That had been five years ago, and nowadays the intense fallout from Tranströmer's bold self-presentation pervaded the scene for public readings by literary authors of every stripe.
Oh, sure, the pressure to tart up readings had been building before Tranströmer's pianistic display. We had already experienced poetry slams, where melodramatic performance often outweighed the texts. There had always been publicity stunts involving books, such as Naked Girls Reading, and Todd Zuniga's Literary Death Matches, where four authors read competitively and the "winner" was awarded laurels. But these had been exceptions to the usual old-fashioned unadorned recitation from behind a cozy lectern, where nothing came between listener and the text but perhaps the author's inexpert, sleep-inducing drone.
Today, however, such antique events were nonexistent. An author reading was an author performing. And with so much of a writer's income and reputation staked on live events, God help the author who couldn't come up with an intriguing act to accompany his or her personal appearance.
And therein lay my problem. My own act had gotten stale, and I couldn't think up a new one.
I had cruised along for three years, ever since the publication of my first novel, An Anodyne for Atheists, with what I rather proudly imagined was a riveting magic trick.
Before turning to fiction writing, during my college years, I had earned spare cash with my amateur escapologist routine: sort of a second-rate Houdini shtick. So when I was casting about for an act to accompany my public readings, I naturally fixed upon what I had already mastered.
My readings consisted of me donning a straitjacket, securely lashed, then climbing into a chin-high, water-filled chamber, above which was suspended an immense crushing weight (actually styrofoam) whose release was determined by a large timing device clearly counting down to my destruction. While declaiming memorized passages from my novel, I appeared to be frantically struggling with my bonds against imminent death. Finally, just at the climax of my oral narrative segment, I would free myself, burst forth in a splash and halt the timer.
I had never failed to move a goodly number of units, selling my books to at least fifteen percent of my audience when I performed. That was a very good sell-through for any author, I knew.
Except lately, with the publication of my second book, A Balm for Beggars. Attendance had been sparse and sales sparser. Then came the highly retweeted comment that ended my run, from Penn Jillette, no less: "Saw Griffin Seltzer's lame-o act—that shit sucked donkey balls a century ago."
My publisher and editor and agent had all called me within sixty seconds of Jillette's tweet, ordering me to come up with a new act for my next reading. And for two months I had tried. But none of my ideas seemed good or exciting enough.
And so I now sat in the waiting room of the agency I thought could save my career, the Jambo Juicebox Novelty Speakers Bureau, a wholly owned subsidiary of the Jim Rose Circus.
At last the receptionist conducted me in to meet the owner of the agency, Jambo Juicebox himself.
JJ, as I'll call him, stood shirtless, with auburn hair to his shoulders, wearing spandex cyclist's shorts and high-top sneakers. Threaded in a close-meshed matrix just beneath his epidermis was a web of artificial luminescent spidersilk. This display, the latest tattoo upgrade and run by an implanted chip, allowed an infinity of animations to parade up and down his scrawny frame. Right now, Donald Duck was chasing Chip and Dale up one arm, (presumably) across JJ's back, then down the other arm.
"Griffin, dude! Have a seat!"
JJ rested his skinny butt against the frame of a treadmill and dug out his smartphone from some hidden recess of his skintight shorts. "I've been looking at some clips of your past readings. Hammy but alluring—at first! You ran it into the ground, bro! Variety is the lifeblood of public performance. You can't expect your readers to flock to see the same show they saw three years ago."
"But I was reciting fresh passages from the newest novel.…" I lamely countered.
"That's the least important part of your act! Wise up! Now, here's the backscatter I'm getting from you: retro! Am I right? You're kind of an old-fashioned guy, correct?"
I was only about ten years older than JJ, but I immediately felt ancient. "Well, I guess—"
"Okay! Savory! That's our approach. How do you relate to physical pain?"
"What?"
"There's no one on the circuit now who hammers nails up their nostrils. Joyce Carol Oates was doing it, but she had a little accident. Kind of a self-administered lobotomy. Now she's only fit to write paranormal romances. Anyhow, the shtick could be all yours!"
"No! I'm not mutilating myself onstage."
"All right, let's see. You play any instruments? Look at this guy."
JJ swiped up a video onto his phone and turned the screen toward me.
"That's Victor Borge. Another damn Scandinavian and his piano!"
"Okay, okay, don't get a knot in your jockstrap. How about this one?"
Some out-of-tune fiddling, a nasal voice and raucous laughter emerged from the phone's speaker. I looked. "Not Henny Youngman! I absolutely refuse!"
"Hey, dude, everything old is new again, if you just wait long enough."
Somehow JJ repocketed his phone without altering the silhouette of his shorts. He twirled a lock of glossy hair while patently deep in thought. Then he said, "How do you look in drag? Burlesque is still big. I could get you lessons from Dita von Teese herself!"
I'm afraid at that point I gave in to self-pity and began to snuffle quietly. JJ came up to my side and patted my shoulder compassionately.
"There, there, you thought that writing a book was the hard part, didn't you? I knew you were old-fashioned. But don't you worry now, I've just gotten an inspiration that's perfect for you."
And so that's how I came to be on all the bestseller lists, under my new nom-de-plume of "Joseph Merrick, Junior." A simple injection of synthesized neurofibromatosis genes, a short stay at a clinic while the genes expressed themselves, and I was ready to appear in all my freakish, crowd-attracting glory.
The experts reassure me that by the time I'm ready to retire, they should be able to figure out how to reverse the whole thing. But for now, I'm happy to share the stage with hot new authors Chang and Eng.
* * *
MELANCHOLY DANES, NACHO E.T.S, AND NAZIS FROM THE MOON
By Lucius Shepard | 1989 words
WHAT ARE we to make of the Danish director, Lars von Trier, the middle-aged enfant terrible of contemporary cinema? And perhaps more significantly, what are we to make of the world's intensely polarized reaction to him?
Prior to writing this review I did something I generally avoid; I read a sampling of reviews of his new film. The authors of these reviews fell roughly into three groups—those who regard von Trier as a pretentious ass; those who feel he is an artist who has fallen prey to megalomania; and those who believe him to be a visionary, a uniquely talented filmmaker. (I assume that some of the negative reaction can be attributed to a highly publicized Cannes interview during which von Trier made a number of pro-Nazi statements that were found offensive even by those who recognized them to have been offered tongue-in-cheek—as a result he was banned from the festival and has since declared that he will give no further interviews, something that I imagine will have his publicists standing up and cheering.) For my part, I have little doubt that any of these characterizations are inaccurate. Directors, from corporate prostitutes like Michael Bay, incompetents like Uwe Boll and on up the scale, are typically megalomaniacs and prone to pretension—it's almost part of the job description—and there is evidence aplenty that von Trier is gifted.
Take, for instance, von Trier's latest, Melancholia, which opens with an eight-minute-long dreamlike montage that must be counted among the most impressive sequences in cinematic history. Birds fall from the sky, a bride in her wedding dress wanders about while vines and roots appear to clutch at her; a woman carrying a child runs across a golf course that is turning to quicks
and beneath her feet; a garden is depicted in which every plant has two shadows, and two planets move closer and closer together, in danger of imminent collision, all this and more shown in extreme slow motion and set to the strains of Wagner's prelude to Tristan and Isolde. Though it is quite different in tone, the only piece of film I can think of that has a comparable impact is Kubrick's famous transition in 2001, wherein a scene of apes venting their frustration over the presence of a strange monolith in their midst gives way to a space shuttle docking at an orbital station, accompanied by the serene strains of Johann Strauss II's "The Blue Danube." The nightmarish mood established by the opening of Melancholia clearly restates what has become apparent during von Trier's career—that he is on the short list of directors who beg to be considered as the most skilled of contemporary cinematic poets. But does this make him a great director, or merely a freakishly talented visual artist?
Following the opening, the movie drops us into the first of two chapters, the first called "Justine" after a young woman, a victim of clinical depression (Kirsten Dunst), who is getting married at a palatial country estate that seems to be a cross between Versailles and the eccentric manse featured in Lemony Snicket. Included in the wedding party are Justine's mom, Gaby (a cold and bitchy Charlotte Rampling), her drunken father Dexter (John Hurt), her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg), and Claire's husband, John (Kiefer Sutherland, in his first meaningful role in years). During the reception, as her parents fight and various other petty dynamics are played out, Justine—feeling alienated from all of them—wanders away several times, once to soak in a bath and lastly to have sex with a male guest, thus effectively ending her marriage and leading to the second chapter in which Justine, sans husband, moves into the estate, sharing the house with Claire, John, and their young son Leo. During this second section it is made known that an enormous telluric planet, Melancholia, until now hidden from view by the sun, is on a course that will bring it close to the Earth, narrowly missing our home world. John is excited by the prospect of the opportunity to view this cosmic event close at hand, but as time passes Claire grows ever more certain that the two planets will collide. As Claire becomes increasingly agitated, Justine, displaying a depressive's calm in the face of extreme danger, takes charge of caring for her and of shielding Leo from the truth.
After an opening sequence that pretty firmly establishes (given the director's track record of downer films) that nothing good is going to happen, it might appear that the last two sections of the film are redundant. Indeed, this is one of the criticisms leveled against Melancholia. For those expecting Robert Duvall or Bruce Willis to rush in and save the day, I can see how this would be a problem—but to them I would say, Not every story needs a hero. There are those stories that require only that people behave naturalistically and if a hero happens to emerge, he or she may not be a traditional one and therefore may not be recognized as such. Other reviewers complain that the actions of von Trier's characters in Melancholia are inexplicable. I find this accusation mystifying. Does it come as news to anyone that people behave incomprehensibly, particularly during stressful family gatherings? I mean, seriously. Shepard family holidays, funerals, weddings, and so forth have been rife with incidents of bizarre behavior, sexual missteps, petty aggressions, and the like. It's hard to credit that my family is alone in this. A further commonly voiced critique of von Trier's movie is that he used Melancholia to talk about his personal difficulties with depression.
Wow. Fancy that. An artist utilizing his life experience to inform his work.
Reviews of von Trier's films are often preceded by a sort of sticker disclaimer that reads, Not For Everyone. What an idiotic caution that is! You'd be hard pressed to come up with a film that could honestly carry a sticker declaring it to be For Everyone. What the sticker on von Trier's films should say is, Not Trying to Be for Everyone, which would separate his films from the countless Ryan Reynolds-type vehicles that stare at you from poster display windows like cute spayed puppies.
If truth be told, most of the criticisms of Melancholia appear to derive from sources that appear offended that von Trier is not giving them what they have been conditioned to expect. For all his faults, and they are several (he sometimes declares his themes too hamfistedly, his dialog is sometimes clunky, etc.), von Trier is an artist, and artists are viewed as an annoyance by an industry that year by year grows ever more timorous and conservative. The license given artists by the critical press is less wide than once it was, less forgiving of indulgence, and artists are expected to dribble out their creative product in such a way as might be evidenced by the spoor of a highly regular, housebroken beast that leaves a neat package of poo on our doorsteps every so often. Nothing too large or too small, nothing with an idiosyncratic shape that might require special handling, nothing too ripe for the seniors or too brutal for the kiddies. Poo that adheres to industry standards.
You know.
Poo that smells good.
It didn't help Melancholia 's cause that it was released in the U.S.A. during the holidays and thus was forced to compete with tug-at-the-heartstrings, Academy-approved Hallmark Greeting Cards such as Hugo and sundry other products brought you by the folks who turned Black Friday into a national holiday.
Black Friday.
Kee-rist, why not come right out and say Satanic Saturday or Moloch Monday, or celebrate Christmas beneath a symbol representing the Fiery Wheel of Ixion rather than a tree or a cross? The idea that anything smacking of sorrow or reality or gloomy truth should sully the tranquil commercial zone of the Christmas season, which now stretches from Halloween to January…it's unthinkable and interferes with the sale of Nintendo Games and Baby Jesus-shaped Gummi Bears.
One last thing.
Kirsten Dunst.
Dunst won the Best Actress award at Cannes for her performance in Melancholia. I was all wait-and-see about the award, because I've never been particularly impressed with Dunst. Well, now I've seen. She is extraordinary in this film, a beautiful, dead-eyed haunt who becomes its iconic figure, the picture's central victim and only possible heroine. Von Trier is said to be rough on his leading ladies and has pulled some remarkable performances out of them. I imagine something similar occurred during the filming of Melancholia, but by saying this I don't discount Dunst's contribution in the least. She obviously learned to exploit a depth that von Trier perceived in her and as a result her presence invests every frame of the picture. The success of Melancholia, and by every standard I can think of, it is a success, a movie whose sadness is transcendent, thrilling in the unique focus it enforces upon its audience…. Its success is not due to the magical conjunction of a 3D camera and CGI combining to create a robot boy with freckles and a crookedy grin. No, this is real movie magic, a true collaboration between an artist and an actress that captures something both undefinable and ineluctable. I can't wait to watch it again.
Nacho Vigalondo's debut feature, the festival hit Los Chronocrìmenes ( Timecrimes ) was to my mind the most diverting time-travel movie ever made, a clever mixture of comedy and suspense, and so I was looking forward a great deal to his sophomore effort, Extraterrestrial . But whereas Chronocrìmenes was heavy on science fiction tropes, Extraterrestrial is essentially a bedroom farce with a sci-fi point of departure and at first came off as slight…but only at first.
The movie opens with a grad student, Julio (Julián Villagrán), waking in the apartment belonging to Julia (Michelle Jenner) after a one-night stand that neither party remembers with any degree of clarity. Julia is inclined to kick Julio out before her boyfriend Carlos (Raúl Cimas) returns home, but when they glance out the window they spot an enormous spacecraft hovering over Madrid, which has apparently been evacuated during the night. After hooking up a camcorder to Julia's TV, they sit staring at an image of the ship, heeding announcements that anyone left in the city should stay where they are.
Shortly afterward, Carlos appears, agitated, concerned about the spaceship and alien invaders—he buys a we
ak excuse that explains Julio's presence and insists they all stick together for the duration of the crisis. Not long after that, Ángel (Carlos Areces), Julia's neighbor and erstwhile stalker, turns up at the door. He has his suspicions about Julia-Julio and puts the pair on the defensive. In order to hide their connection and growing affection from Carlos, they are forced to concoct a web of lies. Eventually the idea is planted that one of the four may be an alien. Though Carlos makes several trips outside to reconnoiter, the camera stays in the apartment, but Vigalondo's smart, funny script keeps things from getting too static and, as the lies pile up, some deeper human truths are revealed. I really enjoyed this movie, but fans of Chronocrìmines should be wary, because Extraterrestrial is an entirely different animal.
During the Utopiales festival in Nantes, France, I was hoping to see Iron Sky, but missed the screening and only got to see pieces of it. Directed by Finns Timo Vuorensola and Samuli Torssonen, Iron Sky is the ultimate in collaborative filmmaking, its eleven million euro budget partially funded by fans, many of whom came to work on the picture as actors and researchers and whatnot. The film is a broad black comedy about the Nazis developing anti-gravity late in WW2 and escaping to the dark side of the moon, where they built a secret base. Now it's 2018 and they're returning to Earth with an armada, their chief target being an America governed by a moronic Palin-esque president. The footage I saw was predictably one-note but had some hilarious moments, and the overall look of the film is amazing, with Hollywood-quality effects. I saw enough to convince me to buy a ticket. Look for it in the spring of 2012. By then, given his penchant for Nazi jokes, maybe Lars von Trier will have kicked in a contribution.
* * *
COMING ATTRACTIONS
By Gordon Van Gelder | 157 words
Fantasy & Science Fiction, Extended Edition Page 28