Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: Facebook Etiquette

I have recently become involved with the BLS Advocate. All readers should check out www.blsadvocate.org because they've got some pretty cool stuff up there (check out the classifieds). I proposed writing a weekly column entitled "Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress" about the various distresses inflicted upon law students by third parties. At bottom, I guess, all of these columns could have the bottom line of determining if there were a tort cause of action against the third party. The topic this time is Facebook Etiquette. So, I guess, Facebook is the third party. Could they be liable for intentional infliction of emotional distress? No way-unless the circumstances were exceptional. But could they be liable for negligent infliction of emotional distress? Probably not - just because, as my little intro points out, it's a tough case to make as it is...

I had to edit this down to 750 words for the BLS Advocate, but I present it to here, in its unedited full, 2,916 word glory:

Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress: Facebook Etiquette
By Christopher J. Knorps
DISCLAIMER:
INTENTIONAL INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
Restatement of Torts, Second, section 46: “One who by extreme and outrageous conduct intentionally or recklessly causes severe emotional distress to another is subject to liability for such emotional distress.”
Comment d:
“Liability has been found only where the conduct has been so outrageous in character, and so extreme in degree, as to go beyond all possible bounds of decency, and to be regarded as atrocious, and utterly intolerable in a civilized community.”
NEGLIGENT INFLICTION OF EMOTIONAL DISTRESS
“Almost all states have adopted the tort of intentional infliction of emotional distress, but only a minority of courts have been willing to recognize an independent cause of action for emotional distress alone against defendants who are no more than negligent. (Shapo, Principles of Tort Law, 3d ed., 381)

BY READING THIS COLUMN, YOU HEREBY AGREE TO FORFEIT ALL POSSIBLE CLAIMS AGAINST THE AUTHOR

Introductory Note to First Column

First of all, let me say, it’s good to be back. This is my first piece of journalism written in a school-sanctioned medium in more than eight years. I have missed the opportunity to make my voice heard, and while there may be plentiful amounts of my own writing at flyinghouses.blogspot.com, that website hardly registers in the national consciousness. This is not to say that the BLS Advocate registers in the national consciousness, but it is at least a resource that other students can use to recognize that they are not alone.

This column is entitled Negligent Infliction of Emotional Distress because it may cause that in the reader. To be sure, I have never shied away from writing about controversial topics, and I have often paid the price. I expect to get a fair amount of hate mail after every column I write – but my goal is to inspire thoughtful comments that can start a conversation about reasonable values that we can all share as law students. Given its ubiquity, I felt that facebook would be the best topic for my inaugural column.

The Incident Giving Rise to this Column

On February 1, 2012, I posted a two-and-a-half minute video that was recorded on February 1, 2004. This video was shot in my dorm room at the 13th St. residence hall of NYU. The video was shot very late in the evening and involved some eight people. I narrated that we had all gotten married. Many of us were drinking and/or smoking cigarettes. I was two-and-a-half months shy of my 21st birthday, and most of the people there were under 21. A close relative of mine was also there. I wrote, “Happy 8th Wedding Anniversary!” and included the names of the four people that I had been married to that evening. I posted this around 11:00 PM and went to bed.
Around 6:00 AM, my phone beeped twice – two text messages. Next, it started ringing. I let it go to voice-mail, heard that a voice-mail was left, heard the phone ring again, let it go to voice-mail again, heard that a voice-mail was left again, and finally got out of bed. I saw the texts were from my close relative. “Take it down,” was all I needed to see to know what was up. I powered the phone down. Then, consumed by guilt and unable to fall asleep, I turned on my computer, went to facebook, and untagged everyone from the video. Then I was able to fall back asleep.
But not for long. The first thing I did after waking up a couple hours later was to check my e-mail and facebook. I also listened to my voice-mails, found there were four, heard my close relative call me an “asshole” in one of them, heard my close relative’s significant other leave a message that was very measured and polite, and finally heard my close relative crying, apparently walking on her way to work, about the horrible thing I had done.
In an e-mail, another friend in the video sent me a polite explanation, saying that he was an employee of the federal government, and he had actually just had a meeting about these sorts of things, and how people should protect their reputation at all costs, most especially on facebook. His argument held more water to me – and I took it down. My close relative continued to text me. I told her she had little reason to fear disciplinary action. She said she didn’t fear disciplinary action, but she took my lack of concern to be an affront to the reputation that she had worked very hard to build and maintain as a 27-year-old female in her workplace. I wrote, relax, it’s gone. I wanted to add, you can take that stick out of your ass now, but did not want to cause any greater ire.

Perhaps it is worth noting that another person in the video, a PHD candidate, did not object whatsoever, but rather commented on it nostalgically, saying it was a perfect representation of her college experience.

Perhaps it is also worth noting that this same close relative saw what I had written on my younger sister’s facebook wall. My younger sister is seventeen years old. She is waiting to hear back from University of Chicago. She is very smart and will probably be very successful in her career, perhaps because I had to move back home in 2008, and lived with her for two years, and was able to give her a fair amount of good advice. But I digress. The controversial post was a joke, sort of. We had gotten into the habit of playing Mario Party 8 on Wii. For those unfamiliar, Mario Party 8 is a game where you can have up to four players. You pick a character (Mario, Luigi, Toad, Toadette, Yoshi, Peach, Boo, Daisy, Dry Bones, Wario, Waluigi, Hammer Bro, Birdo, or Blooper), you pick a board (Tycoon Town being one of my personal favorites—as the strategy involves investing coins in hotels and gaining equity that determines how many stars you are entitled to and carrying as little cash as possible, so that when you have zero coins and land on a red space, and are supposed to lose three coins, you lose nothing –we shout “discharge!” when that happens and it is fun for all), and you pick how many turns you will play. Each turn ends with a mini-game, which takes about two minutes or so. The goal of the game is to get as many stars as possible. It is one of the best games for a real party and if anyone has a copy and wants me to play I will gladly put off writing my paper for Employment Law a few hours longer and play as many turns as you like. Moving on…we had gotten into the habit of playing 50-turn-games of Mario Party 8 – my younger sister, my younger brother, and me. I wrote a message to the effect that, we were reserving the television on December 23, 2011 from 6 PM – 1 AM for two, back-to-back 50-turn games of Mario Party, and that I would supply the adderall. When my father returned from the airport with my close relative in tow, he took me aside into his office and said, “Take all that stuff down! Don’t you realize that it is a violation of federal law to hand out prescription drugs? You are seriously jeopardizing your career by putting up crap like that!”

This prompted a response on my status a couple days later, to the effect that, people should realize that what I write on facebook is not meant to be taken seriously. Approximately half of the time, I am joking. Before you judge me based on what I write, please ask me what I meant. Context is everything.

With that long preamble in mind, I will now address the role of facebook in the typical law student’s life.

History

Before there was facebook, there was Friendster, and before there was Friendster, there was myspace, and before there was myspace there was…..nothing? Hardly. Before myspace there were chat rooms and dating sites – social networking in its infancy – and perhaps another brief story (this one truly brief, I promise) will be illustrative.

It was 1996. We had just gotten America Online installed on our home computer. I had gone on chat rooms with other friends before, but now I could do it on my own. I thought I had to pick a cool name. I looked at my shoes. Nike. Nike is kind of cool, but too obvious. How about I substitute a D for the N, and add the year? Sounds great! So, Dike96 became my screen name. When my parents found out about this, they were quite upset. It prompted this conversation with my mother: “Mom, what does Dike mean?” (It is worth noting here that there are two definitions of the word—and actually, with the spelling I used, mine was the more innocent of the two—but the internet has never been a place where double entendres are ignored). “It’s a derogatory term for a female homosexual,” she said. My parents were quite concerned that I would go into chat rooms with such a screen name and become an inevitable target for online predators – arguably still something of an obscurity in those days. The screen name was deleted, and when I got my own computer in December 1997, I started going by jckchicago on AIM.

What does this story illustrate? I don’t know. I joined Friendster and myspace sometime in 2003, and I joined facebook in early 2004. I like to think of myself as something of an “original” member who has held fast through the years and changes, and who has never compromised his artistic integrity by censoring anything he has posted (with the exception of using ****** to fill in swear words). People tell me I’m hard to find on facebook. This helps me feel less vulnerable. That I have two different names, which is confusing, is another factor that helps me feel safer than others when posting questionable content.

Law School and Facebook

In law school, you will go to events held by the career services center. They will tell you take anything that is even the least bit questionable off of your wall, and out of your photos or videos. They will tell you that it is not worth it to risk losing what is probably the most important job search of your life by leaving up some stupid picture of coughing out an ocean of smoke after a massive bong rip. The picture may be funny – yes – but it will automatically disqualify you for consideration for any job – especially one where they require a drug test (note here: USPS interns are required to take a drug test – you’ve been warned). It is monumentally stupid to allow anything that could potentially result in a reputational compromise to be seen by anyone, especially those in charge of hiring at a firm.

But what if no one actually searches facebook to spy on your profile? What if they can’t see your profile unless you accept them as a friend? I think most people are aware they can change certain privacy settings to avoid these kinds of situations from happening at all.

Moreover, what if no one wants to search facebook for your profile? What if you’re not the sharpest tool in the NYC Legal Market and you’re not going to be considered for any jobs, period? Then, what’s the big deal? Is the NYPD or District Attorney’s office going to search your profile, see some picture that may be probable cause for a warrant for possession of marijuana, and bring formal charges against you? No! Is your goofy younger brother going to think a joke about taking amphetamines to have the fortitude to make it through 100 turns of Mario Party is funny? Yes!

Maybe it’s worth noting that my friend count on facebook used to match my LSAT score, and my weight (somewhere in the low-to-mid 160s) and is now, two years later, up to 433. Obviously, being in school when you are on facebook can have a huge impact on the number of friends you have. My younger brother and sister, for example, have over 800 (perhaps my sister has over 1,000). Do they really know all of these people? I don’t know. But one thing is certain: the more friends you have, and the better you are at expressing your love for them, the stronger your “intangible asset” will be as we wade through this technologically-driven age. But I digress.

This is my criteria for being a facebook friend: you have to have had a meaningful conversation with the person you seek to add.

That is the only rule I abide by. I do not refer to myself as Christopher John or Christopher Jack or John Jack or Jack Johnson or C. Jack or Chris K. or Jack K. I use my name as people know me. I do not fear the facebook police, and neither should you.

Privacy is within the “penumbra” of rights recognized in the Constitution by the Supreme Court, and while this privacy generally refers to sexual matters, it should one day be expanded to cover communications on facebook. Facebook has just gone public. There’s $5 billion in shares out there. Of course, it’s your choice what you put out there, but honestly – why are you on it?

You are on it because everyone else is on it. You have cell phones because everyone else has cell phones. You text constantly (and have an unlimited number per month) because everyone texts constantly. You share pictures of cute kittens and puppies because everyone shares pictures of cute kittens and puppies. You are on it because you want to keep up with the friends that you don’t see everyday, or to take the friendships with those you do see every day to another, more surreal level. But also, you are on it just to stay connected – to “network” if the need arises (and that need will arise, if you believe that recent trends in the employment schemata are here to stay). And you are probably on LinkedIn for the same reason, but probably realize that facebook is probably a stronger tool than LinkedIn.

Now, I am on LinkedIn, and I post almost nothing on my profile (I don’t even think I have a picture yet), but there, I will exude professionalism. I am professional enough on facebook. I list all the places I have worked and I have no shame about what I post, who I tag, what I comment, or what pictures I retain in my profile.

But that day, back in December, when I wrote that status about asking before you judge, I added a hash tag, as has been my practice in comments or status updates deserving of some further witticism. The hash tag on this day in particular was, #iamnevertalkingtoanyoneeveragain, which is what Kafka wrote in one of his journal entries. The problem is thus an existential one that goes to the very heart of colloquial conversation with a friend, or classroom commentary – anything I say may be subject to someone else hearing without my expressed consent – and my reputation is bound to suffer, one way or another. Better not to speak, better not to say anything, better to sit quietly in our rooms for all of eternity, never speaking a controversial word, never composing an inflammatory sentence, waiting, quietly, for the polite offer of a job.
Of course, that’s not the way it is. I know I’m crazy. I know you won’t listen to me. So go on, keep telling everyone you’re so happy in your relationship, that you just got engaged, that you just got married. Tell people to look at your wedding photos and have them comment about how absolutely beautiful you look. Wish people a happy birthday when facebook tells you to do so. When you have a baby, take many pictures and post them often, so friends can keep commenting about how cute they are. When you get accepted for a prestigious fellowship, announce it to the world, so that everyone can congratulate you.

However, never announce that awesome grade you got in Evidence – that would be rude. Also, never go on personal attacks – it is just tres declassee. Finally, preach your politics to the most obnoxious degree possible. Point out how dumb Gingrich, Santorum, and Perry are, and decry homophobia, racism, and all other morally reprehensible positions, so long as your views fall in line with the norms endorsed by your influential associates, colleagues, and peers. Never admit that the view opposite yours holds any water whatsoever. Follow these rules, and success will be yours.

Christopher J. Knorps is a 2L at Brooklyn Law School. He has written two novels, a book of short stories, and a memoir of his 10-month-stint in L.A. None of his creative writings have ever been published in print form. He enjoys studying bankruptcy law. He ranks in the upper 55% of his class. You may find his blog by visiting flyinghouses.blogspot.com. It consists primarily of book reviews, a dozen or so film and music reviews, a few pieces of sports journalism, and a light smattering of “special comments” about the study of law in 2010-2012.

Special Comment: The Dismantling of the Chicago Cubs

Not long ago on my facebook wall, I posted a link to my last post on Flying Houses about the Cubs—a report card for every player at the end of the 2009 season. Appended to this was a comment that included five things the Cubs must do to win in 2012. Here is what they were:

Top 5 things to do to win in 2012:
5) Re-sign Carlos Pena, or else an awesome 1st baseman.
4) Get another high quality starter - an ace. Matt Garza is okay, but I don't think he qualifies as an ace.
3) Give Carlos Marmol one more chance ...to close - if he blows 5 saves by the all-star-break, we can say that he is suffering from "mark wohlers-syndrome" and should be sent to AAA and given mental health therapy.
2) Keep Zambrano for pinch-hitting purposes. Allow him to pitch if he promises to behave himself. Reign him in. Turn him back into the player he once was. Get him to make the all-star-team. Get him to win the Cy Young. Turn him into a different person. Make it the feel-good story of the year. Numbers such as 19-7, 3.26 e.r.a. 200+ IP 200+ K's, 10 HRs, no hitter #2.
1) Hire the right manager to make #2 happen. Since Sandberg is not an option, and I am not exactly excited about Sveum, convince Tony LaRussa to reconsider his retirement by offering performanced-based incentives involving a sliding-scale of donations up to $10 million to ASPCA.
-November 13, 2011

Theo Epstein came in and was greeted as if he were the Messiah. He was 28 when he joined the Boston Red Sox, and helped lead them to their first World Series in a very long time in 2004. I recently watched Moneyball and (spoiler alert) apparently Billy Beane interviewed to be the GM of the Red Sox in 2003. Had he taken this job, perhaps Theo never would have made his big splash, and I would not be writing this post.

The Cubs are now a completely different animal than they were in 1998, 2003, 2007, and 2008, the four times they went to the playoffs in semi-recent years. These playoff runs were sparked by several players and managers: Kerry Wood, Dusty Baker, Lou Piniella, Carlos Zambrano, Aramis Ramirez, Mark DeRosa, Carlos Marmol, Derrek Lee, Ryan Theriot, Geovany Soto, and arguably Alfonso Soriano. With the trade of Carlos Zambrano yesterday, my anger reached its pitch.

I screamed, “NO!” This is was a far more emotional reaction than the one I had upon hearing that David Foster Wallace had just hung himself—the same night Carlos Zambrano threw his no-hitter against the Astros when the Cubs played as the “home team” in Miller Park. Probably, no one will agree with me on this issue, but the loss of Carlos Zambrano signals the end of an era. Everyone thinks we will be better off without him. Only time will tell, and truly, Ozzie Guillen and him are a match made in heaven. But Zambrano, who has said he will retire at 30, and now is about 30, may have ten good years left of pitching in him yet. He may still turn it around yet, and could still make the Hall of Fame if he were able to pitch the way he did from 2003-2007. There is no telling what is going on inside his mind at any time. But he was never boring to watch. That he was brought in to pinch-hit, and that he was more exciting to watch at the plate than nearly every other position player, further validates that he is a player of extraordinary talent that should have been given one more chance to stay with the Cubs. Instead, they’ll pay $15 million for him to pitch against them. Smart, very smart, everyone says. Volstad is younger, and may still be great yet, they say.

Theo Epstein has made many mistakes in his first couple months with the Cubs, and nobody seems to care except me. He is rebuilding the ballclub. They will not contend in 2012, unless some sort of miracle happens. They are aiming to win by about 2014—“Cubs win World Series – SWEEP – against Miami?” Well Miami will need to switch to the American League for that to happen, or at least there will need to be an NLCS showdown so that Back to the Future Part 2 will be prescient.
Regardless, the Cubs will not be a fun team to watch in 2012. The only players they have left that have any kind of entertainment value are Soriano, Soto, Marlon Byrd, Carlos Marmol, and obviously, Starlin Castro. Kerry Wood will be addressed later, and Matt Garza, it seems, is destined to leave as well. But now, it is important that Epstein’s major mistakes be highlighted:

#1: Not Hiring Ryne Sandberg as Manager
They had the chance last year, and they blew it. They had the chance this year, and they formally acknowledged that they would not ask him to join the team. This was the first sign that life was going to be miserable at Wrigley Field this year.

Ryne Sandberg (or “Ryno” as I like to call him) is a Hall of Famer. He played almost his entire career on the Cubs. He was a big part of their playoff runs in 1984 and 1989. I grew up watching and idolizing him. He was my childhood hero. I grew up watching the Cubs in the early 90s, when they had Sandberg, Mark Grace, Greg Maddux, and Andre Dawson. Two of the four are in the Hall, Maddux is undoubtedly going in immediately upon eligibility, and Mark Grace probably deserves a spot too, even though his only record may be compiling the most hits in the 1990s.

But Ryno was special, and has become more special since making it into the Hall. He was always a quiet player, but he decided to open up more, and his stints working his way up through the Cubs minor league system were attached with the presumption that one day, he would take the reins from Lou Piniella. He was ejected several times. He became a fiery manager. His teams did very well. Then Lou exited, Quade entered, Sandberg was passed over, went to the Phillies. The Cubs betrayed him, and I felt betrayed.

Theo had the chance to open up his tenure with a bold move that would have caused a riot. There is no manager that Cubs fans would have been happier with. I would have watched every single game just to see Ryno, and it would fill me with so much happiness to know that the player I grew up with, my hero, was back on the team, and playing as important a role as ever. Whatever excuses were made about any potential issues of Ryno’s experience are just lies used to justify a decision that is Theo’s attempt to change the “culture” around the Cubs. The “culture” (of losing, of drinking, and of ecstatic excitement in recent years when it looked like things were about to change anyways) is what makes the team great, the most popular team in baseball after the Yankees and Red Sox. Theo wants the Cubs to be like Red Sox, or maybe the Rays. Maybe it’ll “pay off” in a couple years, but the team I love is gone.

#2: Trading Sean Marshall

Sean Marshall was the lone bright spot on the extremely disappointing team last season (aside from Starlin). He was one of the best relievers in baseball. The Cubs got Travis Wood in return. I think he’s a starter, or something, and they needed one? Regardless, it shows that Theo has no idea what he is doing.

#3: Trading Tyler Colvin

I know, I know, Tyler Colvin had a terrible season last year. But he had a very good rookie year and it’s possible he can bounce back and be the all-star caliber player that he showed flashes of during his first year. Theo simply has no faith in certain players. Theo wants every single possible Cub to leave and start afresh. I want to throw up.

#4: Zambrano

Zambrano has already been addressed above. This is the move that really set me off though. I hope Carlos Zambrano wins the Cy Young award this year and beats the Cubs whenever he pitches against them. This sounds extremely perverse, but it would prove me right, and we all know I care more about being right than about the Cubs winning a championship.

#5: Garza, Wood, Etc. (Whatever Stupid Moves Theo Will Make Next)

It seems like a given that Garza will be gone – who was probably the only pitcher on the team that came close to being Ace material. If Kerry Wood leaves for another team, then I am going to kill myself. If he retires, that’s another matter entirely. Kerry Wood is not an essential element to the team, but he is the only player left from 1998. He is Pure Cub. He needs to stay on the team. He is still very effective. But if he leaves Chicago for another team, because Theo doesn’t want him there anymore, I’m going to kill myself. Kerry Wood is the best player to keep the “locker room” together. He is a “clubhouse” guy. On top of that, he is a nice person.

If Garza stays by some act of God, then MAYBE I can muster watching a game or two this year. Marlon Byrd is a great player, I love him. Everybody knows I have a soft spot for Soriano. Starlin is the Man. Carlos Marmol can bounce back. Ryan Dempster can be his old reliable self – arguably, the strongest “glue” player on the team after Kerry Wood. Soto can bounce back, call some great games, and be an all-star caliber player if he can get it together. Blake Dewitt, I’ve got no problem with, he can play every day as far as I’m concerned. (Mark DeRosa was available as a free agent, and Theo was moronic for not even considering bringing him back—I know he is past his prime, but I also know he was more effective in Chicago than any other place, and he was one of my personal favorites – I never saw him make any dumb mistakes.)

Theo did not try to get Pujols. This is understandable. Theo didn’t bother trying to keep Ramirez. That too, is understandable. Prince Fielder is the last major free agent left on the market. If Theo picks up Prince, then maybe, just maybe, I could applaud a single move he makes. But he has revealed himself to be a totalitarian dictator that wants to change the “culture” of the Cubs. You know what? I’ve been a Cubs fan all my life and I’ve loved this team as much as anyone – even when they were at their worst. But everything I’ve loved about them is gone, and they’ve been replaced with this “wunderkind” who plays stats just like everyone else is doing now and cares nothing for what the fans want to see. I hope Wrigley Field falls a hundred thousand visitors short this year. I hope real Cubs fans will boycott this team. I’ll be in New York, and I’ll pay attention, sure, but I really won’t care about missing the chance to watch them play on TV. They’re going to be terrible this year, and while all this nonsense may pay off one day, Theo has crushed my dreams. This could have been a really exciting year. The Cubs had enough guys, that, with a couple smart moves, could have gone the distance. Maybe Dale Sveum will be a good manager, but big bad Carlos was too much of a liability—they were too afraid to even bother giving him another chance.

Carlos’s anger at the team last year reflected my own – it was a team that had lost its will to succeed. “We sucks,” he said. They did. He was right. Make no mistake – he’s a loose cannon all right –and walking out on the team in Atlanta was kind of a messed up thing to do. Fighting with Derrek Lee, kind of a messed up thing to do. Fighting with Michael Barrett, kind of a messed up thing to do. However, throwing a no-hitter? Awesome. Hitting a bunch of home runs? Awesome. Carlos was unpredictable, and that is what made him fun to watch. He was never boring. He was as emotional and crazy as anyone in baseball this side of Miguel Cabrera. I loved him for it. And I prayed that he could stay—just one more chance—and that he could come back and carry the team on his back to the playoffs. But all those dreams are gone. Theo drew a line in the sand with this move. I imagine a lot of Cubs fans will be very happy to have Carlos gone, but not me. I’ve disagreed with every single thing that Theo has done so far. I may be no expert, but my knowledge of the Cubs is pretty darn good. I know this team is fueled by psychological nuance. Theo wants to forget about all that junk about curses and such. What he doesn’t realize is that he’s just the latest one to hit the North Side.

The Nine: Inside the Secret World of the Supreme Court - Jeffrey Toobin

About nine months ago, my seat buddy in Constitutional Law asked me, "Have you read The Nine?" A few months later, at my 10th high school reunion, a recent J.D. recipient and classmate asked the same question. I said no, but I joked vociferously with him about the Supreme Court. He said the book showed that the justices just liked to squabble all the time. It made it seem funny.

Turning into a nerd, I started joking all too often about the Supreme Court. Truly, the justices were the greatest political celebrities in America. They may be the greatest celebrities of all, though I am sure Snooki commands a greater majority of the public consciousness than Stephen Breyer. Over this winter break, my nerdiness reached its absolute. Recognizing that my family had 9 members, I decided it would be appropriate to institute a family court. All decisions that affected all members of the family significantly would have to be voted on, with a majority opinion written which would then contain "holdings" for future decisions. My hope is that the practice would be handed down from generation to generation. Whenever a family member died, rules were in place to appoint replacements. However, all opinions would be "advisory," which Supreme Court opinions never are. This caused considerable confusion, but it was fun to attach a justice to each member of our family:

Dad - John Roberts (Dad was offered the position of Chief Justice, but gave it to Mom. They look alike and are conservative - though Dad would never admit as much, having supported Obama - and both have a son named Jack.)
Mom - Ruth Bader Ginsburg (Their political ideologies are almost perfectly aligned.)
Brooke - Sonia Sotomayor (Liberal, and with a middle name of "Vanessa" the most vaguely Hispanic - though I am not sure Vanessa has any Hispanic implications whatsoever.)
Marc - Stephen Breyer (Only because he looks 10 years younger than he is.)
Lindsay - Samuel Alito (There is no good reason for this - except that his seat was Sandra Day O'Connor's, and they wanted a woman to replace her, but they got him instead.)
Me - Antonin Scalia (We are at opposite ends of the political spectrum - but we are both also incredibly angry, enjoy grandstanding, and have a flair for incendiary prose.)
Michael - Anthony Kennedy (He is unpredictable, the "swing justice," the most powerful man in America.)
Emma - Clarence Thomas (She is the most black, and extremely conservative.)

I bought The Nine for Michael as a Christmas present. Before Christmas, I did my best to get through as much of it as possible. Whatever ringing endorsements there may be for it are all true. This book is essential reading for all law students, and for anyone else interested in what is probably the most important branch of government.

The focus of the book is on the nine justices that served together for the longest period in American history, 1994 - 2005: Rehnquist, Stevens, O'Connor, Scalia, Kennedy, Souter, Thomas, Ginsburg, and Breyer. The area addressed is (almost) exclusively Constitutional Law. Any 1Ls (or 2Ls at certain schools, I am told) that have not taken this course will be well-served to read it. I got a B in Con Law last year. I've written enough about my failure to address the Commerce Clause, but this book serves as an effective "nutshell" for a very high percentage of cases that will be covered in that course (had I read it, I might have gotten an A-, given my professor's then-seemingly peculiar method of placing the justices on a line from left to right). Those cases are:

-Roe v. Wade (+ Planned Parenthood v. Casey, Stenberg v. Carhart, and Gonzales v. Carhart)
-Grutter/Gratz v. Bollinger (+Adarand v. Pena, Bakke v. Regents of University of California, and the Louisville/Seattle school district cases that close out the text.)
-Bush v. Gore (+ Clinton v. Jones)
-United States v. Lopez (+United States v. Morrison and Gonzales v. Raich)
-Hamdi v. Rumsfeld (+Rasul v. Bush, Hamdan v. Rumsfeld, and Boumedienne v. Bush)
-Kelo v. City of New London
-Lawrence v. Texas (+Bowers v. Hardwick)
-District of Columbia v. Heller (in the Afterword)

There are many others I am forgetting. But aside from being an entertaining primer and supplement to the sometimes inscrutable language of their opinions, the book is above all, a great mini-biography of all the justices.

John Paul Stevens probably comes across as the most admirable. He was still serving at 89 (90?), and stayed on the Court nearly as long as anyone in history. More importantly he was from Chicago and went to Northwestern Law rather than Yale or Harvard. His vote was not always that predictable, but in later years he moved to the left. He always applied a certain degree of common sense in his decisions that is a breath of fresh air, considering the underlying theme of this book: the conservative movement to control the Court.

It's extremely disturbing to read about hardcore Federalists and Evangelicals. However, Toobin notes near the very end that, "They organized more, mobilized more, and cared more about the Court than their liberal counterparts. And when their candidate won the presidency, these conservatives demanded more--a pair of justices who were precisely to their liking [Roberts and Alito] (and the ejection of one nominee, Harriet Miers, who was not). With admirable candor, and even greater passion, conservatives have invested in the Court to advance their goals for the country." (393) It seems clear that Toobin favors liberals, but he does not seem to criticize conservatives unfairly. However, I do not want this review to dissolve into a discussion of partisan politics. The Nine will provide a heavy education if you are seeking that. Needless to say, I consider the squabbles between liberals and conservatives over affirmative action and abortion and gay rights extraordinarily annoying, and heavily favor O'Connor's view of judicial independence. Anyone that votes along partisan lines without considering the issue from their own independent point of view as an individual deeply steeped in the practice of law is abusing the system. Judges are not supposed to be partisan. But they are. This is the ultimate take-away from the book.

Sandra Day O'Connor was the most powerful woman in America during her time on the Court. She was quite conservative, and her move to the center, and then the left, makes for a fascinating read. She was the original "swing justice" and controlled the Court. Toobin takes pains to point out that O'Connor, better than any other justice (with perhaps Stevens in 2nd), tried to vote on every decision as she thought the American popular consciousness would vote. And most of the time she got it right. Except in Bush v. Gore.

Bush v. Gore merits special mention because it was sort of glossed over in my Con Law class, but is described in such minute detail in The Nine that it takes up its own special section of the book (Part Two of Four). Toobin frankly seems obsessed with this decision. He has very strong opinions about it: "The struggle following the election of 2000 took thirty-six days, and the Court was directly involved for twenty-one of them. Yet over this brief period, the justices displayed all of their worst traits--among them vanity, overconfidence, impatience, arrogance, and simple political partisanship. These three weeks taint an otherwise largely admirable legacy. The justices did almost everything wrong. They embarrassed themselves and the Supreme Court." (165)

It is worth noting that Stevens is perhaps the only one that didn't embarrass himself in this case. Toobin cites a "peroration" that Stevens composed from his home in Fort Lauderdale that pretty much sums it up perfectly: "Time will one day heal the wound to that confidence [in the men and women who administer the judicial system that is the true backbone of the rule of law] that will be inflicted by today's decision. One thing, however, is certain. Although we may never know with complete certainty the identity of the winner of this year's Presidential election, the identity of the loser is perfectly [formerly "pellucidly," as Toobin notes] clear. It is the Nation's confidence in the judge as an impartial guardian of the rule of law." (207)

David Souter nearly resigned after Bush v. Gore. It took a serious toll on him. It seems clear that the he hated serving on the Court. This is probably an exaggeration. However, he comes across as, by far, the most interesting person in the book. One would naturally assume that Scalia provides most of the entertainment in this book, but it is actually Souter who is hilarious.

"Fifty-two years old and a lifelong bachelor, he had the habits of a gentleman from another century. During the day, he would leave the lights off in his office and maneuver his chair around the room, reading briefs by the sun. He ate the same thing for lunch every day: an entire apple, including the core and seeds, with a cup of yogurt. When the justices sat together in the dining room, the two items would be delivered to Souter on the same fine china that served his colleagues; Souter was familiar with Coca-Cola, but he had never heard of a beverage that several of the other justices favored--Diet Coke. Souter did all his writing by fountain pen. Perhaps the best known fact about the new justice was that when Warren Rudman, the New Hampshire senator who was Souter's friend and patron, gave Souter his first television set, he apparently never plugged it in." (51-52)

I could cite more examples but I don't want to spoil it all. Just one more to highlight the awesomeness of being a federal judge:

"Souter had minimal financial obligations and a lifestyle that hovered somewhere between modest and ascetic. He had no wife, no children, a venerable family homestead in New Hampshire, and a small apartment in an unfashionable neighborhood in Washington. He worked about seventy hours a week, and his main hobby was jogging. In the annual disclosure that the justices are required to file, Scalia reported being reimbursed in 2003 by universities and bar associations for twenty-one trips, several of them abroad; O'Connor came in second among the justices with nineteen. Souter was last, as usual, with none. He also reported no outside income from speeches or publications and no gifts. Still, Souter's New England frugality was one factor that kept him on the Court when he thought about resigning after Bush v. Gore. Years earlier, he had invested in local bank stocks in his home region, and after a series of takeovers, the value of his shares had soared. By 2003, he reported cash and stock assets between $5.2 million and $25.5 million, nearly tying with Ginsburg for the highest on the Court. But Souter was also acutely aware that federal judges were entitled to retire with full salary after fifteen years on the bench, a benefit that would become available to him in 2005, when he would be sixty-six. A resignation before that point would forfeit his full pension, so he told friends he thought it would be unwise to forgo that bounty. It was characteristic of his quirky personality that he would worry about his pension when he had little need for it--and almost nothing to spend it on--but Souter's colleagues were used to his eccentricities." (283-284)

Anthony Kennedy is probably the second most eccentric justice profiled in the book. He has a flair for the dramatic. His "sweet mystery of life" passage from Casey is mentioned more than a couple times. His prose is purple. However, I happen to like it most of the time. Also, though conservative, I tend to agree with a lot of his decisions. He is referred to as "the most dangerous man in America" when he seems to turn his back on the conservative movement by joining the "troika" of Souter and O'Connor in Casey, but now that O'Connor has retired, he is the ultimate "swing justice" and the most powerful man in America. (Everyone knows that he will cast the deciding vote on the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act in June 2012--but then again, it would be just like the Court to surprise everyone on this issue. Further speculation on this issue is likely to be rendered moot and I do not like Flying Houses to exhibit obsolescence.)

His opinion in Roper v. Simmons (a case with which I am not intimately familiar) is emphasized because he pointed to the practices of other countries in generally not allowing the death penalty for juvenile offenders (the only countries that did allow it were Iran, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Nigeria, the Democratic Republic of Congo, and China) and this greatly offended conservatives. There are some funny parts about him too, but probably the best is when Tom DeLay chastises him for doing research on the internet. But his chambers are (is?) worth noting:

"Understatement was the rule for the decor in most justices' chambers. Everyone had a few personal touches--O'Connor employed a southwestern motif, with Native American blankets and curios; Ginsburg had opera mementos; Stevens had the box score from the World Series game in 1932 when Babe Ruth hit his 'called shot' home run against the Chicago Cubs. (Stevens had attended the game as a twelve-year-old boy.) Kennedy, in contrast, installed a plush red carpet, more suited to a theater set than a judge's chambers. Worse (or better, depending on one's perspective), the carpet was festooned with gold stars--garish touches that made the office a sort of comic tourist attraction for law clerks and other insiders. All of the justices had the right to borrow paintings from the National Gallery, but Kennedy had taken the fullest advantage, plucking several near-masterpieces from the collection. What was more, he wedged his desk into the far corner of his office, away from the door, so that visitors had to traverse the expanse of his room to shake his hand. It was an office that tried hard, maybe too hard, to impress. (Kennedy even labored on his magnificent view of the east front of the Capitol. When Congress announced plans to build a massive visitors' center between the Court and the Capitol, Kennedy took the lead in lobbying the legislators to make sure it was built entirely below ground, so as not to disrupt his vista. The negotiations turned out to be surprisingly complex, and lasted for years, but Kennedy won this battle, and the view from the Court was largely preserved.)" (172)

Antonin Scalia deserves mention next, as he was appointed close to the same time as Kennedy, and was actually his classmate, and former running partner. They are also close to the same age and likely to retire around the same time. Scalia is probably one of the most noteworthy members of the Supreme Court ever. He had 9 kids. He is of Sicilian descent. He was raised in Elmhurst, Queens. I think he is a Mets fan. I am very fond of his dissent in Romer v. Evans because of his bizarre mention of a law firm interviewee's hating the Chicago Cubs being permissible grounds for denial of an offer. Scalia rarely wrote important majority opinions, and probably has the all time record for dissents. His ideology may be abhorrent to me, but my feelings about him are much more complicated. I really respect his ability to "humanize" the Court and lighten the mood. I am also of Sicilian descent, and Catholic. Also, I totally agree with him about Crawford:

"In two decades on a generally conservative Court, his number of important majority opinions was almost shockingly small; asked at a public forum his favorite of his opinions--a common question for the justices in such settings--he came up with an esoteric case interpreting the Confrontation Clause of the Sixth Amendment." (368-369)

If this is indeed a reference to Crawford v. Washington (US, 2004), Toobin is making a serious mistake by calling it an "esoteric case." Crawford is one of the most important cases in the study of Evidence. Scalia draws upon practically the whole of human history in the development of the Confrontation Clause of the 6th Amendment. It makes for one of the more interesting reads that the Supreme Court has produced, at least for its storytelling quality of the trial of Sir Walter Raleigh in 1602. Furthermore, his recent dissent in Michigan v. Bryant (US, 2011) is also worth a read. Scalia feels very strongly about the Confrontation Clause, and I am inclined to agree with him on it. Moreover, he is often "a voice in the wilderness" and no one joins his dissents. This makes me feel bad for him in a way, and also makes me feel closer to him, because I feel the same way a lot of the time. His rejoinder to the editor of the Boston Herald after a reporter had written about his making an "obscene gesture" at a church is worth quoting at length:

"Your reporter, an up-and-coming 'gotcha' star named Laurel J. Sweet, asked me (oh-so-sweetly) what I said to those people who objected to my taking part in such public religious ceremonies as the Red Mass I had just attended. I responded, jocularly, with a gesture that consisted of fanning the fingers of my right hand under my chin. Seeing that she did not understand, I said, 'That's Sicilian,' and explained its meaning--which was that I could not care less. That this is in fact the import of the gesture was nicely explained and exemplified in a book that was very popular some years ago, Luigi Barzini's The Italians: 'The extended fingers of one hand moving slowly back and forth under the raised chin means: 'I couldn't care less. It's no business of mine. Count me out.'...How could your reporter leap to the conclusion (contrary to my explanation) that the gesture was obscene? Alas, the explanation is evident in the following line of her article: '"That's Sicilian," the Italian jurist said, interpreting for the "Sopranos" challenged.' From watching too many episodes of the Sopranos, your staff seems to have acquired the belief that any Sicilian gesture is obscene--especially when made by an 'Italian jurist.' (I am, by the way, an American jurist.)" (370)

Clarence Thomas dispels the notion that Scalia does all the work for him in this book. He may often vote with Scalia, but he is actually more conservative. By far the juiciest part of the book details his confirmation hearings. Flying Houses tries to avoid gossip better suited to tabloids and this is old news anyways. Thomas is noteworthy for being especially quiet. He has not asked a question during oral arguments in years. Perhaps this gives the impression that he really does not like his job. He always votes against affirmative action, and hates it, though he himself is a beneficiary of it. He is probably the most controversial member of the Court. However, Toobin points out that he is also universally beloved, and extremely nice to everyone in the building. He makes a personal effort to know the names of the cafeteria workers. He befriends a lesbian couple and keeps the picture of one of them, a snowboarder, on his desk. He also occasionally gives interesting speeches.

"He had an understandable sensitivity to the common (and false) notion that he functioned as Scalia's pawn on the Court. This idea was absurd not least because the two justices' voting records were different, with Thomas well to the right of his senior colleague. What was notable, though, was that Thomas attributed this canard to racial, not political, bias. As he put it in a speech in Louisville, 'Because I'm black, it is said that Justice Scalia does my work for me. I understand how that works. But I rarely see him, so he must have a chip in my brain that tells me what to do.'" (126)

More egregious is the Media Research Center's annual dinner story:

"After speeches by Michael Reagan, the president's son and a talk show host, and Oliver North, also at the time a figure in right-wing radio, the climax of the evening came with the presentation of the 'I'm-a-Compassionate-Liberal-but-I-Wish-You-Were-Dead Award for Media Hatred of Conservatives.' This award was presented to an obscure columnist named Julianne Malveaux, for saying in a cable television interview about Thomas, 'I hope his wife feeds him lots of eggs and butter and he dies early like a lot of black men do.' Thomas had been laughing so hard early in the evening that Evans, the MC, said to him, 'Justice Thomas, you are a great audience, too.' When Thomas stepped up to the microphone to 'accept' the award for Malveaux, he received a standing ovation. 'Thank you,' the justice said, still laughing. 'Normally, we are busy. This is a sitting week, so we have cases to decide tomorrow morning at 9:30, and I usually spend this night working. But we realized that this was such an important occasion that we decided it was time to put aside our personal obligations, the Constitution, the work of the Court, our little nephew, to attend...I am pleased to accept this award on behalf of Suzanne Malveaux.' Thomas had mixed up Suzanne, a CNN correspondent, with her distant cousin Julianne; both are African American women. As always, the confirmation hearings were never far from Thomas's mind. 'As I was listening to those awards, I was hoping that Nina Totenberg would also share in it,' he said. Totenberg, the NPR legal affairs correspondent, had played an important role in bringing Anita Hill's story to the public. 'I have finally had the opportunity to have my surgeon remove her many stilettos from my back, and I'd like to return them.'" (132)

By contrast there is very little interesting to say about either Breyer or Ginsburg. They are both liberals, both former law professors, and generally vote in a reasonable manner. Breyer is probably the most obscure member of the current Court. His expertise was in Administrative Law. He always likes to avoid conflicts and tries to make compromises with all of the other justices. He also really enjoys his work on the Court. He stays in good shape. Ginsburg, by contrast, seems annoyed most of the time. She writes very well, and has been extremely influential in the field of women's rights. However, if anyone watched the State of the Union Address last January and saw her basically face-forward asleep, it's clear she hates formal committments that have little meaning. Also, it's clear the work on the Court is not for the faint of heart. Who knows how they have the energy to deal with all that reading and writing? Ginsburg and Breyer were both nominated one after the other by Clinton (not unlike Roberts and Alito by Bush) in the wake of Byron White's and Harry Blackmun's retirements. Along with these two, Lewis Powell also figures somewhat prominently in this book as a friend and mentor to O'Connor, and the author of the Bakke opinion. The friendship between O'Connor and Breyer is also heavily emphasized. But really, most of what comes across in this book is the absolute mess that Clinton made in his search for replacement justices. It took an incredibly long period of time and he went through dozens of options.

This is one of my major complaints about the book. There is a very heavy focus on the "search" for replacement Supreme Court justices. Probably 50-75 pages of the text are taken up on this issue. Now, this will prove very useful to any reader (perhaps an 8th grader) that wants to set themselves up perfectly for an appointment (as apparently Roberts did). But to the rest of us it is just depressing. The lengthy background questionnaire you have to fill out is just scary. The scrutiny is unbelievable. However, Thomas managed to get confirmed despite his controversies, so maybe it's not all bad. Just so long as you can prove you're going to make the right vote, you should be fine. It also helps to have some experience as an actual judge.

We end this lengthy review with William Rehnquist, who, near the end of his tenure as Chief, stopped caring about the reasoning in the opinion and just cared about the votes. He thought that was all anybody cared about anyways, and the reasoning would get overruled eventually too, so who cares. He was meticulous when it came to being on time and keeping the Court efficient and organized. He knew O'Connor from their days at Stanford together. They were friends for 50 years. He was very conservative, but eventually, he stopped caring so much about the "cause" and arguably moved a tad towards the middle. His health problems are emphasized in the book:

"For a large, strapping man, Rehnquist had a delicate constitution. He had a chronically bad back, from an injury he sustained while gardening, and the pain would sometimes cause him to stand up during oral arguments at the Court and take a few steps behind his chair. In the early 1980s, he was even hospitalized for the back problems, and the treatment created new issues. The painkillers caused him to slur his words, and the problem became embarassingly noticeable when he asked questions in Court. The FBI investigation in connection with his promotion to chief justice revealed that Rehnquist's medical problems were more serious than the public was led to believe. He had been addicted to the sedative Placidyl for at least four years, and when he was hospitalized during his withdrawal from the medication in 1981, he suffered hallucinations. On one occasion, he told a nurse that 'Voices outside the room are saying they're going to kill the president.' Still, by the time he became chief, in 1986, his condition appears to have stabilized, in part because he took up tennis. Even though he was entitled to hire four law clerks, he generally took only three, which suited his weekly doubles game." (37-38)

The book came closest to bringing tears to my eyes during a particularly moving passage near the end of Rehnquist's tenure:

"In truth, Rehnquist was a tired old man in the spring of 2004. And he had grown cynical about the work of the Court. Over the years, his opinions had become more terse and cryptic because he had come to think that only the results, not how the justices explained them, really mattered. As Rehnquist told one colleague, who was shocked by the chief's gloom, 'Don't worry about the analysis and the principles in the case. Just make sure that the result is a good one this time around--because those principles you announce will be ignored in the next case." (276)

"In 2004, Stevens was eighty-four, the oldest among them, but he enjoyed robust health and no affinity for the president who would appoint his replacement. Rehnquist, closing in on eighty himself, was the most likely to leave. He had spoken candidly of his belief that justices should hand their seats to the party of the presidents who appointed them, and George W. Bush's conservatives politics reflected his own. But Rehnquist didn't want to retire. He was a widower who lived in a small town house in suburban Virginia. His three children were long grown. He liked his job and his colleagues. His health was satisfactory, if not robust. With his trademark directness, Rehnquist would point out the grim truth about retirees from the Supreme Court: all they did was die, usually sooner rather than later." (277)

I'll leave it there rather than spoil it any further, but I was quite shocked by Rehnquist's condition at the end of his time on the Court. I think I have said all I need to say about this book--except that it ends on a note of uncertainty--whether Obama or McCain would win in 2008. We know what happened, and we know Sotomayor and Kagan are now on the Court and that it is pretty much split down the middle with Kennedy. I read an article in the Tribune today about how both Clarence Thomas and Elena Kagan should recuse themselves from the Affordable Care Act decision. They cancel each other out anyways. The conservatives will fight tirelessly to get Kagan to recuse herself, and the liberals will fight (perhaps with less vigor) to get Thomas to recuse himself. "Politricks" at work to again....It makes me sick.

But if you care at all about politics, you owe it to yourself to read The Nine. I doubt you will be disappointed.

Manic: A Memoir - Terri Cheney

My first year of law school was an emotional roller coaster ride. One year ago today, I was seriously debating dropping out, taking my $10,000 in debt, and walking away from it all. It clearly was not worth it. Yet something told me I would be too afraid, thinking that all of my friends and family and colleagues would judge me for wasting so many years studying for the LSAT, applying to schools, and getting this "higher degree" of education on track. Here I am halfway through. The second year has been better (so far - and we do not yet know our grades), but the anxiety will never end until we find our job and support ourselves like normal people are supposed to do.

I digress. I often told my older sister about this strange phenomenon which I had been experiencing since 2008 or so. I called it a "rapid rapid cycle of manic depression" - a term I had gleaned from wikipedia. Basically, it involved a cycle from a manic to depressed state every 24 to 48 hours. For me, it was every other day. Sunday I would go to bed hating life inordinately. I would pray that I would have a heart attack in my sleep and never wake up, never have to grow older and get lonelier, never have to go on welfare, never have to live sober and try to attain happiness. A little part of me would say, it's okay, tomorrow, you'll have your rocket fuel. Monday I would wake up and feel this sense of empowerment, like I could do anything. I could sit down to study and be enormously productive. I could talk to everyone without feeling self-conscious. However, I would have trouble falling asleep Monday night. Tuesday would be depression. Wednesday would be mania. Thursday would be depression. Friday would be mania. And so on. The only way to subtly affect this pattern was to self-medicate. My sister told me I should read Manic so I did.

Manic is the story of a woman who clearly suffers from manic-depression. Anybody who reads this book will inevitably think of James Frey and his famous fake memoir A Million Little Pieces. I have not read that book, but this memoir presents scenes that are so over-the-top that a reader cannot help but think that Cheney, a lawyer, is using a little bit of hyperbole for emotional heft. However, Cheney comes off as sincere, and her goal in writing the memoir wholly admirable. Who knows what Frey's intent was - warn against the dangers of drug addiction? I do not know. I do not want to particularly read that book as it seems a waste of time.

Many people may consider this book a waste of time but it is relatively short. It took me a while to read because of other obligations. However, the main audience for this book is manic-depressive attorneys or law students. There is little to no legal jargon in this book so non-attorneys will probably enjoy it more and the myth that a professional career in law is a surefire way to a lavish lifestyle will be propagated just a tad bit more. To be fair, Cheney leaves her job in the legal world behind in the end to write, and explains it in this pithy aside:

"It took me sixteen years to realize this. Sixteen years of reassuring myself on the way to work every morning that there's no such thing as a happy lawyer. It was just this particular case I was working on, this client, this judge, the latest Supreme Court ruling, the airborne viruses in my corner office. Perhaps if I tried another firm. So I tried another firm, several other firms in fact, each one bigger and better and more prestigious than the last. I landed higher-profile clients and took long, exotic vacations, and made a considerable amount of money. And I went to parties, a whole lot of parties, for every cause imaginable, or no cause at all. I billed the time regardless.....
If you nurture it long enough, a lie can become a life. Bad nights don't surprise you much after sixteen years. You come to expect them. You just don't expect them to go on forever. I should have known that the bout of depression that finally ended my career was the worst one yet, when I ran out of business cards and didn't have the energy to order new ones. Nothing mattered to me at that point except the pain, and the pain was everywhere." (234-235)


Cheney was an entertainment lawyer, arguably the dream job of many a law student (myself included, though I don't pursue it relentlessly as I go to school in New York, not L.A. - Cheney went to UCLA Law). To repeat, she does not write so much about her daily practice as much as her "pharmaceutical cornucopia." Perhaps it was reading this book that finally led me to see a psychiatrist and obtain prescriptions for Celexa, Ambien, Klonopin, Ritalin, and Adderall. The combination has worked well for me over the last few months but the concerns about chemical dependence remain. I do not recall many passages parlaying this particular concern, but I do believe Cheney mentions that she will probably be on medication for the rest of her life. She does, at the end, point to the need for sobriety, as many non-diagnosed depressives tend to self-medicate.

There are many memorable episodes in this memoir--chief amongst them a few suicide attempts, and stays in psychiatric wards. There is also a whiff of the bizarre, when Cheney describes her relationship with food, when going through depressive episodes where she would sleep 20-22 hours a day, and eat for the time she was awake:

"My mother went grocery shopping one day a week, usually on Sunday, so by Friday we'd be almost completely out of food. I clearly remember those endless Friday nights when there was nothing left in the cupboard and depression was gnawing a hole in my stomach. I had to eat something, anything. Toward the end of my depression, I ate whatever was there: iced coffee packets, bags of flour, spices ranging from anise to fennel to marjoram to thyme. Of course my body eventually rebelled and I wound up throwing up half of what I frantically shoved down my throat. I didn't stop until I finally fell asleep, exhausted, with my hand still clutching whatever I was eating." (191)

There is not much more I can say about the book that will not spoil any possible readings of it. In short, there is nothing offensive about it to me. I do not complain about people being "whiners" because I am a whiner myself. People that don't understand depression will probably still write it off and erroneously infer that Cheney is exaggerating. While I may not be as depressed as her, I can certainly relate to certain portions, where, for example, she describes in a rather profound way, hypomania as an idyllic state where everything seems (and perhaps is) possible:

"I've looked in the mirror when I'm hypomanic and even I can see it: my eyes are an open invitation, a bottomless well of empathy. 'Trust me, tell me everything,' they say, and people do. Not just men sitting across from me at a candlelight dinner, either; and not just men, for that matter. Men and women everywhere seem compelled to talk to me, touch me, give me their confidence. It happens in the oddest of places: in the aisles of the supermarket, waiting in a movie line, sitting at a coffehouse, and especially in elevators. Hypomania breaks down that invisible wall that exists between well-mannered strangers. There are no strangers anymore, only unknown friends, waiting to tell me their stories." (208)

In summation, I am not jealous of Cheney for writing a memoir that became a New York Times Bestseller. I usually am jealous of such authors. While the book may not be a pleasure to read, it is a book that has something to say, and will probably help a lot of people. It also may create a small and unnoticeable increase in business to the pharmaceutical industry. But that is probably just a sign of the times.

S/M: Chapter 25

I was recently writing a journal entry today and noted that it was my half birthday--28 1/2. It reminded me of something--28 1/2 Cuts--which is the name of the student film a character in my second novel creates. The event is the subject of the 25th chapter. I figured it was time to publish an excerpt from this novel. It is too rare of an opportunity. I hope you enjoy it.

Self-mutilation starts to seem tedious when you force yourself to follow a structure, and you find yourself simply filling in the blanks, finishing something just to finish it, as if it were a paper in college that you really didn’t know how to write, so you faked your way through it as best as you could, and you handed it in, and were content getting back a C, because you could be sure that next time, you would focus in the appropriate manner and get an A. Is that the way I feel about this confession, reader? It’s average, not excellent? I wonder what separates the average book from the excellent book. Is it an economy of style or God-like knowledge of all things? Is it a page-turner of a story, or is it something that could only affect the most isolated reader in a highly personal way in their heart? I don’t know—book reviewers confound me. What do they hope to get out of a book—something that makes their critical assignment more fun? Is it more fun to write a positive review that everyone will agree with, or a negative review which displays a higher taste for art than the masses would understand? Most book reviewers are authors themselves—so is it only that they know how hard the publishing process is and all of their reviews basically attack the notion of whether or not the book should have ever been published? No—that’s outside the scope. Their reviews describe whether or not the book is a successful work of art.
I say a successful work of art is something that unites rather than divides. Of course, what unification is possible amongst the isolated spectacles of printed words? The unification is dependent upon a reader’s fine memory, a reader’s articulation, and a reader’s professed enthusiasm for a text. Who among us can remember printed words verbatim as they are read silently to ourselves in our mind, and who among us can quote films or television shows with the utmost veracity and imitation of the actors annunciating the words for us? I feel very hopeless working in this medium. And all I wanted to talk about in the 25th chapter of this confession was how nobody had the same idea of fun as me.
Am I to recount the specific experience for you? It started with Robby calling me in February or March. I had seen him over Thanksgiving and Christmas, but now he was calling to tell me he was going to take a road trip out to California as his graduation gift. His mom said he could do it so long as he devised a budget for the trip and allowed her to approve it, seeing how much money he had to his name and how responsible he could be in an independent arrangement. I told him this was great, as I would be living in L.A. for the 1st half of the summer between my freshman and sophomore year. I would continue to live in Dykstra Hall at a rent significantly lower than typical L.A. housing and I would take my first filmmaking course where our final project would be our first black & white film without sound. Robby told me he was going to leave from Highland Park on June 10 and he hoped to be in L.A. by the afternoon of the 16th. He said he would stay for only a few days—he had to be back by the 26th because his budget would not allow for any more loafing than that. I would be leaving L.A. by the end of June, and flying home, and going to Martha’s Vineyard after a day or two for the rest of the summer. My parents had no interest in staying in Northbrook, and they were not going to let me stay by myself there. Better for them to keep a close eye on my expenses.
So Robby would be there either as I was shooting my film, or immediately after. I would be busy working on it, but it was also the only class I had to worry about. I figured that Robby would be happy to see my work and help me to improve upon it. Maybe he could even be used as an extra in the film, and divert my notions of what the film would be about. Whatever the case, he was still my closest friend from whom I could never keep any secrets, and I looked forward to his company in California. Under these very different circumstances, who knew what we might accomplish?
By the way, the rest of my freshman year was decent. All in all, I was happy I had made some good friends and I was happy people were treating me normally. It was the first time in my life nobody was putting up obstacles to my success. (Only now do I realize, the problem with that was, the success I could accomplish there meant nothing to anyone). Nick and I got along alright, and he went back to the O.C. for the summer, and I stayed in our room by myself. Jake also stayed in the dorms over the summer, and we were the only two people on our floor to stay past graduation ceremonies. A few other students came in for the summer and occupied a few other rooms on the floor. I looked forward to my first filmmaking class immensely.
Samantha and I had signed up at the same time for the class. She was the only person I knew in it from before. On the first day, our new instructor Professor Wazir, who insisted we call her Jackie, explained the way the class would unfold:
“All of your equipment will be rented out from our film department, and all of the expenses for your film usage have already been included in the additional fee for the course. The first week we will learn all of the mechanics of operating the camera with real film. We will not be using digital film in this course. You will learn the basics here, and you will probably never use the basics again. For the last ten years or so, digital has become more and more popular. First there were digital camcorders and then there were DV camcorders and people started saying, the hell with film, this camera costs $700 and you can tape over and over a digital file infinitely and save it on your computer. Celluloid is for purists, and if you are going to be filmmakers, you must at least grasp the foundations of filmmaking, the history, and the techniques of all those that came before you.”
“We will not be using sound in these films because that adds a level of complication to the scenario that I do not want you to worry about. Your films will be silent, and whatever stories you decide to tell must be communicated by wordless gestures, or, if you so choose (though I must admit many find it eccentric and unseemly) by way of letter cards. Your films will have a cap set at seven minutes, so you will have to be very precise about how long each shot is held for, and exactly what image you want to capture in order to tell your story. Some of you may be saying, ‘That’s so limiting, I want to use dialogue, I want to tell an amazing story!’ and to that I am just going to say two things. Number one, seven minutes is a lot longer than it seems for a silent film. Number two, I say you go write that amazing story, with dialogue, with a long-running-time, with everything, and then you figure out a way to tell it without sound, and in seven minutes.”
“By week eight, we will begin showcasing your films. And, while silent shorts are generally ignored by the ‘industry’ at large, if any of your films turn out to be, shall we say, revelatory, I will use my connections to submit it for consideration at next year’s Sundance film festival. And regardless, all of your films will be showcased in one sitting at the end of the course, which everyone in the UCLA community this summer will be invited to attend.”
We went around the room, saying our names, where we were from, and what our favorite movie was. When they got to me I said, “My name’s Oscar, I’m from Chicago, and my favorite movie is Secretary,” which wasn’t true, but which I just wanted to say. A few people in the class who had seen it laughed appreciably. When it got to Samantha she said, “My name’s Samantha, I’m from Las Vegas, and my favorite movie is Annie Hall,” which nobody found very funny. We left class and she asked what I thought my film might be about and I told her I had already been planning it for a year and I knew exactly what its story would be. I found it amazing that I had only thought of one idea for a movie and it was going to be highly appropriate to make that idea a reality.
That night I saw Jake and asked him if he would be my lead actor for the film. He said he would love to do it and then he asked me what the film was about. Of course, I knew what the film was going to be about—the kid who ran away from home to L.A. after the SATs, before college. But, in that moment when Jake asked me, I had a brief vision of saying, “It’s about a kid who cuts himself.”
So you see, reader, the seeds of this document date back to my first significant creative exercise. I knew it was the only story worth telling, the only story not to exist in a conventional framework. It could go anywhere and it could do anything. It could be like the movie Waking Life or Slacker—not in its subject matter, but in its redefinition of what a film could be. So what if this kid just keeps cutting himself? So what if that’s not an exciting enough plot—it’s reality, man! And art, art must mimic reality if we are to find it revelatory, if we are to feel it deeply in our hearts and minds. All the other boys and girls that cut themselves would seek it out and idolize it, the same way I idolized Secretary, because no other movie could be so bold as to take up such abnormal concerns—except that film had focused on it from the female perspective, which just seems like its easier for a mass audience to swallow, for some reason. No, I couldn’t make a movie out of it—it was too dark and uncomfortable for actors. Also, I didn’t yet know how the story would end. Reader! People complain about despairing circumstances being clichéd, but despairing circumstances can often reveal the artist’s consciousness in its totality.
But I told Jake about the runaway story and he said it sounded good. We started work on it immediately the next week. I recruited Professor Diminico to play Jake’s father, and his wife agreed to play the part of the mother. We could not use dialogue, so I had to show Diminico speaking vociferously at a dinner table, Jake looking down at his plate, and Mrs. Diminico regarding the scene with a look of extreme concern. The actions were exaggerated so the meaning could not be missed. I decided not to use word cards—I wanted there to be a greater challenge.
The dinner table scene was the first, and the second was a short shot of Jake with his head in an SAT Test Prep book. The third was a short scene meant to communicate a meeting with a guidance counselor—I also recruited Professor Lang to play this part. Jake was handed a sheet of paper with a list of unimpressive schools. This was the hardest part of the film for me. I didn’t want to offend anyone by saying they were bad schools. There was a key on the sheet that said 1 = reach, 2 = 50/50, 3 = safety. Northwestern University was at the top of the list with an unprecedented 1+, Beloit College had a 1, DePaul had a 1, UIC had a 1, Loyola had a 1, Northern Illinois University had a 2, Columbia College had a 2, and Oakton Community College had a 3. There was a long shot of this sheet of paper as if it were in an old Looney Tunes cartoon and the viewer was meant to process all the information therein contained.
The next scene showed Jake at a desk in the library, taking a standardized test meant to represent the SAT. I could not recreate test-like conditions, so I did my best to gain the support of everyone in the section of the library where we were filming to re-arrange themselves four to a desk and to appear to be focusing on a test. I had roughly sixteen people in the shot and it succeeded in creating the illusion.
Next I showed Jake receiving a letter of acceptance from Northern Illinois University. Then, laying on his bed, looking up at the ceiling, pondering. Then, packing a large backpack, slipping out of the house at night (Diminico was kind enough to let me use his house as well), walking down the street, sticking out his thumb, getting picked up.
It was difficult to create the illusion that Jake was traveling from Chicago to L.A. when we were filming it in L.A. in the middle of June. Luckily, the script had him leaving in May, so the weather was not the problem. It was the rolling hills of California and the flat plains of Illinois. We went beyond the valley, up and around the most distant suburbs of L.A. County, finding roads far from the freeway, far from the insane crowds, giving the illusion that we were in the desolate Middle West. We did not worry about showing the different rides Jake found while hitchhiking—a few different shots of him in the passenger side with changing scenery in the window was more than enough to suffice.
Finally we showed him arriving in Hollywood, of course utilizing that famous sign, and shot a couple L.A. landmarks, which our tour (documented in the “24” chapter) had inspired in us. He had to get a room at the YMCA, so we showed one of those facilities, which the owners were very kind in letting us film. We showed him going into the Cold Stone Creamery with a Help Wanted sign on the front—the one in the mall on Hollywood Blvd, right by the Chinese theaters. We showed him in uniform, scooping out the cake batter flavor into a cup. Finally, we had to intimate that he moved out of the YMCA and into an apartment, so we showed him moving his stuff into an apartment with one of his co-workers as a new roommate. Then, to complete the film, we used the unifying shot of him collapsing onto the bed, looking up at the ceiling, pondering.
I was so happy with this movie! Jake also found my vision very precise—he was very impressed that I had such a clear notion for my first film. How economically we had told such an epic story. The only thing left was to come up with a good title.
Robby had arrived in L.A. the day we were filming the final scene in Jake’s new apartment. He had driven the same teal Toyota Camry he always drove the two thousand miles to California. It occurred to me that I should have asked him to take some footage, which I could have spliced into the film—but I was using real film, not digital, and Robby did not have a camcorder that I knew of anyways. After the last shot, we went back to Dykstra Hall, and Robby put his stuff down in Nick’s old place. I told him I had to go into the editing room tonight to work on the film, and Robby asked if he could come along. I said of course, but it would be boring. He said he didn’t care because he was really interested to see my movie.
We ordered Domino’s after we had been holed up in the editing room for two hours. Robby was assisting me with artistic decisions. It was a very epic story that had to be told in a very short time, and some three or four minutes had to be cut to make the seven-minute restriction. Robby said to cut back on the L.A. landmarks montage—Jake was only going to be working at Cold Stone Creamery—he was not going to be living the stereotypical L.A. lifestyle as traditionally depicted in American cinema. Just that section of Hollywood Blvd. should have been emphasized, Robby said, because that was Jake’s world.
Sometime around 1 AM, we left the editing room and went back to the dorm. Robby said he had a surprise for me. I could guess what it was. The drug box. He took it out of his suitcase. It had been transferred to a shoe box. Inside were twenty-five pills of ecstasy, twenty-five tabs of LSD, five grams of coke, a half ounce of shrooms, an ounce of weed, and two grams of heroin. Robby had kept it almost perfectly halved. To be honest, I felt it was something of a burden, but I also knew I could make a lot of money off it. I thanked Robby at least ten times, showed him the bong I had bought in Venice Beach, we smoked some of the weed from the ounce bag, and we played XBOX 360 until we couldn’t keep our eyes opened. We went to bed sometime after 4:30, because it was one of those rare occasions that we were able to smoke at 4:20 AM.
Robby was going to be in town for the UCLA screening of all the student shorts, which was going to be happening in just a couple days. My film had been finished, and all that was left was to publicize its screening. And title it.
I thought about it for a while, and decided 28½ Cuts would be the best possible title. There were many different variations on why this worked. It had manifold associations. Namely:
-It was in many ways an updated version of Les Quatre Cents Coups, only with Jake being a few years older than Antoine Doinel, and in him never ending up in a detention center, and in it being in English, not French, and translated more appropriately by the word for the purposes of its creator.
-At 7 minutes, it was roughly 1/14th the length of that aforementioned film. Thus, if the number four hundred were to be divided by that total in order to concentrate the essence of the film into a more action-packed short, it would be twenty-eight and a half cuts.
-I edited the film to exactly twenty-eight and a half cuts after I decided on the title. It was not very hard. That was pretty much what I had. How did I accomplish the ½ cut—isn’t, isn’t that impossible? Perhaps, but I freeze-framed the final shot as an homage, to make it even more apparent if anybody couldn’t have caught the more obvious references. The freeze frame may actually be a full shot, but its finality contains an abruptness that gives the illusion of an abbreviated cut (not unlike the final image in Fight Club).
-It ended on 8 ½ which probably made people think it was going to be a Fellini homage. Actually there was really nothing reminiscent of that masterpiece. It was merely a mathematical truth that coincidentally leant itself to multiple film homage interpretations.
And the night before the premiere, when Robby was playing XBOX 360 in my dorm room and I was taking a shower, I cut a film canister right below the surfboard, using the pocket knife. It was a circular shape with three circular triangular shapes cut out. Rather intricate compared to many previously, but this cut had meaning. My first film had inadvertently become named after a number not far from how many times I had marked down a blade upon my skin. I wanted to get closer to that number. 28½. Could I devise an homage to myself when I reached that point, a la my “golden” cut? I didn’t want to think too much about it. The natural course of events often led to the basic conditions necessary for complicated psychic gestures. The film canister was an easy one, like a photograph or journal entry, to remember a time when I was very excited because I had created something that was now going to be let forth into the public, for everyone to dismiss or praise. The film was an integral part of my life—all I had claimed to be studying for had led up to it, and I had finally proven that all was not a waste. So this was actually more of a “tattoo” cut, not necessarily done in a time of great stress or depression or sadness, but when I was actually feeling good (was really high, actually), and I thought it would be cool to see what it felt like then.

Blindness - Jose Saramago; Blindness - Dir. Fernando Meirelles; Contagion - Dir. Steven Soderbergh

This review is primarily about Blindness, the novel, but I watched the film adaptation as my final Netflick before it became known as a Qwikflick (and sadly cannot afford this new service--though I admit it is dumb, as much business sense as it makes--another perfect example of the world going to hell), and then the night after went to see Contagion in the movie theater. Because of the close proximity of experiencing all three, and because of the similarities between them, this will be the first ever triple-review on Flying Houses.

Blindness provided me with two personal epiphanies--two philosophical insights, slight as they may be, unworthy of a full essay devoted to exploring them, but appropriate here: #1 relates to imagination and ideation. It can be explained by this simple illustration. Let us suppose I am reading a book. Let us suppose it takes place at a time not in the distant past nor the distant future (in other words, anytime between the 19th and 21st centuries). Let us suppose one of the primary settings in this book is a farm. I know one farm in my life better than any other. It was my grandmother's house, the farm my mother grew up on, which we would visit every single Sunday of my childhood, a one hour drive from our house. If there is ever a farm in a book I read, absent some incredibly long and detailed description, I will automatically associate the farm imagined by the writer with the farm I recall in my mind. This could have been an interesting discussion in the class I took called "Borders of the Western Imagination." Our imagination stretches only so far as our experience. Thus the writer forges a connection with the reader through an abstract measure--a single word, a noun. It is impossible for us to imagine the same object in our minds (unless it is a familiar object that everyone can recall, like an Egyptian pyramid), and this is where my literary epiphany comes in. It has always been clear to me that long, descriptive writing is boring, and that I will slog through it thinking, what a waste of my time, anyone can describe what a house looks like from the outside, but who can describe what it feels like to live in that house. Houses are different from farms. They are a far more common object, you can imagine hundreds of different variations, whereas I have not been to many farms, and primarily remember one. Ultimately, description makes little difference. We are all human, and we all have our imaginations to supplement the words that the writer provides. The story is what matters, the dialogue is what matters, and the reader's ability to identify with the characters and their actions is what matters. Blindness is perhaps the ultimate illustration of this concept.

Oeuvre rule: I have not read anything else by Saramago, but apparently all of his books contain the same style of dialogue, which is like this, I'm not going to use any quotations, Why would you do that, Because I am original, because I don't care what rules I'm supposed to follow, Don't you think people will get confused and stop reading, I don't care if they stop reading, they won't because as I said in my previous post, dialogue is like candy for the reader, and even if we include a two-page-long paragraph dialogue between two characters where you begin to lose track of who is who, readers will go to the end because each dialogue is almost like something you'd find in Plato.

That's a tall compliment, but Blindness has the unmistakable flavor of a myth or a parable, and while published in 1996, it can sit alongside Apology or Phaedo or The Oedipus Cycle as well as any other book released over the past century. For one, it is relatively short. It is not an all-consuming, deeply-nuanced study of a family in decline, but the presentation of a philosophical situation, and a reasonable prediction of all the events that could follow.

Here is the plot, shorn of spoilers (and indeed, if you read the back of the paperback copy, it provides spoilers up until the final third of the book--this is a book that won't really be spoiled, except for a few key events--indeed if you watch the movie and look at its R-rating, the description of why it is Rated-R, that is an even bigger spoiler): a man is in his car. He is waiting for the light to turn green. It does, but he goes blind, and he starts freaking out. Another man comes up to his car and asks if he can help him. He walks him back to his home, which happens to be nearby. The first blind man tells his wife, and they go to see the ophthalmologist (I will just use "doctor" from now on because it's hard to spell ophthalmologist). At his office is a girl with dark glasses (a lady of the night, pun intended), a boy with a squint, and an old man with an eyepatch. Later, the scene shoots back to the man who helped the first blind man. He has gone back to the car, and he steals it. He is actually a thief. However, before he can enjoy his new prize, he goes blind. The scene shoots back to the doctor's office. Doctor sees the first blind man and says, I don't know what's wrong with you, there's no medical explanation for this sort of thing. Later that night he goes home and sees his wife and tells her about this unusual case of blindness. He goes to study from his books, and he goes blind.

Soon, the Government begins to notice that people are going blind, and they set up quarantine facilities. Our basic group of characters are all placed in the same mental hospital. They are given food rations, but little direction from the military personnel guarding the facility, because they too are afraid of contracting the "white sickness," called such because the person does not see "blackness" but rather a "sea of milky white." The scenes in the mental hospital comprise the second act of the book. Several key episodes occur, but I will not discuss what happens. Let us just say that the primary allegorical element of the novel is introduced--that is, when civilization and society cease to exist, de facto representatives and leaders emerge in some form or another, either by tyranny or some democratic agreement. What happens to the mental hospital is disgusting. Saramago devotes a good deal of description to the filth.

The third part of the book is probably the strongest section. The last twenty or thirty pages are quite good, too. However, I borrowed this book on a recommendation from a girl who graduated from Fordham Law School. We were talking about Hemingway (as my previous post indicated, back in June 2011, I would soon finish that endless behemoth of a biography on him) and how the ending to The Sun Also Rises is just one of the most beautiful things ever, and how The Old Man and the Sea was a book that you could read anytime, in one day if you had the time, that could just sort of refresh your conscience and remind you of what it is to live and to be alive. She spoke beautifully about literature, and so when I saw Blindness on her shelf and remarked that I had heard great things, and when she said that the ending, also, was worth the total experience, I was convinced. Now, the ending is something of a "twist," and the last section of this book is certainly, to my mind, the strongest part, and the final paragraph can be both mesmerizing and confusing, but still, to a certain extent, I was underwhelmed. That said, I think Blindness is worth reading.

It is something of a long literary experiment, in the vein of Italo Calvino or Haruki Murukami. (I always say those two are experimental because I have only read "If on a Winter's Night a Traveler" and "Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World"--the latter of which is the only book I have read since April of 2008 that is not reviewed on Flying Houses, probably because I just don't know how I feel about it). The characters do not have proper names. The book is dialogue-heavy, but I don't believe there is a single quotation mark in it. The characters are blind and they struggle to complete the most mundane tasks. And there are not many portions that I find easy to quote:

"We came out of internment only three days ago, Ah, you were in quarantine, Yes, Was it Hard, Worse than that, How horrible, You are a writer, you have, as you said a moment ago, an obligation to know words, therefore you know that adjectives are of no use to us, if a person kills another, for example, it would be better to state this fact openly, directly, and to trust that the horror of the act, in itself, is so shocking that there is no need for us to say it was horrible, Do you mean that we have more words than we need, I mean that we have too few feelings, Or that we have them but have ceased to use the words they express, And so we lose them, I'd like you to tell me how you lived during quarantine, Why, I am a writer, You would have to have been there, A writer is just like anyone else, he cannot know everything, nor can he experience everything, he must ask and imagine, One day I may tell you what it was like, then you can write a book, Yes, I am writing it, How, if you are blind, The blind too can write, You mean that you had time to learn the braille alphabet, I do not know know braille, How can you write, then, asked the first blind man, Let me show you." (292, quotations mine)

Here, Saramago seems to be inserting himself as a character. The "writer" becomes an archetypal figure, as do the other characters, but this time as an even more transparent philosophical mouthpiece. And while the pleasures the book contains primarily relate to larger issues of the comprehensibility of the different facets of human existence, there are a couple traditional "novelistic" episodes that may bring tears:

"Men are all the same, they think because they came out of the belly of a woman they know all there is to know about women, I know very little about women, and about you I know nothing, as for men, in my opinion, by modern criteria I am now an old man and one-eyed as well as being blind, Have you nothing else to say against yourself, A lot more, you can't imagine how the list of self-recriminations grows with advancing age, I am young and have my fair share already, You haven't done anything really bad yet, How do you know, if you've never lived with me, You're right, I have never lived with you, Why do you repeat my words in that tone of voice, What tone of voice, That one, All I said was that I have never lived with you, Come on, come on, don't pretend that you don't understand, Don't insist, I beg you, I do insist, I want to know, Let's return to hopes, All right, The other example of hope which I refused to give was this, What, The last self-accusation on my list, Please, explain yourself, I never understand riddles, The monstrous wish of never regaining our sight, Why, So that we can go on living as we are, Do you mean all together, or just you and me, Don't make me answer, If you were only a man you could avoid answering, like all others, but you yourself said that you are an old man, and old men, if longevity has any sense at all, should not avert their face from the truth, answer me, With you, And why do you want to live with me, Do you want me to tell in front of everybody, We have done the dirtiest, ugliest, most repulsive things together, what you can tell me cannot possibly be worse, All right, if you insist, let it be, because the man I still am loves the woman you are, Was it so very difficult to make a declaration of love, At my age, people fear ridicule, You were not ridiculous, Let's forget it, please, I have no intention of forgetting it or letting you forget it either, It's nonsense, you forced it out of me and now, And now it's my turn, Don't say anything you may regret later, remember the black list, If I'm sincere today, what does it matter if I regret it tomorrow, Please stop, You want to live with me and I want to live with you, You are mad, We'll start living together here, like a couple, and we shall continue living together if we have to separate from our friends, two blind people must be able to see more than one, It's madness, you don't love me, What's this about loving, I never loved anyone, I just went to bed with men. So you agree with me then, Not really, You spoke of sincerity, tell me then if it's true that you really love me, I love you enough to want to be with you, and that is the first time I've ever said that to anyone, You would not have said it to me either if you had met me somewhere before, an elderly man, half bald with white hair, with a patch over one eye and a cataract in the other, The woman I was then wouldn't have said it, I agree, the person who said it was the woman I am today, Let's see then what the woman you will be tomorrow will have to say, Are you testing me, What an idea, who am I to put you to the test, it's life that decides these things, It's already made one decision." (306-307, quotations mine)

So, let's just take a moment here to point out that, yes, Blindness, is worth reading, and Saramago may have justifiably won the Nobel prize--and indeed, reading it in its original language (which translates directly to Essay on Blindness) might shed even more light on how great a triumph of clarity it is. But seriously--writing a book like this is much easier than writing a book like Buddenbrooks or The Magic Mountain. Those take years, and maybe we have to be much more fast-paced in 1995 than we do in 1915, but if you look at the total oeuvre, Mann's probably outweighs Saramago's by 100%. This in terms of page numbers. And it may be interesting to compare how much money each made from his books (this information in the publishing industry in general seems to be kept secret, and should be addressed more directly so people don't throw away years of their lives writing books no one will ever read), or how much time they spent writing their specific novels, compared to whatever "side-projects" they did for money. But they do have one thing in common: their depiction of reality, and of people acting as they really act, rings true. This is another literary epiphany that I have emphasized greatly over the last several years: REALISM IS ALL THAT MATTERS.

Before we enter into film, philosphical epiphany #2 came to me at some point during my high school years. I had a roommate my sophomore year. High school, is, I think, a cliquey time (law school is too but save that discussion for later). People band together in their own little groups. And it caused me to reflect, how, as the group of participants grows, so also does the group you as an individual are willing to ally yourself with. This is the simple illustration: you are in your dorm room with your roommate, and you are having an argument, or playing a computer game against one another on a local-area-network (Command and Conquer, for example). You hate each other. You want to kill the other person. You want to beat the hell out of them. The next day, you and your roommate play on a team, against two other roommates who live down the hall. Now you are friends and you have to work together, and the other roommates are your enemy. The next day, your dorm has organized a basketball tournament, and every floor has to form their own team to play against the others. The day after that, your dorm has to play in a tournament against every other dorm. The day after that, your school has to play against another school in a big football game. The day after that, an All-American team is selected from the group of 15 schools of which your school is a part. The day after that, All-Americans are chosen from every high school in the country. And so on, until Earth is itself the ultimate community, but it does not seem likely that there will be intergalactic warfare anytime soon. The point is this: we are all part of communities, as tiny as an apartment and as huge as the planet. Our concerns shift and we are more likely to be agreeable the larger the community that we function within, because there will be many other people on your same side that will denounce you, or question your beliefs, not out of some personal animus, but out of the altruistic motive of discovering what is best for one and what is best for all. That is, there is a search for reason, not some kind of search for dominance over the other side. This is the basic problem with the adversarial system of law, personal relationships, a free enterprise society, everything.

After that incomprehensible thought pattern, let's move on to Fernando Meirelles. First of all, if you have not seen City of God, please watch it next weekend. I only saw it once, like 5 years ago, but it stands out to me as one of the best films of the decade of the 2000s. Second, I thought The Constant Gardener was real boring. Sorry, but I don't remember anything about it. Finally, Blindness is ultimately a poor adaptation of the book, but its heart is in the right place. This is meant to be an absolutely faithful adaptation. And it is. No characters are named--except "The King of the Ward 3" who is played by Gael Garcia Bernal. Now, he is one of my favorite actors--I really liked Y Tu Mama Tambien and The Science of Sleep and those movies show that he has kind of an incredible energy. His character is definitely in the book, but he is also given an auxiliary role so that his character could also be named "the bartender," which is not in the book. Also, Sandra Oh plays the "Minister of Health" which is not in the book, really, or if she is, in disembodied form. Either of these actors would have been good to play one of the major characters, but to me they are basically wasted in the roles they are given. Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo do fine with the material they are given, but everyone else seems rushed to develop their character, or they just come through less clearly than in the book. Many key moments are transported directly from the text of the book (like when the Doctor asks for a show of hands when voting on something, and then realizes the absurdity of such a directive), but many are left out (like the second long quotation from above). The book's third act in particular seems cut down sharply. There are several key scenes there that would have made the movie much better.

Basically, there are several problems with the film. #1: Blindness is meant to be read, not viewed. It all has to do with the comprehension of our senses. Reading is, in a sense, a blind activity. We are not looking at objects--we are looking at words and imagining objects. When you watch a movie, you are looking at the objects. The director and cinematographer make an effort to portray the "white sickness" through combinations of visual trickery, but it feels like an empty exercise. #2: Blindness the book is much funnier. The book is hilarious, whether or not always intentional, and the movie is pretty serious all the way through--excepting the one joke about raising hands. #3: The movie is marketed as a "thriller." And it is made like that, with an emphasis on plot--what's going to happen to these people? A more dreamlike, detached, philosophical approach might have made for a better adaptation. It appears as if the producers were shooting for the moon--they wanted a big-budget blockbuster with an uber-art house director adapted from a Nobel-prize winning author that millions of people all over the world would see. But Harry Potter Blindness is not. That said, I still believe that an adaptation of White Noise would be a huge success. BUT IT HAS TO BE DONE RIGHT!

Of special note in Blindness is the final shot. It gave me a different interpretation than what I had of the text, and upon re-reading, it is the correct one.

If one was reading Blindness in September 2011, one could not help but think of its similarities to Contagion when the posters started showing up in New York. Here is a movie that everybody knows. It is the follow-up to Outbreak in a sense, fifteen years later, with a bit more sophisticated technology, and a slightly amped-up cast. Many elements from Blindness and Contagion coalesce. In particular, the quarantines that are implemented. However, the key difference is that society does not crumble in Contagion quite the way it does in Blindness. It's less philosophical and more realistic, though plenty of readers will admit that what happens in Blindness is totally plausible--if such a "white sickness" were to actually happen. Contagion is very scary. The first thirty minutes scared me. I really liked it for a while towards the middle. Then towards the end, (I won't spoil anything, though it seems this film is incredibly popular, and has already made more money and attracted a bigger audience than either Blindness ever will) I started to get bored.

But yeah, a depiction of a disease that is visceral rather than invisible will generally be more engaging on film. The converse will generally be more engaging on page.