The Big Frickin' Swede

The BFS Recommends Into the Beautiful North

N Book cover of Into the Beautiful North, a black and white photograph of a young woman staring out at the viewer o knock against serious drama, but there is something about a story that can blend comedic and serious themes just right: combining the two in the right mix can cause both elements to sing in ways they could not otherwise. Charles Dickens at his best (when he’s writing something I would want to read again, e.g., Little Dorrit) exemplifies this, as does one of the more Dickensian modern novels I have read, Luis Alberto Urrea’s Into the Beautiful North.

How else could you describe a novel that uses the setup of The Magnificent Seven to skewer the current mess of immigration policies in the United States and Mexico? The very idea makes me smile, but the fun and ridiculousness of the premise is what makes the novel’s examination of some very difficult realities possible. And in a world where the United States has spent millions of dollars on border walls that wash away in yearly floods (and Arizona alone spent millions on an ill-advised wall of cargo containers that it is now paying to take down), what’s less realistic, the theater of immigration politics or a group of young people looking for fighters to help protect their small Mexican town from a drug cartel?

This is all anchored by the novel’s main character, Nayeli, whose interest in finding “Siete Magnificos” is secondary to learning what has happened to her father, who went north for work like most of her hometown’s men but hasn’t been heard from in years. She carries a postcard sent by him from the exotic town of Kankakee, Illinois—the message is equal parts humor and sobering reality, with a picture of a “paranoid turkey” staring out from a cornfield and her father’s favorite words of wisdom: that “everything passes.” Does he mean he’s never coming back, or that he’s only there for a time and will return some day?

With her on the journey are her two friends, Yolo and Vampi, also recently graduated from high school, and her boss, Tacho, who has promised the mayor of the town (also Nayeli’s aunt) to look after them on the trip. Between the four, a reader can easily tease out the reasons why any human would choose or be forced to move from one region to another: curiosity for a new place, boredom with the old place, a longing for someone you love or lost, a longing (or need) for somewhere better than your current situation. Yolo is curious about Los Yunaites and keen to find the young missionary man from California that worked in their town for a few years. Vampi is into death metal (“Soy una vampira,” she says by way of introduction) and equally curious about the North. Tacho may or may not be looking to move elsewhere—he’s a gay man living in a small town that doesn’t like change, and the weight this has put on him is clear around the persona he has created as “grumpy but loving older brother figure” to the trio of women.

The trip north… the trip to and over the border and eventually (unsurprisingly) to Kankakee is full of warmth, humor, and terror. I was scared for their lives more than once. I was surprised and warmed by the people that helped them out of tough scrapes. I was angered—as they were—when seemingly supportive people turned on them. Nayeli, a former soccer star and trained in karate, is obliged to kick ass more than once. It’s hard not to cheer as she is forced to beat someone up, but it’s hard not to feel the direness of the situation at the same time. Things could all too easily move from comedy to real-life horror.

While the novel maybe has a bit of nostalgia for the Mexico that has changed—the towns with so many who have moved elsewhere—Urrea also makes sure to poke fun at the inability of Nayeli’s hometown to accept change, among other shortcomings. Rather than valuing Mexico over the United States, or small towns over big cities, this novel celebrates humans being good to one another, wherever they might be at the moment and wherever they might be from. What is mocked and criticized are the humans and systems that keep people from living their lives and being happy.

In the words of a show that also crossed the United States’ border (this time from the north): “Remember I’m pulling for ya—we’re all in this together.” The debacle of humanity’s approach to immigration and refugees is not going to be easy to get through, but the heart of Into the Beautiful North provides a guide for how we can eventually get there.

The BFS Recommends From Scratch (Limited Series)

Rom-coms have a clear formula: the potential love interests meet early on in the story, the potential love interests face obstacles in getting together, the love interests then finally get together (potentially facing more obstacles before they are for real together together). Simple.

Why the rehash of a well-known genre, you ask? Because reviewers and whoever does the posters and promos at Netflix seem to think the limited series From Scratch is a rom-com. Some critics compared it to typical (if “elevated”) fare from Hallmark and Lifetime during the holiday season, and Netflix itself recommends viewers of the limited series to check out Love & Gelato (very much a rom-com) and Emily in Paris, which… I guess they’re related, if you want to watch something where an American goes to live in Europe for awhile?

It’s a frustrating diminishment of a moving drama based on Tembi Locke’s memoir of the same name. Created and partially written by Locke and her sister, Attica, the series follows Zoë Saldaña’s Amy, who meets future husband, Lino (played by Eugenio Mastrandrea) while studying abroad in Florence. The closest the series gets to the rom-com formula is its first episode, but even here one can see the deeper dramatic themes the series exemplifies: beginnings (and endings), beginning after an ending, and the emotions that so often characterize beginnings and endings—grief, love, hope, and regret. The stakes are also much more real than in a rom-com, with their often disposable significant others who are clearly not meant for one of the story’s potential love interests. This difference is made very clear in the first episode when Lino confronts Amy about doing something that has clearly hurt him to the core. Amy, who has mostly been treating her relationship with Lino (and others) like a short-term, just for fun, compartmentalized study-abroad experience, is forced to realize what she’s doing matters to him, and her.

The first episode also sets up another major factor the series will deal with, which are the realities romance must deal with in the real world: towards the end of her time in Florence, Amy is visited by her father (played by the inimitably voiced Keith David) and step-mother. Amy’s father is keen to get her back in law school and away from this art business she’s been studying in Florence. Her step-mother, played with a lovely warmth by Judith Scott, is equally keen to keep the peace.

It’s an experience many can relate to from their teens and twenties (or maybe even later), where conflicts flourish between the generations as the grown-up child begins to conform less and less with what their parents thought they were going to be. But what makes the series particularly lovely is how many years it traces (well over a decade): we see Amy’s relationships with her father, step-mother, and mother all develop, shift, and grow as she and Lino eventually marry, then adopt a child of their own some years later. And we get to see this happen with Lino’s family as well. Cultural misunderstandings abound, but are also worked through in ways that are not quick, easy, or melodramatic—the result feels much more real than the vast majority of dramas out there.

This is all assisted by there being no weak characters in the supporting cast of family and friends, as well as how excellent Saldaña and Mastrandrea are as the series’ leads. Even so, the standout in the familial relationships is Amy’s sister, Zora, played by Danielle Deadwyler. As Amy’s older sister, she clearly carried some of the weight for Amy as they both navigated their parents’ divorce, who separated while they were children. Rather than being a one-note supporting role, we see Zora as a fully rounded person. She is sometimes frustrated and annoyed with both Amy and Lino (particularly when they are forced to live with her for an extended period), but when it comes down to it, she is always there for them, no matter what heartbreak may come their way. Seeing such a fierce, loving, and caring person played with such depth is far too rare in storytelling, and Deadwyler’s sheer power and presence in the role makes it clear how important having such a person in your life can be.

It’s rare for stories to take the time to grapple with life so wholly as From Scratch does, and it being a limited series means it won’t be back for more, trying to scrounge up additional drama or character failings like some series have to do when they’re extended. It told the story it wanted to tell, and it actually left me emotionally rocked and in tears more than once—no mean feat, and certainly not something a rom-com is generally able to do (no matter how much I enjoy that genre). From Scratch is a family drama about love, life, and death, and it is not to be missed.

On Banana Yoshimoto’s Kitchen and Slowly Learning to Live With Grief

Book Reviews Recommended Reads

Book Cover for Kitchen, with a woman in a white dress standing shyly, with her arms behind her back. The novel begins with simple delight.

The place I like best in this world is the kitchen. No matter where it is, no matter what kind, if it’s a kitchen, if it’s a place where they make food, it’s fine with me. Ideally it should be well broken in. Lots of tea towels, dry and immaculate. White tile catching the light (ting! ting!).

To break down how much this opening does in establishing its modus operandi as well as its narrator and main character, a young woman named Mikage, would take more than the fifty-seven words of that opening paragraph. In the process, I would probably remove far too much of the pleasure it creates, so I’ll just say that if a narrator or narration uses a parenthetical like the above paragraph does to describe something as potentially bland as white kitchen tile, you’ve got me: I am 100% over the moon and in your corner.

So as the short novel continues and we learn Mikage is an orphan raised by her grandmother—and that her “grandmother died the other day,” we realize we have been opened up to feel her grief as rawly as Mikage does. The only spot she’s able to sleep in the apartment she shared with her grandmother is the kitchen: “wrapped in a blanket, like Linus.” The joy of that opening paragraph has been shifted and shot through with grief.

This situation can’t (but could!) continue, so it’s with relief that we see Mikage begin to befriend Tanabe, a young man who worked in the flower shop Mikage’s grandmother frequented—and who liked Mikage’s grandmother enough that he helped with her funeral. He lives with his mother, and he arrives at Mikage’s apartment one day to suggest she come live with them for a bit. Just while she tries to figure things out. Mikage is a bit disconcerted—as most would be—but finds herself liking the idea more and more. Unsurprisingly, on her first visit to Tanabe and his mother’s apartment, she explores the kitchen first: it has a lived-in disorder balanced by the quality of its plates and various implements. “It was a good kitchen. I fell in love with it at first sight.”

Kitchen’s strength is this seeming simplicity. I will admit there are times where either the translation or Yoshimoto’s writing is too simple for me, perhaps missing some of the poetry I prefer or the verve of that opening paragraph, but those moments are few and far in-between. There are far more moments like this for devastating truthfulness:

In the uncertain ebb and flow of time and emotions, much of one’s life history is etched in the senses. And things of no particular importance, or irreplaceable things, can suddenly resurface in a café one winter night. (p. 75)

So many of my favorite moments are ones such as these—reading, playing games, sitting on the porch and staring up at the night sky—letting those memories of important and unimportant things suddenly resurface in my mind’s eye. It’s why for Mikage—and the reader—that grief is not something you just get over or get through, it’s something that remains, becoming a companion that may hold its peace for any number of days, only to return unexpectedly with something as simple as a glancing outside a window of a café.

Most English copies of Kitchen come with a companion piece within its covers, a long story titled “Moonlight Shadow.” Knowing it was a companion piece, I was expecting to find the same characters as Kitchen, perhaps further along their respective paths, but instead it’s a story of two other young people also struggling with the loss of someone close to them: this time, a significant other.

It’s striking in the way grief plays out in similar ways, just with varied surface details. Where Kitchen’s Mikage obsessed over kitchens and cooking, the narrator of “Moonlight Shadow,” Satsuki, has taken up running to cope with the loss of her boyfriend in a car crash. She runs every morning, even when she’s not feeling particularly well, and has started to lose far too much weight. Hiragi, the brother of her deceased boyfriend, lost his girlfriend in the same automobile accident, and he’s gone to the extreme of wearing her uniform to school.

What “Moonlight Shadow” adds to the struggle of learning to live with grief is knowing that you will continue on past the death you cannot forget. That the one you once did everything with will no longer participate in your life as they once did—that you somehow survived and they did not. The story ends with Satsuki calling out to her boyfriend, hoping he will hear her:

Hitoshi:

I’ll never be able to be here again. As the minutes slide by, I move on. The flow of time is something I cannot stop. I haven’t a choice. I go.

One caravan has stopped, another starts up. There are people I have yet to meet, others I’ll never see again. People who are gone before you know it, people who are just passing through. Even as we exchange hellos, they seem to grow transparent. I must keep living with the flowing river before my eyes.

The simple things are how we live and love, as well as how we learn to live with grief, and the simple things are how we are able to continue, even as we cannot forget those we have lost.

In Appreciation of Chinua Achebe’s Things Fall Apart

Book Reviews Recommended Reads

Book Cover to Things Fall Apart Sometimes a reader is simply not prepared for the world they encounter within a book’s pages. “This dude is hard to like,” is my strongest memory from my first reading of Things Fall Apart and its main character, Okonkwo. This giant of a man is an often terrifying presence to those around him: opinionated, prideful, and patriarchal as all get-out. In one fit of rage, he even fires a gun at one of his wives, who barely escapes with her life. It would have been hard to be more ideologically at odds with a character than I was with him, and I was left feeling dismayed that I did not connect much to what was considered a great work of literature.

What I didn’t notice so strongly upon that first reading, some twenty or so years ago, was that I didn’t put the book down, even when I was most disagreeing with Okonkwo. The reasons for this are so much more clear to me now, on a second reading. From the very start, Chinua Achebe makes the world of his historical novel come to life—a reader is left feeling like they are living in Iboland, before and during the beginnings of European colonization. And he makes Okonkwo hard not to respect, despite all his faults.

Okonkwo was well known throughout the nine villages and even beyond. His fame rested on solid personal achievements. As a young man of eighteen he had brought honor to his village by throwing Amalinze the Cat. Amalinze was the great wrestler who for seven years was unbeaten, from Umuofia to to Mbaino. He was called the Cat because his back would never touch the earth. It was this man that Okonkwo threw in a fight which the old men agreed was one of the fiercest since the founder of their town engaged a spirit of the wild for seven days and nights. (opening paragraph, Things Fall Apart)

It is this careful balancing of contrasts that drives the novel’s power. Okonkwo is as he is because his father was frequently in debt, preferred music to physical labor, and was deemed cowardly by their community. We can even feel sympathy (or at the very least understanding) for Okonkwo when holding to his personal ideal of masculinity and identity costs him dearly. When the village’s oracle states that Okonkwo’s adopted son must die, Okonkwo not only allows this to happen to his adopted son—a boy he loves more than his own flesh-and-blood son, Nwoye—Okonkwo even takes part in the ritual killing so as not to be seen as weak by his clan. And for weeks afterward, the man is unable to understand why he has no desire to work. The killing had to be done, and so he did it. Grief is not in his vocabulary, even if he cannot help but feel it.

The tale is more than a Shakespearean tragedy, however: it’s seen as the defining work of post-colonial literature because of how it uses contrasting details to highlight strengths and weaknesses of Ibo culture before the arrival of Europeans, as well as the damages (and benefits) Europeans brought with them. As Kwame Anthony Appiah states in his excellent introduction to the Everyman’s edition of the novel, “Achebe’s rigorous accounting includes columns both for profit and loss.”

The first Christian missionary to the region develops strong relationships with the community, becoming friends even with those he is not able to convert to his religion. When he becomes sick and departs back to England, his replacement is of the fire and brimstone variety, pushing the community to a violent confrontation that ultimately leads to Okonkwo’s death. Another notation in the column for profit, or benefit, is both missionaries’ objection to the local culture’s tradition of leaving twin babies in the woods to die (twins are seen as evil).

Even with all this careful balancing, there is a clear condemnation of the myopic and biased view of the European colonizers. By the novel’s end, we have seen the breadth of Iboland’s culture: its economy, its family life, its religion, its system of justice, even its love of wrestling (the frenzied, communal description of a wrestling event is not all that different from how a writer would try to bring to life a modern game of high school football). It is a place with its own traditions and values. Some better or worse, perhaps, but not on a qualitative whole worse than that of the Europeans who have recently arrived.

So on its final page, when the novel switches to the European viewpoint of the local district commissioner, a reader is hard pressed not to recoil when the commissioner notes the death of Okonkwo as a mere curiosity or anecdote—something to use in a book he is writing about his experiences in Africa.

One could almost write a whole chapter on him. Perhaps not a whole chapter but a reasonable paragraph, at any rate. There was so much to include, and one must be firm in cutting out details. He had already chosen the title of the book, after much thought: The Pacification of the Primitive Tribes of the Lower Niger. (final paragraph, Things Fall Apart)

Unlike Achebe’s “rigorous accounting” (as Appiah put it), this is unbalanced accounting of the worst kind. The commissioner has but one column for the Ibo—primitive—and he twists all evidence to fit this or ignores it entire. And Achebe has forced his readers to see this clearly, with no ifs, ands, or buts. What a marvel.

The BFS Recommends Kindred by Octavia Butler

Book Reviews Recommended Reads

There’s always a barrier between a reader and what they read—the reader knows they can always put the book down. This is particularly the case with a subject the reader thinks they know about already, as they’re further insulated from being affected by it, with their biases and previously drawn conclusions. But the best authors find a way to reduce or almost eliminate this barrier, to implode those implicit stances the reader places between them and the seemingly familiar concepts they’re encountering.

Octavia Butler was one author consistently able to do this (go read her story “Bloodchild” if you haven’t already: you’ll thank me), and she did so in particular with her 1979 novel, Kindred. This is the third novel I’ve read in the past couple years that uses a speculative fiction approach to tangle with racism. slavery, and antebellum America, but it’s undoubtedly the best of the lot. While Ta-Nehisi Coates’s The Water Dancer is worth reading for how powerfully it uses its themes of memory and heritage, and Colson Whitehead’s The Underground Railroad intrigues with a Gulliver’s Travels style journey to explore race relations in America, neither of them wrestled with the these issues as successfully as Kindred.

Butler accomplishes this by having her protagonist, Dana, be a modern (well, 1979 modern), married Black woman forced to travel back to an early 1800s plantation in Maryland to save her white ancestor, Rufus. By means and for reasons that she is never able to determine, Dana is called to save Rufus when his life is in danger, but is sent back to her own timeline when her own life is put into danger. Her first stop is brief, with her pulling the young child Rufus from a river, providing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, only to have the boy’s father point a gun at her, causing her to be sent back to her own timeline. But unfortunately for Dana, this is not the only instance where Rufus nearly dies (she’s called back to different moments in his life), meaning she is yanked back multiple times to the plantation Rufus’s father owns. After a few hours or days in her present, Dana is called back to find months or years have often gone by between her visits to Rufus’s timeline

And other than for that first visit, it is often months before she is able to return to her present, meaning she has to find some way to live on the plantation. While it’s hardly the most hospitable place, she has few other options: Rufus’s family grudgingly allows her a place to work and live (tinged with slight gratitude for saving Rufus), and any attempted escape north could cause Dana to be captured by patrols, resulting in her being sold as a slave to someone that is even worse than Rufus’s father (who only whips slaves when they “deserve it,” according to Rufus).

This setup means Dana’s (and the reader’s) previous thoughts and biases about the era are slowly and steadily removed. Octavia Butler said the idea for the novel came to her after a young Black man she knew vilified the generations that had come before them for their subservience to whites and racism, and you can see how the novel implodes his not-uncommon thought process. Dana attempts to soften Rufus as he grows older (and he does seem to respect her), but she is only able to do so much, given his family and the society he lives in. She also attempts to help and educate other slaves on the plantation, but again she is only able to do so much: and eventually the cost to her is great.

Dana is only human, in the end, capable of being whipped, shot, or torn at by dogs, and she wants to live. She wants to get back to her own era, and her husband. Once faced with that reality, the needed compromises to get by are seen and felt by her and the reader—any grandiose thoughts about how she might live or be different from other slaves are slowly worn away. While she befriends some other Blacks on the plantation, other slaves see her as dangerous—if not a spy for Rufus and his father, at the very least a “mammy” or a “whore,” worthy of their contempt.

As she goes back again, and again, the reader is forced to ask (as Dana and her husband also ask), why doesn’t she let Rufus die? But of course, then Dana herself wouldn’t exist. Nor would all the generations between Rufus and Dana herself. It’s not that simple. Ignoring all that, what would it mean for Dana to become a person that lets another die? Where would the separation be between her and Rufus? His father?

For all its dark subject matter—for all the physical, emotional, and mental pain Dana goes through—Butler doesn’t drown the reader in it. This is no small feat, as Amazon’s production of Whitehead’s Underground Railroad shows: its very first episode subsumes the reader in the violence of the era, simultaneously burying much of its main character’s story, making her seem a bystander to the narrative. While these are issues Whitehead’s novel generally does not have, they still highlight the danger in telling a story such as this. It is far too easy to caricature, distancing the viewer through extremes of one sort or another.

Kindred stands apart through its ability to find balance in its narrative. Like Dana, the reader can never stop hoping for something better. Seen in one way, that hope is a chain that enables slavery. Seen another, hope is the thing that makes life worth living.

On the Passing of North Dakota’s Nicest Man

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Musings Slice of BFS's Life (memoir)

The greatest friendships in life are often the unexpected ones—the ones you didn’t know you could or should look for. The other kid on the playground you didn’t notice at first; the random post from a kindred spirit on the internet; each one the unique support you didn’t even know you need.

When you make a major move as Jessica and I did four years ago, you of course hope you’ll find new friendships in your new location. But there’s always the lurking fear that you won’t make any new connections—especially strong friendships. Having made major moves before in adulthood, we both knew how hard this could be. Most adults our age are already balancing their life around established friends and family, and oftentimes their kids. Adding a new friendship to that equation rarely happens: the “Yes, we should do something sometime” statements are all too often not followed up on.

So it was wonderful to hear that Jessica’s new job included a lunchtime group of the people who worked near her in the library: amusing lines and anecdotes were repeated for me when she came home at night, and she told me that much of the lunchtime chatter passed over jigsaw puzzles that were painstakingly sorted and assembled on the break room table. Jigsaw puzzles have driven me nutty since I was a child, but they took on a new light for me here—if they were part of what was making my wife happy in this new place we had found ourselves in, they couldn’t be all that bad.

One co-worker’s name came up repeatedly: Randy Rasmussen. He was older than us—old enough to be in our parents’ generation—though he came across as anything but a stuffy relative. A genial, kind, witty man whose leukemia had recently gone into remission, it seemed like he had watched every TV show and film ever made (he had even published four books about movies!). Need to know something about Orson Welles or a Hammer horror film? Randy was your man. Want to talk about an episode of Bewitched? Randy was most definitely your man: Elizabeth Montgomery was the most beautiful, elegant woman who ever lived, if you asked him.

While maybe not yet a friendship, this workplace acquaintanceship seemed the start of one—for Jessica and me. I had begun to know Randy better as well, since I frequently came in to eat lunch with Jessica and the rest of her lunchtime crew. And so the weeks and months passed, with us getting to know Randy better and better.

He talked about about his vast movie collection and how he organized it, noting that he was going through the bookcase devoted to his favorites—watching one movie a night—determining if they still deserved a place on those hallowed shelves. He recommended movies to me and Jessica, describing Before Sunrise as “the best movie of the 90s” (we watched it and rather had to agree). And he mentioned valuing his days more, since the leukemia went into remission—that he found them all the more precious now. One time, walking back from the dining center, he noted one of his favorite spots on the University of North Dakota campus, where the English Coulee ripple-roared over a small ledge of rocks. Though Jessica and I had paused over that bridge many times before, we did so again, savoring the sight and sound anew.

Why is it so many of the best experiences are shared? A thing you find and love alone seems a softly singing solo, while sharing that same thing with another seems to transform it into a glistening harmony.

I find myself sitting and remembering so many things like this about Randy. Having him over in the fall of 2019 to listen to an old radio drama, “Sorry, Wrong Number,” a gem I had never heard of before. Eating a Thanksgiving meal with him just a few weeks later. And going to watch Knives Out last January. The theater was empty except for our group and it felt like we were watching it on a big screen in our living room, joking and talking during the movie like we never would with a larger audience around us.

Hanging around those happy moments from a little over a year ago was the news that the doctors were not happy about Randy’s numbers, that the leukemia might be relapsing. It was knowledge we did our best to ignore around the times we shared, though it grew impossible to do so as the covid pandemic took hold and he asked us to drive him back from the leukemia treatments that seemed to make no difference—Randy was not improving. We offered to drive him in as well, wanting to do more for him, but he didn’t like to be a bother.

If that were one thing you could fault Randy for, it was that independence and desire not to be a bother. At the same time, how dare I push in on his desire for independence and privacy, things I very much value myself? But helping him with his appointments and keeping up with him periodically was all Jessica and I had to give to Randy, and it never seemed enough. It wasn’t enough, or he’d still be here.

Which makes me even more angry—in a world where there isn’t enough kindness, in a year that was all too short on kindness, why did 2020 have to add leukemia claiming the nicest man man in North Dakota to its list of horrors? Randy may never have accepted the title of “nicest man in North Dakota” for himself—he was too nice to claim it for himself—but a friend of ours bestowed it upon him and I have yet to hear a person dispute that moniker who even passingly knew Randy.

Now, even though Randy passed away over a month ago, the anger still returns. The distancing required of the current covid pandemic makes it seem he still has to be out there, like everyone else I’m not seeing in person at the moment. He’s just a phone call or email away, right? My mind prefers to think like that, despite knowing better. When I accept it, though, when I remind myself fully that he is gone and that we will never eat lunch together again, I find myself grateful that I even got to know him. In the small space of time granted by his leukemia’s remission, there was an opening for the glimmers of a new friendship, and I will never forget that.

And I will always remember you, Randy, when I start a movie… when I walk across the English Coulee… and when I think about the all too few days and minutes that life gives us.

The BFS Recommends Three by Ishiguro: The Remains of the Day, Never Let Me Go, and The Buried Giant

Book Reviews Recommended Reads Reviews

Kazuo Ishiguro in 2017 Like a great river, Kazuo Ishiguro’s novels are deceptively slow-moving. Beneath their well-mannered, placid exteriors lie a current one inevitably succumbs to: when his characters finally come to regard the parts of their lives they have buried deep within, the emotional tidal wave caused is like little else in literature.

The Remains of the Day

The early standout that garnered him major attention (an award-winning film adaptation certainly helped), 1989’s The Remains of the Day epitomizes Ishiguro’s modus operandi for almost all of his writing. The main character and first person narrator of the novel is Stevens, a butler of a great English manor house in the early and mid-twentieth century. He is a butler’s butler, a servant so committed to his task that he willingly contemplates changing his serious demeanor to attempt “some banter” with the new American owner of the manor where he works. Mr. Farraday seems to like little joking comments, so perhaps it is also expected of Stevens to respond in kind (though the reader can easily see Stevens is out of his depth here: so afraid is Stevens of offending his employer that his first attempt at humor doesn’t even register as a witticism). More, when Mr. Farraday suggests making a go of running the house with only four staff, Stevens accedes, even though doing so puts a strain on his health—we come to gather that Stevens is advanced in years, and is most probably in his 60s.

Book Cover of The Remains of the Day a watercolor like image of a manor house in the distance With how deferential and professional Stevens seems, it can take some time to realize that for all his attention to external detail, this butler is glossing over some life-altering facts about himself. Our first indication of this is a repeated reference and focus on a former housekeeper at the manor, Miss Kenton. Even though she has not worked there for twenty years in the novel’s present—1956—she seems a fixture in his thoughts and they do keep in touch: something he has not done with other former colleagues he recalls fondly yet cordially.

These indications come in ever-increasing waves, laying bare more and more of Stevens’s past life and work at the house for its former occupant, Lord Darlington. The subtlety with which they are revealed makes them all the more heart-breaking. At the novel’s middle point, Stevens recalls an important international conference Lord Darlington brought together at the house in 1923, attempting to have some of the harsher measures of the Versailles treaty reduced (at the end of World War I, the Allies exacted such extreme reparations from Germany that some historians believe they helped cause World War II).

At the same time as this conference, however, Stevens’s father, who has come to work at the manor in his old age, has a stroke and dies. Being a butler’s butler and knowing the importance of the conference for Lord Darlington (and therefore the world), Stevens refuses to cease his duties, continuing to deal with recalcitrant guests. He meticulously details the events of the evening, all while refusing to note the emotional toll it takes on him. In the midst of all the description and dialogue, it is only when a friendly visitor asks repeatedly if he’s alright that we realize the anguish which must be showing on Stevens’s face—and it’s confirmed a couple of paragraphs later, when Lord Darlington takes him aside as well, asking if he has been crying. Stevens just won’t admit to his true, honest emotions, even in the past tense as he recounts the evening.

It’s only at the novel’s end that Stevens can fully and finally admit to the mistakes of his past—to the anger and despair he feels at the trust he placed in his former employer, and what that trust has done to the rest of his life. After a little over two hundred pages spent in this character’s head, the release hammers the reader as hard as it does Stevens.

While there is an element of depression to these final events, the effect is something of a catharsis. Stevens’s life has been more empty than it should have been—and past choices cannot be revoked or wholly repaired—but he no longer pretends the damage does not exist. As another character notes to Stevens in the novel’s final moments while they watch the sun set, everyone is waiting for the joys an evening holds: the evening awaiting Stevens may not quite have been the one he desired or thought he was working for, but it is, nonetheless, one where he can make his own conscious choices.

Never Let Me Go

Book Cover for Never Let Me Go: the lettering of the novel's title, behind which can be seen a young woman's face Where The Remains of the Day is a nod to the well-established “proper butler” and upstairs/downstairs storytelling of English tradition, Never Let Me Go tangles with a different fictional genre: science fiction and dystopia, with a flavor of alternate history. Added to the mix is that somewhat strange—to a middle-class American’s eyes—English institution, the boarding school.

It’s a familiar fictional setting well established in many books, movies, and TV shows, however, so it’s in the slight differences to this formula that a reader begins to track the trouble beneath this novel’s proper British exterior. There’s the sadly reminiscent tone of the novel’s narrator, Kathy, for one, looking back at her days at Hailsham boarding school. There’s occasional hints about the future that awaits the students beyond the school’s grounds, and something seems a little off, or different, about it—particularly when one of the teachers insists the students be told more about what awaits them, which leads to some tense moments with the school’s leadership. And why does the school’s governor seem terrified of the students when she comes in for her monthly visit?

Even as this mystery deepens, we’re confronted by the human problems every person faces at that age. Who am I? What will I be in the future? And what about that attractive other person over there—do I… love them? Do they… love me? In Ishiguro’s hands, adolescence is treated with respect and depth.

Seen through the lens of Kathy’s memory, these events gain a greater magnitude as well. Moments that changed the forward projection of Kathy’s life, and her relationship with other students—particularly Tommy, another boy at school she felt a particularly strong connection to (but sadly never seemed to be able to start a relationship with). As we begin to understand the future awaiting the students from Hailsham, those missed opportunities begin to cut us more deeply, building to an impossible to forget moment, as Kathy looks out over an empty field in Norfolk. To others passing by, that field would have little, if any significance. For the reader, who has walked along through Kathy’s memories of what she had—and did not have—in her all too short life, it’s one they will never forget.

The Buried Giant

The Buried Giant's book cover, dominated by the black lines of a tree's gnarled branches and roots, on a blue background, with a slight shimmering of silver surrounding it. Ishiguro was apparently worried going into this novel’s publication, as it had more overt fantasy connotations, being set in Britain shortly after the reign of King Arthur. Dragons apparently exist, along with other magical creatures, and Merlin recently walked the enchanted isle. One has to wonder if this worry caused him to avoid too much overt fantasy, as other than for an ever-present magic that causes people to lose most of their long term memories, the novel proceeds fairly realistically.

This reluctance is occasionally disappointing. While the title of the book certainly refers to the memory loss many of the characters are struggling with (and its cause), it also refers to what may be an actual, buried giant on Salisbury plain. Beatrice, one of the main characters, reminds her husband Axl of the necessity of passing by the buried giant’s hill in complete silence, also hinting at other sinister forces on the plain, but we never actually see these creatures. While the third person narrator of the book seems trustworthy, this creates a confusion over what is real and what is superstition—and while this is certainly in keeping with the book’s themes, it does feel like Ishiguro didn’t quite want to own the setting he chose. Among other elements, the book does have a real dragon, and Merlin did accomplish real magic with it, so not completely owning or dealing the ramifications of a world where magic and magical creatures exists feels like a shortcoming in an otherwise excellent book.

Being a genre enthusiast myself, I may have noticed this more than some other readers. But on a second read through, it was more noticeable to me, particularly given that the actual magic and fantasy Ishiguro used in the book is potent—delving into the very human and real world issues of loss and memory (are you noticing the similarities his other books?). In the novel’s present, elderly Britons Axl and Beatrice have been husband and wife for as long as they can remember—which is long, but they’re not entirely sure how long. Like everyone else in the book, a magical mist has deprived them of much of their long term memory. People only seem to remember what they see daily (sometimes hourly), and once that is gone, only the most persistent can even snatch at the phantom of a true recollection.

Beatrice and Axl begin a journey to visit their son, who lives in a village a few days away. They’re not sure why he’s no longer living with them, but they are certain they want to see him again. Throughout the course of their journey, they encounter Saxons, who seem to live in peace now with their Briton neighbors—but it wasn’t always that way. People still remember that there was a King Arthur who fought and protected them from the Saxons, but that war seems to be done and over with now.

This general lack of a long term memory (other than for the fuzziest of past, important details) makes for intriguing parallels to the real world. When we live in the now and forget how we arrived where we are, we cling to beliefs and superstitions for unknown, potentially spurious or damaging reasons. But we can also forget enormous pain, and the anger that can come with it. In the course of their journey, Beatrice and Axl meet a mighty Saxon warrior, who they come to a sort of accord with—the Saxon likes them well enough, but inside he holds a sharp hatred for all Britons, due to their mistreatment of him when he was young. Liking an individual but hating the group they are a part of is illogical when looked at in one way, of course, but it’s entirely realistic and human in practice.

In probing these themes, Ishiguro is sharply examining a post Cold War, 21st Century, where democracies the world over seem to be having an identity crisis: turning in on themselves now that they don’t have a clear and present exterior threat to form their identity around (or finding a new enemy within their own borders to form up against). While I could wish I didn’t live in such a seething kettle of repressed racism and hatred, I live in this time nonetheless and a book dealing with such powerful issues is one that cannot be over-valued.

That’s the grander drama of The Buried Giant. Beneath all these larger ideas is a more personal, human factor—ever present in Axl and Beatrice’s relationship. Arguably, Ishiguro’s best use of his fantasy setting is not the breath of the dragon, which has caused the long term memory issues, but the concept of a magical island, accessible only by a mysterious ferryman. Such an idea appears time and again in Arthurian legend, and Ishiguro uses it here to lay bare the human pains and fears we all have about death and losing those we most love. As Axl and Beatrice’s journey ends in an encounter with a mysterious ferryman, I found myself as moved as I had ever been with The Remains of the Day and Never Let Me Go.

On the Hopeful Darkness of The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle

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In a year already marred by insurrectionists storming the U.S. capitol building to dispute the results of an election in which hardly any instances of voter fraud occurred, I find myself comforted by Haruki Murakami’s best novel, The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle—and disturbed by its all too accurate portrayal of the dark side of humanity.

Why is it that evil so easily seems to grow? How do the seeds of dissension so easily spread? Murakami’s novel rightly identifies media as one cause, with those who earn its seemingly random favor gaining a strange power to manipulate those around them. At one point the book’s main character, Toru Okada, is warned to be careful: “Those people are always glued to the television set. That is why you are so disliked here. They are very fond of your wife’s elder brother” (pg. 572).

Nor is it just being in media that confers power—it’s also how the media is used. Toru’s brother-in-law is so dangerous because he does not seem to hold any consistent values (other than the increasing of his own power). Rather than being problematic to his supporters and viewers, this lack of consistency actually works in the brother-in-law’s favor, which Murakami notes in a passage that will echo alarmingly to anyone who has paid any amount of attention to modern media (and politics), let alone the past week: “Consistency and an established worldview were excess baggage in the intellectual mobile warfare that flared up in the mass media’s tiny time segments, and it was his great advantage to be free of such things (pg. 75-76).”

It’s not all down to the media of course—hatred and evil find other ways to spread… sometimes in ways that are hard to understand and can almost seem like a tidal wave. In a passage that is by turns hilarious, disgusting, and soberingly accurate, Toru captures this phenomenon by telling the story of the monkeys of the shitty island.

‘Somewhere, far, far away, there’s a shitty island. An island without a name. An island not worth giving a name. A shitty island with a shitty shape. On this shitty island grow palm trees that also have shitty shapes. And the palm trees produce coconuts that give off a shitty smell. Shitty monkeys live in the trees, and they love to eat these shitty-smelling coconuts, after which they shit the world’s foulest shit. The shit falls on the ground and builds up shitty mounds, making the shitty palm trees that grow on them even shittier. It’s an endless cycle […] What I’m trying to say is this: A certain kind of shittiness, a certain kind of stagnation, a certain kind of darkness, goes on propagating itself with its own power in its own self-contained cycle. And once it passes a certain point, no one can stop it—even if the person himself wants to stop it. (202)

If one can’t tell from the humor of that ingenious passage, Murakami is incredibly apt at making heady moral and philosophical ideas accessible. But he is especially able to do this because of the ordinariness of his main character. Not unlike Bilbo in The Hobbit, Toru Okada is the best possible protagonist for this kind of narrative. He is so utterly normal, so utterly grounded, it’s hard for a reader not to appreciate his stability, even as bizarre, otherworldly things begin to happen. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is a Haruki Murakami novel, after all, and that means you’re in for strange, psychic dreams and dark netherworlds that wouldn’t feel out of place on the X-Files or Twin Peaks (as I noted in my review of Murakami’s Wind/Pinball).

Just in the first chapter alone, a strange woman keeps calling Toru on the phone, insisting that he knows her very well, even though he doesn’t recognize her voice or manner at all… before she takes the conversation in a in a racier direction (“Oh, great. Telephone sex,” Toru thinks to himself before hanging up on her). And then the teenaged girl Toru meets while searching for the his lost cat seems to be rather morbidly obsessed with death. Everyone he encounters is a little strange, a little off, and Toru’s equanimity in encountering them all keeps drawing the reader in.

The balance Toru brings only continues as the aforementioned psychics and strange dreams start to arrive in the novel’s narrative. “What does it all mean?” any reader is bound to ask, but Toru’s even-keeled nature and the connections that are revealed between smaller strange events lead a reader to trust that all the bigger ideas and mysteries Murakami is juggling will come together somehow. And they do—thanks much in part to why this oftentimes somber novel is able to comfort me. Even as Toru uncovers a human darkness that grew out of some of the darkest events of World War II—itself one of the darkest times in human history—he finds a group of like-minded souls, individuals that have learned (or come to learn) how to feel for their fellow humans and to help them.

Still, it all seems so fragile, so impossible. Toru Okada is out of work and his cat has disappeared, shortly before his wife disappears as well. And his primary antagonist is his wife’s elder brother, a rising media star and politician that has all the power and all the cards. It begins to feel like there’s no way that Toru can win and unravel the mystery of those missing in his life, no matter what friends he finds on the way.

But if a small group of humans can continue on, healing the world around them—no matter how high the cost—maybe it’s okay to feel some hope as my own life has been hit by a real-life media (kind of) star and politician that is wreaking his own brand of havoc on this world that I love so much. Like Toru, I choose to descend into the darkness again, for those who seem to be lost to it… unless I can help them find their way out.

On the Inherent Hopefulness of The Last Jedi

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Movie Post for The Last Jedi (AKA “An Appreciation of The Last Jedi by a Middle-aged Cis White Dude, Since Supposedly We All Hate This Movie”)

Even if you don’t give a fig for the new Star Wars movies, you’ve most certainly heard about them somewhere through the grapevine (fig… vine?): they’re either the greatest thing since sliced bread/the original movie trilogy, or they’re those movie things with fans so terrible they make the actors in them cancel their social media accounts… and sometimes their acting careers.

Nowhere is this divide clearer than for the second movie in the Star Wars sequel trilogy, The Last Jedi. Even as a fan of Star Wars and an observer of its fandom, it’s kind of hard to tell where the consensus lands for this one (if such a thing can be found among millions or billions of people) and if there are issues, what those truly are. Some of the complaints can be discounted offhand by emotionally stunted people that probably need some therapy, while others are truly revolting and/or mysoginistic, with supposed “fan” cuts that remove every female giving orders in the movie. We see you, people, and we know what you’re about.

The Red Throne Room in The Last Jedi, a dark, tall throne, flanked by crimson walls. On the more difficult to parse side are comments that can still be rejected fairly off hand. One that repeatedly comes up is that Rian Johnson, the director of The Last Jedi, is a hack: someone that just doesn’t know how to make a good movie. A brief look at Johnson’s body of work makes this infinitely mockable, just based on the strength of Brick and Looper alone (now with Knives Out added to the mix). Even if you don’t want to watch any of of his other movies, the visual power of The Last Jedi alone discounts this claim. You don’t forget things like Snoke’s red throne room if you watch this movie; it is too menacingly gorgeous. Calling Johnson a hack is one of those “internet takedowns” that only work if you’re talking to a group that will already agree with anything you have to say on a subject. You can give each other an electronic high-five or fist bump all you want, but don’t expect the rest of the world to agree with you so easily.

The Actual Problem With The Last Jedi (if there really is one):

Cutting past the misogyny and internet vitriol, one can find a fairly consistent complaint about the movie, its characters and its themes: one which can basically be summed up as the “Luke Skywalker problem.” Fans of the original trilogy had decades to celebrate Luke’s journey, to look up to it and to celebrate it. Adding to the pedestal effect created by the emotional power of the original movies are the Star Wars fiction series that started up in the 1990s with the beloved trilogy by Timothy Zahn. Sure, Luke has some flaws and suffers setbacks in these books, but he’s always the hero—and he emerges in the right and victorious yet again.

The Red Throne Room in The Last Jedi, a dark, tall throne, flanked by crimson walls. The Last Jedi throws this all on its head. Luke has given up, marooning himself on an island on a remote planet that almost no one knows how to find. This act even threw Mark Hamill for a loop: he’s quoted in the special features of the movie (and elsewhere) as not being on board with the changes to his character—but as a professional and a classy guy, he still endeavored to make Johnson’s vision work. To Hamill and many other fans, Luke Skywalker is one of the most hopeful characters in cinematic history, and Rian Johnson’s script seems to do away with all that, presenting a saddened, broken failure of a man at the movie’s opening.

To many, that is the movie’s entire portrayal, with maybe a slight hand wave toward Luke still being amazing at the end of the movie (but not enough to make up for what Rian Johnson and Disney have “done” to their hero). Luke simply isn’t allowed to be his hopeful and heroic self, they claim, nor is he allowed to be an awesome Jedi sage, like Yoda.

Just how awesome is Yoda, though? Yes, he’s able to do things Luke can only marvel at when he himself was learning in the original trilogy, but for all the power and knowledge of the force he demonstrates, both he and Obi-Wan Kenobi are broken old men in the middle three movies: they have flat out failed and are in hiding as well. And worse than Luke, they don’t seem to have changed much from the experience. Kenobi regrets that he did not teach his former pupil as well as Yoda would have done, but the truths they cling to have not shifted all that much.

The Last Jedi is an Affirmation of Luke and the Star Wars Universe, Not a Rejection:

Indeed, it is in Luke’s differences from his mentors that The Last Jedi actually holds true to the character. Hope is a wonderful thing, but you can hope in the wrong direction, and hopes may be broken: is there a depression more complete than failure and disillusionment? Everything Luke worked toward in the original trilogy, and the decades since, has gone for naught. The Empire has re-risen as the First Order, and he almost killed his sister’s (and best friend’s) son in a moment of weakness, allowing that boy to fall to the dark side.

Rather than re-treading the sage mystic routine that characterizes Obi-Wan and Yoda in the original trilogy, the character arc for Luke in The Last Jedi allows him to be a real, flesh-and-blood person. Beyond that, it also allows a viewer to value just who Luke is. We miss Luke’s hopefulness, but we can appreciate it all the more when we see that his hopefulness is what energizes Rey so much. Rey isn’t just the new hero of the sequel trilogy, she’s also the person that reminds Luke of who and what he truly is—and that has very little to do with his failure.

Even though it is the middle of a trilogy, The Last Jedi is also the eighth episode of a saga that is nine movies long. For a story to have power, for a story to resonate with its viewer, it has to find something in itself that will linger with its audience. And in a generational saga like this one, stretching across decades, it’s almost impossible not to consider the impact of legacy.

The Last Jedi asks some tough questions about this saga’s legacy—the legacy that its characters want, and the legacy that its viewers want. In watching it, some viewers seem to want a return to safety, to where things ended in its happy middle. It’s an understandable urge, but one that is not true to the saga that they love (or the world that they live in). Change is what characterizes Star Wars. It saw the end of a government that had lasted for centuries in the prequels, it sought an end to the autocratic regime that replaced that former government in the original trilogy, and now it asks what the future will hold in the sequel trilogy.

By asking the tough questions, Rian Johnson was able to identify the beating heart at the center of Luke, Rey, and the entire franchise: hope. Mark Hamill as Master Skywalker, looking hopefully into the sunrise.

On “Rey Cries All the Time” and the Emotionally Stunted Stupidity of the Star Wars Fandom

Methods of Film Movie Reviews Someone Is Wrong on the Internet

Rey, supposedly played with too much emotion by Daisy Ridley

This post has been a long time coming. I know it’s late to the party, but I’ve hit my breaking point.

As becomes abundantly clear to anyone that reads my blog, tweets, and other writings (or interacts with me for any length of time), I’m a massive fan of genre stories: I even spoke about them for my lecture on writing craft during my MFA in Fiction program. While realism certainly has its moments, genre has a scope all of its own–a way of expanding and commenting on reality.

Which is why I have found the Star Wars fandom increasingly tedious and angering since the Disney sequels began to arrive. Prior to this, disagreements in its community were often nerdily contentious, but mostly understandable. Are the Ewoks fun and cute or a despicable pandering to kiddies? How much and how badly did the prequels actually stink?

Now cue a female main hero and a more inclusive cast, and all Dark Side breaks loose. At the tamer end are cries of “Disney is ruining Star Wars,” while at the dangerous, toxic end are fan cuts that remove all female characters from The Last Jedi and chase actors from social media (or possibly from the acting profession itself, so maybe the prequel era was worse than nerdily contentious?). I play Star Wars games, and it’s ridiculously common for forum posts to casually toss out that Rian Johnson (the director of The Last Jedi) is a hack, and that Daisy Ridley’s Rey is a Mary Sue that can do anything without even trying. But then you also get posts that really lay it all out there and state that “Kylo is better because Rey cries all the time.”

Here’s some simple words for such fans, in the tough-guy speak they seem to adore: fuck you and your emotionally stunted stupidity.

First is the irony of “Crying all the time.” Oh, Rey gets upset about her parents leaving her as a child on a desert planet, where she has to eke out a barren and miserable existence (where she can all too easily envision herself turning into one of the old, shriveled, and dejected women around her)? I hope you also complain about Luke’s abject dismay and horror at learning his father is Darth Vader, you worthless excuse for a person with the emotional capacity of a croquet mallet.

God, look at the completely understandable emotions on that dude’s face. How emo.

And why are you so upset about women in the sequels, you misogynistic excuse for a wart? In the original trilogy, Leia outranked Han (and held her own against his attempts at verbal wit), while blasting up the Death Star, Cloud City, and Endor like the boys. Mon Mothma was the freaking leader of the Rebellion, not Han or Luke. This stuff ain’t new, and I question your ability to know, comprehend, or understand the movies you supposedly are a fan of. Not that I’m surprised, given your ability to hold less sentiment than a teaspoon.

Do we need to expand the discussion on the the diversity side of things, given the racism John Boyega and Kelly Marie Tran have encountered? Yes, we do. The Empire was designed by the original filmmakers to be Space Nazis. Space Nazis, not “good people on both sides” occupying some justifiable gray middle space–even if you can maybe question whether the films held the Empire accountable enough, and you can definitely question how it looks when George Lucas and now Disney profit from making their evil empire into playful toy lines and theme parks,

Business ethics aside, did you even notice how the Empire is made up of all white men, while the Rebellion has women, people of color, and different alien species? Or did the super obvious visual difference escape you? You know, the thing that just about everyone praises every Star Wars movie for? No, you were probably too busy imagining you were your Luke Skywalker action figure, slicing things up with your laser sword, rather than opening your calloused heart to the ideals he represented.

Yes, I mentioned your heart, and those annoying things called feelings. I know it’s terrible when we have to deal with them, but you know what happens when you don’t? When you avoid them at all costs? You go and slaughter an entire village of Sand People and eventually a temple filled with children. You go from being the hero with no fear to being the villain that inspires fear. Does any character ever look forward to Darth Vader’s presence, even once? Even Director Krennic, the scrabbling bureaucrat that would sell out his own mother for a promotion, looks on his approach with dread. People will use Darth Vader, but they don’t want him around.

I know, I know, the Dark Side seems cool, given all those movies and toy lines and video games. We all get angry, and it’s all too common for some of us to wish we could reach out mentally and choke someone we find annoying, saying “I find your lack of faith disturbing.” The Dark Side appeals to the side of us that hates being small and hates being hurt.

But here’s the thing. If a story is actually worthwhile, if it’s more than just space ships blasting and lasers pew-pewing (the all too common criticism of anything “genre,” given by the serious “academy” of filmmakers, storymakers, and awards-givers), then what the story says has to actually matter. You shouldn’t want to be Darth Vader–only full of anger or hatred. You shouldn’t find Kylo more interesting than Rey because she has the audacity to show ranges of emotion.

Kelly Marie Tran’s Rose has every right to despise arms dealers and those who profit from war. She’s lived her entire life in a war-torn galaxy: a galaxy torn apart because a bunch of emotionally stunted force users didn’t learn to grapple with their very real trauma. What do the prequels look like if the Jedi hadn’t just preached peace (and lack of emotion), but helped Anakin to save his mother (or at the very least deal with her passing)? Traditions and the continual progress from one supposedly greater need to another allowed a very real cancer to spread.

And of course it’s frustrating that Luke Skywalker lost hope and hid on an island (on a remote planet in space). I wish he hadn’t as well, but it’s a tradition of sorts, in these movies: don’t deal with your feelings, and you get the Dark Side–either through your actions or the lack of them.

Emotions are the reason Star Wars amounts to more than lasers pew-pewing and an epic soundtrack. When you say “Rey cries all the time,” you’re making light of the very thing that gives a soul to what you love.