Obviously this kind of thing comes up a lot when you write books for children and teenagers (especially, I suppose, when you write books called things like the Seven Deadly Sins...), but it's really come to a head for me recently as I've watched several friends struggle with this kind of attack. There are obviously a lot of issues bound up in the question of book banning, censorship, corporate bias, book challenges, etc. And warning: I'm about to ignore most of them, because discussing them involves a lot more rage and analysis than I can tolerate on a Friday afternoon. (That especially includes the question of how gatekeeper types decide what counts as inappropriate/edgy/racy/immoral material, and the special hell I feel should be reserved for those whose underlying assumption is that a) homosexuality is evil or b) woman's bodies and sexuality are dirty.)
What I'm thinking about -- possibly because at the moment I'll think about absolutely anything as long as it has nothing to do with the book I'm supposed to be writing RIGHT NOW -- is what we mean when we worry about a book influencing a reader. This idea people have that reading about sex or drugs or violence is going to make teens want to pole dance for the boy next door, then do a line of coke and shoot him in the head. Or the like.
This idea that books can make you do anything.
My graduate school advisor (tiny digression alert) despised the word influence. As in, would not let us use it in writing or speech, under penalty of death. (Well, mostly under penalty of disapproving scowl, but that first year in grad school, we equated such things with death. Or at least expulsion.)
It took me a few months to figure out why the word so enraged him (and of course, by this point I was over my fear of the scowl and was saying "influence" just about as often as humanly possibly, because that's the kind of lovable gal I am). But one day I got to hear him give a talk (read: rant) about the issue, and I finally got it. His concern:
"[Influence] is a wishy-washy term that stands in for causal action when the author does not know what sort of action has actually occurred. In fact, influence has maintained its roots in the astrological notion of an ethereal fluid streaming from the stars and 'acting upon the character and destiny of men', as the OED puts it. In more modern terms influence becomes 'the capacity or faculty of producing effects by insensible or invisible means, without the employment of material force, or the exercise of formal authority.' So the word still connotes insensible emanations from outside sources."
The point, in non-grad school terms: When we talk about a book "influencing" a reader, we're acting like some invisible hand reaches out from the book, plunges into the reader's head, and starts pushing and pulling thoughts around until they fall into line. We're acting like an inanimate object can dictate human action. We're acting like when a person reads a book, they receive a telepathic message telling them exactly what the author wants them to learn from the book and exactly what they're supposed to do with that new information. And then they're brainwashed into doing it. My professor hated the word influence because it turns readers into puppets, and writers into wizards.
And (though sometimes, power-hungry that I am, this is much to my sorrow) that's just not how it works.
We all know words have power. We all know books can change minds and change lives. That books are, in some sense magic, and maybe writers are wizards, reaching through the ether to change the world. But: They don't get to decide what changes. As soon as they type the last word and send that document off to their editor, their power is gone.
Ultimately, the reader is the one with the power. The reader is the one who decides what to make of the book, what he or she wants to love and hate, believe in and refute, obsess over and ignore. The reader is the one who takes the mishmash of available resources -- pleasure books, school books, tv, teachers, parents, commercials, magazines (before they all went out of business), newspapers (ditto), blogs, friends, etc, etc, etc -- and decides what it all means and what kind of world he/she wants to live in.
Words have power--just not as much power as readers have. And when we start talking about books influencing children, as if they have no ability to pick and choose what they want to hear and what they want to believe (and anyone who's ever spent more than 5 minutes with a kid knows they're the best selective listeners of all time), we turn them into puppets. Dolls that we get to shape and move as we like.
Is it true that children are more impressionable than adults, that the things they read and see can have a bigger effect? Maybe. But my point is that they are still the ones forming the impressions. Acting like we know exactly what a book is going to do to them -- as if a book can do anything but sit there and be read -- may make us all feel better, because it makes us feel like we have the power to decide what a child will think or do. Like we can mold the person they're going to become into exactly the person we want them to be. It makes us feel like the "impressionable youth" are under our control.
But they're not.
Anyway, here we are, yet another Halloween gone down the drain. Good news: half price candy. Bad news: November. I've made my peace with early fall, but November is a bridge too far, and as I seem to be the only person in the country who finds Thanksgiving completely devoid of merit, there's really nothing to keep me going between now and oh, I'd say...April.
So, before we abandon October '09 forever, I wanted to give a special thanks to Jezebel for resurrecting one of the spookiest movies of my childhood, made all the spookier by the fact that, for years and years, I was the only person I knew who'd ever even heard of it, much less seen it. In the days before google and youtube, this was enough to make a girl seriously question her sanity. (I had the same problem for a while with that cartoon version of Dungeons & Dragons -- but after complaining about that loudly enough for enough years, someone actually snagged me a VHS copy of several episodes from a garage sale, so I now have ironclad proof of its excellent existence.)
So, with thanks to Jezebel for reminding me, I give you...The Peanut Butter Solution:
For some reason, the trailer makes this movie seem like an entertaining romp of boyish hijinx and super-hair. Be warned: It is NOT.
As the ladies as Jezebel explain, "If you remember this movie, you understand the horrors. If not, let me just say this: the movie involves a haunted mansion, a creepy art teacher, kidnapped children forced to make paintbrushes, and a scene that involves pubic hair that won't stop growing."
Just try to erase that mental image from your brain. I dare you.
Anyways....
If I haven't traumatized you for life, perhaps you'd like to give me another opportunity. If you live in the New York area, you've got not one but TWO chances to track me down this week and throw peanutbutter at my hair. (Um, please don't do that.) Wednesday I'll be at the monthly YA teen author reading night at the Jefferson Market branch of NYPL. (6 pm, with 7 other awesome authors)
Then there's Thursday. Which will be a bit of an experiment. Like that time in high school that your chemisty teacher got called out of the room and you decided to dump all your chemicals into one beaker, toss in a match, and see what happened. Only hopefully this time you'll keep your eyebrows.
On Thursday night, 7:30 pm, Libba Bray, Carolyn MacCullough and I will be at the Word bookstore in Brooklyn, not reading, not talking about our specific books, but just TALKING, about being YA writers and about YA and about things that thrill us and piss us off and whatever possibly-not-suitably-for-public-discour
Here's the official description:
Sex, Drugs, and Vampires -- Everything You Secretly Wanted to Know About YA But Were Afraid to Ask
Once upon a time, YA fiction involved after-school special moralizing, teens worried about their split ends, and feel-good babysitting clubs. Now, it’s a brave new world that reflects our modern anxieties–war, self-harm, drugs, sex, identity, gender, existentialism and more–with no-holds barred honesty (and occasional supernatural creatures). Join YA authors Robin Wasserman, Carolyn MacCullough, and Libba Bray as they discuss the new landscape of young adult fiction, from what makes a book YA to getting published to book banning and beyond.” As a special twist for this event, not only with our authors interview each other, but they will solicit questions from the audience (and in advance) that will be randomly selected from a hat and then answered. No question is too daring…
More details about the event are here, and if you're truly daring, you can RSVP, because if we know you're coming, who knows what we'll have lying in wait...
Remember when I was all excited and jumping up and down and shouting from the rooftops TOUR! TOUR! TOUR!
Um, yeah.
So now I'm just nervous.
You know that feeling you get when you reach the front of the line for the roller coaster and you think to yourself, "Huh...remind me why I thought this was a good idea?"
Don't get me wrong, roller coasters (almost) always turn out to be awesome.
But forcing yourself (or at least, forcing myself) to get into that little seat, pull down the restraining bar, and make it through the long, slow trip up the hill without throwing up?
That's more of a challenge.
Anyway, as I wile away the minutes before I set out on my adventure, I figured I'd share my list of things that chill me out when I'm fending off panic. Because presumably sometimes you're in need of the same.
1. Fixating on what to wear
2. Making lists
3. Googling people I went to elementary school and/or summer camp with
4. Obsessive refreshing of gawker.com
5. Reruns of House (or at least, this helped last week in the Mexico City airport when I was lost and running on about two hours of sleep and thought I was going to have a nervous breakdown)
6. Playing piano (specifically the only 3 songs I still remember by heart -- over and over again)
7. The World According to Garp
8. Gossip Girl recaps on Television Without Pity
9. Frozen pizza while watching
10. Degrassi: The Next Generation
These last two, as it turns out, is where I'm off to now.
Catch me with Scott Westerfeld this afternoon, here:
Friday, October 16, 4:00PM
In-store signing at Books & Greetings
Location: 271 Livingston Street
Northvale, NJ 07647
And here's your reminder of where we'll be the rest of the week.
One Big Thing: Probably, I should have spent last week barricaded in my apartment, coming up with something to actually say on this tour and minimizing human contact so as to come nowhere near any kind of barnyard animal flu germs.
Instead, I was dragging myself out of bed at 5 am, winging my way to western Canada, to get a firsthand look at the Seven Deadly Sins Lifetime movie set.
This was rather exciting.
Let me rephrase that.
THIS WAS RATHER EXCITING!!!!!!!
Ahem.
Unless you count the time I stumbled upon a Sex & the City shoot in the West Village, loitering on a street corner in hopes of catching a glimpse of Mr Big (no luck), I've never been on a movie set.
And unless you count the time I rode in an elevator with LL Cool J, I've never met a celebrity. (Even in the two years I lived in LA, the closest I ever got was that time I almost got run over by Jon Voight. And, technically, the time I spotted Tony from California Dreams in an Italian restaurant on Melrose...but by the time I got up the nerve to confirm whether it was actually him, he'd finished his ziti and slipped out the door.)
So I'm pretty sure I can officially call this Canadian adventure the first week of the rest of my life, at least when it comes to the glitzy, glamorous Hollywood experience.
It blows my mind to think that five years ago, I scrawled down a bunch of words in a notebook -- and now there's a whole fleet of actors, cameramen, producers, gaffers, etc etc running around turning those words into something real. I'll admit that until I saw it, I didn't actually believe it was happening.
But I saw it. It's happening. Real, live human beings walking around, pretending to be characters from my books.
(I should add here that they're technically no longer characters from my books, they're characters from a (very good) screenplay that someone else wrote. It's strange to think that the Seven Deadly Sins now exists in the world as something completely separate from me, but -- strangely -- it's strange in a good way. There's something very cool about the idea that all these brilliantly creative people have plunged their hands into the story and molded something completely new out of the raw materials.)
Obviously I took a million pictures, but I'm not sure I'm really
allowed to post any of them, so in the meantime, here are a
couple from the newspaper, which seem fair game. This is
uber cool director Jeff Renfroe. (His last project was Stranger
With My Face, based on my 2nd all time favorite Lois Duncan
novel.)
And here's Rachel Melvin trying not to freeze
while she gets her makeup done.
(I should also add that this is the first time I've ever been to Canada, and it turns out I shouldn't have waited so long, because western Canada? Best place EVER. Shopping, fudge, and whale watching, all in one day!)
It was very, very, very surreal to walk around sets that seemed to have sprung right out of my head. You know the part in Being John Malkovich when John Malkovich goes inside the head of John Malkovich and finds himself in a freakish world of Malkovich's where all anyone can say is "Malkovich! Malkovich, Malkovich. Malkovich?"
It was a little like that.
(Complete with an inability, at least on my part, to speak in rational and complete sentences.)
I did my best not to shriek and squeal and make a total fool of myself. Most of the time, my best was not good enough. But I did manage not to drag Gossip Girl Dreama Walker (playing "Harper") into a corner and beg her to tell me every piece of GG gossip she could think of and/or introduce me to Ed Westwick. Nor did I pump Rachel Melvin (playing "Kaia") for upcoming Days of Our Lives twists or tales from the Daytime Emmy's. And, through some kind of super-human strength of will, I managed to stop myself from telling Greyston Holt (playing "Kane") that his character was based on every bad boy I've ever had an ill-advised crush on and that, by the way, he totally looked the part.
I met all the actors (extremely nice, extremely talented, extremely tolerant of my exuberant presence) except for the girl playing Miranda, and that might have been for the best, since Miranda (in the books, at least) is the character most based on me, and the two of us coming face to face might have led to some kind of universe-destroying hole in the space-time continuum.
On the educational front, I learned much about making a tv movie in Canada (like the fact that the bathroom trailer is called "the Honey Wagon," apparently for exactly the reason you would imagine), but mostly I learned that the people who make movies in Canada are insanely, ridiculously, wonderfully nice. I expected to have to stand in some corner designated for nosy, annoying authors, holding my breath and trying my best to be invisible.
Instead, they gave me a front row seat.
In my very own director's chair.
I'm not sure why this was the best part, but I'm sure that it was.
The movie doesn't come out until next summer, so I've got a long, long, long time to wait to see the finished product, but now at least I have no doubt whatsoever that a) there will be a finished product, b) it will be awesome.
I fear that in my glee I'm probably leaving out a variety of interesting details (or at least, a variety of details), so if you've got any specific questions, just ask! (Clearly I could talk about this forever...)
And I will laugh and laugh.
And then say something like, "Oh, you foolish, foolish [insert appropriate noun here]. Only very glitzy and glamorous and famous authors get to do things like that. The only tour I'll be taking involves the route from my house to the nearest Ben & Jerry's, and back again."
(If we're having this conversation online, I will then refer them to this:
So trust me when I say that no one is more flabbergasted, dumbfounded, staggered, stunned, and all around stupefied, to hear the following words come out of my mouth:
I AM GOING ON TOUR!
You heard it here, first. And, better news -- for me, but most especially for you:
I AM GOING ON TOUR WITH ESTEEMED AUTHOR, FREAKISHLY WITTY RACONTEUR, AND ALL AROUND ALL-STAR SCOTT WESTERFELD!
I will spare you any more exclamation points and caps lock explosions, but suffice it to say, I am rather excited.
(Also rather terrified, since now I have to figure out how it is one actually goes on tour. As I understand the concept, it involves some rather tricky things, like talking to other people.)
Hopefully some of you live in one of these cities, but if not, cross your fingers, and maybe I'll make it to your neck of the woods the next time around. (This, of course, assuming that I don't screw things up so humiliatingly and horribly that there is no next time, but hey, never let it be said I'm not an optimist!)
And now for those of you intrepid souls who have continued reading this far...The Information.
Saturday, October 10, 12 pm
Haverstraw King's Daughter Library
85 Main Street
Haverstraw, NY 10927
**This is not actually part of the official tour, and so will be the only event that does not include Scott Westerfeld. Just me, I'm afraid!**
Friday, October 16, 4:00PM
In-store signing at Books & Greetings
Location: 271 Livingston Street
Northvale, NJ 07647
POSTPONED Saturday, October 17, 2:00PM
In-store signing at Borders
Location: 110 Federal Road
Danbury, CT 06811
Sunday, October 18, 4:00PM
In-store signing at RJ Julia
Location: 768 Boston Post Road
Madison, CT 06443
Monday, October 19, 6:00PM
In-store signing at Wellesley Booksmith
Location: 82 Central Street
Wellesley, MA 02482
Wednesday, October 21 7:00PM
In-store signing at Borders
Location: 21031 Triple 7 Road
Sterling, VA 20165
Thursday, October 22 4:30PM
In-store signing at Politics and Prose
Location: 5015 Connecticut Avenue, NW
Washington, DC 20008
Edited to add -- I almost forgot about this one!
Teen Author Reading Night
Wednesday, November 4, 6 pm
Jefferson Market Brancy of NYPL
425 6th Ave, at 10th st
New York, NY
Appearing with: Barry Lyga, Marianne Mancusi, Ton Dolby, Matt de la Pena, Matthew Cody, Courtney Sheinmel, Maryrose Wood, and David Levithan (yes, ALL of them!)
I'll admit that, since leaving for college thirteen (ouch, I am old) years ago, I haven't paid all that much attention to the internal politics of my home state of Pennsylvania. So I have somehow missed the massive state budget crisis that's been going on for quite a while now.
Admittedly, even if I had been paying attention, I doubt I would have really been able to wrap my ahead around what "massive state budget crisis" actually meant, for those of us not participating in marathon legislative horse-trading sessions.
Well, here's what it means: If a budget isn't passed in the next couple weeks, then the Philadelphia Library System will close.
All of it. No central library, no branch libraries, no ESL classes, no computer literacy classes, no community meetings, no community outreach, no more books.
"Friday morning, signs went up on every entrance to every library in the city's system, from Central on down, reading thusly: All Free Library of Philadelphia Branch, Regional and Central Libraries will be Closed Effective Close of Business October 2, 2009."
Now, I don't know if this is an alarmist move intended to try to spook the legislators into passing a budget, or if, two weeks from now, Philadelphia will have no more libraries. But I do know that I'm spooked.
I grew up in the Philadelphia libraries. (As well as Philly's suburban libraries. We pretty much went to a different library every day of the week when I was a kid.) I learned to read in the Philadelphia libraries. I learned to love reading in those libraries. I am, obviously, not the only one.
I could elaborate on this, a lot, and talk about how libraries function as gateways, as refuges and hideaways, as stepping stones, as beginnings, as schools, as temples of knowledge. How I used to stare at the "W" section of the stacks, vowing someday I'd see my name on one of the books. How disastrous it would be if the library system fell apart and how unacceptable it is for this kind of funding to fall through the cracks, even in such dire economic times.
But I'm not going to, because the longer this is, the less chance there is you'll keep going, and I want you to get to the important part -- what can you do.
If you live in Pennsylvania, you can contact your state legislator, and tell him or her to pass a damn budget. This site tells you how, and even gives you a letter to print out and send.
I will admit I'm not to sure what those of us who don't live in PA can do, other than be loudly enraged. But if you've got a suggestion, let me know.
I know they're not threatening to close their doors forever. But the library explains why closing for even a few days matters:
"The resources and services we provide are essential to our community members, and usage of the Library has increased dramatically. Job seekers use free public computers for job searches, children seek out safe havens with homework help, and seniors rely on the Library to access information about social security and other federal benefits— information that is now found only online. The Free Library of Philadelphia also provides hundreds of public-access computers with free internet service, a resource highly valued in a city where almost half of the citizens are without internet access at home."
Philadelphia, like most cities right now, needs more, not less. More of everything--but especially more of this. Access, resources, knowledge. Books.
(Edited to add: The commenter below knows a lot more about this than I do, and has left me somewhat terrified for the fate of my hometown.)
Not the question of whether I am one, or could be one, or why I'm not one, or whether I've got one hiding in me just waiting for the right moment to write the perfect, pulitzer prize winning book (or maybe surprise us all and come up with a proof of the Riemann Hypothesis).
I think about those things on a daily basis, so they wouldn't really qualify as occasion for posting.
(Although I'm willing to admit that there might be a more significant factor of genius in my current book if I didn't keep ditching it to go do things like write blog posts.)
Ron Rosenbaum, a columnist I generally detest, has an article in Slate today about the question of literary and artistic genius, and how we recognize it. But I find the more interesting question to be what I guess you would (although I don't know if I'd agree) term the post-modern one: Is there such a thing as genius in the first place?
And if so, what the hell is it?
Back when I was in grad school, my advisor -- who fortunately found it entertaining, rather than annoying, when I fought with him -- and I had an ongoing debate* about whether there was such a thing as scientific genius. Whether people like Newton or Einstein were actually qualitatively smarter (or however you want to define genius -- more innovative, more courageous, etc) than their fellow scientists, or whether they were just bright guys, born in the right place at the right time under the right conditions, who combined the right resources into something that just happened to revolutionize their field.
In other words (possibly unfairly simple words), the reason you definitely know who Einstein is but may be cloudier on Helmholtz, Thomson, Planck, Boltzmann, etc, has a lot to do with luck.**
I've heard people say that genius is a lot easier to identify in the sciences than in the arts, because achievement is so quantifiable. But is achievement really the hallmark of genius?
Take Einstein, who tends to be most people's go to guy for smartest man in recent history. Most people think of him as the kooky mathematical genius who basically sat in an empty room and created the theories that redefined our understanding of a universe.
(The picture next to "genius" in my mental dictionary.)
We think of Einstein this way partly because that's the image he very cleverly cultivated of himself. He went around for several decades talking about how important it was to live the life of the mind and how his ideal job would be a lighthouse keeper, so he could just sit in his tower and think all day and all night, in splendid isolation.
But a few years ago, a book came out that turned this image a bit on its head. Peter Galion's Einstein's Clocks, Poincare's Maps tells the story of Einstein's early career as a patent inspector in early 20th century Switzerland, and how his immersion in a society obsessed with railroads and the synchronization of clocks gave him the mental tools and models necessary to build his theory of relativity.
The point isn't that any patent inspector could have done it, or that Einstein couldn't have done it under other circumstances (although arguably "it" would have been entirely different, but that's a whole other question about whether scientific theories are discovered or invented). The point is that he didn't do it in a vacuum. His accomplishments didn't spring fully formed from the morass of brilliance in his brain. If he'd been born a few decades earlier, when energy physics was still in its infancy--or a few decades later, when someone else had already stumbled onto (or invented, or whatever) something like relativity, would we still know his name?
It's a story you can tell for any great historical mathematician, scientist, military general, etc. The contingency of achievement, the dependency of genius on luck.
On the other hand (I would say to my advisor, much preferring the discussion to another explanation of mutual induction and diamagnetism and various other things I was embarrassingly slow to grasp), what about someone like Ramanujan, the Indian mathematician who grew up in poverty, teaching himself (and in the process discovering or re-discovering new theorems as a teenager), and was eventually brought to England to become one of the most brilliant and renowned mathematicians in the world.
What kind of contrived, convoluted explanation would you need to come up with, to deny that he was a genius? That he was genuinely smarter, more special, different than your average, run of the mill smart guy.
And what about Da Vinci?
And what about Shakespeare?
And what about, and what about, etc?
Are the geniuses of art and literature really just the lucky folks who survived the whittling down of the Western canon over the centuries? Are we really supposed to believe that it was just happenstance that Mozart endured while Salieri lives on only in F Murray Abraham's Oscar reel?***
And why do we care? (Well...maybe you don't, in which case I can't believe you're still reading this.) What's the difference whether there's just a continuum of talent and achievement or some kind of quantum leap between us and the (because I'm feeling melodramatic today) higher class of human?
There's a famous quote about physicist Richard Feynman and the nature of genius -
"There are two kinds of geniuses, the 'ordinary' and the 'magicians.' An ordinary genius is a fellow that you and I would be just as good as, if we were only many times better. There is no mystery as to how his mind works. Once we understand what they have done, we feel certain that we, too, could have done it. It is different with the magicians....the working of their minds is for all intents and purposes incomprehensible. Even after we understand what they have done, the process by which they have done it is completely dark." (Mark Kac)
And I think this gets at the heart of it.
You could argue**** that labeling a certain group of people "geniuses" manages to relieve us of the responsibility, and terror, of struggling to match their achievement. (ie, I'm fairly certain that if there is such a thing as a genius, MT Anderson qualifies, so maybe that should make it easy for me to say, "well, he's a genius and I'm not so I should stop wanting to set my computer on fire in despair every time I read one of his ridiculously brilliant books, because what he calls 'writing' and what I call 'writing' are very clearly different pursuits.") I don't know any writers who get particularly upset by the prospect that they'll never be as good as Shakespeare.
(Full disclosure, when I was growing up, I wondered whether I might turn out to be. In his article, Rosenbaum cites an anecdote about a teenage Saul Bellow convinced he would someday grow up to win the Nobel Prize, and speculates that one aspect of genius is the certainty that one is a genius. I can assure you that being certain of such things at age 13 does not make for a self-fulfilling prophecy.)
But there's something a bit depressing about the thought that either you are a genius or you aren't, and if it's the latter, you're out of luck, so our condolences, and please enjoy whatever above-average life you manage to cobble together for yourself. So I don't actually think that's why the concept of magical genius is so appealing. Or at least, that's not why it's so appealing to me.
(Trust me, I would much prefer to live in a world where one day I could wake up and discover my inner MT Anderson, or Feynman, or whatever. Although that world might require me to be significantly less lazy. Because if you know it's possible you could someday become Great, it's hard to justify not working in that direction.)
I think our love of genius -- our need for genius -- speaks to our love of heroes, and our love of a good story.
These days in the hallowed halls of academia, historians refer -- always disdainfully -- to the "Great Men of History" theory, the now seen as embarrassingly wrongheaded philosophy that the history of civilization was shaped by a handful of geniuses. (Outliers on the scales of intelligence, cunning, bravery, art, etc.) An alien, superior breed to normal man, worthy of our worship and our scholarship.
"Great Men of History" pretty much disregards everything external to the "Great Man" himself -- social trends, mass culture, material objects, economics, contingency, coincidence, race, religion, upbringing, etc etc etc.
(Oh yeah, and women.)
But I have to admit, I found it appealing. (This plays a large role in the discovery that I would make a much better novelist than I would historian. File that under 'that's another story.') The theory of genius is a romantic and exciting one -- because it makes for a better story. We want our protagonists to be extraordinary, to be heroes, to have some special faculty that allows them to save the day or change the world. Even the so-called ordinary heroes (the mostly unremarkable Harry Potter, for example) prove themselves extraordinary in their acts, if not their nature. They save the world.
Believing in genius allows us to believe that individual men or women have the power to do that.
"Genius is the transformation of collective experience by one individual for the common good," Rosenbaum quotes an art critic as saying.
I like the idea of living in a world where such a thing is possible.
And maybe he's got the right idea. Maybe there's no such thing as "a genius." Maybe the genius is in what we do.
Maybe any of us are capable of it.
Though alas, it may be time to accept that I'm not going to grow up to be Shakespeare.
-----
*"Debate" makes it sound like I actually had an opinion, but the truth was, my advisor had a very definite opinion and I was playing devil's advocate, as I am wont to do. (Am beginning to understand why my advisor was so understanding and helpful when I decided to leave grad school...)
**These guys are actually really poor examples, since they're all also considered geniuses, which is why I'm able to come up with their names off the top of my head, but you get my point. If I were slightly less lazy, I'd go find a reference book and come up with some more esoteric names for you, so let's pretend I did that.
***Yeah, yeah, it's a straw-man argument, and the real one's more complicated. Sue me.
****Though as you'll see, I don't.
WE HAVE ARRIVED.
Or rather,
CRASHED HAS ARRIVED.
In bookstore. Hopefully near you.
To celebrate, perhaps you'd like some Crashed wallpaper?
Or maybe this extremely cool Crashed avatar?
Or maybe you'd just like to freak yourself out all over again with the Crashed trailer?
You want excerpts? We've got excerpts! Here's the one I picked -- and I recently discovered that if you go on Amazon, you can read a good chunk of the first chapter.
For those of you wondering what a writer does on the day of her book release, I hate to disappoint you, but the truth is...WORK.
No, really. But the good news is, my muse was extra helpful today, and on top of a big piece of chocolate cake, she also gave me quite a nice portion of book 3 in the trilogy. (You will not believe how this thing is going to end.)
The better news is what a writer, at least this writer, does on the night of her book release, which involves planning a vacation to Canada to go see her other book being filmed.
So, all in all -- and unusually for me -- I cannot complain.
And neither can you, because, as I say, CRASHED HAS ARRIVED.
Now, because this movie has been on my mind all day, and because it is the one thing guaranteed to make me happy happy joy joy and so hopefully will do the same for you, and because this summer has kicked my ass but I am finally coming back with a vengeance, I give you this final thought for the evening:
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(Honestly, my two favorite scenes from this movie are the "Drop. Your. Sword." moment and Inigo Montoya's climactic battle with the six-fingered man, but I figured I'd go for third favorite, since a) it's a little perkier and b) I remember with great fondness and pride the afternoons my elementary school best friend and I spent reenacting this duel. With only a few injuries resulting.)
(Edited to add: Iocane Powder! How could I forget?)
Justine Larbalestier's Liar (Sep 29, 2009) is similar to all her other books in that it's really well written--but it's different in pretty much every other way. Liar is a dark, twisted, incredibly ambitious novel narrated by a compulsive liar. Which means that as the story unfolds, you have no idea what's real and what's just a lie spun out by the increasingly strange girl at the heart of the book.
I realize this sounds cryptic, but the fact is, if I divulge any more of the plot, Justine will literally climb through the internet, explode out of my computer, and smother me with my copy of the book.
Or, you know, she might just send me a sternly worded email. She's done everything she can to keep the plot under wraps, which was smart of her, because the twists and turns of this book will blow you away page after page, paragraph after paragraph.
I've never read another book like it, and I bet you haven't either.
(This may be a good point to note that it may sound like I'm exagerrating, but I don't go in for hyperbole too much when it comes to books -- and you may notice that I don't mention too many books on this blog -- so when it comes to this, and all the books I'm talking about here, you should trust me that when I say something's amazing, I don't say it lightly. And this book is amazing.)
When I was a teenager, I was a little obsessed with Tom Robbins. (Jitterbug Perfume, for starters. Then Skinny Legs and All and Even Cowgirls Get the Blues. If you haven't read them, now might be a good time to go pick yourself up a copy. I'll wait.) I was determined that someday I was going to grow up to write weird, bizarre, phantasmagoric, mind-blowing adventures just like him.
So you can imagine I'm a little out-of-my-mind jealous that Libba Bray has managed to do it first.
Not just like him, of course, because Libba Bray has managed to write a book that only Libba Bray could write. PW aptly called Going Bovine (Sep 22, 2009) ""inspired lunacy," describing it -- better than I could -- as "an absurdist comedy in which Cameron, Gonzo (a neurotic dwarf) and Balder (a Norse god cursed to appear as a yard gnome) go on a quixotic road trip during which they learn about string theory, wormholes and true love en route to Disney World."
String theory and Disney World, people! Not to mention talking yard gnomes!
I'm pretty sure this is going to be one of those books that changes people's lives. Somewhere out there, some 15 year old is going to finish the book, close it, and look up at a world that now seems utterly and forever different. This book, in other words, is the kind of book that I suspect every author wants to write. But like I say, only one person could have actually done it. Lucky us that she did.
Sacred Scars, the sequel to Skin Hunger, came out in August, which technically means it's not a fall book. But I'm counting it anyway, just in case there's anyone left who hasn't figured out that this trilogy is mandatory reading. (Besides, the wait between book one and book two was so unbearable that my relief/celebration is going to last for another month or two.)
I've never been a big fantasy reader, but a year or so ago I picked up Skin Hunger...and I didn't put it down again until I'd turned the last page, breathless and overwhelmed. According to people who know much better than I do (because they're actually well-read in this genre), this is a fantasy trilogy like no other.
I wouldn't know. What I do know is that it's terrifying and heart-wrenching and hopeful and confusing and mysterious, all in one.
And that if I knew where Kathleen Duey lived, I would probably be camped out on her doorstep, refusing to move until she let me read whatever she had of book three. Because I MUST KNOW WHAT HAPPENS NEXT.
And here are some books I haven't yet read but trust me, I'm eagerly awaiting the moment I get my grubby little hands on them:
If the beautiful art hadn't convinced me, and the awesome steampunk alternate history "retrofuturistic" Darwinist vs Clankers plot hadn't convinced me, and the ridiculously cool trailer hadn't convinced me, then likely the million and one starred reviews would have done me in:
"This is World War I as never seen before...Enhanced by Thompson's intricate black-and-white illustrations, Westerfeld's brilliantly constructed imaginary world will capture readers from the first page. Full of nonstop action, this steampunk adventure is sure to become a classic." (SLJ)
I've been waiting to read this one for a long, long time--partly because I decided that instead of poaching a galley, I would wait and read it in its final, official, magnificent form. I've been promised lots of special cover effects and fancy paper that makes the art look even better than it does online.
One more month to wait (until October 6). Is it killing me slowly?
Yes.
This book is also out already and I'll admit I don't know know too much about it except that it's written by Kristen Tracy, who never fails to make me laugh. (We're talking unseemly, inconvenient chocolate-milk-out-of-the-nose kind of laughing.) Her first two books, Lost It and Crimes of the Sarahs were both for teens, and Camille McPhee Fell Under the Bus is her first middle grade.
This isn't the kind of thing I usually read, but for Kristen Tracy, I'm ready and willing to make an exception.
There are a bunch of other books on my must-be-read list this month (like The Ask and the Answer, by Patrick Ness, which I can't read until I get to The Knife of Never Letting Go, which I've been wanting to read, oh, forever), but unfortunately, the latest episode of Mad Men just finished downloading from iTunes and the microwave popcorn is steaming and, well, it seems I'm going to have to save the rest of the books for a post Part II.
After all, Don Draper is waiting!
In the meantime, what books are you most eager to get your hands on? I need suggestions!
A few weeks ago I asked what you would do if you were given five million dollars two days before aliens blew up the earth. I promised to post the winning response, and here it is.
I think the whole getting blown up by aliens thing would almost be worth it, if you could have a weekend like this!
Okay, take it away, Erin . . .
"The world is about to end, and I have five million dollars. Assuming that everyone else on the planet isn’t panicking, meaning that I can actually buy things from stores and such, and that I have already discovered that I can’t stop the alien attack, I would then ponder what I am going to do with this money. Before my last two days of fun, and probably panic, begin, I would, of course, spend a bit of time trying to figure out why I spent the last twelve years in school, when I’m never actually going to get to the college of my choice and become a freelance writer/journalist. After this crying fit, where I contemplate why I suffered through the year with my eighth grade teacher, who practically carried a pitchfork to school everyday, I would begin what I will now call: THE AWESOMEST TWO DAYS THAT ANYONE HAS EVER SPENT BEFORE BEING KILLED BY ALIENS! (TATDTAHESBBKBA, for short.)
To start these two days out, I would definitely consult my bucket list, a document that I keep on my computer, which I have been adding things to for the past few years. To begin, I would probably figure out that most of the things on my list cannot be accomplished in two days; being at the Olympics and living in New York City for at least a year being two of these. After marking off the 100 things that I could not accomplish in two days, the last days of my life would really begin.
Day 1: 0600
Despite the fact that I hate getting up early, I make an exception for important events, such as the end of the world. I get out of bed, dressing for the day that will hold nothing but excitement. The first item on my list: Pie. For breakfast I go to Village Inn and force them to make me one of my favorite pies, one that is not usually available until February. Ah, European Truffle pie! After this, I go to Marie Calendar’s for a slice of Banana Split pie and a slice of the Oreo pie, which I pay a good amount of money to get, considering this is another pie that is only offered seasonally. Once I am finished with this pie, I now order a plain cream pie. When it arrives, I smash it into my sister’s face. The first item on my list is now completed. I have wanted to pie her since I was about five. Finally, I have accomplished this task!
Day 1: 0730
Considering that I bought the world’s fastest limo to take me from restaurant to restaurant, the pie eating portion of the morning lasted a rather short amount of time. I now go to Harkins’ Cine-Capri, where I pay them to play one of my favorite movies on the big screen for me and my friends. I will sit at the very top of the theater, throwing popcorn at my friends from above, while eating Cookie Dough Bites and Dippin’ Dots. By the end of the movie, my friends and I have gotten into a huge popcorn war with buckets being shipped in by the movie theater workers. I have paid them, so they can’t kick us out, even when I have them stand in front of the screen so we can hit them with popcorn.
Day 1: 0930
Now it is time to go to California. I take a plane from Sky Harbor National Airport to John Wayne. Here a limo meets me, complete with fifteen actors for me to choose from. On the way from John Wayne to Sunset Beach, California, I proceed to kiss each of these extremely attractive actors, who have been paid to adore me. I didn’t want to have the world explode with me having never been kissed. We reach Sunset Beach, where I have asked the owners of my favorite beach house, the house my family and I have stayed at every summer for nine years now, to meet me. With my millions, I buy the beach house. This way, I can fulfill my wish to live on the beach, even if it is for only two days.
Day 1: 1015
I have hired someone to teach me how to surf, and now we are out on the ocean. I may not learn to surf, but instead of giving up, I ditch the surfboard and spend two hours in the ocean with a boogie board, for once not worrying about sharks or even jellyfish, because if I get stung or eaten, the world’s going to end in a day anyway. In fact, I pay someone to keep all sharks and jellyfish away, so I can have fun without any fears.
Day 1: 1230
I rinse the sand off of me in the beach house shower before going to the best restaurant on the beach, The Harbor House Café. It may be kind of greasy, but why do I care if the world is ending? I order a large plate of cheese fries and an Oreo shake. I pay the restaurant to give me the best seat in the house, which I technically haven’t discovered yet, so I spend a while hopping from table to table before I find a spot. I also go into the restaurant’s bathroom, because they have the coolest automatic paper towel dispenser. You can’t go to The Harbor House without using the paper towel dispenser.
Day 1: 1320
Back to the limo. Another half hour with my hot actors before reaching John Wayne. I pay my way through security, and I get on the world’s fastest jet, which will get me to New York City in an hour and a half. On this plane ride, I will proceed to at least skim all of my favorite books, along with advanced readers copies, or even just the manuscripts of the books that have yet to be released that I want to read, including Crashed, Catching Fire, Liar, Leviathan, and Scarlett Fever. These five books will be read continuously throughout the next day and a half. If I can’t finish these before the end of the second day, I will be very disappointed. I can’t die without having finished at least the books I really want to read that I haven’t gotten to yet.
Day 1: 1540
Another limo awaits me in NYC. As I ride through the city, my assistant for TATDTAHESBBKBA will be making phone calls. By the time we pull up in front of the Four Seasons Hotel, my favorite authors, who I have either by now begged, or paid, to come are waiting in an upstairs suite. (This group would consist of Robin Wasserman (and I’m not trying to suck up to you, I promise), Scott Westerfeld, Justine Larbalestier, Maureen Johnson, John Green, Meg Cabot, and Libba Bray, along with their other author friends who I have not yet gotten a chance to read the work of, but I would love to write in the same room as.) After I finished being the rabid fangirl that I can be, I sit down in front of my laptop, (also known as Kate) and fulfill my lifelong dream of writing in the same room as my favorite authors. (John Green made a Brotherhood 2.0 video of he and all of his writer friends writing in a hotel suite, and ever since, I have wanted to do this.) I spend two hours with these writers, probably working on my second novel. (I still need to do a bit of editing and rewriting on my first, but who wants to rewrite if they only have a day left to live?)
Day 1: 1800
I take my favorite authors out to dinner now; although, I let them choose the restaurant, because I don’t really know what the best restaurants in New York are. After dinner, I finally let the authors leave (if I had more time, I would probably hold them hostage for longer, but because I don’t, I will let them go), and I pay my way into the main branch of the New York Public Library. (I must pay because it has probably already closed by this time.) I wander the library, because the last (and only) time I was in NYC before, we arrived at the library for a part of the Young Adult Author Festival at what was, apparently, after hours, so we weren’t able to view the entire library.
Day 1: 2200
Despite the late hour, I attend a Broadway play of my choice. (I have enough cash to choose what time I want the play to be at.) I’ve always wanted to see Wicked, so this is probably what I will see. I have front row seats to this play, and it is amazing.
Day 2: 0020
I am tired, so I go back to The Four Seasons, and I fall asleep for three hours. I will not allow myself to sleep more than this, since I only have a few more hours until the end of the world. While I was sleeping, my assistant was flying my best friend and my newspaper staff in from Phoenix, and she/he was calling in all of our favorite bands. (We have different tastes in music, so this is a large spread.) I dress in the world’s most beautiful outfit, made especially for me, and I meet my friends at the best concert of the new millennium. We have front row seats, and at one point in the concert, we are pulled up on stage to dance with the bands. It is amazing, and by the end, none of us can hear anything but the ringing in our ears.
Day 2: 0440
Straight from the concert, my best friend and I go to Rockefeller Center where I hire someone to teach me how to ice skate. At sunrise, we go to the Empire State Building and run the top. Then we go back to Rockefeller Center where I go to either the Simon and Shuster Building or the McGraw and Hill building. I walk through these halls like I’m a published author, and I bribe an editor to read my manuscript and tell me that he/she would publish it if the world was not going to end. In normal circumstances, I would not pay my way into the publishing business, but since the world is about to end, all I want to do is hear that editor tell me that my book is publishable.
Day 2: 0750
We have breakfast, and then we spend the next four hours walking through Central Park. At the end of this walk, a hot air balloon picks us up and carries us out of the city and into the countryside. Here, we go horseback riding. Afterwards, we find the nearest Cold Stone Creamery where my sister, having finally cleaned the whipped cream off her glasses, meets us. I have Cake Batter and Marshmallow ice cream and some of their Sweet Cream ice cream cupcakes. We all get stuffed on ice cream and complain that we may never eat again, which is really too realistic, because the world is about to end.
Day 2: 1445
Hershey Park is the next stop on my list. After a quick flight to Pennsylvania, we find that we can stomach more food as we indulge in chocolate of all sorts while riding roller coasters and other rides. We also spend some time in an arcade, where I beat both of them at racing, shooting games, air hockey, and the motorcycle race game. We trade in all our tickets for a huge stuffed bear, which we name Max.
Day 2: 1900
The end is growing near, so we head to Laser Quest, where we play three games. I don’t win every time, but it’s okay, because I have a lot of fun. We go for dinner at a conveniently located Bob Evan’s. (My sister loves Bob Evan’s, and I enjoy the food, so I figure I will give her at least one thing to make up for the pie in the face earlier.) We eat pot roast, turkey, and burgers, before having more shakes and pie. This sugar may be bad on a regular day, but the sugar rush will keep us awake for the last night.
Day 2: 2000
I give my friend and sister each twenty-thousand dollars to go do what they want while I head to the local animal shelter to perform one last good deed. I spend a long time with the cats and dogs, sad that I can’t hug every homeless animal in America. Still, the ones in this shelter will at least get some love before the end.
Day 2: 2200
I meet up with my friends and my sister, and we go to another hotel where I rent out an entire floor for all of us. My newspaper staff gets our complementary Chipotle food. (We let them advertise, and they give us food.) We then have a huge party, playing video games and board games. We have the biggest Risk game ever. While they continue to play, I find a secluded corner, take out my laptop (Kate) and spend my last few hours performing my favorite activities, writing and surfing the internet.
The Last Day: 0200
I go to see the Atlantic Ocean. Sitting on the shore, I begin to feel a bit sad. I pull out a pad of paper and write the last poem I will ever write. My best friend, my sister, and I build a huge sand castle, and as the sun rises, we run in and out of the waves. We watch dolphins playing in the surf. This is where we are when the alien space ships come and destroy the world.
My last couple of days on this planet would be fun-filled and wonderful. I would spend them with some of my favorite people and attempt to fulfill my dreams. Our new Alien Overlords may be able to take away our planet, but they cannot take away the joy I would feel as I spent my money on TATDTAHESBBKBA."
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robinwasserman- Robin Wasserman
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