Friday Before and After Quiz #4

I don't have a number joke for four!  If you don't know how to play, check out the first before and after quiz.

1. After being sold as a sled dog in the Yukon, Buck abandons his domesticated behavior and heads to the Texas-Mexico border, where he and his gang try to succeed as outlaws in the dying days of the old west.

2. The last time-lord pins a murder rap on an unsuspecting cartoon character.

3. Aragorn arrives in Gondor where he prepares to challenge Sauron in a test to see who can set the all-time high score in a classic arcade game.

4. A demon writes a series of advice to his nephew, who is trying to tempt the soul of a soldier in an iconic WWII battle in the Pacific.      

5. After a disastrous Christmas, George Bailey tries to commit suicide, but reconsiders when an angel shows him what life would be like if he'd been born as an 18th century lexicographer.

Scroll down for the answers!

1. The Call of the Wild Bunch (The Call of the Wild by Jack London (1903) and The Wild Bunch (1969 film)

2. Dr. Who Framed Roger Rabbit (Dr. Who (1963-2015 TV series) and Who Framed Roger Rabbit (1988 film))

3. The Return of the King of Kong (The Return of the King by J.R.R. Tolkien (1955) and King of Kong (2007 film)

4. The Screwtape Letters from Iwo Jima (The Screwtape Letters by C.S. Lewis (1942) and Letters from Iwo Jima (2006 film))

5. It's a Wonderful Life of Samuel Johnson (It's a Wonderful Life (1946 film) and The Life of Samuel Johnson by James Boswell (1791))

What I'm Reading/Watching

I've seen some other lit blogs have a similar weekly-ish post like this, so I figured I might as well, as well.

I'm nearing the end of Dan Simmons' SFF novel Hyperion (1989), the first novel of a tetralogy called the Hyperion Cantos.  Beyond the fantastic world-building, Simmons does a great job of melding science fiction and fantasy elements in the same worlds as a group of unlikely pilgrims go on a quest to find the mysterious and deadly Shrike.  I can't help but feel that Hyperion had a big aesthetic influence on Brian Vaughan and Fiona Staples' Saga series.

I also saw Ex Machina, written and directed by Alex Garland (screenwriter for 28 Days Later and Dredd).  It's a solid, absorbing SF piece, with fantastic acting by Oscar Isaac, Domhnall Gleeson, and Alicia Vikander.   The less you know going in, the better.

On the Popularity of Apocalyptic and Post-Apocalyptic Fiction

An article from the Guardian's blog has been making the rounds recently, being shared by message boards and The Paris Review alike.  The article is titled Has US literature awoken from the American dream? and discusses the modern popularity of post-apocalyptic novels. First, let me point out that even within the context of the article, this title makes no sense.  The article points out that American literature has always been critical of the American dream, pointing out examples as far back as Huckleberry Finn.  But my main complaint is when the article comes to the conclusion that 

"Perhaps an exhaustion with national myths explains the recent advent of post-apocalyptic literature: from Cormac McCarthy’s The Road to Colson Whitehead’s Zone One. When the dream has been blown to bits for more than a century, all that’s left is to tell bleak stories of human survival set in the wreckage of a junkyard."

I'm going to do two things here.  First, I'm going to refute the claim that the advent of post-apocalyptic literature is 'recent,' and provide an alternate hypothesis as to the cause behind what is actually recent: it's surge in popularity.  Secondly, I want to examine why people like post-apocalyptic literature.   

First, let's acknowledge that there is a long history of apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic literature.  Mary Shelley's The Last Man (1826), Jack London's The Scarlet Plague (1912)  Aldous Huxley's Ape & Essence (1948), Richard Matheson's I Am Legend (1954), Shirley Jackson's The Sundial (1958), Harlan Ellison's A Boy and His Dog (1969).   This is, of course, only a tiny piece of the a much longer tradition.  What you may notice about all these titles, is that they fall into a genre.  Most are Science Fiction or Horror and were marketed as such.  

Until the last few decades (and even now to a lesser extent), Science Fiction, Fantasy, Horror, and genre fiction in general have been considered marginal literature.  They were looked down on by the literary establishment and the reading populace at large.  And apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic literature was a trope of these genres.  If World War Z had been published in the 1960s, it would never have been nearly as popular as it became, because it would have been relegated to the horror rack in the back of the store, and no self-respecting reader would be caught dead back there.  With growing acceptance of these genres came a growing acceptance of their constituent parts.  By the late 1990s, even John Updike was writing post-apocalyptic fiction.  

So one simple explanation is that we're seeing more apocalyptic and post-apocalyptic fiction because Science Fiction and Horror, the genres into which most post-apocalyptic works fall,  have become popular genres.  And authors who don't normally write in these genres are no longer worried about being pigeon-holed or discredited for doing so. Despite what the Guardian writer claims, we've been telling these stories for over a century.  People just haven't been listening.

As to my second subject, why people enjoy this type of narrative, it's first necessary to make some distinctions. To my way of thinking, there are two primary forms of apocalyptic/post-apocalyptic literature: issue-driven and societal.  Let's talk about issue-driven first.  

Despite the Guardian's bizarre attempt to portray post-apocalyptic fiction as a product of the US, the fact is it is an international genre.  While it dates back to the early 19th century, it started reaching critical mass in the 1950s.  This was a) the 'Golden Age' of Science Fiction and b) soon after the advent of the atomic bomb.  Huxley's Ape & Essence, Nevil Shute's On the Beach (1957), and Kurt Vonnegut's Cat's Cradle (1963) are all post-apocalyptic novels dealing with the results of atomic warfare (although Vonnegut handles Mutually Assured Destruction with the fictitious Ice-9, the message is still the same).  I keep making reference to apocalyptic literature as opposed to post-apocalyptic, so I should give an example of what I mean.  Dr. Strangelove is a good example, as it deals with the end of the world, rather than life after the end of the world.  The 1951 film The Day the Earth Stood Still is also, I feel, largely apocalyptic.  An alien species comes to Earth to deliver a message: If you don't get your crap together, you're going to kill us all.  So get your crap together or we'll kill you first.

More recently, issue-driven works have been focused on the environment. In film, we can find The Day After Tomorrow (2004) or The Happening (2008). (I didn't say they were good films.)  The appeal of these is simple.  It's our way of saying, to steal a quote, "You maniacs!  You blew it up!  Ah, damn you!  Goddamn you all to Hell!"

The other category, which I've vaguely titled "Societal," uses the breakdown of civilization to explore the individual or society.  This can be done in a largely literary way (e.g. McCarthy's The Road (2006), Shelley's The Last Man (1826)) or as fun/exciting SF/Horror (e.g. Brooks' World War Z (2006) or Mad Max (1979)) or anything inbetween (e.g. Matheson's I Am Legend).  Jackson's The Sundial is a good example of societal apocalyptic (as opposed to post-apocalyptic) fiction, as the end of the world is at the end of the novel.  

The appeal of reading The Road is different from the appeal of reading World War Z.   In cases like The Road, the appeal is a desire to understand human nature, and the complete destruction of society, of civilized behavior, of everything but the will and need to survive, allows an individual's humanity (or inhumanity) unfettered control of his/her situation.  While there is certainly some such exploration in novels like World War Z, novels and films like this also have an escapist function.  That job you hate?  Gone.  Those people you can't stand?  Gone.  You can do anything you want, whenever you want.  No responsibility, no constraints.

But both of these types of narratives have corollaries outside of the (Post-)Apocalyptic narrative.  Something like William Golding's The Lord of the Flies (1954) provides many of the same possibilities as The Road.   It is a study of human society, a dissection via disintegration.  On the other hand, something like Zane Grey's The Man of the Forest (1919), or any of the countless novels about pirates or lone rogues or charming crooks who live by their own rules and don't take no guff from no one, these fulfill much of the same need that books like World War Z fulfills.  Post-apocalyptic fiction is a very easy way to do this, because you don't need to write a society that your protagonist is at odds with.

Long story short, post-apocalyptic fiction is not a recent genre, but has a long history as a subgenre in SF and Horror, which have only recently gained mainstream acceptance.  It doesn't address any new psychological need, but rather addresses many existing needs in a very direct way.

2009: The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown

The Author:

Dan Brown (1964-    ) was born in Exeter, New Hampshire, where his father worked as a professor of mathematics.  Brown went on to study at Philips Exeter and later Amherst, from which he received his B.A. in 1986.  He moved out to Hollywood to pursue a career in music.  He released a few albums by 1994.  In 1993, he moved back to New Hampshire with Blythe Newlon, whom he married, and taught English at Philips Exeter.  He and his wife co-wrote his first book: 187 Men to Avoid: A Survival Guide for the Romantically Frustrated Woman.  Brown was credited under the pseudonym Danielle Brown. He quit teaching to work full time in 1996 and published his first novel,Digital Fortress, in 1998.  Angels & Demons (2000) was his first novel starring Robert Langdon.  His fourth novel, The Da Vinci Code (2003) was the bestselling novel of the year it was published and the following year.  His next two novels, The Lost Symbol (2009) and Inferno (2013) were the bestselling novels in the year they were published.

The Book:

Cover Design-Michael J. Windsor/
Cover photograph-Murat Taner

Length: 639 pages
Subject/Genre: Masonic 'symbology'/conspiracy thriller

The Da Vinci Code  The Lost Symbol starts when Harvard symbologist Robert Langdon is summoned to Paris Washington D.C. by an older, established symbologist.  After he arrives, he finds himself in the world famous Louvre U.S. Capitol Building, where he finds the older symbologist's corpse severed hand, surrounded by arcane symbols.  This older symbologist was a high ranking member of the Priory of Sion the Freemasons, and the location of a secret and powerful item is being sought by a deadly albino man covered in tattoos.  With a killer on one hand, and a detective CIA officer of questionable loyalties on the other, Langdon must find the secret with the help of the older symbologist's daughter sister, before it's too late.

On the one hand, Brown spent less time blatantly fabricating facts this time around.  Not that it did much good.  To clarify before I go into this, historical inaccuracy isn't itself the problem. The problem comes from the fact that Robert Langdon is supposed to be an expert, but consistently ignores, or rather, is unaware of, the obvious answer to questions when such answer would make things less mysterious.  I'm no expert on history, yet I still seem to know more than Langdon in some cases than others.  One common topic in the early parts of the novel is the Greco-Roman influences on D.C. architecture.  In addition to their masonic background, Langdon points out the most mysterious aspects of this influence, completely ignoring the fact that the Greeks and the Roman Republic were the first great democratic systems.  It ignores the rather interesting Society of the Cincinatti of which George Washington, James Monroe, and Alexander Hamilton were founding members.  The theme of apotheosis is also prominent, with Langdon describing The Apotheosis of George Washington and a statue of Washington as Zeus that used to be on display.  Somehow, he's completely unaware of the fact that the 'good' Roman emperors were elevated to divinity after their deaths by the Roman senate.  Because simply continuing the Greco-Roman motif isn't that mysterious.

There's a scene in the book where Langdon is giving a lecture to a bunch of college freshmen, and he just, like, blows their minds, by pointing out that taking communion and bowing before the cross consists of symbolic cannibalism and bowing before a torture device.  And I realized that this is Brown's attitude toward his audience in a nutshell.  Except Langdon would be less of a world-renowned Harvard professor and more of a low-tier community college professor, or a guest host on Ancient Aliens.  Because the fact is, Robert Langdon comes across as a guy who memorized a bunch of facts, but ignores the obvious explanations and relevant connections.  He's a hack.

But as to The Lost Symbol, it has some specific problems The Da Vinci Code didn't.  First, and I'm sorry if I spoil anything for you, but nothing is really at stake.  At least in The Da Vinci Code, the discovery of Magdalene or of Jesus' descendants would have massive implications, theologically and politically.  In The Lost Symbol what's being sought is, well, symbolic.  I mean, imagine if Langdon found what the Priory of Sion was hiding, and it turned out there was no grail, the real treasure was friendship.  It's basically that bad.  It also ends with a twist regarding the bad guy, except the twist is completely pointless.  Another spoiler alert.  The older symbologist was extremely wealthy, and his son was a irresponsible party boy.  After however many attempts to save him, he decided to let his son suffer the consequences.  His son was arrested for drug crimes in Turkey, and rather than bribe the guard to release the son into his father's custody, the father decided to go through the official channels with the embassy.  The son's cellmate and the guard killed the kid, and took his considerable fortune, and the cellmate then killed the guard.  The cellmate soon grew bored with the good life, and saw a special on the freemasons, talking about a secret masonic pyramid.  He remembers that the son told him he was offered a small pyramid by his father in lieu of his share of the family fortune.  This sets the cellmate off on his quest.  He gets some tattoos, changes his name to Mal'Akh, and starts killing people.  In the end, we find the twist:  Mal'Akh was the son the whole time!  He and the guard killed his cellmate, then he killed the guard and ran off with his money because his dad left him in prison.  So, this irresponsible millionaire playboy, who as far as we know has done nothing worse than some recreational drugs, decides to murder two people?  Especially considering he could have just bribed the guard and bought a fake ID, this makes no goddamn sense.  Twist endings are supposed to explain inconsistencies, not create them!

This book is, to borrow a phrase I used frequently in my review of The Da Vinci Code, bullshit.  Robert Langdon is to history and art what the cast of The Big Bang Theory is to math and science: caricatures that only make sense when you know absolutely nothing about the subject.

Bestsellers of 2009:

1. The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown
2. The Associate by John Grisham
3. The Help by Kathryn Stockett
4. I, Alex Cross by James Patterson
5. The Last Song by Nicholas Sparks
6. Ford County by John Grisham
7. Finger Lickin' Fifteen by Janet Evanovich
8. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
9. Under the Dome by Stephen King
10. Pirate Latitudes by Michael Crichton

Also Published in 2009:

The Year of the Flood by Margaret Atwood
The Women by T.C. Boyle
Chronic City by Jonathan Lethem
Wolf Hall by Hilary Mantel
Inherent Vice by Thomas Pynchon

Friday Before and After Quiz #3

Third time's the charm!  If you don't know how to play, check the first weekly puzzle.






1. A boy who never grows up fights surreal monsters in revolutionary Spain.



2. A Treatise on how to gain and keep power as a Narnian monarch.



3. A former carnival freak is covered in moving tattoos that tell the musical adventures of a 17th century Spanish 'knight.'



4. Wesley must rescue Buttercup from the clutches of a giant, a swordsman, and a Sicilian, who plan to make her marry a reanimated corpse.



5. After ending up on double secret probation, the brothers of Delta Tau Chi find a door leading to a hallway in an external wall at the frat.  Their attempts to document the shifting and seemingly infinite passages put strain on their relationships and sanity.


Scroll down for the answers!






1.  Peter Pan's Labyrinth (Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (1904) and Pan's Labyrinth (2006 film))

2. The Prince Caspian (The Prince by Niccoló Machiavelli (1532) and Prince Caspian (1951)

3. The Illustrated Man of La Mancha (The Illustrated Man by Ray Bradbury (1951) and The Man of La Mancha by Dale Wasserman, Joe Darion, and Mitch Leigh (1964 musical)

4. The Princess Bride of Frankenstein (The Princess Bride by William Goldman (1973, film 1987) and Bride of Frankenstein (1935 film)

5. Animal House of Leaves (Animal House (1978 film) and House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski (2000))

If High Schools Taught Philosophy

For some reason, I found myself thinking of my freshman sociology class.  The professor was dedicated to breaking down the assumptions college freshman tend to carry over from an institutional high school education, which, for me, meant it was pretty unexciting. (I went to a high school where we called the teachers by their first names, everyone cussed as they saw fit (teachers included), and all discussion was allowed, no matter how 'inappropriate,' so long as it was constructive.)  One thing that I remembered was the professor pointing out that high schools don't teach philosophy, and she claimed this was because of the institutional nature of high schools, and they didn't want students questioning the school's authority.  And I had an insight.  If high schools taught philosophy, nothing would ever get done.  It would be sheer hell for anyone who taught any subject besides philosophy.  Here are some examples of what classes would be like if high schools taught philosophy.

Physics

"...and therefore exposure to water causes the carbon to explode."

"But will it really? How can we know?"

"Well, if you'll remember the scientific method—"

"No, I mean, how can we say that one thing causes another?"

"We can discuss metaphysics some other time, but now—"

"But why talk about cause and effect when we can't even be sure it exists?"

"Interrupting like this will get you sent to the principal's office."

"... But will it really?"

History

"...leading to Napoleon's defeat at Waterloo."

"But how do we know this?"

"Well, there are plenty of first hand accounts, as well as—"

"No, I mean, how can we be sure that Napoleon even existed?"

"What?"

"We've never seen him, and even if we did, we'd need to consider the possibility that he's an illusion."

"Fascinating, but completely irrelevant to the discussion."

"Well, I guess I have to question the relevance of a lecture about a battle we can't really know ever happened."

"If you keep interrupting, I'm sending you to the principal's office."

"... But how can we be sure the principal exists?"

Gym

"For warm-ups I want one lap around the football field."

"But that's impossible."

"What?"

"Well, if I run one lap, first I'd have to run half a lap."

"So?"

"So, before I run half a lap, I'd have to run half that.  And before I run a quarter lap, I'd have to run half that.  Before I can run any distance, I'd have to run half that distance first."

"Look, either you run the lap or I send you to the principal's office."

"...But to get to the principal's office, first I'd have to go half the distance to the principal's office..."

2008: The Appeal by John Grisham

The Author:

John Grisham (1955-    ) was born in Jonesboro, Arkansas, the son of a construction worker. At the age of twelve, his family moved to Southaven, Mississippi.  He graduated with a B.S. from Mississippi State University in 1979.  He passed the Mississippi Bar exam in 1981, and received his J.D. from the University of Mississippi.  In 1981, he married Renee Jones, with whom he had two children. 

Grisham began a successful law practice in 1981, starting in criminal law, and moving to more lucrative civil law.  In 1984, he was elected to the Mississippi State House of Representatives, a position he held in addition to running his law practice.  A case he witnessed while in the state legislature led him to write his first novel, A Time to Kill (1989).  He had trouble finding an agent and publisher.  He eventually found both, and a limited run of 5,000 copies was printed of his first novel.  In 1990, Grisham resigned from his position on state legislature and retired his practice.  In 1991, Doubleday published his second novel, The Firm.  It was a massive commercial success, as were his third and fourth novels, The Pelican Brief (1992) and The Client (1993).  His fourth book, The Chamber (1994) is the first of eleven novels to become the number one annual bestselling novel in the U.S.

Since 1989, Grisham has published a total of 29 novels, five children's books, and a work of non-fiction.  His family splits its time between homes in Oxford, Mississippi, Charlottesville, Virginia, and Chapel Hill, North Carolina.  Grisham also serves as a board member on the Innocence Project. 

The Book:

Cover design-John Fontana/Illustration-Shasti O'Leary Soudant/
Photograph-Nicholas Giraud

Length: 484 pages
Subject/Genre: Law/Legal Thriller

The Appeal starts with a verdict against a blatantly evil chemical company which had been knowingly dumping toxic waste into the water supply.  The jury finds the company responsible, and, in addition to a few million in actual damages, awards $38 million in punitive damages.  This opens up the company and it's owner, Carl Trudeau, to more lawsuits and possible bankruptcy.  Trudeau realizes this, and knows he might not win an appeal (mostly because he's unbelievably guilty), so he decides to stack the deck in his favor.  Mississippi is one of a few states that elects state supreme court judges, so Trudeau decides to get someone who will side with him on the bench, replacing a justice that generally sides with plaintiffs.  This process takes up most of the book.  I don't generally like giving away endings, but in this case it's necessary.  Fisk gets elected, almost has a change of heart, but ends up sticking with Trudeau, who ends the party having a big big party on a big big boat.

Trudeau is evil to the point of making the issue of judicial elections go past black and white and into comic book territory.  He's a mix of Sherman McCoy from The Bonfire of the Vanities and Lex Luther.  Here's an actual quote from the meeting after he finds out he lost the initial case.  "Not one dime of our hard-earned profits will ever get into the hands of those trailer park peasants."  While I understand the use of setting clear good and evil when writing a novel with a very specific moral (electing judges is a bad idea), you eventually reach a point of diminishing returns.  Either your reader is an idiot, in which case you're screwed no matter how obvious you make your point, or he's not an idiot, in which case you shouldn't treat him as if he needs the obvious shoved in his face. And this isn't just me griping over my tenth Grisham novel.  I've mentioned before that I like to read the Goodreads reviews on the books I read for this project, and reviews for this book generally fell into two camps.  The smaller camp was people complaining about the panderingly oversimplification of the novel's purpose.  The larger camp is mostly comprised of people who start the review declaring their fandom for Grisham, but giving it a one star rating because they didn't like the ending.  To quote user Alicia: "Grisham could have had a great legal thriller but instead he chose to write a political commentary that tricked me into thinking I was reading for pleasure and enjoyment."    

To quote the top review (from user babyhippoface): "I understand what Grisham was trying to do, but I hate what he did. Hate. H-A-T-E. "    

I never thought I'd feel bad for John Grisham.  He usually gives his book happy, or at least happy-ish, endings.  The good guys win and bad guys get theirs, even when it doesn't make sense.  He's often written about the corruption in politics and the legal world, and if the goodreads response to this novel is indicative of his average reader, I can understand why he felt the need to stop giving them happy endings.  Look, I get that people want stories that are entertaining.  There's nothing wrong with entertainment, with enjoyment, with reading for pleasure.  But what level of obliviousness and complacency and entitlement leads to the response this novel received?  The dislike it receives for being hyperbolic or heavy-handed I understand (and agree with).  But it seems like the general reaction was anger, anger at Grisham for not having given them a happy ending tied up in a neat bow.  Their reaction was to go online and write angry comments about Grisham, rather than write angry letters to their congressman.  Grisham usually brings some social issue into his novels, and he usually deals with them in a very superficial manner.  The Appeal is no exception.  But I'm just struck by the aggressive indifference of his fanbase.  It's one thing if they didn't just like the ending, but the general rhetoric is that they were angry at Grisham for not giving them the ending they wanted, that he had wronged them by disturbing their carefully built up complacency.  I guess I'm angry.  That I had to first read nearly five hundred pages of boring, heavy-handed agitprop, and that I now have to get up here and defend it against criticism far more stupid than the novel itself.  It would be one thing if they disagreed with the message of the novel, but they seem to generally agree.  Perhaps a condensed version of the response would be: "I agree that this is bad, but how dare you make me be aware of it."

I know there are still good books that sell a lot of copies, and there are writers who take on serious social and political issues.  But these two categories seem to keep moving farther and farther apart.  Even up to the 1970's you'd find people like Solzhenitsyn on the top ten annual list.  And this is ignoring the days when people like Sinclair Lewis, or Pearl Buck, or John Steinbeck, or Edna Ferber were some of the most read authors in the nation.  Even books I enjoyed, like A Thousand Splendid Suns or the Millenium trilogy, are limited to already popular statements like 'don't blow shit up' or 'sexism is bad.'  I guess I'm just frustrated by a culture that considers entertainment to necessarily be nothing but mindless diversion and wish-fulfillment, and an industry that caters to and encourages this.  

I'm sure you can figure out my recommendation (and probably my general frame of mind as well).

Bestsellers of 2008:

1. The Appeal by John Grisham
2. The Story of Edgar Sawtelle by David Wroblewski
3. The Host by Stephenie Meyer
4. Cross Country by James Patterson
5. The Lucky One by Nicholas Sparks
6. Fearless Fourteen by Janet Evanovich
7. Christmas Sweater by Glenn Beck
8. Scarpetta by Patricia Cornwell
9. Your Heart Belongs to Me by Dean Koontz
10. Plum Lucky by James Patterson

Also Published in 2008:

2666 by Roberto Bolaño (English translation)
Unaccustomed Earth by Jhumpa Lahiri
A Mercy by Toni Morrison
Home by Marilynn Robinson
When You are Engulfed in Flames by David Sedaris