At the beginning of the academic year, it was suggested to me that I should write reviews of cases on this blog in the same way I wrote reviews of books. Now, I did not think I had the time to do this (indeed, writing about every single case would become unbearably time-consuming, and while my next post may be a milestone (#150), had I done this I might be approaching #1000, seriously diluting the quality I have endeavored to achieve on Flying Houses), but I promised myself that I would call attention to this single case from my Property class. I promised myself that when I covered it in my outline, I would transcribe a good portion of its dissent.
Now, our professor in this class did not seem to like this dissent very much. He claimed it "goes on...and on....and on...." True, when it goes on, it does not discuss legal principles. However, there are plenty of opinions that go on, and on, and on, and make one positively drowsy. I have mentioned many times on this blog that "normal people" in 2011 think reading novels is "boring." If you think that is boring, do not go to law school (more on this later).
Whatever the legal utility of the dissent, it was the single-most transcendent reading experience of the year for me. I showed it to my roommate one night, and tried to read it aloud. I could not. I could not stop laughing. He read it aloud instead and agreed that it was fantastic. Perhaps it is unintentionally hilarious, but it is also striking in its beautiful quality.
Some discussion of the facts may be necessary. This is a case about a cave that was discovered underneath a person's land. Edwards discovered the cave, and he improved its conditions, and opened it up as a tourist destination in Kentucky. (This reminded me greatly of "The Lost Sea," an underwater lake in a cave in Sweetwater, TN, which I had planned to visit with a friend, but which unfortunately never came to pass). His neighbor brought an action claiming the ad coelum doctrine, which posits that a person owns everything above or below his land. The cave was beneath his land, and he claimed a right to it. The court held in favor of the neighbor.
The dissenting judge, Logan, found this incredibly unfair (and I agree with him). For the first two pages, Logan mostly keeps to legal principles, while still affecting a somewhat poetic manner. However, by page 3, he completely shifts his focus to a comparison of this cave (The Great Onyx Cave) to Hades, extolling the virtues of the brave workers who excavated it. The best possible explanation I can make is that he smoked a lot of weed and then wrote the part that begins here:
"...Edwards owns this cave through right of discovery, exploration, development, advertising, exhibition, and conquest. Men fought their way through the eternal darkness, into the mysterious and abysmal depths of the bowels of a groaning world to discover the theretofore unseen splendors of unknown natural scenic wonders. They were conquerors of fear, although now and then one of them, as did Floyd Collins, paid with his life, for his hardihood in adventuring into the regions where Charon with his boat had never before seen any but the spirits of the departed. They let themselves down by flimsy ropes into pits that seemed bottomless; they clung to scanty handholds as they skirted the brinks of precipices while the flickering flare of their flaming flambeaux disclosed no bottom to the yawning gulf beneath them; they waded through rushing torrents, not knowing what awaited them on the farther side; they climbed slippery steeps to find other levels; they wounded their bodies on stalagmites and stalactites and other curious and weird formations; they found chambers, star-studded and filled with scintillating light reflected by a phantasmagoria revealing fancied phantoms, and tapestry woven by the toiling gods in the dominion of Erebus; hunger and thirst, danger and deprivation could not stop them. Through days, weeks, months, and years--ever linking chamber with chamber, disclosing an underground land of enchantment, they continued their explorations; through the years they toiled connecting these wonders with the outside world through the entrance on the land of Edwards which he had discovered; through the years they toiled finding safe ways for those who might come to view what they had found and placed their seal upon. They knew nothing, and cared less, of who owned the surface above; they were in another world where no law forbade their footsteps. They created an underground kingdom where Gulliver's people may have lived or where Ayesha may have found the revolving column of fire in which to bathe meant eternal youth."
"When the wonders were unfolded and the ways were made safe, then Edwards patiently, and again through the years, commenced the advertisement of his cave. First came one to see, then another, then two together, then small groups, then small crowds, then large crowds, and then the multitudes. Edwards had seen his faith justified. The cave was his because he had made it what it was, and without what he had done it was nothing of value. The value is not in the black vacuum that the uninitiated call a cave. That which Edwards owns is something intangible and indefinable. It is his vision translated into a reality."
"Then came the horse leach's daughters crying: 'Give me,' 'give me.' Then came the 'surface men' crying, 'I think this cave may run under my lands.' They do not know they only 'guess,' but they seek to discover the secrets of Edwards so that they may harass him and take from him that which he had made his own. They have come to a court of equity and have asked that Edwards be forced to open his doors and his ways to them so that they may go in and despoil him; that they may lay his secrets bare so that others may follow their example and dig into the wonders which Edwards has made his own. What may be the result if they stop his ways? They destroy the cave, because those who visit it are they who give it value, and none will visit it when the ways are barred so that it may not be exhibited as a whole."
"It may be that the law is stated in the majority opinion of the court, but equity, according to my judgment, should not destroy that which belongs to one man when he at whose behest the destruction is visited, although with some legal right, is not benefited thereby. Any ruling by a court which brings great and irreparable injury to a party is erroneous."
All judges should write like this. True, applications of legal rules to facts of whatever the present case may be are not always conflated by such poetic subject matter, but they really should make more of an effort. There should be a certain pleasure in reading judicial opinions. Sometimes, they are pleasurable. Many law professors speak of Cardozo as the be-all, end-all of linguistic masters. Holmes is similarly held up on a pedestal. As much as I may disagree with much of what he has to say, one cannot deny that Scalia sometimes strings together an entertaining phrase or two. One of the first dissents I read, by Justice Black in Goldberg v. Kelly, I found similarly great. I should state that I am a huge fan of Posner, and that if I were a much better student, had a background in economics or engineering, and had gone to say, Northwestern or U Chicago, it would be my "dream job" to be his clerk or intern. Kozinski has also written more than his fair share of very humorous opinions.
Yet these moments of literary epiphany in law are rare. 95% of the opinions I read are boring, tiresome, and as dry as a math textbook, despite the usually incredible circumstances they are called upon to adjudicate. I would love to be on a journal next year, and write a "note" on this topic, but unfortunately I doubt it would be supported by the staff. You are supposed to write about novel legal issues that have not been addressed by anyone before. I would love to write a biographical note on Logan, to see what his other opinions looked like, and to gauge his legal philosophy, or to write about the phenomena of poetic or humorous judicial opinions in general, but I am afraid this would not be allowed. Note that this is one of the reasons I hate law school. There, I said it.
What legal issue is important to me, that is novel, that no one has addressed? Something in intellectual property law perhaps, copyright, whether posting large sections of text from novels is legal (I hope so). But this is not something I care particularly deeply about. My 4 "followers" (and I cherish each and every one of them) may know that the only thing I care particularly deeply about is literature, and creating my own, in a search for perfection or transcendence. It is a shame that there is so little money associated with such a venture. It is what led me to think a position within the legal profession was the next best thing. It is not. I do not think it will (would?) be the worst job in the world, but what you have to go through in order to get it is certainly one of the worst things in the world. Oh, I know it must be very hard to get a PHD or an MBA or CPA certification, and probably MD too. However, I think psychologically, there is nothing more difficult or painful, particularly going through it from 2010-2013 at a "2nd tier" school in New York City.
It is time to draw this post to a close. The next post I write will be after May 13th. It will be a reflection upon the entire year. The post to follow that will be a commentary on the phenomena of "scamblogs." That post will be dedicated to every one who is considering going to law school, or who has already sent in their seat deposit for the class of 2014. I now must return to my outlining. Good night, and good luck.
Saturday, April 23, 2011
Friday, March 4, 2011
A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar...- Dir. Eric Chaikin
About a month ago, I was up around midnight on a Saturday night, searching randomly around documentaries on Netflix. I came across this movie and found it worth writing about on Flying Houses for several reasons. First of all, there are many films and television shows about the legal profession, but they never address the boredom and mundanity of it all. They make it seem exciting. In a review on Flying Houses from about a year and a half ago (here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2009/11/lawyer-myth-rennard-strickland-frank-t.html), there contained a quote from Roger Ebert to the effect that nothing could be more boring than an absolutely accurate movie about the law. I am sure that, were I to read The Lawyer Myth again, I would not review it so easily. Or perhaps it would be more illuminating, a quicker read, and less boring at points. Any books published for the general public will be less tedious than the mechanical methodology of a judicial opinion. There are plenty of books about the legal profession, but few films, and owing to people's inability to find time to read, or general laziness, it seems that more should be made in the near future.
There are plenty of feature films, but as already mentioned, they do not expose the mundanity. This film exposes the mundanity, but in a way that still makes law school seem like fun. Or rather, there is little discussion of the actual 3 years. The focus is upon the two and a half months in between graduation--second half of May, June, and July--and the hell that newly-minted J.D.'s must undergo in California. They face a Bar Exam with a 39% pass rate, the lowest in the country. At least, that is the percentage the film cites. The figures I find are 44% or 46% from 2004 or 2005. In 2009, it was 49% (and in 2008 it was an impressive 54%)--also these are "overall" numbers--the first-time numbers are generally a bit higher.
This film follows six different aspiring Bar-passers. I say that because one of them is a social worker by trade who has taken the Bar exam about forty times. Many organizations utilize both social workers and attorneys, so maybe actually he would just change his position where he was working. He has consistently failed the Bar and it inspired him to write an article called "Fuck the Bar," and at one point in the film he shouts it at the building where they are all taking it in Ontario, CA.
The five others graduate from various schools. There is a girl who is part-Native American and who says she was a 50% actress/50% law student while attending UCLA law school, the most prestigious school represented. She has a scholarship or a grant from the Tribe she is affiliated with. In one scene, she should be studying for the Bar, but instead she is out partying, and I am surprised the footage of that remained in the film, though it does make for its most hilarious moment. It seems almost staged.
I think THREE of the six actually went to Loyola Law School, which is why I found this so worth writing about, as I nearly attended that school in a dead-lock (decided about a year ago) with its arguable "sister-school," where I now reside. One of them is a guy who graduated the year before, and he is taking the Bar his second time. The two others are girls who have just graduated that year. I realize now that it is hard to write this review without getting deeply into their personal stories.
The last person went to People's College of Law in L.A. and some of the scenes with the director of the school are some of the best in the movie too. I've forgotten the quotes she has but practically all are classic. The student in question is a Mexican immigrant mother who is in her late 30s or early 40s. Some of the scenes with her are very moving, and her story of going through community college in East L.A. and making her way through law school to become a potential attorney may inspire those in situations where the odds seem improbably stacked against them.
I do not want to give away the ending but let us just say that it is not very surprising.
I do not have much to say about this film except that I am glad it exists. However, it was released in 2007, and shot in the summer of 2006, so there is very little in the film to suggest that the economy is bad, particularly for lawyers. Now there needs to be a new movie. Nothing about law school translates as well in documentary form as the Bar, because it is the actual end of all the b-s. It would not be feasible to make a movie about all 3 years of law school. I do think a good movie could be made about the first year. There are many crucial moments that would translate well. The orientation, the first month of classes, the legal writing assignments piled up on top of the other work, the different briefing methods, note-taking methods, the midterms, if any, and finally the exams---followed by the grades, which are "all that matter," the next semester classes, the internship search, and finally the last exams, which will determine class rank for OCI, hiring for summer associates, and potential hiring for graduates. Of course the end of the first year is far from the end, and so no real closure could be given. Law school is not properly applicable to a documentary context, but should be portrayed in a feature film, with much drama and much mundanity. This would help that percentage of law students that enter with nebulous ideas of what it is going to be like, and where it is going to lead.
1L (also previously reviewed here) and the The Paper Chase may be instructive, but they portray Harvard Law School in the 1970s. While the actual material students must read in the first year may not have changed appreciably, the general atmosphere pervading the profession has, as has society at large. I want to see a movie that shows 1/3 of the students at an "average" school going on Facebook or playing Scrabble on their computers while in class. I want it to focus on like, maybe 6 students, one who is perfect and gets straight A's, blah, blah, blah, another who is far from perfect and gets bad grades and looks like an idiot when they have to talk in class, who worries about ever getting a job and wants to drop out, and the other four in varying degrees in the middle, maybe one person who commits "sectioncest" and has a romantic comedy storyline, maybe one who is super-depressed and breaks out crying in the middle of class or kills themselves, maybe a totally average student who gets through everything alright and ends up with a job, and is generally happy, and then maybe another totally average student who maybe ends up with a job, but maybe has serious financial difficulties, and always wonders if they made the right decision, if there wasn't something else they'd rather be doing.
A feature film like this would lay out all the issues, and actually be useful to those considering applying. A potential student will probably not find A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar.... and decide they don't want to go. No matter how bad people make the Bar seem, I think students will always think, "Well, I did the LSAT and nothing can be more stressful than that..." However, it seems clear to me now, that the Bar is more stressful than anything, after watching this film. If you fail, what do you do? You take it again. Or else you keep your J.D. on your resume, and maybe some HR people think you may have other skills, but have questions that you can either answer or not, at the risk of looking like a liability. Really, at the end of the day, nothing is more stressful than getting the job, and actually living under the terms of the profession. Once that is achieved, there should be happiness, because all of the hoops and hurdles have been jumped through and over. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, happiness does not generally follow. Rather, lawyers tend to look back fondly on their law school years. It seems as if many are guarded individuals who would rather not open up about their personal feelings on the subject, but will be happy to tell people not to go if they aren't absolutely sure they want to go.
The financial aspect of taking BarBri and the Bar, after the enormous financial burdens of law school is vaguely addressed in this film, but I still think my feature film idea would get this across better. Now, movies extolling Christian ideology by Christian filmmakers always find financing despite not expecting to reach a critical mass, but who will finance my movie? The ABA? The NYC Bar Association? A profession is hardly a religion. But in a profession so deeply concerned with regulation, one would think there would be a way to regulate law schools in a manner that a disproportionate number of students do not graduate with little hope of employment. Unfortunately, such a massive overhaul is unlikely to be seriously considered.
P.S. If anyone actually takes my idea without coming to me for use as a creative consultant, it will make me very sad.
There are plenty of feature films, but as already mentioned, they do not expose the mundanity. This film exposes the mundanity, but in a way that still makes law school seem like fun. Or rather, there is little discussion of the actual 3 years. The focus is upon the two and a half months in between graduation--second half of May, June, and July--and the hell that newly-minted J.D.'s must undergo in California. They face a Bar Exam with a 39% pass rate, the lowest in the country. At least, that is the percentage the film cites. The figures I find are 44% or 46% from 2004 or 2005. In 2009, it was 49% (and in 2008 it was an impressive 54%)--also these are "overall" numbers--the first-time numbers are generally a bit higher.
This film follows six different aspiring Bar-passers. I say that because one of them is a social worker by trade who has taken the Bar exam about forty times. Many organizations utilize both social workers and attorneys, so maybe actually he would just change his position where he was working. He has consistently failed the Bar and it inspired him to write an article called "Fuck the Bar," and at one point in the film he shouts it at the building where they are all taking it in Ontario, CA.
The five others graduate from various schools. There is a girl who is part-Native American and who says she was a 50% actress/50% law student while attending UCLA law school, the most prestigious school represented. She has a scholarship or a grant from the Tribe she is affiliated with. In one scene, she should be studying for the Bar, but instead she is out partying, and I am surprised the footage of that remained in the film, though it does make for its most hilarious moment. It seems almost staged.
I think THREE of the six actually went to Loyola Law School, which is why I found this so worth writing about, as I nearly attended that school in a dead-lock (decided about a year ago) with its arguable "sister-school," where I now reside. One of them is a guy who graduated the year before, and he is taking the Bar his second time. The two others are girls who have just graduated that year. I realize now that it is hard to write this review without getting deeply into their personal stories.
The last person went to People's College of Law in L.A. and some of the scenes with the director of the school are some of the best in the movie too. I've forgotten the quotes she has but practically all are classic. The student in question is a Mexican immigrant mother who is in her late 30s or early 40s. Some of the scenes with her are very moving, and her story of going through community college in East L.A. and making her way through law school to become a potential attorney may inspire those in situations where the odds seem improbably stacked against them.
I do not want to give away the ending but let us just say that it is not very surprising.
I do not have much to say about this film except that I am glad it exists. However, it was released in 2007, and shot in the summer of 2006, so there is very little in the film to suggest that the economy is bad, particularly for lawyers. Now there needs to be a new movie. Nothing about law school translates as well in documentary form as the Bar, because it is the actual end of all the b-s. It would not be feasible to make a movie about all 3 years of law school. I do think a good movie could be made about the first year. There are many crucial moments that would translate well. The orientation, the first month of classes, the legal writing assignments piled up on top of the other work, the different briefing methods, note-taking methods, the midterms, if any, and finally the exams---followed by the grades, which are "all that matter," the next semester classes, the internship search, and finally the last exams, which will determine class rank for OCI, hiring for summer associates, and potential hiring for graduates. Of course the end of the first year is far from the end, and so no real closure could be given. Law school is not properly applicable to a documentary context, but should be portrayed in a feature film, with much drama and much mundanity. This would help that percentage of law students that enter with nebulous ideas of what it is going to be like, and where it is going to lead.
1L (also previously reviewed here) and the The Paper Chase may be instructive, but they portray Harvard Law School in the 1970s. While the actual material students must read in the first year may not have changed appreciably, the general atmosphere pervading the profession has, as has society at large. I want to see a movie that shows 1/3 of the students at an "average" school going on Facebook or playing Scrabble on their computers while in class. I want it to focus on like, maybe 6 students, one who is perfect and gets straight A's, blah, blah, blah, another who is far from perfect and gets bad grades and looks like an idiot when they have to talk in class, who worries about ever getting a job and wants to drop out, and the other four in varying degrees in the middle, maybe one person who commits "sectioncest" and has a romantic comedy storyline, maybe one who is super-depressed and breaks out crying in the middle of class or kills themselves, maybe a totally average student who gets through everything alright and ends up with a job, and is generally happy, and then maybe another totally average student who maybe ends up with a job, but maybe has serious financial difficulties, and always wonders if they made the right decision, if there wasn't something else they'd rather be doing.
A feature film like this would lay out all the issues, and actually be useful to those considering applying. A potential student will probably not find A Lawyer Walks Into a Bar.... and decide they don't want to go. No matter how bad people make the Bar seem, I think students will always think, "Well, I did the LSAT and nothing can be more stressful than that..." However, it seems clear to me now, that the Bar is more stressful than anything, after watching this film. If you fail, what do you do? You take it again. Or else you keep your J.D. on your resume, and maybe some HR people think you may have other skills, but have questions that you can either answer or not, at the risk of looking like a liability. Really, at the end of the day, nothing is more stressful than getting the job, and actually living under the terms of the profession. Once that is achieved, there should be happiness, because all of the hoops and hurdles have been jumped through and over. Unfortunately, from what I can tell, happiness does not generally follow. Rather, lawyers tend to look back fondly on their law school years. It seems as if many are guarded individuals who would rather not open up about their personal feelings on the subject, but will be happy to tell people not to go if they aren't absolutely sure they want to go.
The financial aspect of taking BarBri and the Bar, after the enormous financial burdens of law school is vaguely addressed in this film, but I still think my feature film idea would get this across better. Now, movies extolling Christian ideology by Christian filmmakers always find financing despite not expecting to reach a critical mass, but who will finance my movie? The ABA? The NYC Bar Association? A profession is hardly a religion. But in a profession so deeply concerned with regulation, one would think there would be a way to regulate law schools in a manner that a disproportionate number of students do not graduate with little hope of employment. Unfortunately, such a massive overhaul is unlikely to be seriously considered.
P.S. If anyone actually takes my idea without coming to me for use as a creative consultant, it will make me very sad.
Wednesday, November 24, 2010
Special Comment - On Using Movie Quotations for Commemoratory Purposes; on “ATL,” on Cyber-bullies, on Entering a “TTT” at a Time of Economic Turmoil
It has been a long time but here is the first new post on Flying Houses since August. This probably isn’t the best time to be doing it, either, as I should be taking down the notes I just wrote on Compulsory Joinder and Intervention, and transcribing them into my computer. But we can only be such machines when it comes to legal work as may be reasonably expected.
This is a not a personal check-up 9/10 of the way through the semester. This is a response to a (now not so recent) post on a popular website for the legal profession. Here is a link to that post: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/11/brooklyn-law-2010-class-gift-is-more-like-a-terrible-high-school-yearbook-quote/.
For those uninitiated, Above the Law is an online legal tabloid that is basically the TMZ or Perez Hilton of the legal profession. It is something to read on a lunch break, something to laugh at, nothing to be taken seriously. However, this post in particular affected me in such a personal way that I seriously wanted to go out and kill myself, and I would entertain a claim against them for negligent infliction of emotional distress, but I know that would probably not be a very good claim (perhaps it would be protected by the first amendment? perhaps I could not prove any direct physical injury?). Why do I have such a “thin skull” you might ask?
The post itself is nothing particularly untoward. It merely claims that the Class of 2010 made a mistake in the quote they decided to put on a plaque in the library. The quote is from A League of Their Own, a film about women in the 1940’s who decided to form a baseball league to counteract the suspension of Major League Baseball and its many players signing up for service in World War II. There are many quotable moments in the film, but the one the Class of 2010 chose happened to be this: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it…The hard is what makes it great.” Automatically, this is turned into a sexual reference, which doesn’t really make sense given the second sentence, but this is immaterial. Should quotes from movies be plastered on the walls of law schools? Don’t we have “higher values” than those of popular culture? (Please don't let us start believing that there are better quotes to be found in film than literature--even judicial opinions would be better fodder). The class has asserted that it strove to begin a tradition, whereby students would touch the plaque as they pass under it while coming down from the second floor of the library. I have not seen anyone do this and I am afraid that if someone was seen doing this, they would be laughed at.
However, there were many comments to this post that were certainly untoward, and a source of my emotional distress (one other article on ATL, written by a psychiatrist who had also been through law school, bemoaned the opportunities of those holding J.D.’s but seeking employment apart from the legal field, which also contributed to said distress). The very first one reads “Crooklyn = TTTT.” Now I am not sure what the fourth T signifies (TTT signifies “third-tier toilet,” a derogatory term for a school not ranked in the top 50 in the nation), but the statement itself, posted by someone known as nothing more than “$$$,” certainly sends a harmful message. The next comment, posted by “Wow,” points the reader to Brooklyn’s budget planner page on its website. It reads, “Lulz at the price tag for this dump!!” Is “Lulz” some variant of LOL or is it something more nefarious? BLS is expensive, but so are most law schools. Scholarships are the only way a student can justify the enormous price tag after already having been through so much previous education. The next comment is from Kenny Powers who is a character on the HBO series Eastbound and Down and he offers the prescient wisdom (for those of us walking into final exams as an already uphill struggle), “If at first you don’t succeed then maybe you just suck.” A couple others joke about how much Kenny Powers sucks, then someone makes fun of the “living with parents” column of the budget (taking housing out of the equation) because that is what students will be doing after graduation. From here on in, the comments become more sporadic and less focused. Apparently, “Watch your head,” was another option for the quotation. This would have been sort of eloquent given the state of legal hiring patterns in 2010. Someone brings up a better quote from the same movie: “You know, if I had your job, I’d kill myself. Wait here, I’ll see if I can dig up a pistol.” This would also have been better, but dark, very dark, and law schools should not be propagating dark thoughts, though they inevitably must.
Now comes the painful part—an alum from BLS posts and sticks up for the school, and legal education in general, saying that it will pay off over time, and not amortize or depreciate like a car. They then get taken to task for failing to discern that student loans accrue interest and therefore may be considered technical amortization/depreciation. Another person says the plaque is fitting for BLS students because women baseball players ended up unemployed and broke. Other potential quotes are considered from the movie: “There’s no crying in law school” and “You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose.” There is then a discussion of a possible typo on the plaque in the use of the ellipsis. Blue-booking rules are debated. Someone else points out that all of the comments are cynical, and that everyone posting is an a-hole. A very dry reply read “Law students generally are not cynical. You have to graduate and realize the harsh realities of life and being unemployed/underemployed with massive student loan debt before the cynacism (sic) kicks in.” Another person named “<2012>” simply writes, “You are DOOMED.” Another person suggests the school hang a plaque saying, “See 11 U.S.C.A. 523(a)(8).” This was fairly clever as it forced me to use WestLaw to look up what it meant. Here is a quote that seemed particularly appropriate: “Let me sum up what I think of you when I hear you go to Brooklyn Law (particularly class of 2012 or 2013): (1) You weren’t smart enough to get into a better school, and (2) you’re even stupider than I would have thought otherwise because you’re paying an exorbitant amount of tuition. WTF are these people thinking, particularly those who enrolled this year in the middle of a recession?”
The other contenders for the quotation for the plaque are then listed near the end of the thread. (none of which I like very much, except for this one: "The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity." -Seneca) And there we are. I luckily did not post anything myself on this thread, because then I would know the pain of a direct attack. I have had enough experiences with that on the Speakeasy at PW.org to know better.
I don’t know if a legal education is worth it or not if you go to a TTT school and this post has given me certain doubts. Of course, one can always tell themselves to buck up and give it their best effort regardless, but can you really forget you’ve seen something awful? Or does it pay to not have an “Ostrich problem?” If I am substantially certain that my education is a waste of time, but I insist on pretending that everything is going alright, aren’t I just as guilty of wasting an education? This is like whether or not I wanted to check my Torts midterm grade last week. I could have not looked, and felt better, but because I did look, I know I am in grave danger, and some drastic measures must be implemented if I am to recover and not waste this opportunity I’ve spent years putting together.
Or are cyber-bullies just out to get everyone regardless, to hide behind their computers and make acid-tongue comments in an effort to convince strangers that they are witty or intelligent, when they really just come off as mean. Or is it just a way to blow off steam? I do know one thing. I don’t feel very good about where I am or what I am doing. It’s not the website that made me feel this way, but it certainly didn’t help matters. Assumption of Risk would be their defense in an action. Law students attending less prestigious schools or with poor academic performances should enter ATL at their own risk. If you want to ride “the Flopper,” you should know that you may fall down. You may not sue ATL for NIED because it is on the internet, and the internet should not be able to hurt you physically. Also, cyber-bullies are not within the exclusive control of ATL. They are not employees—they are followers, they are fans.
I have to bring in the personal element and decide whether or not BLS is a good choice or not. There are a few frustrating elements about this school.
#1: The Bookstore. Admittedly a minor issue, but 1Ls had a rude awakening this year when they found that few of the books they ordered would be available from the bookstore until the second or third week of class, forcing us to find the people with the books, xerox assignments, and generally feel that we did not have the tools to properly comprehend the material. However, the bookstore apologized and offered to pay shipping costs incurred from books bought from outside sources.
#2: The Halls, The Claustrophobia: I always preface this complaint with the statement that, for me, the choice came down to Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, or BLS. I do not think Loyola has the same problem as BLS as their campus has nearly a dozen buildings or so and everything is very spread out and aesthetically pleasing. BLS, by contrast, slams more than 1,200 students together in a giant rectangular building, and puts most of the major classes on floors 4, 5, and 6, resulting in bottlenecks at elevators and sometimes stairwells and hallways—not to mention a generally cramped atmosphere inside the actual classrooms. This underscores the fact that we are all competing for a very limited number of positions and that all of this hard work and discipline and struggle may end up as the ultimate nightmare yet.
#3: The Competition. Brooklyn may be ranked #67 in the nation or whatever, and #4 or #5 in New York City in general, but that does not mean that its students are less intelligent. Oh sure, we scored lower on the LSATs, that is probably a given—but I’m sure there’s some of us that didn’t score that low, and are receiving a full ride. I’m guessing the majority of my classmates, however, are in the same position as me, which provides reasonable tuition assistance, with the stipulation that you must finish in the top 40% of your class (roughly a B to B+ overall GPA) to reclaim it in subsequent years. When I put in my seat deposit and signed my promissory note, I thought I’d coast through law school, I thought I’d be a star, I thought I’d get straight A’s and get offered a big law firm job at OCI and pay off my debt in no time and pay $3000 a month in rent, or even buy my own place. A few months later, and reality has given me a swift kick in the rear again. I will say this about my classmates—sometimes, it can be awkward, if you know someone by face, and you maybe even know their name, but you have not introduced yourselves, for whatever awkward reasons you have. And it may be the case at every law school, but my classmates constitute the smartest, most hardworking group of people I have ever been surrounded by, and I thought I could throw down, I thought I could keep up with anyone, but they are a tough group to be scaled against on a curve.
But maybe we aren’t that intelligent, as the one comment that seems particularly more harsh than the others states. Maybe we have truly nebulous reasons for being here in the first place. People ask me what kind of law I want to practice, or what kind of lawyer I want to be, and I have no idea. I think I am going to start saying “any area that will hire me” or “the kind that has a job.” I thought that going to law school would open up more career options, but it has really just opened up one new area—and one that is extremely competitive. I did not fully realize the gravity of this situation until a couple months into the semester, when we started discussing internship applications.
I will apply for internships starting now. My grades will be out January 15th. There is still hope that I could ace all of my exams, have an awesome GPA, get an awesome internship, get on the awesome law journal, keep my awesome scholarship (maybe even get a better one), and live an awesome life in Brooklyn Heights. [Which reminds me that I never pointed out the positive qualities of BLS. I do think it is the best area to go to law school in New York City because of its proximity to the courts in Brooklyn. I do think that the receptions, events, and other school-sponsored activities it hosts are some of the best I have ever attended (but this also has a negative effect—I have personally spread myself thin between the activities, the clubs, the job search, reading assignments, outlining, and all of the other facets that make up a law student’s life). I do think Brooklyn Heights is a great area (though not as “exciting” or “fun” as the Village may be for NYU students).] But there is also the reality that this is a pipe dream, and a dream that will end when my exams are finished and I see my grades, which, if my first midterm is any indication, will prove horribly depressing and provide material for the most difficult period of my life yet. For now, I can grind, and I can hope that I can change my approach, and I can pray that a miracle will occur, and all of my classmates will suddenly become extremely stupid the morning of the exam, and we will all do very poorly, and it will be okay. But experience knows it is not so.
So I will press on, and I will not think about how tenuous this life may be for me, and I will focus, and maybe it will all work out yet. I don’t even want to express a doubt on the matter (!) because it seems like throwing in the towel, or setting yourself up for disappointment. Let me say this: as frustrating as the whole law school thing may be, if you can’t get into a top 14 (or even top 50) school with any kind of funding, it is no more frustrating than any other technical training for any other job. The main difference comes with the price tag, and it’s the element that can cause serious breakdowns. When cyber-bullies know what is at stake, they should think before they post something harmful or injurious. I am sure there have been suicides because someone has posted something mean about someone on Facebook, and maybe this will constitute a tort action. But when the postings are anonymous, other questions of privacy may be raised. I am going to end this long and rambling post by saying that I am very proud that Flying Houses has always had positive, happy comments. If this “special comment” receives any comments, I hope they will engender a real and beneficial discussion, and not a laundry-list of urban dictionary-isms meant to make others “in the know” laugh in appreciation.
This is a not a personal check-up 9/10 of the way through the semester. This is a response to a (now not so recent) post on a popular website for the legal profession. Here is a link to that post: http://abovethelaw.com/2010/11/brooklyn-law-2010-class-gift-is-more-like-a-terrible-high-school-yearbook-quote/.
For those uninitiated, Above the Law is an online legal tabloid that is basically the TMZ or Perez Hilton of the legal profession. It is something to read on a lunch break, something to laugh at, nothing to be taken seriously. However, this post in particular affected me in such a personal way that I seriously wanted to go out and kill myself, and I would entertain a claim against them for negligent infliction of emotional distress, but I know that would probably not be a very good claim (perhaps it would be protected by the first amendment? perhaps I could not prove any direct physical injury?). Why do I have such a “thin skull” you might ask?
The post itself is nothing particularly untoward. It merely claims that the Class of 2010 made a mistake in the quote they decided to put on a plaque in the library. The quote is from A League of Their Own, a film about women in the 1940’s who decided to form a baseball league to counteract the suspension of Major League Baseball and its many players signing up for service in World War II. There are many quotable moments in the film, but the one the Class of 2010 chose happened to be this: “It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it…The hard is what makes it great.” Automatically, this is turned into a sexual reference, which doesn’t really make sense given the second sentence, but this is immaterial. Should quotes from movies be plastered on the walls of law schools? Don’t we have “higher values” than those of popular culture? (Please don't let us start believing that there are better quotes to be found in film than literature--even judicial opinions would be better fodder). The class has asserted that it strove to begin a tradition, whereby students would touch the plaque as they pass under it while coming down from the second floor of the library. I have not seen anyone do this and I am afraid that if someone was seen doing this, they would be laughed at.
However, there were many comments to this post that were certainly untoward, and a source of my emotional distress (one other article on ATL, written by a psychiatrist who had also been through law school, bemoaned the opportunities of those holding J.D.’s but seeking employment apart from the legal field, which also contributed to said distress). The very first one reads “Crooklyn = TTTT.” Now I am not sure what the fourth T signifies (TTT signifies “third-tier toilet,” a derogatory term for a school not ranked in the top 50 in the nation), but the statement itself, posted by someone known as nothing more than “$$$,” certainly sends a harmful message. The next comment, posted by “Wow,” points the reader to Brooklyn’s budget planner page on its website. It reads, “Lulz at the price tag for this dump!!” Is “Lulz” some variant of LOL or is it something more nefarious? BLS is expensive, but so are most law schools. Scholarships are the only way a student can justify the enormous price tag after already having been through so much previous education. The next comment is from Kenny Powers who is a character on the HBO series Eastbound and Down and he offers the prescient wisdom (for those of us walking into final exams as an already uphill struggle), “If at first you don’t succeed then maybe you just suck.” A couple others joke about how much Kenny Powers sucks, then someone makes fun of the “living with parents” column of the budget (taking housing out of the equation) because that is what students will be doing after graduation. From here on in, the comments become more sporadic and less focused. Apparently, “Watch your head,” was another option for the quotation. This would have been sort of eloquent given the state of legal hiring patterns in 2010. Someone brings up a better quote from the same movie: “You know, if I had your job, I’d kill myself. Wait here, I’ll see if I can dig up a pistol.” This would also have been better, but dark, very dark, and law schools should not be propagating dark thoughts, though they inevitably must.
Now comes the painful part—an alum from BLS posts and sticks up for the school, and legal education in general, saying that it will pay off over time, and not amortize or depreciate like a car. They then get taken to task for failing to discern that student loans accrue interest and therefore may be considered technical amortization/depreciation. Another person says the plaque is fitting for BLS students because women baseball players ended up unemployed and broke. Other potential quotes are considered from the movie: “There’s no crying in law school” and “You’re gonna lose. You’re gonna lose.” There is then a discussion of a possible typo on the plaque in the use of the ellipsis. Blue-booking rules are debated. Someone else points out that all of the comments are cynical, and that everyone posting is an a-hole. A very dry reply read “Law students generally are not cynical. You have to graduate and realize the harsh realities of life and being unemployed/underemployed with massive student loan debt before the cynacism (sic) kicks in.” Another person named “<2012>” simply writes, “You are DOOMED.” Another person suggests the school hang a plaque saying, “See 11 U.S.C.A. 523(a)(8).” This was fairly clever as it forced me to use WestLaw to look up what it meant. Here is a quote that seemed particularly appropriate: “Let me sum up what I think of you when I hear you go to Brooklyn Law (particularly class of 2012 or 2013): (1) You weren’t smart enough to get into a better school, and (2) you’re even stupider than I would have thought otherwise because you’re paying an exorbitant amount of tuition. WTF are these people thinking, particularly those who enrolled this year in the middle of a recession?”
The other contenders for the quotation for the plaque are then listed near the end of the thread. (none of which I like very much, except for this one: "The bravest sight in the world is to see a great man struggling against adversity." -Seneca) And there we are. I luckily did not post anything myself on this thread, because then I would know the pain of a direct attack. I have had enough experiences with that on the Speakeasy at PW.org to know better.
I don’t know if a legal education is worth it or not if you go to a TTT school and this post has given me certain doubts. Of course, one can always tell themselves to buck up and give it their best effort regardless, but can you really forget you’ve seen something awful? Or does it pay to not have an “Ostrich problem?” If I am substantially certain that my education is a waste of time, but I insist on pretending that everything is going alright, aren’t I just as guilty of wasting an education? This is like whether or not I wanted to check my Torts midterm grade last week. I could have not looked, and felt better, but because I did look, I know I am in grave danger, and some drastic measures must be implemented if I am to recover and not waste this opportunity I’ve spent years putting together.
Or are cyber-bullies just out to get everyone regardless, to hide behind their computers and make acid-tongue comments in an effort to convince strangers that they are witty or intelligent, when they really just come off as mean. Or is it just a way to blow off steam? I do know one thing. I don’t feel very good about where I am or what I am doing. It’s not the website that made me feel this way, but it certainly didn’t help matters. Assumption of Risk would be their defense in an action. Law students attending less prestigious schools or with poor academic performances should enter ATL at their own risk. If you want to ride “the Flopper,” you should know that you may fall down. You may not sue ATL for NIED because it is on the internet, and the internet should not be able to hurt you physically. Also, cyber-bullies are not within the exclusive control of ATL. They are not employees—they are followers, they are fans.
I have to bring in the personal element and decide whether or not BLS is a good choice or not. There are a few frustrating elements about this school.
#1: The Bookstore. Admittedly a minor issue, but 1Ls had a rude awakening this year when they found that few of the books they ordered would be available from the bookstore until the second or third week of class, forcing us to find the people with the books, xerox assignments, and generally feel that we did not have the tools to properly comprehend the material. However, the bookstore apologized and offered to pay shipping costs incurred from books bought from outside sources.
#2: The Halls, The Claustrophobia: I always preface this complaint with the statement that, for me, the choice came down to Loyola Law School in Los Angeles, or BLS. I do not think Loyola has the same problem as BLS as their campus has nearly a dozen buildings or so and everything is very spread out and aesthetically pleasing. BLS, by contrast, slams more than 1,200 students together in a giant rectangular building, and puts most of the major classes on floors 4, 5, and 6, resulting in bottlenecks at elevators and sometimes stairwells and hallways—not to mention a generally cramped atmosphere inside the actual classrooms. This underscores the fact that we are all competing for a very limited number of positions and that all of this hard work and discipline and struggle may end up as the ultimate nightmare yet.
#3: The Competition. Brooklyn may be ranked #67 in the nation or whatever, and #4 or #5 in New York City in general, but that does not mean that its students are less intelligent. Oh sure, we scored lower on the LSATs, that is probably a given—but I’m sure there’s some of us that didn’t score that low, and are receiving a full ride. I’m guessing the majority of my classmates, however, are in the same position as me, which provides reasonable tuition assistance, with the stipulation that you must finish in the top 40% of your class (roughly a B to B+ overall GPA) to reclaim it in subsequent years. When I put in my seat deposit and signed my promissory note, I thought I’d coast through law school, I thought I’d be a star, I thought I’d get straight A’s and get offered a big law firm job at OCI and pay off my debt in no time and pay $3000 a month in rent, or even buy my own place. A few months later, and reality has given me a swift kick in the rear again. I will say this about my classmates—sometimes, it can be awkward, if you know someone by face, and you maybe even know their name, but you have not introduced yourselves, for whatever awkward reasons you have. And it may be the case at every law school, but my classmates constitute the smartest, most hardworking group of people I have ever been surrounded by, and I thought I could throw down, I thought I could keep up with anyone, but they are a tough group to be scaled against on a curve.
But maybe we aren’t that intelligent, as the one comment that seems particularly more harsh than the others states. Maybe we have truly nebulous reasons for being here in the first place. People ask me what kind of law I want to practice, or what kind of lawyer I want to be, and I have no idea. I think I am going to start saying “any area that will hire me” or “the kind that has a job.” I thought that going to law school would open up more career options, but it has really just opened up one new area—and one that is extremely competitive. I did not fully realize the gravity of this situation until a couple months into the semester, when we started discussing internship applications.
I will apply for internships starting now. My grades will be out January 15th. There is still hope that I could ace all of my exams, have an awesome GPA, get an awesome internship, get on the awesome law journal, keep my awesome scholarship (maybe even get a better one), and live an awesome life in Brooklyn Heights. [Which reminds me that I never pointed out the positive qualities of BLS. I do think it is the best area to go to law school in New York City because of its proximity to the courts in Brooklyn. I do think that the receptions, events, and other school-sponsored activities it hosts are some of the best I have ever attended (but this also has a negative effect—I have personally spread myself thin between the activities, the clubs, the job search, reading assignments, outlining, and all of the other facets that make up a law student’s life). I do think Brooklyn Heights is a great area (though not as “exciting” or “fun” as the Village may be for NYU students).] But there is also the reality that this is a pipe dream, and a dream that will end when my exams are finished and I see my grades, which, if my first midterm is any indication, will prove horribly depressing and provide material for the most difficult period of my life yet. For now, I can grind, and I can hope that I can change my approach, and I can pray that a miracle will occur, and all of my classmates will suddenly become extremely stupid the morning of the exam, and we will all do very poorly, and it will be okay. But experience knows it is not so.
So I will press on, and I will not think about how tenuous this life may be for me, and I will focus, and maybe it will all work out yet. I don’t even want to express a doubt on the matter (!) because it seems like throwing in the towel, or setting yourself up for disappointment. Let me say this: as frustrating as the whole law school thing may be, if you can’t get into a top 14 (or even top 50) school with any kind of funding, it is no more frustrating than any other technical training for any other job. The main difference comes with the price tag, and it’s the element that can cause serious breakdowns. When cyber-bullies know what is at stake, they should think before they post something harmful or injurious. I am sure there have been suicides because someone has posted something mean about someone on Facebook, and maybe this will constitute a tort action. But when the postings are anonymous, other questions of privacy may be raised. I am going to end this long and rambling post by saying that I am very proud that Flying Houses has always had positive, happy comments. If this “special comment” receives any comments, I hope they will engender a real and beneficial discussion, and not a laundry-list of urban dictionary-isms meant to make others “in the know” laugh in appreciation.
Thursday, August 19, 2010
Think Tank for Human Beings in General - Jordan Castro/Richard Wehrenberg Jr
Can someone please tell me the difference between a "chapbook" and a "zine?"
Jordan Castro sent me this chapbook after I commented on his prize-winning entry into Tao Lin's contest. My entry is here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-essay-on-tao-lin-and-our-histories.html. His is here http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/jcastro/2010/08/a-comprehensive-review-of-richard-yates-tao-lins-second-novel/. In it, he reviewed my essay and gave it high marks and I thanked him. I think it was the first time anyone ever reviewed anything I wrote on the internet. He sent me a chapbook for explaining that Dakota Fanning was not in The Sixth Sense.
That movie came out in 1999, and I think he was about 7 then, and perhaps its "twist" has been ruined by everyone in the intervening 11 years so now it is no longer quite the "best picture" event that it was then. Plus, M. Night Shyamalan's cultural cache drops with each new film he makes (though everyone seems to think he "may turn it around with this one..."), though I assume that NYU is still proud to have him as one of their more successful recent graduates.
This is the grand finale, the electrifying conclusion if you will. Please note that Bob Pollard broke up GBV on 12/31/04, and now, no more than 5 1/2 years later, they are already doing reunion shows. Flying Houses will be silent for a while, but this is not the end.
In my essay on Tao Lin, I began by stating how I embarrassed myself by a certain comment on his blog made perhaps 4 1/2 years ago about all of the zines I published at NYU while we were both there. I first became aware of zines my freshman year and I put out my first zine my sophomore year. It was entitled "Xenophobia," which was probably not as original as I thought. It was about 16 pages long. There was a poem in it about "almost" getting mugged. There was an essay about meeting 3 celebrities in New York City (Thurston Moore, Carson Daly, and Janeane Garafalo, though I did not technically meet her). I think there was a poem about smoking a cigarette on bleachers in an empty schoolyard near my parent's house during one of my holiday breaks. I don't remember what else was in this zine. I sold these zines for $1.00 out of a milk crate in Washington Square Park and gave out a complimentary kiss to anyone that wanted it. I gave a copy to my creative writing teacher from the summer session of 2002, Paul Gacioch, who was an instructor that I think was about 24 then and obtaining his MFA and trying to get his first novel published. I am going to Google him now and see if he accomplished that. Here is what I found: http://www.sidebrow.net/contributors/paul-gacioch. I left him a copy in his faculty mailbox and I ran into him in Bobst Library and I asked him if he got it and what he thought of it. He said it was "short."
My second zine was a collaborative effort between me and several of my friends entitled "Honey I'm a Prize and You're a Catch and We're a Perfect Match," which is a line from a song by Pavement and in honor of the date it was published, February 14, 2003. I don't remember anything in it (except for a poem called "horse shoe crabs" by my friend Emily, which I think she later published online) but more people read it due to the nature of the contribution process.
My third zine could probably be called a "chapbook." It was entitled "Autointoxication" and it was the best thing I had done up to that point. Arguably it is still the best thing I have done because it was published. I went to a printer in Greenwich Village and asked for 100 copies. I tried to sell them for $1.00 and probably sold about 3 or 4, which is about the total of "Xenophobia." Had I a blog at the time, who knows what might have come.
There were several others but none as important as those first three (except for "Uck Ar" but I played too minor a role in that for consideration). I include this autobiography because, this is a highly symbolic gesture. Jordan and Richard are young, and they probably know what they are doing way better than I did (or do, for that matter) but I am here to warn them about the dangers of literature. But a review first.
I have never reviewed poetry on Flying Houses before, which is another reason I wanted to do this as my last post. I wanted to do something audacious. Each writer contributes 9-10 poems of 1-2 pages in length. Jordan's are slightly more experimental and Richard's are slightly more typical of poems popular over the last 20 years. Both are talented, and while their chapbook may be "short," it deserves commendation.
My favorite poems of Jordan's are "a list of things I am going to do," which I didn't like that much until the last few lines; "weak," which is the first poem I have ever read about the dilemma of autofellatio, thus worthwhile; "haiku" which is certainly topical and formal; and "last poem," which is about achieving inner-peace. Four out of ten is not bad. The other ones have moments but overall seem too "cheeky" or "cute" or "silly" to fully praise.
My favorite poems of Richard's are "excuse me," which is a lament for internet culture, "dumpster dive alone," which I don't really understand but references Scottie Pippen, so I like it; "snow-people easily identify the sun as their enemy," which is pretty original and may be the single best poem in the chapbook; and the so-called title track, "think tanks for human beings in general," which, like most title tracks in music, I usually feel are better than the majority of other songs on the album--but is the best way to end the chapbook.
I like the idea of chapbooks and zines because they are not too time-consuming. They are like regular magazines except they are not filled with useless trash about celebrities and reality stars. They are filled with serious writing by mostly unknown people, reaching out and trying to establish themselves. There is something noble about them. For some reason I do not think self-publishing a novel is as noble as self-publishing a zine.
Do I really have anything else I want to add? When I was 17 I wrote a one-act play for my high school and after my classmates told me how much they liked it (though I was unsure of its quality), I made it my life's mission to write, until every MFA program I applied to rejected me in February of 2007. I did not stop writing after that, obviously, but my confidence was shot. Here is my advice to Jordan and Richard: if you are going to get your MFA eventually, apply to a safety school. I applied to U Chicago's MAPH program, UT-Austin's Michener Center for Writers, Iowa's Writer's Workshop, University of Oregon, Columbia University's esteemed program producing writers like Rick Moody and Wells Tower and James Franco and offering zero aid in general and a $50,000 price tag (and you thought law school was expensive, and didn't offer enough career security). Every single one rejected me. Apply to a safety school. Or don't. Maybe I just suck at writing, and at life.
Do I really want to be at law school, and quitting my blog, and quitting my creative endeavors? No. I intend to work on my 3rd novel whenever appropriate over these next three years. I am 28,000 words into it. It is the best thing I have done, no doubt, but still unpublishable. Too many "fatal flaws." Everybody in or associated with law school says you have no free time and if you have free time you should be studying. Well, now I am going to start doing that and stop blogging. And I have serious doubts about my career in general. I waited too long to do this.
More advice to Jordan and Richard: never move to a random city (like say Los Angeles) because it seems fun and you have enough savings in your account-----unless you have a job there waiting for you. Had I not done that, had I applied to law school 3 years ago, or now without that stint, I'd be having a blast, not pinching every penny, not failing to leave tips for take-out orders, not feeling guilty about an endless reliance upon my parents and not feeling that I have a dubious future in general. I would feel much more confident.
Finally, that is very far in the future for them. They will be at college soon and probably have the time of their lives. I would recommend NYU but I feel as if it is changing. It is expanding, somehow, despite already having been the largest private university in the country 9 years ago. John Sexton is really emphasizing how important it is to study abroad so they can get as many students as possible out of the Village and into their other, expensive international branches in Paris, Florence, Buenos Aires and other places of which I am unaware. They are putting up students in hotels, because the new dorms they have opened since I have graduated still don't provide enough space. Faculty members would complain about their salaries. Still, I wouldn't have rather been anywhere else. Except UT-Austin or maybe Oberlin if I had gotten in there. Liz Phair and I have the same birthday and she is exactly seventeen years older than me and she went there.
Thanks to Jordan for sending me this chapbook. I apologize for using this as an opportunity to explain why this blog will be slipping into a coma and writing so many other random things. I wish him and Richard the best of luck, and hope that their method of e-publishing will work out okay for them. They are on the first-wave of this stuff, and they should ride it out and see where it takes them.
Jordan Castro sent me this chapbook after I commented on his prize-winning entry into Tao Lin's contest. My entry is here http://flyinghouses.blogspot.com/2010/07/my-essay-on-tao-lin-and-our-histories.html. His is here http://www.thenervousbreakdown.com/jcastro/2010/08/a-comprehensive-review-of-richard-yates-tao-lins-second-novel/. In it, he reviewed my essay and gave it high marks and I thanked him. I think it was the first time anyone ever reviewed anything I wrote on the internet. He sent me a chapbook for explaining that Dakota Fanning was not in The Sixth Sense.
That movie came out in 1999, and I think he was about 7 then, and perhaps its "twist" has been ruined by everyone in the intervening 11 years so now it is no longer quite the "best picture" event that it was then. Plus, M. Night Shyamalan's cultural cache drops with each new film he makes (though everyone seems to think he "may turn it around with this one..."), though I assume that NYU is still proud to have him as one of their more successful recent graduates.
This is the grand finale, the electrifying conclusion if you will. Please note that Bob Pollard broke up GBV on 12/31/04, and now, no more than 5 1/2 years later, they are already doing reunion shows. Flying Houses will be silent for a while, but this is not the end.
In my essay on Tao Lin, I began by stating how I embarrassed myself by a certain comment on his blog made perhaps 4 1/2 years ago about all of the zines I published at NYU while we were both there. I first became aware of zines my freshman year and I put out my first zine my sophomore year. It was entitled "Xenophobia," which was probably not as original as I thought. It was about 16 pages long. There was a poem in it about "almost" getting mugged. There was an essay about meeting 3 celebrities in New York City (Thurston Moore, Carson Daly, and Janeane Garafalo, though I did not technically meet her). I think there was a poem about smoking a cigarette on bleachers in an empty schoolyard near my parent's house during one of my holiday breaks. I don't remember what else was in this zine. I sold these zines for $1.00 out of a milk crate in Washington Square Park and gave out a complimentary kiss to anyone that wanted it. I gave a copy to my creative writing teacher from the summer session of 2002, Paul Gacioch, who was an instructor that I think was about 24 then and obtaining his MFA and trying to get his first novel published. I am going to Google him now and see if he accomplished that. Here is what I found: http://www.sidebrow.net/contributors/paul-gacioch. I left him a copy in his faculty mailbox and I ran into him in Bobst Library and I asked him if he got it and what he thought of it. He said it was "short."
My second zine was a collaborative effort between me and several of my friends entitled "Honey I'm a Prize and You're a Catch and We're a Perfect Match," which is a line from a song by Pavement and in honor of the date it was published, February 14, 2003. I don't remember anything in it (except for a poem called "horse shoe crabs" by my friend Emily, which I think she later published online) but more people read it due to the nature of the contribution process.
My third zine could probably be called a "chapbook." It was entitled "Autointoxication" and it was the best thing I had done up to that point. Arguably it is still the best thing I have done because it was published. I went to a printer in Greenwich Village and asked for 100 copies. I tried to sell them for $1.00 and probably sold about 3 or 4, which is about the total of "Xenophobia." Had I a blog at the time, who knows what might have come.
There were several others but none as important as those first three (except for "Uck Ar" but I played too minor a role in that for consideration). I include this autobiography because, this is a highly symbolic gesture. Jordan and Richard are young, and they probably know what they are doing way better than I did (or do, for that matter) but I am here to warn them about the dangers of literature. But a review first.
I have never reviewed poetry on Flying Houses before, which is another reason I wanted to do this as my last post. I wanted to do something audacious. Each writer contributes 9-10 poems of 1-2 pages in length. Jordan's are slightly more experimental and Richard's are slightly more typical of poems popular over the last 20 years. Both are talented, and while their chapbook may be "short," it deserves commendation.
My favorite poems of Jordan's are "a list of things I am going to do," which I didn't like that much until the last few lines; "weak," which is the first poem I have ever read about the dilemma of autofellatio, thus worthwhile; "haiku" which is certainly topical and formal; and "last poem," which is about achieving inner-peace. Four out of ten is not bad. The other ones have moments but overall seem too "cheeky" or "cute" or "silly" to fully praise.
My favorite poems of Richard's are "excuse me," which is a lament for internet culture, "dumpster dive alone," which I don't really understand but references Scottie Pippen, so I like it; "snow-people easily identify the sun as their enemy," which is pretty original and may be the single best poem in the chapbook; and the so-called title track, "think tanks for human beings in general," which, like most title tracks in music, I usually feel are better than the majority of other songs on the album--but is the best way to end the chapbook.
I like the idea of chapbooks and zines because they are not too time-consuming. They are like regular magazines except they are not filled with useless trash about celebrities and reality stars. They are filled with serious writing by mostly unknown people, reaching out and trying to establish themselves. There is something noble about them. For some reason I do not think self-publishing a novel is as noble as self-publishing a zine.
Do I really have anything else I want to add? When I was 17 I wrote a one-act play for my high school and after my classmates told me how much they liked it (though I was unsure of its quality), I made it my life's mission to write, until every MFA program I applied to rejected me in February of 2007. I did not stop writing after that, obviously, but my confidence was shot. Here is my advice to Jordan and Richard: if you are going to get your MFA eventually, apply to a safety school. I applied to U Chicago's MAPH program, UT-Austin's Michener Center for Writers, Iowa's Writer's Workshop, University of Oregon, Columbia University's esteemed program producing writers like Rick Moody and Wells Tower and James Franco and offering zero aid in general and a $50,000 price tag (and you thought law school was expensive, and didn't offer enough career security). Every single one rejected me. Apply to a safety school. Or don't. Maybe I just suck at writing, and at life.
Do I really want to be at law school, and quitting my blog, and quitting my creative endeavors? No. I intend to work on my 3rd novel whenever appropriate over these next three years. I am 28,000 words into it. It is the best thing I have done, no doubt, but still unpublishable. Too many "fatal flaws." Everybody in or associated with law school says you have no free time and if you have free time you should be studying. Well, now I am going to start doing that and stop blogging. And I have serious doubts about my career in general. I waited too long to do this.
More advice to Jordan and Richard: never move to a random city (like say Los Angeles) because it seems fun and you have enough savings in your account-----unless you have a job there waiting for you. Had I not done that, had I applied to law school 3 years ago, or now without that stint, I'd be having a blast, not pinching every penny, not failing to leave tips for take-out orders, not feeling guilty about an endless reliance upon my parents and not feeling that I have a dubious future in general. I would feel much more confident.
Finally, that is very far in the future for them. They will be at college soon and probably have the time of their lives. I would recommend NYU but I feel as if it is changing. It is expanding, somehow, despite already having been the largest private university in the country 9 years ago. John Sexton is really emphasizing how important it is to study abroad so they can get as many students as possible out of the Village and into their other, expensive international branches in Paris, Florence, Buenos Aires and other places of which I am unaware. They are putting up students in hotels, because the new dorms they have opened since I have graduated still don't provide enough space. Faculty members would complain about their salaries. Still, I wouldn't have rather been anywhere else. Except UT-Austin or maybe Oberlin if I had gotten in there. Liz Phair and I have the same birthday and she is exactly seventeen years older than me and she went there.
Thanks to Jordan for sending me this chapbook. I apologize for using this as an opportunity to explain why this blog will be slipping into a coma and writing so many other random things. I wish him and Richard the best of luck, and hope that their method of e-publishing will work out okay for them. They are on the first-wave of this stuff, and they should ride it out and see where it takes them.
Wednesday, August 18, 2010
Richard Yates - Tao Lin
This will be one of the last posts on Flying Houses for a long time. A friend of mine recently told me that I should spend more time studying and less time blogging since studying involves the financial investment. But I requested this book and I am not going to be negligent when it comes to following through on promises.
Yes, perhaps a bit of personal narrative is in order before this official review begins, since it is such a serious occasion. I requested a copy of Richard Yates from Tao Lin's publicist on July 6, 2010, approximately 5 weeks before I would move to Brooklyn for law school. I knew I would receive the book in my new apartment in Brooklyn, and I knew there would be law school assignments, and I knew it would appear negligent if I blogged about underground literature instead of reading and briefing cases. But I did it anyway because I knew it was the last chance I would have to do an advance review of a relatively highly-anticipated new title.
I will not be interviewing Tao as I did for previous reviews of Eeeee Eee Eeee and Shoplifting from American Apparel. Not that I don't want to, but again, time, and negligence. I received Richard Yates in my apartment foyer on Monday, August 16. There were two packages from Melville House* and I was just out of my 2nd day of "preliminary" law school classes. I was very depressed. I was thinking that there was no way I could possibly survive the next three years. It would not be sustainable. In this depressed mood, I immediately began reading Richard Yates, which is usually the best time to read books by Tao Lin. I read for an hour and made it through roughly 1/4 of the book and then decided it was time to go get drunk and watch a movie on Netflix. It was Comedians of Comedy and I laughed very much. Sometimes I would go outside and smoke a cigarette. I would put my iPod boombox by my window and play music and go outside and sit outside my window on a stoop and listen to the music and smoke. It came time to go to bed and I began having a nervous breakdown. Sometime around three or four o'clock in the morning I fell asleep. Then I woke up around 6:30 am or so and resumed having a nervous breakdown, and I opened up my word processor and did a free-write about the inevitability of my decision to suicide. This put me in a weird manic mood, and I went to shower and then went to another set of preliminary classes around 8:15 am.
Several hours later, the nervous breakdown had been quelled, and I enjoyed a calm lunch in the school cafeteria while reading Richard Yates. Then later I smoked a cigarette in the school's gated entrance and read more of Richard Yates. I was enjoying it very much.
I did not read any more of it on Tuesday night. I watched two movies on Netflix after being at a bar for a school outing--The Trials of Henry Kissinger and The Cruise (the latter of which I had seen before and should be required viewing for anyone living in New York City), also while drinking more beer and continuing to smoke cigarettes in this manner.
This morning, Wednesday, I resolved not to smoke any cigarettes or drink anything alcoholic. I went to the bookstore and waited forty-five minutes to get my books and was very frustrated but then happy it was over. I went to a pizza place for lunch and read more of Richard Yates, but only a few pages. Then I went into the school library and read a few more pages of Richard Yates. Then I went to class, and then I came home, and I resolved to finish reading the rest of Richard Yates. I also received a chapbook from Jordan Castro today and think I will try to review it as the last true blog post for a long time.
And I finished reading Richard Yates around 7:05 PM and it is now 7:35 PM. So, I suppose we can begin then?
Richard Yates is a very narrow book. It is about one thing, and one thing only: a relationship between a 16-year-old named Dakota Fanning and a 22-year-old named Haley Joel Osment. It is perhaps worth noting that Tao Lin does not attempt to seriously recreate the lives of these celebrities. Haley Joel Osment (hereafter referred to as HJO) is a graduate of New York University who spends a lot of time in Bobst Library and lives on Wall St. Dakota Fanning (hereafter referred to as DF) is a high-school student living in Secaucus, New Jersey. They meet on the internet and quickly begin dating and take buses and trains to visit one another.
It is about that one thing only, but within that, it is about many other things: self-mutilation, bulimia, health food stores, sex, lying, G-chat, movies, emo bands, and writers like Lorrie Moore and Richard Yates--in short, par for the course for a Tao Lin novel. I don't begrudge Tao for writing about the same topics. I have written enough to know that certain themes become obsessive to certain writers, and there is no shame in repetition, so long as it offers something new.
And I have been looking forward to this book for a couple years now and I predicted that it would be Tao Lin's most mainstream effort yet, and in certain regards I am right and in certain regards I am wrong. Tao does branch out into a more detailed "consistent" "straightforward" narrative than he has in the past. It is much more focused on the characters and there are no tangents that make little sense, as in Eeeee Eee Eeee. And I think technically, the rough draft of this novel was finished before Shoplifting from American Apparel was written, and then this novel was edited heavily after that novella was finished.
And perhaps that holds the key to my feelings. In a sense, I appreciate what Tao is trying to do with this book. But in another sense, I could not get into it as much as his previous two long-form prose works. Perhaps it is because I was rushing through it because I was in law school.
Here is my problem with it, essentially: it does not need to be a novel. I do not want to say that but it is the way I feel. I think it would have made an excellent short story, or a very good novella, but as the longest book he has done yet (not sure on this, but it seems longer than Eeeee Eee Eeee) it tends to drag. HJO and DF are two of the most interesting characters he has portrayed yet, but their story is too narrowly-focused.
So I went through periods where I thought the book was great, and periods where I thought it was not so great. My opinion depended on my mood, and the book could not distract me from present circumstances. Some people have been giving it bad reviews and not even reading to the end. I read to the end but I think the strongest parts are in the first 120 pages. It is in the last 80 pages that most of the "climactic" scenes occur, but I found HJO and DF's conversations becoming too repetitive, and almost too pointless. I do like how HJO wants to help DF near the end despite his weakening feelings for her. And I like the scene where they make funnel cakes at the carnival, and I like the scene where they go to Epcot, and I like the scene where they dye DF's hair black and she "turns goth." I also enjoy the references to self-mutilation and bulimia and Ernest Hemingway biographies and Nicholas Sparks for personal reasons.
There are many little moments in this book that are nice, but on the whole, I did not find it as interesting as Lin's two previous novels. Something has been made about this book being autobiographical and if that is the case then I understand why Tao felt that it needed to be published. I do not think everything in this book really happened. Or maybe everything in this book did happen, but certain details about people are skewed. I can't tell, and it doesn't really matter either way. It is fiction. And while I would love to give Tao positive reviews from here until the end of days, I can only half-heartedly recommend this novel.
It is worth reading for its "experimental" aspect for Tao Lin personally. It is more straightforward, in a sense, but it is also just like his previous work in that description is totally eschewed in favor of maximum repetitive action with repetitious objects. The element I like most is its "realist bent."
This is a minutely-detailed (though not deeply descriptive) account of a relationship that rings true. You feel that you are reading about a "real relationship" that might prove educational in some way. But it is only educational if you are a 22-year-old going out with a 16-year-old and all of the weird things that come with it. Neither HJO or DF is very mature, but obviously HJO has a slightly more complete view of life. The tagline for this book is, "What constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?" I am not sure I like it, and it does not seem like Tao wrote that tagline, but I may be wrong. Regardless of whether or not I like it, the implication is that this book is an exploration of that sort of "illicit sex" and one gets the impression that it will be "titillating." But it is not titillating at all, even with more than a few scenes of sexuality. There is lots of G-chat. I think maybe more than 50% of this book's content is in the form of G-chat. The rest is extremely dialogue-heavy, and most of the dialogue seems almost meaningless.
I haven't read any books by Richard Yates, but I did see the movie Revolutionary Road and that was a narrowly-focused narrative on one relationship. Perhaps his other books are like that, and this is Tao's homage to him. If so, that is fine, that is nice. Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring to make fun of Sherwood Anderson.
So maybe there is a deeper layer to this book that I can't quite see, but taken on its own terms, I feel that is lacking in something, or that there is too much of nothing in it. I do believe it would make a great short story, and if it were edited down to just a few essential scenes instead of an exhaustive diary of every conversation (most glaringly, the four-page paragraph where DF tells HJO every single time she has lied to him in a long e-mail, which is either the best or worst part of the book, depending on your view), I would have liked it much more. Such as it is, I am glad I read it, I am glad I reviewed it during this tumultuous time in my life, and I look forward to reading whatever else Tao Lin's next project will be. Shoplifting from American Apparel was "roughly" written after this, and it is my favorite thing by him so far, so whatever he has been working on for the last year, or whatever he will be working on for the next year, I think, will continue to improve. This does seem a bit like an object from a time-capsule despite its latter-day editing. I remember reading a blog post by Tao Lin a long time ago saying he was going to write a novel about Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment and thinking that it was a joke. Imagine my surprise when I read the plot descriptions for Richard Yates.
This novel isn't a joke though. It's a serious attempt at something different, and I respect that. One can learn something from it. Sometimes exhaustive recitation of events and conversations do not automatically make for compelling literature. I have been guilty of this (and am still guilty of this, at times) so I understand the motive behind it. But without any deeper significance, or any hints of deeper significance, the reader finds themselves lost, and wonders why this information was so important to communicate.
*I received two copies of Richard Yates because I requested one from the publicist and then entered Tao's contest, which gave a copy of the novel as an award to all legitimate participants. I have an extra copy so if anyone wants it, I will send it to them, but I would prefer for them to live in Brooklyn Heights so I don't have to mail it.
Yes, perhaps a bit of personal narrative is in order before this official review begins, since it is such a serious occasion. I requested a copy of Richard Yates from Tao Lin's publicist on July 6, 2010, approximately 5 weeks before I would move to Brooklyn for law school. I knew I would receive the book in my new apartment in Brooklyn, and I knew there would be law school assignments, and I knew it would appear negligent if I blogged about underground literature instead of reading and briefing cases. But I did it anyway because I knew it was the last chance I would have to do an advance review of a relatively highly-anticipated new title.
I will not be interviewing Tao as I did for previous reviews of Eeeee Eee Eeee and Shoplifting from American Apparel. Not that I don't want to, but again, time, and negligence. I received Richard Yates in my apartment foyer on Monday, August 16. There were two packages from Melville House* and I was just out of my 2nd day of "preliminary" law school classes. I was very depressed. I was thinking that there was no way I could possibly survive the next three years. It would not be sustainable. In this depressed mood, I immediately began reading Richard Yates, which is usually the best time to read books by Tao Lin. I read for an hour and made it through roughly 1/4 of the book and then decided it was time to go get drunk and watch a movie on Netflix. It was Comedians of Comedy and I laughed very much. Sometimes I would go outside and smoke a cigarette. I would put my iPod boombox by my window and play music and go outside and sit outside my window on a stoop and listen to the music and smoke. It came time to go to bed and I began having a nervous breakdown. Sometime around three or four o'clock in the morning I fell asleep. Then I woke up around 6:30 am or so and resumed having a nervous breakdown, and I opened up my word processor and did a free-write about the inevitability of my decision to suicide. This put me in a weird manic mood, and I went to shower and then went to another set of preliminary classes around 8:15 am.
Several hours later, the nervous breakdown had been quelled, and I enjoyed a calm lunch in the school cafeteria while reading Richard Yates. Then later I smoked a cigarette in the school's gated entrance and read more of Richard Yates. I was enjoying it very much.
I did not read any more of it on Tuesday night. I watched two movies on Netflix after being at a bar for a school outing--The Trials of Henry Kissinger and The Cruise (the latter of which I had seen before and should be required viewing for anyone living in New York City), also while drinking more beer and continuing to smoke cigarettes in this manner.
This morning, Wednesday, I resolved not to smoke any cigarettes or drink anything alcoholic. I went to the bookstore and waited forty-five minutes to get my books and was very frustrated but then happy it was over. I went to a pizza place for lunch and read more of Richard Yates, but only a few pages. Then I went into the school library and read a few more pages of Richard Yates. Then I went to class, and then I came home, and I resolved to finish reading the rest of Richard Yates. I also received a chapbook from Jordan Castro today and think I will try to review it as the last true blog post for a long time.
And I finished reading Richard Yates around 7:05 PM and it is now 7:35 PM. So, I suppose we can begin then?
Richard Yates is a very narrow book. It is about one thing, and one thing only: a relationship between a 16-year-old named Dakota Fanning and a 22-year-old named Haley Joel Osment. It is perhaps worth noting that Tao Lin does not attempt to seriously recreate the lives of these celebrities. Haley Joel Osment (hereafter referred to as HJO) is a graduate of New York University who spends a lot of time in Bobst Library and lives on Wall St. Dakota Fanning (hereafter referred to as DF) is a high-school student living in Secaucus, New Jersey. They meet on the internet and quickly begin dating and take buses and trains to visit one another.
It is about that one thing only, but within that, it is about many other things: self-mutilation, bulimia, health food stores, sex, lying, G-chat, movies, emo bands, and writers like Lorrie Moore and Richard Yates--in short, par for the course for a Tao Lin novel. I don't begrudge Tao for writing about the same topics. I have written enough to know that certain themes become obsessive to certain writers, and there is no shame in repetition, so long as it offers something new.
And I have been looking forward to this book for a couple years now and I predicted that it would be Tao Lin's most mainstream effort yet, and in certain regards I am right and in certain regards I am wrong. Tao does branch out into a more detailed "consistent" "straightforward" narrative than he has in the past. It is much more focused on the characters and there are no tangents that make little sense, as in Eeeee Eee Eeee. And I think technically, the rough draft of this novel was finished before Shoplifting from American Apparel was written, and then this novel was edited heavily after that novella was finished.
And perhaps that holds the key to my feelings. In a sense, I appreciate what Tao is trying to do with this book. But in another sense, I could not get into it as much as his previous two long-form prose works. Perhaps it is because I was rushing through it because I was in law school.
Here is my problem with it, essentially: it does not need to be a novel. I do not want to say that but it is the way I feel. I think it would have made an excellent short story, or a very good novella, but as the longest book he has done yet (not sure on this, but it seems longer than Eeeee Eee Eeee) it tends to drag. HJO and DF are two of the most interesting characters he has portrayed yet, but their story is too narrowly-focused.
So I went through periods where I thought the book was great, and periods where I thought it was not so great. My opinion depended on my mood, and the book could not distract me from present circumstances. Some people have been giving it bad reviews and not even reading to the end. I read to the end but I think the strongest parts are in the first 120 pages. It is in the last 80 pages that most of the "climactic" scenes occur, but I found HJO and DF's conversations becoming too repetitive, and almost too pointless. I do like how HJO wants to help DF near the end despite his weakening feelings for her. And I like the scene where they make funnel cakes at the carnival, and I like the scene where they go to Epcot, and I like the scene where they dye DF's hair black and she "turns goth." I also enjoy the references to self-mutilation and bulimia and Ernest Hemingway biographies and Nicholas Sparks for personal reasons.
There are many little moments in this book that are nice, but on the whole, I did not find it as interesting as Lin's two previous novels. Something has been made about this book being autobiographical and if that is the case then I understand why Tao felt that it needed to be published. I do not think everything in this book really happened. Or maybe everything in this book did happen, but certain details about people are skewed. I can't tell, and it doesn't really matter either way. It is fiction. And while I would love to give Tao positive reviews from here until the end of days, I can only half-heartedly recommend this novel.
It is worth reading for its "experimental" aspect for Tao Lin personally. It is more straightforward, in a sense, but it is also just like his previous work in that description is totally eschewed in favor of maximum repetitive action with repetitious objects. The element I like most is its "realist bent."
This is a minutely-detailed (though not deeply descriptive) account of a relationship that rings true. You feel that you are reading about a "real relationship" that might prove educational in some way. But it is only educational if you are a 22-year-old going out with a 16-year-old and all of the weird things that come with it. Neither HJO or DF is very mature, but obviously HJO has a slightly more complete view of life. The tagline for this book is, "What constitutes illicit sex for a generation with no rules?" I am not sure I like it, and it does not seem like Tao wrote that tagline, but I may be wrong. Regardless of whether or not I like it, the implication is that this book is an exploration of that sort of "illicit sex" and one gets the impression that it will be "titillating." But it is not titillating at all, even with more than a few scenes of sexuality. There is lots of G-chat. I think maybe more than 50% of this book's content is in the form of G-chat. The rest is extremely dialogue-heavy, and most of the dialogue seems almost meaningless.
I haven't read any books by Richard Yates, but I did see the movie Revolutionary Road and that was a narrowly-focused narrative on one relationship. Perhaps his other books are like that, and this is Tao's homage to him. If so, that is fine, that is nice. Hemingway wrote The Torrents of Spring to make fun of Sherwood Anderson.
So maybe there is a deeper layer to this book that I can't quite see, but taken on its own terms, I feel that is lacking in something, or that there is too much of nothing in it. I do believe it would make a great short story, and if it were edited down to just a few essential scenes instead of an exhaustive diary of every conversation (most glaringly, the four-page paragraph where DF tells HJO every single time she has lied to him in a long e-mail, which is either the best or worst part of the book, depending on your view), I would have liked it much more. Such as it is, I am glad I read it, I am glad I reviewed it during this tumultuous time in my life, and I look forward to reading whatever else Tao Lin's next project will be. Shoplifting from American Apparel was "roughly" written after this, and it is my favorite thing by him so far, so whatever he has been working on for the last year, or whatever he will be working on for the next year, I think, will continue to improve. This does seem a bit like an object from a time-capsule despite its latter-day editing. I remember reading a blog post by Tao Lin a long time ago saying he was going to write a novel about Dakota Fanning and Haley Joel Osment and thinking that it was a joke. Imagine my surprise when I read the plot descriptions for Richard Yates.
This novel isn't a joke though. It's a serious attempt at something different, and I respect that. One can learn something from it. Sometimes exhaustive recitation of events and conversations do not automatically make for compelling literature. I have been guilty of this (and am still guilty of this, at times) so I understand the motive behind it. But without any deeper significance, or any hints of deeper significance, the reader finds themselves lost, and wonders why this information was so important to communicate.
*I received two copies of Richard Yates because I requested one from the publicist and then entered Tao's contest, which gave a copy of the novel as an award to all legitimate participants. I have an extra copy so if anyone wants it, I will send it to them, but I would prefer for them to live in Brooklyn Heights so I don't have to mail it.
Monday, August 16, 2010
Antichrist - Dir. Lars von Trier
While I had wanted to see this movie for over a year, it was very dificult to find. It is unrated. It did not play widely in theaters. But it was the most talked about film at Cannes in 2009. It is actually not out on DVD until November 2010, from the Criterion collection. Recently I signed up for Netflix again and watched it instantly. I found it last night and became ridiculously excited.
Why does it take so long to come out on DVD? Probably because it's such a difficult film. It is definitely in the top 5 "darkest" films I have ever seen, if not #1 itself. Many may know the basic plot but I will recount: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe played a married couple. In the "prologue" they are having sex (which is a bit graphic) when their toddler son crawls out of his crib to play with some toys on his window ledge. This prologue is filmed in black & white and set to a beautiful score by Handel I believe. In short it is the best part of the movie. It is filmed in super-slow-motion, and the end of the scene is quite painful.
From here, the film switches to color and regular speed and contains dialogue. It is perhaps worth noting that the dialogue is quiet, and I was watching it on my laptop, which does not have the most powerful speakers, so I missed a bit. Charlotte collapses after the funeral of their baby boy and goes into the hospital. Willem is a therapist and seeks to cure his wife of her pain.
There are three chapters: Grief, Pain, and Despair. Charlotte is having a really hard time getting over the death of her baby, of course she feels responsible, she even knew that sometimes he would try to crawl out of his crib in the past. Willem decides to take her to their cabin in the woods for more alternative forms of therapy, like having her imagine lying in the grass and having it consume her.
"Grief" becomes a bit scary at times, and Antichrist is in the horror genre, I would say. It is not as scary as The Exorcist but it is very scary, for example, when a wolf talks to Willem at the end of "Pain." That is what is weird about it. "Grief" has a few scary moments, but then during "Pain," Charlotte even becomes happy and excited and claims that she is cured and there is a brief moment of bliss. But then the wolf talks to Willem at the end in a scary voice and "Despair" (Gynocide) begins.
"Gynocide" is the title of the study that Charlotte has been undertaking, about crimes committed against women in the 16th century. There are lots of weird illustrations and there is a constellation with Grief, Pain, and Despair appearing as a fox, a bird, and a deer. These animals show up in the movie having various bloody tumors or what appear to be severed appendages.
In "Despair," Charlotte drills a hole through Willem's leg, cuts off her labia with a scissors, and runs into the woods and masturbates. I have to say that I give enormous respect to both Gainsbourg and Dafoe for their performances in this film. No other actors of their station would take such risks.
I won't give away what happens at the end, but it is relatively predictable. It is a reasonable ending and I don't think most people will be horrified by it after everything that came before. However, there is still a super creepy ending, where there are like hundreds of women in white silhouette climbing through the woods as a closing shot. And then there is an "epilogue" which has the same score as the "prologue" and the same black & white and super-slow-motion, but it is much more sad because the film is over and there is nothing more to be done.
I don't think this film is meaningless, but I do think some of it may contain crackpot psychology. Gainsbourg's revelation, before going totally nuts, that women are subject to nature, is the major epiphany of the film, only to be derided by Dafoe a second later. Many say that Lars von Trier makes misogynistic films. This film may be misogynistic but I could not help but feel affection for Gainsbourg's character, up to a certain point at least.
This is the type of movie that should be shown in dive bars and indie rock clubs and put on mute. It's the type of movie that should be shown at screwed-up parties. I waited a long time to see it and I was so happy to finally have the chance last night. It's not one of the best movies I've ever seen at all, but it is an event. I actually liked The Girlfriend Experience better because it was more light-hearted.
But this is a horror film, and it's a very good horror film. It's not as good as The Shining but it's definitely similar. Even when you see the cabin in early shots, you know it's straight out of 80's slasher pics. But this isn't a "dumb horror film" (which they usually always are). Like, okay, I like both Hostel movies, but this is much more intellectual. It's intellectual and personal and psychological and horrific. I am sure few couples are going to have to go through what Gainsbourg and Dafoe do, and I am sure even if they did go through it, they wouldn't go to such extremes. That von Trier is able to make it believable and hallucinatory at the same time shows how talented he is. Now, I would like him to do something ridiculously mainstream. But I don't think that will happen anytime soon.
Why does it take so long to come out on DVD? Probably because it's such a difficult film. It is definitely in the top 5 "darkest" films I have ever seen, if not #1 itself. Many may know the basic plot but I will recount: Charlotte Gainsbourg and Willem Dafoe played a married couple. In the "prologue" they are having sex (which is a bit graphic) when their toddler son crawls out of his crib to play with some toys on his window ledge. This prologue is filmed in black & white and set to a beautiful score by Handel I believe. In short it is the best part of the movie. It is filmed in super-slow-motion, and the end of the scene is quite painful.
From here, the film switches to color and regular speed and contains dialogue. It is perhaps worth noting that the dialogue is quiet, and I was watching it on my laptop, which does not have the most powerful speakers, so I missed a bit. Charlotte collapses after the funeral of their baby boy and goes into the hospital. Willem is a therapist and seeks to cure his wife of her pain.
There are three chapters: Grief, Pain, and Despair. Charlotte is having a really hard time getting over the death of her baby, of course she feels responsible, she even knew that sometimes he would try to crawl out of his crib in the past. Willem decides to take her to their cabin in the woods for more alternative forms of therapy, like having her imagine lying in the grass and having it consume her.
"Grief" becomes a bit scary at times, and Antichrist is in the horror genre, I would say. It is not as scary as The Exorcist but it is very scary, for example, when a wolf talks to Willem at the end of "Pain." That is what is weird about it. "Grief" has a few scary moments, but then during "Pain," Charlotte even becomes happy and excited and claims that she is cured and there is a brief moment of bliss. But then the wolf talks to Willem at the end in a scary voice and "Despair" (Gynocide) begins.
"Gynocide" is the title of the study that Charlotte has been undertaking, about crimes committed against women in the 16th century. There are lots of weird illustrations and there is a constellation with Grief, Pain, and Despair appearing as a fox, a bird, and a deer. These animals show up in the movie having various bloody tumors or what appear to be severed appendages.
In "Despair," Charlotte drills a hole through Willem's leg, cuts off her labia with a scissors, and runs into the woods and masturbates. I have to say that I give enormous respect to both Gainsbourg and Dafoe for their performances in this film. No other actors of their station would take such risks.
I won't give away what happens at the end, but it is relatively predictable. It is a reasonable ending and I don't think most people will be horrified by it after everything that came before. However, there is still a super creepy ending, where there are like hundreds of women in white silhouette climbing through the woods as a closing shot. And then there is an "epilogue" which has the same score as the "prologue" and the same black & white and super-slow-motion, but it is much more sad because the film is over and there is nothing more to be done.
I don't think this film is meaningless, but I do think some of it may contain crackpot psychology. Gainsbourg's revelation, before going totally nuts, that women are subject to nature, is the major epiphany of the film, only to be derided by Dafoe a second later. Many say that Lars von Trier makes misogynistic films. This film may be misogynistic but I could not help but feel affection for Gainsbourg's character, up to a certain point at least.
This is the type of movie that should be shown in dive bars and indie rock clubs and put on mute. It's the type of movie that should be shown at screwed-up parties. I waited a long time to see it and I was so happy to finally have the chance last night. It's not one of the best movies I've ever seen at all, but it is an event. I actually liked The Girlfriend Experience better because it was more light-hearted.
But this is a horror film, and it's a very good horror film. It's not as good as The Shining but it's definitely similar. Even when you see the cabin in early shots, you know it's straight out of 80's slasher pics. But this isn't a "dumb horror film" (which they usually always are). Like, okay, I like both Hostel movies, but this is much more intellectual. It's intellectual and personal and psychological and horrific. I am sure few couples are going to have to go through what Gainsbourg and Dafoe do, and I am sure even if they did go through it, they wouldn't go to such extremes. That von Trier is able to make it believable and hallucinatory at the same time shows how talented he is. Now, I would like him to do something ridiculously mainstream. But I don't think that will happen anytime soon.
Saturday, August 14, 2010
The Girlfriend Experience - Dir. Steven Soderbergh
While I had wanted to see this movie for over a year, I had mixed feelings going into it. For one, I was unconvinced of Steven Soderbergh's talents as a director. I found Erin Brockovich to be overrated. I found Traffic to be overrated, but in time I began to understand some of its appeal. I consider the Oceans movies to be cashout opportunities, though not without their own (quite unique, I think) niche. I never saw The Good German but I have heard it is terrible. I have never seen Solaris or The Limey, but I have been meaning to. The Informant! was enjoyable, but no other comment on that now.
Second, Sasha Grey is (was?) a porn star. And she is younger than me, and way more fucking rich. And she manages to land her own film, basically, with Steven Soderbergh. So I was jealous, and suspicious of her talents as a "real actress."
Despite his more mainstream occupations, Soderbergh also directed Bubble and Che, (neither of which I've seen) which are not the most obvious choices for a director who can pretty much guarantee a $100 million blockbuster when he so chooses. Furthermore, he is responsible for sex, lies, and videotape, which might not be one of the best movies ever, but certainly helped to launch a genre which has been responsible for some of the best movies over the last three decades. And his cameo in Waking Life was cool. So I respect him, and I wanted to see this movie, but I was still skeptical.
Long story short, skepticism erased. This movie is hilarious, and supposedly sad, but I don't think the desperation it is seemingly meant to portray ever comes across. Here is the plot: Chelsea is an escort. She meets rich men and listens to them talk and goes out to dinner with them and sleeps with them. But she has a real boyfriend, Chris, who is a personal trainer. There is a weird time-zone for this movie where it keeps flipping back and forth to a plane trip Chris takes with one of his clients on a private jet party to Las Vegas. And there are random sub-plots where Chelsea might go to Dubai as part of a prostitution vacation, or sleep with internet messageboard administrators to get a good review and get more business.
In general, the movie is slow, quiet, talkative, and mundane. However, its greatest asset is its timing. It takes place near the November 2008 elections. There are references to the $700 billion bailout and the word "maverick" in debates and Man on Wire. Sometimes Chelsea writes journal entries about her "dates," and one of them is a dinner at Nobu, which I found funny for personal reasons.
The last shot in the movie kind of totally blew me away. And on the whole I found it surprisingly tasteful. I thought the script was good, the dialogue was very realistic, and I laughed out loud several times. Still, not for the faint of heart due to its subject matter. Also I don't think it's a very responsible film in the way I don't think "Mad Men" is a very responsible TV-show. I think they encourage bad behavior.
This film probably won't change your life, but it certainly made me think, and it certainly inspired me at moments. Otherwise I would not be blogging at 1:26 in the morning after drinking, oh, maybe 50 oz of beer. Perhaps there is more I could say about it, or more that I thought I wanted to say about it (i.e. my favorite part, the beginning of a misogynistic monologue at a bar, or alternately, a snippet of conversation about the insufficiencies of using a vaporizer) while I was watching it, but it doesn't matter. You'll either be aware of this film or not, and if you are aware of it, you should take a chance on it. Because while it may not be for everyone, it is exactly the type of film I appreciate, because it attempts to portray reality without Hollywoodization. I know that is not a word but you know what I mean.
Second, Sasha Grey is (was?) a porn star. And she is younger than me, and way more fucking rich. And she manages to land her own film, basically, with Steven Soderbergh. So I was jealous, and suspicious of her talents as a "real actress."
Despite his more mainstream occupations, Soderbergh also directed Bubble and Che, (neither of which I've seen) which are not the most obvious choices for a director who can pretty much guarantee a $100 million blockbuster when he so chooses. Furthermore, he is responsible for sex, lies, and videotape, which might not be one of the best movies ever, but certainly helped to launch a genre which has been responsible for some of the best movies over the last three decades. And his cameo in Waking Life was cool. So I respect him, and I wanted to see this movie, but I was still skeptical.
Long story short, skepticism erased. This movie is hilarious, and supposedly sad, but I don't think the desperation it is seemingly meant to portray ever comes across. Here is the plot: Chelsea is an escort. She meets rich men and listens to them talk and goes out to dinner with them and sleeps with them. But she has a real boyfriend, Chris, who is a personal trainer. There is a weird time-zone for this movie where it keeps flipping back and forth to a plane trip Chris takes with one of his clients on a private jet party to Las Vegas. And there are random sub-plots where Chelsea might go to Dubai as part of a prostitution vacation, or sleep with internet messageboard administrators to get a good review and get more business.
In general, the movie is slow, quiet, talkative, and mundane. However, its greatest asset is its timing. It takes place near the November 2008 elections. There are references to the $700 billion bailout and the word "maverick" in debates and Man on Wire. Sometimes Chelsea writes journal entries about her "dates," and one of them is a dinner at Nobu, which I found funny for personal reasons.
The last shot in the movie kind of totally blew me away. And on the whole I found it surprisingly tasteful. I thought the script was good, the dialogue was very realistic, and I laughed out loud several times. Still, not for the faint of heart due to its subject matter. Also I don't think it's a very responsible film in the way I don't think "Mad Men" is a very responsible TV-show. I think they encourage bad behavior.
This film probably won't change your life, but it certainly made me think, and it certainly inspired me at moments. Otherwise I would not be blogging at 1:26 in the morning after drinking, oh, maybe 50 oz of beer. Perhaps there is more I could say about it, or more that I thought I wanted to say about it (i.e. my favorite part, the beginning of a misogynistic monologue at a bar, or alternately, a snippet of conversation about the insufficiencies of using a vaporizer) while I was watching it, but it doesn't matter. You'll either be aware of this film or not, and if you are aware of it, you should take a chance on it. Because while it may not be for everyone, it is exactly the type of film I appreciate, because it attempts to portray reality without Hollywoodization. I know that is not a word but you know what I mean.
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