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The Roundup: Alias Grace

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I refuse to watch “The Handmaid’s Tale” until a certain administration is out of the White House, because from what I hear, it’s tracking a little too close to reality and I can’t yet. But I looked for other Margaret Atwood books to read, and sure enough, I found “Alias Grace.”

This book is about Grace Marks, who we know at the beginning is a convicted murderess who is being examined by Dr. Simon Jordan, who is attempting to help (?) her remember the murders that almost got her executed. Grace, alongside another house servant, James McDermott, were accused of killing the house’s master, Kinnear, and Nancy, the head servant/Kinnear’s side chick.

This book was published in 1996 and set in the early-to-mid-1800s, but sometimes, the language is quite relevant to today. Consider these nuggets:

“Would that be me you’re addressing? said McDermott. No it would not, I said with a cool manner as I walked by him. I thought I could tell what he had in mind, and it was not original.”

Just Grace trying to walk around without being harassed by a man. Little too on the nose, eh?

“This puts him in an instructive mood, and I can see he is going to teach me something, which gentlemen are fond of doing.”

This is Grace talking about Dr. Jordan and this sounds a lot like mansplaining. And of course throughout this book, it’s pretty obvious that although Simon’s the doctor, it’s Grace who is pulling his strings — telling him things that might pique his interest. He, on the other hand, is not doing a very good job of diagnosing Grace and is actually getting it on with his landlady whose husband has left her. In other words, she’s in a better headspace than he is.

This book was beautifully written and patiently laid out by Atwood, and still the story moves fairly quickly. Even at the end, you’re not totally sure of Grace’s culpability in the murders, although I’m pretty sure she did it of her own volition.

After I read the book, I thought to myself, “This has to be just as good as ‘Handmaid’s Tale.’ Why doesn’t anyone make it a series?”

And of course Netflix was on the case. And when I saw the cast list, I kinda lost it a little bit:


OK, let me tell you about my obsession with Paul Gross. So I got hooked on this show right as I was going to college called “Due South.” Paul Gross was in “Due South” and he wore the hell out of a Mountie uniform. The premise is that a Mountie (Gross) straight out of Canada comes to Chicago trying to find his father’s murderer, then decides to just stick around and help a Chicago cop solve crimes. Still dressed as a Mountie. Yes, some people would categorize this as corny, but those people would not be friends of mine. Got it?

I have all three seasons’ worth of “Due South” soundtracks and I’m not ashamed. I watched every single episode of this show, in my dorm room at 1 a.m. (which was the only time you could find the thing as CBS began shuffling the show’s start time around. Anybody remember when you couldn’t record something on TV or pause it to go the bathroom? I present to you the late 1990s.) Anyway, this show was comforting to me for some reason and I then endeavored to watch everything Paul Gross was in.

This, uh, has not been without some pain, including “Men with Brooms,” a movie about curling and “Aspen Extreme,” which makes me embarrassed for Paul Gross.

But it’s been more reward. For instance, if you have never watched “Slings and Arrows,” well, go watch it. (You have time.) There’s a young Rachel McAdams and Gross’ real-life wife, Martha Burns, who is a great actress — and very damn lucky.

Anyway, so that’s why I decided to watch “Alias Grace.” It takes a while for Paul Gross to appear in this miniseries, so there’s time to appreciate the performance of the lead actress, Sarah Gadon.

Gadon is sneaky good in this role, because the first time there’s a scene showing her egging McDermott on to murder, it’s genuinely shocking. Gadon is great at expressing the mental instability present in Grace, how her mental state deteriorates from losing her mother and her best friend Mary, who dies after a botched abortion. There’s some similarities between Mary’s situation and Nancy’s — Mary was impregnated by the son of the house masters where Mary and Grace are working. And while Grace tries to help Mary, she doesn’t seem to have this inclination with Nancy.

Also present in this series is Anna Paquin as Nancy. I have to say that when I read the book, I asked myself why Grace and McDermott would care if Nancy was knocking boots with the man of the house. Sure, Nancy is supposed to also be the help but is also barking out orders, but still. Is it worth killing someone? Paquin helps answer this question by playing Nancy as the type of person you would want to punch in the face. Hard. Paquin’s Nancy is every terrible boss you ever had who also was trying desperately to be your friend. Even when her time comes and McDermott goes to attack her with an axe, you’re kind of like:

via GIPHY

Jeremiah the peddler plays a pivotal role in this series as well, and it took me a while to place the actor who plays him. OK, *I* never placed him — Google did. He was Shazam! So that’s why you don’t judge books by covers because Zachary Levi also does a great job in this series and looks pretty good when he’s not wearing that Shazam suit. I got the sense in the book that Jeremiah was just a hustler of sorts, trying to make money anywhere he could. It just makes sense that he’d go to becoming a traveling hypnotist. Yet somehow, his approach is starting to make more sense to observers than the psychiatry approach because it’s pretty clear that something is not quite right with Dr. Jordan.

Edward Holcroft’s Dr. Jordan drifts from disinterest in Grace to outright boredom, then sudden obsession. Even in the book, this doesn’t really make a lot of sense. It’s obvious that there’s one difference between he and Grace, which might have been the thing that doomed him — he doesn’t know who he is. Grace, even if she’s a stone-cold murderer, has come to terms with who she is and has moved past the idea of pretending to be someone else or caring what others think of her. Dr. Jordan, despite his relatively stable background, has no clue what he’s doing or what he’s supposed to do with his life. (The first hint has got to be presenting Grace with the potatoes, right?) Then, upon extricating himself from Grace’s case, he then joins the army and a war and then marries a woman his mother picked out for him.

Then there’s Mr. Kinnear, played by my man Paul Gross. I’ve never seen him play a bad guy or someone who doesn’t whimsically end up talking to ghosts (it’s a thing with his roles). But one good thing about his bad guy is that he doesn’t overplay it — there’s enough ambiguity in there to make you wonder if perhaps he’s misunderstood. Maybe if you fall in love with your maid, it’s not so bad to get another maid so you can sort of pretend she’s your wife? OK, yeah, it’s shady as hell, and obviously Nancy didn’t think this through in hiring yet another young girl for him. I’m going to place Paul Gross’ Kinnear right up there with Jason Bateman’s character in “Juno.” Remember how you felt when he started hitting on Juno? I’m pretty sure I can’t unsee how Kinnear looked at Grace when she was bent over cleaning up after Nancy. Bleh. Totally unsettling creeper performances that almost make you think you could never watch that actor in anything else. Almost. This is still Paul Gross.

Obviously, Margaret Atwood is really good at capturing what the world looks like trapped by masculinity. I would almost say “toxic” but there’s not a lot that toxic about Dr. Jordan, for example, and yet, he is obviously affected by the expectations that masculinity presents. He doesn’t project those expectations on anyone else — really it swallows him. That’s why Atwood’s work is making a rebound right now — at a time when we are all thinking a lot about gender roles and how damaging restrictions on them might be.

For some reason, the series decided on a different ending from the book. First of all, Grace is pardoned and lands in the hands of the preacher who’d been advocating for her after her conviction. They then take Grace to meet an unknown man who wanted to see her, and she doesn’t realize until she gets there that it’s Kinnear’s flute-playing neighbor boy, Jamie. Jamie, who had a crush on her when she was a servant girl, and then testified against her at her murder trial. He proposes to Grace, and they marry. But Jamie’s not such a sweet kid anymore — he appears to get off on hearing Grace’s tortured prison sufferings. (Grace also notes that she’s not getting a maid for their tiny house, which is definitely wise.) Instead of marrying the girl his mom wanted for him, as in the book, Dr. Jordan is injured at war and is in some type of catatonic state, until he receives a letter from Grace. As his mother reads it aloud, Simon stirs a bit. Who wanted this ending? No one, no one. No, here’s the ending I wanted for Grace, who, by the way, was a real person.

[ potential Grace Marks job interview after prison pardon ]

Employer, looking over her resume: “It does appear there are some gaps to your employment history. Would you be able to explain that?”

Grace: “… And so forth.”

Employer: “And so forth?”

Grace: “Just because you pester me to know everything is no reason for me to tell you.”

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End-of-Year Roundup!

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Whew! 2019 was a heckuva decade. Good thing I had some books around to read. Here are my favorite books that *I* read this year (not that came out this year).

It’s hard for me to find time to read. I have a job. Two kids. A side hustle. Three kids, actually, if you count my husband. So I decided to read 15 minutes a day. That’s not a lot, and indeed, by the end of 2019, I’d finished 12 books. Not bad, but not great. Still, that number would be higher if I hadn’t read “11/22/63” by Stephen King, which is quite thick. Would I make that decision again? Yeah, no.

What I read this year: Finally, “Beloved.” I know. In retrospect, I tried reading Toni Morrison when I was far too young — her books were all over our house. I didn’t understand it and I put her down for, like, decades. After she died this year, I decided that the best way to honor her memory was to get with the program. I know that when Morrison died, there was conversation about her place in American literary history, not just black American literary history. But this book is about slavery, which is a pretty American thing. I cannot imagine the process of researching this book, it’s that devastating. But you probably knew that. This book uses language to make imagery better than just about anything I have ever read. It was beautiful, disquieting, scary, fever-dreamy and why hasn’t Jordan Peele remade this yet?

“The War of Art” by Stephen Pressman: Sometimes, I find it hard to sit down and write. It’s frustrating sometimes because the words don’t come out the way you want. It makes you think you’re no good. Why am I doing this anyway? Why am I having trouble finishing projects? How can I find the time to write? If you’ve ever had these issues (and not just with writing — anything you want to do and are not actively doing), I’d recommend this book. Pressman was a failed writer before he was a successful one, and he learned about success via the scenic route. He shares what he saw in straightforward fashion — that the one thing keeping all of us from achieving our goals is resistance. He outlines some ideas about how to tame that resistance. This book is worth noting because it changed my writing routine forever. It’s short and the chapter entitled “Fear” has never really left me.

“Deep Work” by Cal Newport and “How to Break Up With Your Phone” by Catherine Price: I did not intend to read these books at the same time, but it was perfect timing that I did. “Deep Work” is about the anticipated need for businesses and organizations for people who can develop valuable skills and what’s required to do that — long periods of intense concentration. Price’s book is part research paper (phone screens can give your brain the signal that it should be awake, even at night. For real.) and part step-by-step process on how to restructure your relationship with your phone, beyond checking social media obsessively. Newport would take it a step further:



Yeah, in this, the year of our Lord 2020. But this is a leap I’m thinking more and more about taking because of both these books.

I’ve mentioned “Queen of the Night” by Alexander Chee before, and of all the books I read this year, I was most blown away by this one. I can’t remember the last time I was so stressed reading a book. Like Morrison, the depth of research about the time in which Chee is writing makes this book more like an experience. My goodness. Nothing more, y’honor.

What I listened to this year: “In the Dark” from American Public Media. “In the Dark” is the investigative powerhouse people think “Serial” was. (It wasn’t, as anyone who has ever read/watched/listened to additional information about the Adnan Syed case will tell you. The first season of “Serial” was great writing, but most of it isn’t actually accurate …?)

The third “In the Dark” season actually began in 2018, but the team’s investigation actually sparked further episodes — and led to further legal developments in the following year. Spoiler alert (how are you not listening to this podcast, though?): Curtis Flowers’ conviction was overturned by the U.S. Supreme Court and he was just recently freed on bail. At the bail hearing, Flowers’ lawyer literally played the podcast for the judge. Had to be the best of 2019 and 2018.

I might have promised to expand my podcast world last year and listen to more than true crime, but I definitely did not do that. For example, “Hit Man,” which is an entire season based on a story told in an episode of “Criminal” I listened to once, about a man who was hired to murder a woman, her son and her son’s nurse. He did this by following a hit man instruction manual. This podcast looks into the crime itself, but also the history of the book, and the host managed to find the identity of the book’s author, which had been elusive for years. Now, what host Jasmyn Morris does with this information is … not what you’d expect.

And then there’s “Murder in Oregon” (I know, this makes me sound really bad). But this podcast, while not as well-produced as anything from Wondery, is one heckuva story. So basically, a little over 30 years ago, state government officials apparently murdered the new Department of Corrections chief, Michael Francke, because he was about to blow the hell out of a nearby whistle. Then they framed another dude while failing to investigate the probable real killer, all while those who knew the real killer were saying, “Yeah, he’s the killer.” The government officials were criminals themselves in willllld ways that were mostly covered up by the state newspaper THE OREGONIAN. Hello! It’s a journey. Listen to it!

Honorable mentions for this year: “Running from COPS,” “1619” (also please read the accompanying New York Times section) “The Catch and Kill Podcast,” “Startup” (which is an older podcast, but one I recently discovered), “Slow Burn’s” third season about the murders of Tupac Shakur and The Notorious B.I.G.), “Crimetown’s” latest season about corruption in Detroit, the third season of “Accused,” (which is underway and is already pretty insane) and “Bundyville: The Remnant.”

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The Roundup: The 1619 Project and Ms. Morrison

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The thing that annoys me the most about the conversations around reparations (and there are other, minor annoyances, believe me) is that the talk remains centered around money and property. When I read Ta-nehesi Coates’ essay for The Atlantic “A Case for Reparations” — and if you are a resident of America and haven’t read this yet, just open another tab and do so now, please — it led me to the reparations legislation that John Conyers had been trying to pass every year for at least 25 years. It’s known as HB 40, and when I read that, I realized that education is a key part of it as well.

Reparations means almost nothing without education, and an understanding of what this country is truly built upon. Part of the reason white nationalism and white supremacy remains today is because in school, the brutality of slavery and all of its other offshoots rooted in racism is largely avoided. So there is this room in the classroom for a student to walk out thinking that the Civil War was about “states’ rights.” There’s room for adults in the year of our Lord 2019 who chant “Send her back” and advocate for separating different families in similar cruel ways yet again in our history with no trace of irony.

So that’s why I’ll be spending time this weekend getting acquainted with the New York Times’ The 1619 Project. It’s an effort to show how the effects of slavery touches every part of what America is today. This is where an honest conversation about reparations begins — with what actually happened and how it frames what’s happening today. The New York Times can have my money on this one.

What I’m Reading

Toni Morrison, of course. I remember when I was about 13 years old, and being the advanced reader I was, ran across a Toni Morrison book — I want to say it was “Song of Solomon” — and cracked it open. I was too young — I didn’t understand it, although I knew it to be beautiful writing, even then.

When she died last week, I was sad, but she lived a good, full life. My dad also died this year and he was a writer. I’m not trying to claim he was on the Toni Morrison level, but I do understand a little more the importance of leaving a bit of yourself behind, and that’s what she did. So if I want to remember her influence on telling the stories of black women without blinking, then I have her books. Farewell, Toni. I mean, Ms. Morrison.

(Did you all know that she wrote children’s books as well? I didn’t, but now my kids know. “Peeny Butter Fudge” is pretty deep for a children’s book.)

What I’m Reading, Part II

Have you ever panicked because you haven’t had a good book to read, even with all the books you own that you haven’t read? Have you ever gone to your library’s website to solve this “problem,” only to find the book you want is unavailable? Then you go down the list of all the books you want and finally — paydirt — there’s one.

Then, the first one you put a hold on is waiting at the library for you. The second one. Now, you’ve got two weeks to read all of this:

In my ears

So I did a quick drive to Atlanta and back recently to do some clearing-out work at my dad’s house, and came across the newest season of Crimetown. The first season was about the generations of corruption in Providence, Rhode Island. This year is a deep dive into Detroit. I am not from Detroit, nor have I ever been there, and I was thoroughly fascinated by this series. I also want to say that I don’t know what it is about Marc Smerling and Zac Stuart-Pontier that they get the interviews that make these stories pop (such as Kwame Kilpatrick and his entire family and his mistress. You might also recall their involvement on HBO’s “The Jinx,” which culminated in Robert Durst croaking out something that might have been a confession.

What’s great about this podcast is that it could be lazy and still be quite popular. Who doesn’t love consuming stories about crime, right? But this show is not lazy. It takes its time telling the stories of all these characters, especially Kilpatrick, the former mayor, so that it isn’t so easy to label them criminals or “bad guys.” You don’t just become a criminal. It’s a process and that’s far more fascinating to listen to than limiting the story to the criminal acts. If you’re stuck in a car for seven hours, this podcast is a pretty good way to spend it.

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The Roundup: I Almost Didn’t Make it to the End of ‘Queen of the Night’

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It took a few months, but I finally finished Alexander Chee’s “Queen of the Night” and it was worth every penny of that overdue penalty from the library.

OK, seriously, I have never read a book that had me so anxious at the end. I realized I was holding my breath! No spoilers I guess, but … never mind

**SPOILER**

Lilliet is my homegirl! When she attacked and killed the tenor, I was like, “Is this a dream sequence? She doesn’t have it in her!” Then I was like, “If she did this, she definitely didn’t do it right.” When I realized she offed the dude and did it right (for the most part — that stinkin’ maid), I decided that she was going right up to the top of list of my literary character hero list. (Which I guess I’m now going to have to do.) Whew! I was pissed that she lost her man, but I think it’s safe to say she liked him more than he liked her. Honestly, Aristafeo was straight trash.

**SPOILER OVER**

I think I’ve noted I don’t normally like Victorian-era books, but once this one got clicking, I couldn’t put it down and I’ve been thinking about why that is. If you’re a writer, you’re creating worlds and to take the reader with you, you have to get granular, so specific. That’s what Chee did, and the way he injects historical figures and events works beautifully because Lilliet is so fully formed that you’re experiencing this life with her. But you have to be thorough. I know in my fiction writing, I have a tendency to sneak past the stuff I think is boring, but it’s atmosphere and it makes your worlds pop up off the page. It’s been a while since a story has done that to me and it makes me want to do it for my work.

In my ears

When I was just out of college and living by myself, I would fall asleep to episode of “Forensic Files” or something similar and that is just weird, right? To be soothed by stories of crime? Now I do it with podcasts, too, and it is so odd. There was a time when I’d listen to any content involving a real crime. It could be listening to Crime Writers On (the best podcast critics’ show out there right now) that’s got me a bit more discerning. But I listened to one in the last couple of weeks that I had to turn off.

It’s called 22 Hours: An American Nightmare, and it’s a case about a family and their housekeeper that was kidnapped, terrorized and killed. They were found in their burned out home. So I have a theory about podcasts, and it’s that broadcast reporters/companies are the worst at podcasts. It makes sense — they focus on showing you something with their stories, with your eyes. It doesn’t often translate to radio or print. This podcast is trying to be true crime, hardboiled and Serial all at the same time, and if you want to talk about a face plant, well, here you are. I only allow myself to cringe over something I’m listening to in a podcast for two minutes and then I realize it must not be for me.

The exact moment that did it for me was when the host, whose name I won’t even bother to go look up, talks about how emotionally challenging it was for her to report on this story when it first happened, then played some audio of her talking about how hard it was to her producer. Less than a minute later, they open up a box of evidence and the mood is … much lighter. Someone does that fake suspense music — you know, “dunt dunt DUNNNNN!”

I turned it off.

One other thing that I am not turning off is the Mueller Report Audio. My brother told me about this, because obviously, I did want to read the report, but was short on time. I guess I understand why special counsel Robert Mueller is being asked to testify before Congress (on this very day!), but listening to this report, it is damning enough — and it’s redacted! So far, my favorite part is Donald Trump telling Chris Christie that because he fired Michael Flynn, the whole “Russia thing” was over with and Christie responding with, basically, “yeah no.”

Comedy gold. And yet, also terrible.

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The Roundup: The West Wing, Alexander Chee and a Journalist’s Role

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It’s time to dust this blog off!

Looking back at my previous entries, it looks like I dropped off “The West Wing.” I had been watching it, but man, between the 9/11 episode to start the third season and Mrs. Landingham dying at the end of season 2, I needed a break. I was watching WW to distract me from the real actual West Wing of the White House right now. But now that this current administration has amped up the crazy to noxious levels, I thought it was time to go back, and I am pleased to report that I completed the third season over a long weekend. A couple key points:

  1. CJ is just my homey. She might be the only woman character that Aaron Sorkin has ever made to seem like an actual woman you might meet.
  2. There are some shows that don’t intend to be dated. I think “The West Wing” is one of them. But there is no surer sign of a 90s/early aughts network television show than Mark Harmon showing up in a guest romantic role. I’m still mad about him assisting in the final ruination of “Moonlighting.” I didn’t even feel bad about how dirty he got done in the last episode.

I’ll probably start season 4 this week. I guess I do have a small question about how Josh is dating a lobbyist who immediately takes their pillow talk and then tries to thwart the administration’s plans. It seems like that should be more than the minor annoyance it appears to be in the third season. Part of me was also blaming Sorkin for how Mary-Louise Parker’s character comes across, but yeah, I actually never liked “Weeds” because of her, too.

In my ears

I’m a bit of a podcast junkie, and I was able to fashion a reasoned article out of the rage haze I saw when I completed the Broken Harts podcast. Thanks to Galen over at Bello Collective for calming me down enough to write this critique, and for suggesting I contact the team at In the Dark, because I got quotes from Samara Freemark! (You have listened to In the Dark, yes?)

I’ve developed something of a reputation among family and friend for (often unsolicited) podcast recommendations that match virtually any conversation. I thought I’d start sharing what I’m listening to and why.

Anyone who knows me knows that my only consistent habit during the work week is listening to The Daily. If you want to learn something new, you listen to this podcast. Sometimes it’s stuff you’re interested and sometimes it’s just stuff you just now realized you were interested in. Usually, The Daily can do no wrong to my ears.

Usually.

This week, they did a series about how democracy is working across Europe, especially with the strength of the European Union under threat.

This team went to France, Italy, Poland and Germany to take a look at democratic countries with populaces in distress. Many are seemingly disillusioned with “liberal democracy” (air quotes because I don’t think that’s a thing) and are tiptoeing towards support for nationalists. In Poland, it’s already there, and that’s the strongest episode. It had everything: Two brothers divided — one goes into politics and the other journalism, and a widow running for office after the assassination of her husband.

**(SPOILER) When reporter Kathrin Bennhold says that someone from the government came in to change the editorial direction of the paper the one brother worked for, did anyone else feel that second of dread, knowing it was definitely his own brother coming to strong-arm him?**

Anyway, I waited for the whole series for someone to make two points here: First, a lot of people in the U.S. thought it was a good idea to vote for the current president because of economic anxiety. I kept waiting for someone to say, “SOUNDS FAMILIAR, GUYS?!” Which was not the point. I know this.

Second, these European far-right candidates are taking that economic discomfort and mixing in casual xenophobia and baking it into this nice cake whose decoration reads: “Let’s get rid of the immigrants and everything will be fine!” Which is their choice, no matter how repugnant. But this begs the question of whose job it is to present facts here. Sure, opposing candidates can disprove the right’s talking points on immigration with facts in a debate setting, or an interview. But in this man-on-the-street situation, shouldn’t journalists do this, too? That was the most frustrating part of this series. Do you let these people onto your air blaming immigrants for their lots in life without fact-checking them? It’s not a journalist’s job to dissuade them, but to let them wade around in false information without at least telling them there’s different information out there? That feels wrong and lazy. But that’s the corner journalism has painted itself into now — at least here. It’s so obsessed with giving both sides a forum that outright white nationalists can stand on the same stage with serious minds with no qualification.

On the queue for this week: A new podcast from Barnes & Noble about Stephen King books! It’s called King of the Dark and it’s available now and I was a little excited about this development on Twitter:

Barnes & Noble is doing podcasts now. What a wonderful world.

What I’m reading

“Queen of the Night” by Alexander Chee. This is how I get into books. I saw a quote of Chee’s on Twitter about what writer’s block means and so I decided to pick up one of his books.

From his interview with Goodreads

I am not a big Victorian-era book reader, and this one started slow for me. I’m elbow-deep in now. Here’s something wild that happened while I was reading this book:

I was working on a short story that I’d been trying to finish for months and I got to the buildup to the end I’d had in mind when I just stopped. I couldn’t figure out how to get from where I was to where I was going and that had never happened before. I was so. close.

So I closed the file and decided to read instead to calm myself down, intending to just get through a few pages, then go about the rest of my day. I picked up “Queen of the Night” and began reading. I read a passage that was so beautiful that it unlocked whatever had happened with my block. Seriously. I closed the book, opened my document and finished my short story right there, right then. My story and his have nothing in common. I don’t know how to explain it, except as I said: Dude unlocked my writer’s block. So thanks, Alexander?

“Why is it so loud when you cry from grief? Because it must be loud enough for the missing one to hear, though it never can be. Loud enough to scale the sky and the backs of angels, or to fall through the earth to where they rest. And so it is sometimes when I sing that the notes come from me as if I believed I could reach them where they rest, they sure of a reunion I still cannot imagine or believe in except, sometimes, in song.”

Chee, “Queen of the Night”
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Therapy with TWA: The First Person I Ever Converted to Tennis

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(Cross-posting from my tennis blog, as I do when something is at the forefront of my mind)

I haven’t been posting much lately, and that’s because I’ve been dealing with family issues. I thought, even against all the evidence I had to the contrary, that at some point, the weight of the responsibility of caring for my sick father would be alleviated once he got better. That actually didn’t end up happening.
My father died a couple of weeks ago and since then, I’ve not been in the mood for much, least of all tennis. So here I am, back on the therapy couch.
Did I ever tell you guys about how my dad became a tennis fan?
So about 16 years ago, I was becoming obsessed with the sport. I was playing it, was dating a guy I met because of it, was actually getting good at it. I loved watching it on television. Whenever I talked to my dad, he would talk to me about boxing and I would talk to him about tennis. I never really liked boxing. My dad loved boxing. I hadn’t watched boxing since I was under his roof because we had one television and I had no choice. We’re talking Mike Tyson’s heyday here. And honestly, growing up in Brooklyn with Tyson knocking out everyone lined up against him? It would have been sacrilege not to follow that. But that was the depth of my boxing expertise.
Now, despite my possibly obvious disinterest in the sport, it didn’t change my dad’s determination to narrate each blow of the recent match he watched. I listened. He was super jacked about it. But still, no dice. No boxing fandom for me.
My dad eventually moved to a housing development with a pool and tennis court. When we went to visit one time, he wanted to have a hit. One thing you should know about my dad is that he was very meticulous about his appearance. And yet, he came out with my then-boyfriend and I to his tennis courts and allowed photographical evidence of his completely wack tennis game to be recorded. Now, I would never actually share those tiny images of him completely mishandling his racquet and looking decidedly uncoordinated that I took on a Motorola Razr nearly 13 years ago.

Bah, he wouldn’t have minded.
But here’s the thing. So it never occurred to me that I should start watching boxing because my dad liked it. For me, it was like, “No, I didn’t see that fight. Let’s talk about something else!” And we could. There was no shortage of things to talk about with him. There was life, movies, books, current events, and the like. But my dad knew that I had this new passion and did not resolve, as I did, to talk about something else, or to allow the other person to ramble on just because. No. My dude became a tennis fan. And I’m not talking about folks who are Serena/Maria/Fed stans. He watched all the matches. He trended towards the young Americans and women’s tennis, especially the rivalries. It never ceased to surprise me just how much he got entrenched. He knew all the player names, and when we turned on tennis at his house, he could go on about Marion Bartoli’s game, or that of Simona Halep. I know he still loved boxing.
It’s not like I feel guilt for not becoming a boxing fan, because to expect someone to pick up a sport because someone they care about cares about it is a lot. But he did it.
What does that say about him?
Things I didn’t fully understand until now.

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Therapy with TWA: This Moment Right Here

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“They say African Americans have to be twice as good, especially women. I’m perfectly OK with having to be twice as good.”

Serena Williams said that. I’ve been thinking about it a lot this month, and it’s part of the reason I got mad with her at the U.S. Open. You don’t set your standards that high, and then lower them to act like John McEnroe. Yuck.
I’ve been thinking about it for the last few weeks because we’re about to get an irresponsible, dishonest frat boy who likes beer for a Supreme Court justice. That’s just the stuff we know about him for sure. He’s about to get this job because we lower the bar for privilege so low in this country that all he has to do is have a tantrum, and poof! He has what he wants.
I would suspect that if you’re a woman, this week has been tough. If you’re a black woman, it’s been even harder. It’s not just the light treatment of sexual assault accusations by our political leaders. I once had an internship at Family Circle, and the girl I interned with showed up to work one day severely hung over. I’m not exaggerating. She asked me to smell her breath to make sure it didn’t smell like liquor. It did. I told her it didn’t. Her grandfather owned a printing press. She couldn’t even turn on the computer. I’m not exaggerating.
So yeah, this has been a lot. It will continue to be a lot. It’s not fair to watch someone get a job they don’t deserve because of their privilege.
Still, there is something to having to work for what you’ve gotten. So maybe he becomes a justice. The career I’ve had, I worked for it. I endured comments about my race, my clothes, my smile — and that was before we even got to the quality of my work.
I had to be twice as good. It’s not fair. But it’s OK. I’d rather be twice as good than half anyway.

*This is a cross-post from my Tennis With Attitude blog. 

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‘This is America’ — Chapter 4: The Artist

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Of course I’ve seen “This is America.” I’ve seen it, like 50 times now. I don’t watch music videos, either. And I *checks clips* have never written about a music video. But “This is America” isn’t really a music video. It’s more like a book, so here we go. Let’s start with the chapter I’m reading now — Chapter 4: The Artist.

I’m watching the young, handsome brother who is clad in light-colored shirt and slacks and flip-flops. He’s approaching the chair with the guitar and in the background, the music begins: “Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, go away.” He begins strumming the guitar.

By the time Donald Glover aka Childish Gambino is done slinking over behind him, making mocking minstrel faces that almost have to be in the guitarist’s direction, the guitarist is gone. At least he’s not who he was just a moment ago. He’s bound, head covered in a sack, pants bloodied, dirty. His guitar is gone.

And then he is shot and dragged away.

We’ll take the music, we’ll take your talent. You?

Go away.

This is a really interesting chapter, as it intersects with another piece released this week by Ta-Nehisi Coates. It’s called “I’m Not Black, I’m Kanye.” You should read it. In it, Coates strips West bare, but in the way that only he can, he showcases West, Michael Jackson and himself in portraits of the artists as young men. He looks at the moments when they all struggled with fame and how it affected their sanity. Jackson, it seems, lost, having scrubbed his face to try to reach that standard of beauty he knew. West, it seems, is struggling mightily now, with his concept of “free thinking” which apparently involves the reimagining of history. And then there was Coates, whose success pulled him into new circles and new power and new critics, who made him doubt himself. It changed him, and he thought for a moment there that he had lost his mind, to the point where he questioned his own ability and talent. Who is he? It’s a question he’s still asking. And that must be how it started for Jackson, for West, when their gifts catapulted them into levels of stardom that changed them. They probably struggled to hold on to who they are, as Coates is now. For West, who once rapped: “Racism’s still alive, they just concealin’ it,” now calls Donald Trump “my boy” — a “boy” who tried to ban Muslims from this country using the law. Notably, though, West didn’t even know about this, according to Coates, until another rapper informs him.

The guitarist makes a return in Glover’s video, near the end. He’s back in the chair, with his guitar, no longer bound and free to play, but his head is still covered. He looks to be playing enthusiastically as Glover dances all over the hood of an abandoned car and a singer whose name is apparently Sza (I told y’all I don’t do music videos) watches, as most sisters are supposed to do in music videos, right? She must also notice all the empty and open cars whose warning lights are going off. But the artist. He gets to keep his talent, but he can’t see what’s happening around him. He can’t sing what he can’t see. Which is by design — now the chant in the background is “Black man, black man, get your money, get your money.”

Who the heck is that supposed to be?

Money’s easy to get. Keeping your identity and your gifts intact, this chapter, and Coates, seem to be saying, is much harder, and so much more precious.

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What I learned from reading the worst book I’ve encountered in some time

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Recently, I tried an experiment based on a simple question: Would my favorite authors as a teen/young adult stand the test of time? Would I still think these writers were any good? I was just curious. So at the library, I searched for books from one of my favorite horror books from back in the day and found that Christopher Pike writes adult fiction horror books, too. On top of that, his books were located only a few feet from the computer I was working on, so off I went. I came home with his 2007 book, Falling. On the cover is a review blurb that reads: “Literary crack cocaine.”

See, I thought that was a good sign at first, but after reading this book, I remembered that crack cocaine is actually not good for you.

Let’s be clear: This is not a good book. It has a vaguely interesting plot and you want to know what happens next, kinda. I think it’s more that once you get halfway into the book, you feel like you need to know how it ends, and you don’t want to cheat and flip to the back, because that’s just never right. Still, I almost quit this book about halfway in because I thought it would be too predictable and the writing was painful. It definitely wasn’t predictable, but the pain was real. I basically sped-read my way through the end and although there were lots of twists and turns, nothing was more important than reaching the end. I made myself finish, though, because I thought there might be a lesson in it for me.

The big idea: So this guy, Matt, falls in love with this girl, Amy, who is not very nice. She breaks his heart and he decides to fake his death and then return to torment her. This is happening at the same time an FBI agent, Kelly, goes rogue in pursuing a serial killer and ends up getting attacked with acid. Bummer, sure, but then her husband leaves her, takes their daughter, and moves in with another woman. Then Kelly takes on a case involving Amy and she ends up crossing paths with Matt.

The theme here is falling. Pike fairly beats you over the head with it. Everyone in this book is falling — out of planes, off boats, mountains, you name it. Mainly, everyone in this book has fallen in love and it has gone badly. There isn’t one normally functioning relationship in this book at all — not even a parent/child relationship. But that’s fine. It makes for high drama.

What’s the problem, then? We have to dedicate some time to some of the worst lines I’ve ever read. I mean, I physically recoiled at several passages in this book. Such as this one:

My god. OK, you want the reader to know Charlie is black. OK. There’s got to be a better way. You know, like this:

OK, not like this. And what exactly is even the meaning of this? Pete’s sake.

B-b-b-b-but wait, there’s more:

A … Lego. Maybe pick something that doesn’t have a completely different meaning for a parent of small kids. Is Amy really a pain in the foot? Lord.

We’re supposed to believe Kelly is smart, but then she says stupid stuff like this (she’s in disguise and I don’t want to waste time talking about why):

Asterisk: The Rolling Stones literally had a song called “Stoned,” and another one called “Stupid Girl.” But it’s the rap that makes you want to abuse your woman. This is so intellectually lazy that it’s distracting.

So wait. What was the first way?

I feel that by now, you must surely get the point of the poor writing. Let’s move on to other aspects. In one way, Pike keeps the story going — he manages to cut through a lot of transitional stuff. But in other ways, this book is still bogged down in tedium and reflection. I was trying to get a grip on what was happening with this book, and then I realized what it was as I was reading something else entirely — instructions for something I had just purchased. The main problem here is that this book does a lot of telling, and not a lot of showing. We’ve got pages here of delving into Matt’s brain — how emotionally attached he is to Amy, the reasoning around why he does everything as opposed to Matt’s actions speaking for themselves. Which is admittedly hard is a situation like this, because for a smart person, Matt does a lot of very dumb things, and then stands around on the phone with whoever (as described by Pike) and thinks of how to get out of the dumb situation he just put himself into. Kelly, this alleged genius hotshot agent, literally does the same thing twice to get herself nearly killed WITH THE SAME PERSON and befriends a kidnapper who could just as easily kill her as well. If Kelly were real, this is the agent you want to investigate you for any serious crime. At the very least, she would give you a good head start. Basically, Pike tells us the wrong things. We have dialogue that goes on like this for three pages:

but he dedicates two paragraphs to the moment that Kelly realizes she can’t live without her family through a conversation with a random little girl.

So, besides the clunky writing, this book reinforced the necessity of the art of showing, not telling. Stephen King covers this in On Writing. There is one other book I’ve read like Falling: Wire in the Blood by Val McDermid. (This actually was made into a great British series with Robson Green who is just too damn sexy for his own good and he needs to stop it.) Anyway, both of these books had something good — a story. In McDermid’s case, she had strong characters and a good story. But the command of the language, the natural dialogue just wasn’t there. I think of other books I’ve read with the opposite issue — We Were the Mulvaneys by Joyce Carol Oates is a good example — where the writing is sweeping and beautiful but when the book is over, you realize that it’s difficult to tell anyone what the story was about. For example, the defining moment of the book doesn’t happen in front of the reader’s eye. We just read about the fallout. No one jumped out of a plane in that book, and yet it still held my imagination better than one that involved several death-defying jumps, at least five instances where the main characters almost die, a surprise paternity result and just some wild stuff involving vinegar and the storage of dead bodies.

So what did I learn from my experiment, besides that you can have an interesting story and turn it into a bad book? Well, it leaves me a little afraid of looking at his most memorable book from my teen-dom now, Remember Me. Or of any of the other authors whose work I inhaled back then. Which of course means I’ll be doing this again.

 

 

 

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I finally won NaNoWriMo!

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The first time I did NaNoWriMo, it was 2005 and I managed to rope in my ride-or-die buddy from the copy desk. In case you’ve never heard of it, it stands for National Novel Writing Month, and the goal is to write 50,000 during the month of November. To do that, you need to write about 1,600 words a day. The point is to be consistent, which I could use some help with, in all honesty. Now, if you don’t care about what those words are, it’s very easy to do this. In theory, if you have a great idea, it’s also supposed to be easy. And I had an idea, and so did Lisa. The problem is that we both had full-time jobs and families. As I recall, we both found ourselves short by some 30,000 words going into the final week of the month.

Our first NaNoWriMo ended with a last-day dash to hit 50,000 words, and we did it, and it was fun. We went from restaurant to restaurant (getting kicked out of an Eat ‘n Park for stealing their electricity!) for fresh motivation, and ended the night at Lisa’s house, where we made it by midnight and we celebrated into the early hours of the morning. It was fun. Of course, my novel had become a nonsensical mass of words. I botched it so badly that I’ve been too embarrassed to look at it. It was one of my favorite story ideas, too. But, whoohoo, 50,000 by any means necessary, right? Right.

I guess.

Each November since, I’ve thought about it, at least a little, but would decide against it. But last November, I decided to try again. I had another idea and, with my plans to get out of journalism in high gear, I was feeling good, creative. I was tearing it up, too. Until Election Day. Sorry for my liberal tears, but it shook me. I don’t suffer from depression, but I had really never felt so low. I felt like I was tricked into believing that, while imperfect, this world was finally turning in a direction that made me feel like I could have children here and that their lives would be better than mine, and in the space of just a few hours, that was gone. Which is another issue entirely. But let’s say that sitting down to write the morning after, the week after, the month after? I could barely get up, let alone stir my creativity. So, yeah, NaNoWriMo sucked it hard last year.

So this year, the NaNoWriMo emails starting rolling in in late October. Right around that time, I decided that in pursuing freelance writing opportunities, I should maybe revisit my roots — creative fiction. Which, of course, had me high on the promise of hitting 50,000 words this year. For real this time. It didn’t start great, I have to say. I wrote zero words on Nov. 1. I believe I only made the decision to do it on that day. But the next day, I was in business, and my story took off.

But then life, as usual, happened and I fell behind. I started to feel like a big fat failure again, until two things happened. First, my story had taken on a life of its own. I had some plot points written out that I wanted to hit, but getting from A to B was the really fun part. I thought I knew how my main character, Samuel (yeah, on day two, I decided I don’t like that name after all. EDIT!), would get there, but then he and the rest of the cast took the wheel and it was a lot of fun. I normally love writing dialogue and hate writing surround-sound. That didn’t change last month, but I learned I could do it. In short bursts.

The second thing that happened stemmed from a new thing I’m trying. It’s called a bullet journal. You write down your goals and ideas and all the miscellaneous in one place. One optional part of this journal is a habit tracker, where you make a chart of things you want to accomplish and color in the days that you actually do it. Towards the end of the month, I began to realize it would take another epic crash-and-burn night fueled by Eat ‘n Park adrenaline to make my word goal. That didn’t make me feel great, but then I filled in my tracker over the final weekend, using the NaNoWriMo word tracker and I realized that I had been writing nearly every day of November. And my story was going great. And I was at about half the word count.

So on Nov. 30, I wrapped up NaNoWriMo just as Samuel and his new (girl?)friend Caroline closed in on his parents who were “on the lam.” Their words. My word count? 25,065.

And I like every single one of them.

I also didn’t get have to get kicked out of a restaurant, so that was nice, too.