get some of the most disturbing sex I've read in a while (perhaps since my last Palahniuk novel?), some nice jabs at elites, a wild conspiracy that's hard to piece together let alone believe, a decent look at madness, some very good side characters and couple less good ones, and elements of the weird: a doctor who can channel the dead, for instance.
Palahniuk is a good writer. He's messing with sentences a bit much here, but he's looking for things that work and he's using his status as a bestseller to try things. Let him fail, I say. It's good for all of us.
Meanwhile, on the thematic level, he's firing on all cylinders. While I don't always agree with his choices, no question they work and they build. He wields violence and the unpleasant like a size 2/0 sable brush—exquisite detail revealing large truths.
It is important that we see the ugly so that we can appreciate the beautiful.
Perhaps, after you wipe the blood out of your eyes, that is what will happen here.
I was expecting that the silent-movie comparison would be Sunrise. And it's not bad, but it's ultimately not right either. That image is from the center of the book and a misleading detail. This story has it not-terrible moments but they are few. To call this novel Destiny probably hurt Destiny's feelings.
Anyway, we pass through a house of ill-repute and thus my no-nipple quest remains unfulfilled. Plus, it's too long and a bit hard to follow. The quest continues.
I've read Fences probably twenty times. Seen the movie half a dozen times. Seen it live once. Yet, somehow, nothing else of August Wilson's. I've had this copy of The Piano Lesson for ages but I finally picked it up because I bought tickets to Two Tickets Running. Which we saw tonight. So I've tripled my Wilson today.
The Cycle plays, I have a lot to go. The Lower Bottom Playaz are also doing King Hedley II later this year. I should go again.
Anyway, having now read The Piano Lesson and seen Two Trains Running, I can see some things Wilson likes doing. There are lines almost repeated between Fences and Two Trains Running. There are similar disabled characters in Fences and Trains. In all three plays (!) there is an off-stage white man whose name starts with St–. I could go on, but you get the point.
This isn't a knock on Wilson. He's showing one place change over a hundred years. There should be echos. And, I mean come on, Shakespeare didn't rely on stock characters and situations? These things are not crimes of any sort.
(Though it does make me wonder if my own work may feel more repetitious than I realize.)
Anyway, The Piano Lesson set up what seemed like an intractable conflict between a brother and a sister. It seemed it could only end in tragedy. But the strange and supernatural elements combine into some escape that somehow—magically—works.
I am left with the sense that Fences is the best of the three, but no wonder I would think that, given my intimacy with the text. Who am I to say they all don't stand up to that kind of scrutiny?
Well, this was the most nipplous yet. Perhaps this quest is hopeless. Anyway, this is the penultimate in my collection. I'll give the wordless novels one last chance to enter my classroom.
I know Thomas Mann loved this one, but in a way it feels almost like a parody of realist fiction.
Our hero cannot be restrained. He loves, he travels, he carouses. He feels delight and amazement. He has his heart broken. Then, towards the end, realism it left behind. He's a hundred stories tall and peeing on the city. He is weeping at the feet of the crucified Christ. He is walking through a forest of towering flowers. And then he is dead. He goes from eternally twenty-something to dead. But even death cannot restrain him. He carries on.
I mean—I like it well enough. But I wouldn't want to spend a month here.
I think I like Ward's intricate art style better than his European counterparts. But you know whose opinion I'd really love on Ward? Edgar Allen Poe's. I really think Poe would have dug this one in particular.
It begins with an evil slaver. Between panels he murders and African man and steals his drum. He then steals his relatives and takes them over the ocean where the sale of their living flesh makes him a wealthy man.
His son takes down the drum at some point to play, but his father beats him and pushes him toward books. That seems to go well but then . . . I mean, it's hard to say. It's not always easy to keep characters straight in these books. But we get three generations of men who, each in his own special way, fails to escape evil.
But, oh the art.
I have to say, even though I don't always find it easy to know what's going on, I am impressed by the confidence of these artists. They never add little captions saying something like Mr Johnson's wife is also some sort of lunatic. They trust us to puzzle our way through. I like this.
But if you were hoping this means I found a book without nipples, think again.
In the spring I saw Ben's new play Shut Up, Sherlock (which was terrific) and that led to a series of conversations that ended up with me having a pdf of this play.
I remember reading an interview with Neil Gaiman once around the time MirrorMask came out. If you don't remember, MirrorMask was written by Gaimain and crafted visually by his frequent collaborator Dave McKean. Anyway, in the interview, Gaiman said that he was writing scenes and taking them to McKean to see if they could afford them and that what could be afforded was not always intuitive to Gaiman. One simple scene set in a classroom would be too costly because kids are expensive, but a scene where a whole opens in the universe and all of time and space drain away can be done on the cheap because it's just cg.
Anyway, I mention this because Murder Mystery Mystery Murder is kind of the opposite. It has TWENTY-ONE speaking parts, an insane number hardly any modern company working on a budget would ever touch. But this was written for a high-school troupe and the one thing they had in abundance was cheap actors. Otherwise, this is a pretty simple one-set production, but the piles of chaos from having so many characters interacting with each other gives MMMM a unique charm. It's like Clue somehow cranked even higher and madder. But also, in the end, friendlier. It's great.
.png)
![PANEL ONE: ex. meteor hits your head [man saying HEY BABY] PANEL TWO: COHERENCE [man now with busted skull with brain and blood leaking down his left side and puddling at his feet says, THE HOLE IN MY HEAD MATTERS, BABY]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!u8im!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2Faf9ae03e-40f1-49e7-b59e-83ac36de9941_1797x1443.png)
![PANEL ONE: ex. you go to Target [man sees dollar shelves and exclaims in excitement] PANEL TWO: PURPOSE [man posessed preaches the confluence of price and quality]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!o8fv!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F733ad628-b71e-4547-aa15-ec48fdeec872_1618x1287.png)
![PANEL ONE: ex. you play online poker [man playing online poker says "they're gonna miss me when I'm gone"] PANEL TWO: SIGNIFICANCE [all the world's poker players graveside saying, We miss him SOOOOOOOO much!!!]]](https://substackcdn.com/image/fetch/$s_!elDf!,f_auto,q_auto:good,fl_progressive:steep/https%3A%2F%2Fsubstack-post-media.s3.amazonaws.com%2Fpublic%2Fimages%2F75e7e1a6-ae62-48c5-a90b-5737ea1937e8_1492x1253.png)
