The Best of All Possible Worlds

Oil. Is it worth the price?

Werner Herzog takes a unique approach to oil, war and their combined impact in his "window into another world," Lektionen in Finsternis / Lessons of Darkness (1992). Set in Kuwait (there's a breathtaking aerial view of Kuwait City before the Iraqi invasion and Coalition counterattack), he interviews Kuwaitis about torture and mayhem, then plunges into the desert and the oil fields, many of the them blazing. There are beautiful shots of what looks like an inland sea, a mirage, a massive oil slick, in fact. Herzog provides some trippy narration in English, but the real audio backdrop is provided, as in most of his films, with music. Here, his classical German and Italian selections fit the on screen images mesmerizingly. We see tire tracks, tank tracks, blackened and burned equipment, burning oil wells, operatic destruction caused by human beings interacting with their environment.

The latter sequences let us observe men, looking otherworldly in fire retardant suits, trying to contain and put out these primal fires.

Herzog the visionary simply wants to share his glimpses of the mysterious, arational world, and in the fifty minutes of Lessons of Darkness set in Kuwait, he succeeds.

2006: Here we are living in what Voltaire satirized darkly as The Best of All Possible Worlds. Over two hundred years ago. The more things change. . . .

Maryann Burk Carver: What It Used to Be Like

WHAT IT USED TO BE LIKE: A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver by Maryann Burk Carver (New York: St. Martin's Press, July 2006) tells the riveting story of her relationship with Raymond, one that began when she was a teenager and has endured, even though he's been physically gone for eighteen years.

What the Carvers lived through (including twenty-five years of marriage and raising two kids) is described in an endearing, heartbreaking, and familiar voice that makes one want to weep for the human condition. They’d have been right at home living in Detroit, certainly. There are not really any villians in this memoir; Carver Country is just hard and sad, interspersed with joyous moments and flashes of brilliance. My favorite part is the 1960s, their daily struggles and constant moving from place to place. When the 1970s arrive, life careens beyond control, fueled by alcoholism; even the changing structure of chapter sections reflects this chaotic time. I couldn't put the book down until I'd read it straight through, and someday hope to read more of what was edited out (the original manuscript was apparently as long as a Bill Clinton speech, and probably as rambling -- but the deleted details must inevitably add more to the complex story of their lives and families). Nonetheless, I love all the details presented in the book the way it is now; Maryann's strength of feeling is evident, especially when she gets angry about Ray's girlfriend Diane Cecily or about one of his nastier (to her) mentors like Gordon Lish, or at a fire and brimstone preacher jabbering at her father's funeral. She also discusses a lot of other interesting things, like how they barely survived from paycheck to paycheck, Ray deciding for a while to become a librarian (he loved hanging out or working in libraries), her wanting to be a lawyer but becoming a successful teacher instead. Her bitterness about having to move from hip and happening Berkeley to dreary Iowa for the depressing Iowa Writers' Workshop is especially touching and well-described, as is her tough but sometimes lucrative (in terms of essential cash flow) work as a waitress.

This is a marvelous book for anyone interested in real life stories -- I'm very glad to have read it as soon as I got my hands on a copy (which was delivered to my doorstep). Other Raymond Carver fans, of course, will find it extra fascinating. Sometimes love may not be enough to keep a marriage or other longterm relationship intact, but in this case, the love endured beyond marriage. Kudos to Maryann Burk Carver! I hope she continues to write and publish more of her own work.

Ciao!

Doppelgänger, Jr.

I once had a nightmare in which everyone I knew had been cloned and were no longer the people I loved. Sound familiar? Anxiety dreams are one thing, full-fledged fantasy nightmares another. Invasion of the Body Snatchers, anyone?

When we wake up, we usually begin on the assumption that things will be as we left them the day before. So what happens when you wake up and find your own nose missing? This is precisely the crisis that Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) reveals in his 1836 short story, "The Nose." The story includes shifting points of view, starting with a barber who finds the nose in a chunk of bread he's about to eat. He panics and tries to fling it into the Neva River, only to be collared by a policeman. Next, Major Kovalyov realizes his nose is missing, and comes to learn that it has transformed into a higher ranking official. Much disorientation and desperation ensues.

Fyodor Dostoevsky (1821-1881) took the idea further in his 1846 novella, The Double: A Petersburg Poem. In it, Golyadkin comes to realize that he has an adversarial doppelgänger (dubbed "Junior") much like Kovalyov does in "The Nose." Dostoevsky's tale is scarier in tone, more like a David Lynch film at times, and perhaps asking the reader, do you really know your true identity?

Which begs the question: why do people pay a lot of money for elective non-essential plastic surgery operations like nose jobs? What compels someone like Michael Jackson to have other people chisel away at his nose and other features? Does he have his own identity? Sheila's recent post on body image opens up a lot of questions, and this is one. And what's the deal with Suri, the alleged daughter of Katie Holmes and Tom Cruise? Is TomKat a new identity? Is there still a separate Katie Holmes? The lives of these celebrities seem as weird and outlandish as the fiction of Gogol, Dostoevsky, or even Franz Kafka, and as creepy as any nightmare I've ever had.

Auf Wiedersehen, doppelgängers!

Diners, Wawa, Soda

I love diners, especially ones that are open around the clock, are more than fifty years old, and sport lots of chrome. Doesn't matter where they're situated -- urban is as good as way out on Rte. 209, Hwy 61, or Rte. 66. I like diners where the cooks and wait staff wear uniforms, too, like the Melrose Diner in Philadelphia at 16th and Passyunk Avenue.















From The Blob (1958): If it was good enough for Steve McQueen, it's good enough for me. Downingtown Diner, Downingtown, PA.

Old school diners still thrive in Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and New York, and are otherwise scattered around the USA. Michigan's version seems to be the ubiquitous Coney, Coney Island, National Coney Island or Coney Island knockoff diners. In the South, the Waffle House is everywhere, along with bigger sitdown Dairy Queen eateries.



Driving in the Keystone Commonwealth? Check out Diners of Pennsylvania by Brian Butko and Kevin Patrick (Stackpole Books, 1999).









Another type of place I love checking out is the convenience store. Philadelphia and the surrounding area features the Wawa store or Wawa Food Markets, similar to 7-11. Why is it named such a weird thing? Because its headquarters are in Wawa, Pennsylvania.

It's intriguing to hear local lingo, too: references like soda, soda pop, pop, soft drink, Coke. Personally, I hate the world "pop" as applied to flavored soda water. There but for the grace of God . . .

I don't drink much of the stuff, but if I do, I'll go for Coke, Cherry Coke, Dr. Pepper, Mr. Pibb, 7-Up, Sprite, Ginger Ale, Root Beer, or Mountain Dew, among others. I loathe diet drinks and would rather have a small sip of the real stuff than a gallon of diet anything. Drinks for quenching thirst and food, I suppose, for thought. More coffee, please.


Next stop: Winn-Dixie and Piggly Wiggly. All aboard!

Lech Kowalski's DOA (1981)

Folks, if you're at all into punk, this is a must see!
I saw it twice while an undergraduate in Chapel Hill, and it stuck with me: the raucous scene, the one and only 1978 Sex Pistols tour of the American South, and glimpses of a lot of performances, telling glimpses of the Clash, X-Ray Spex, Generation X, Sham 69, and a touch of Iggy Pop. It's shot in punk noir style -- thank God for Lech Kowalski, a D.A. Pennebaker of punk and immediate precursor to Penelope Spheeris in covering the fringe milieu! There are even helpful lyric lines splashed over the screen when the Pistols dish out their happy little ditties. The filmed audience reaction is fascinating, one fan enthusing: "When I saw Johnny Rotten's face I thought I'd vomit, he's so beautiful."


In DOA, we get to see Nancy Spungen and Sid Vicious making various witty observations, Nancy at one point declaring about her relationship with Sid, who of course later killed her in their room at the Hotel Chelsea: "We have good fun. We help each other out." Indeed, Sid is the anti-star of this wild documentary film. To see their last days fictionally portrayed, there's the 1986 Alex Cox film Sid and Nancy, or Love Kills. But DOA is hard to beat -- and hard to find in the USA.

God Save the Queen!

The Gospel According to Penelope Spheeris

From The Decline of Western Civilization (1981) to The Gospel According to Janis (2008?), Greek American film director Penelope Spheeris (New Orleans, 12/2/1945-) has paid a great deal of attention to the hard-edged American music scene and its surrounding popular culture. Along the way, she's paid the bills by making pop movies like Wayne's World (1992), The Beverly Hillbillies (1993), and The Kid and I (2005).

Spheeris' background is unconventional. Her father ran a traveling carnival and was killed when she was seven; subsequently, Penelope had to become a sort of chief of staff for her working mother, overseeing three younger siblings. Eventually, she studied psychology and film in college, and came under the aegis of Roger Corman (1926-), "the West Coast Andy Warhol" and king of B movies. He quietly produced her first major film, The Decline of Western Civilization. She also directed Suburbia (1984) and continued from there. Sadly, the same year, her brother Jimmie Spheeris, a musician with three albums to his name, was killed in a motorcycle accident.

Penelope Spheeris happens to be a cousin of director Costa Gavras (1933-) and has one child, Annalee Spheeris, who has a cameo appearance in The Beverly Hillbillies.






Pink (Alecia Moore, 1979-) as Janis Joplin? Stay tuned!

Don't Speak

Comments responding to yesterday's Leni Riefenstahl post got me to thinking about Woody Allen's Bullets Over Broadway (1994), which examines the creative process and its attendant horrors as well as joys. A naive and idealistic playwright comes to the metropolis during the Gangster days. A basically good guy, he is drawn into the chaotic realities of his new surroundings. He must make all sorts of compromises and often bad decisions if he is to succeed. Much hilarity and mayhem ensues.

Woody Allen seems to be saying that the creation of art or anything else costs, and costs a lot more than anyone initially bargains for. Every minute of writing, for example, requires sacrificing a minute for something else, what economists like to call "opportunity cost." Creation requires a certain amount of chaotic energy, resulting in change.

The process is so complicated that Woody can provide no definitive answers or solutions, but he does seem to suggest that messy issues and uneasy moral/ethical choices will creep into the noblest of projects. Is creating art of any form worth that cost? The answer will ultimately vary from person to person. It does seem that the bigger the risk taking, the greater the cost, yet also the greater the potential reward. Or all mixed together simultaneously. Just like Woody Allen's real life and career.

Today in class we discussed a short documentary on Raymond Carver that addresses the same themes. There was no definitive response from me or anyone else. Some things remain mysterious, and what could be more mysterious than creating through writing, a mad scramble of words strung together with a unique signature? Tomorrow, Maryann Burk Carver's What It Used to Be Like : A Portrait of My Marriage to Raymond Carver comes out, providing her angle on the writing life. I'm willing to bet it's an interesting one. When you don't speak, write.



Ciao, darlings! Thanks for the thoughtful comments!