BOOKS

THE LEFTOVERS + THIS WORD NOW: The Guiding Mysteries

June 12, 2017 by Adam Membrey

The morning after watching and absorbing The Leftovers finale, I felt a certain kind of emotional hangover. I woke up to a different life, one irretrievably changed by the show. The world outside my apartment pulsed with emboldened color and mystery. The sun shined brighter. The grass gleamed greener.

I needed something to guide me back from a place of transformation to a place of reality. My brain craved not only a better, more efficient way to gasp and gulp at life, but to put it in expressive, actionable steps.

Water wouldn’t quench my thirst. I needed something more.

Owen and Jodi Egerton’s This Word Now sat on my shelf for weeks. I even renewed it with the library twice. I meant to read it at some point, and that morning, of all mornings, felt like just the right time.

Talk about serendipity.

While the Egertons have done a fantastic job of putting truly actionable and creative steps for a writer together (seriously: buy the book; every section traps your excuses and sends them to space), the best thing it does is change the way you think.

Prior to watching The Leftovers, I had a beef with one of its creators, Damon Lindelof. In several interviews over the years, he mentioned how he liked to give every character a secret. And while it sounded like a great writing tip, in execution, it often faltered. How could we care about characters when we didn’t know what they wanted? How could we have conflict? It seemed like a non-starter. It also led to him having a hand in blockbuster movies that had no lasting impact, big, giant light shows that slid off your brain as you exited the theater.

What Lindelof seems to have learned with The Leftovers is that you can have secrets and mysteries as long as the characters are compelling. It certainly helps to have great actors and directors tell your story. But we can go a long way from home if we’re at least somewhat interested in the people we’re riding along with.

But the biggest thing The Leftovers taught me is the same thing This Word Now reminded me, over and over: that there is truth and beauty in questions, mysteries, and the abstract. The Egertons use a David Lynch (who else?) quote to anchor their point:

Ideas are like fish. If you want to catch a little fish, you can stay in the shallow water. But if you want to catch the big fish, you’ve got to go deeper. Down deep, the fish are more powerful and more pure. They’re huge and abstract. And they’re very beautiful.

– David Lynch

I would happily bet a six-pack of cold beer on a Texas summer afternoon that the quotes the Egerton’s use throughout the book are posted somewhere in their own home. They hit the truth of writing and storytelling so hard on the head you could build an entire house with those few nails.

Here is what I mean:

I wanted a perfect ending. Now I’ve learned, the hard way, that some poems don’t rhyme, and some stories don’t have a clear beginning, middle, and end. Life is about not knowing, having to change, taking the moment and making the best of it, without knowing what’s going to happen next. Delicious Ambiguity.

– Gilda Radner

I couldn’t think of a better quote to drag me from my Leftovers emotional hangover into something I can work with. Delicious ambiguity.

There are several times throughout the show that the audience wonders if something is real or supernatural or there is some explanation they have yet to consider. But Lindelof, Tom Perrotta, and company did the best thing they could have: they refrained from giving their interpretation. Whatever way you think of it, they suggested, is just as real as the way anyone else thinks of it.

They definitely went deep and hooked some big fish. They took wild risks that paid off beautifully. They threw assassins, resurrections, and the Australian Outback at us, and all of it felt real because it all rang emotionally true.

The most meaningful passage, to me, of This Word Now comes from Owen, and it literally stopped me cold. I must have stared at the wall for a solid five minutes. Owen describes a white-and-brown dog his grandparents had, which he would play with when he visited them in England in the summers. One day he came home only to be informed that Norman had passed away. Distraught, Owen went upstairs, pulled out some paper and a pencil, and wrote about it:

“Then I was done,” he wrote, “the story complete – a simple, sentimental piece. There was nothing breathtakingly brilliant about the writing. But I felt better. I breathed easier. The writing had helped, but not in the way I had expected. I was no longer sick, but I had not answered a single one of my questions. Instead the story had given my questions and confusion a place to be.” (p. 98)

The characters of The Leftovers are all struggling in the aftermath of the Sudden Departure. There is no explanation for what happened, and it leads to a lot of questions and confusion. But what this show – and the story it told – did, is give the characters and the audience a place to let their questions and confusion be. Without judgment. Without demand for answers. Just a place for it to exist.

Some critics, like The New Yorker’s Matthew Zoller-Seitz, had an intensely personal reaction to the show. You don’t get responses like this from your average Netflix or network TV show. And it’s only because Lindelof, Perrotta, and company so relentlessly and consistently went deep-sea fishing that they were able to bring up all of the emotions and the questions that followed.

“I had written stories before,” Owen continued, “but Norman’s story was a turning point. It was born from questions.

There are countless ways into a story or essay, but I’m drawn to the cracks made by questions. Questions that would be cheapened by answers. I am convinced that a life is defined more by the questions we return to than the answers we can temporarily embrace. Those answers change, but we circle the questions again and again.”

The best theme song the show uses – for Season 2 and, fittingly the season and series finale in Season 3 – is Ingrid DeMet’s “Let the Mystery Be”. It summed up the point of view of the characters, the creators, and the audience. What could have become maddening became freeing. What became freeing gave way to a sense of purpose and place in a way we never expected.

Everybody’s wonderin’ what and
where they they all came from
Everybody’s worryin’ ’bout where they’re gonna go
When the whole thing’s done
But no one knows for certain
And so it’s all the same to me
I think I’ll just let the mystery be

Another humdinger of a quote the Egertons include, of which slides right into The Leftovers so beautifully they cannot be separated:

Fiction’s purpose is not to explain the mystery, but to expand it.

– Tim O’Brien

So much of the show is an exploration of the stories we tell each other to give meaning to the things we cannot explain. But the most important thing, in as close to a mission statement as I imagine the show would venture, is the presence we provide each other. When Nora asks Kevin, after all they’ve been through if she believes him, he says, “Of course I do. You’re here.”

She smiles and says, “I’m here.”

Writing can be a lonely, isolating practice, but the tools we write with and the questions we have give us company. They surround us and goad us on, right until the end. They become so much a part of us that it feels criminal not to let the story out to the world. It has to come out. It has to have a place to be so the story can be passed on and envelop itself just as The Leftovers did me.

The title of the Egertons book comes from the beginning, when they inform us that we don’t need anything fancy to tell a story. We just need one word to start. And that’s it.

So when I finished This Word Now, I felt emboldened to pursue the writing questions stuck in my head and to give them a place to be. In trying to revel in another five minutes of air-conditioning, I almost sidetracked myself before I even started. And then I remembered another quote Jodi and Owen used:

A writer who waits for ideal conditions under which to work will die without putting a word on paper.

– E.B. White

Here are the words to paper. Here is to This Word Now, a guide and mind-transformer I can’t recommend enough, and to The Leftovers, a show that merely a week later I already deeply miss.

Here’s to searching for and cycling back to the questions, and as Owen and Jodi remind us, we don’t need anything fancy. We don’t need a table or time or talent. We just need this word, and this one word to start.

Go.

From Page to Screen: The Light Between Oceans and Me Before You

April 9, 2016 by Adam Membrey

By either serendipity or dumb luck, I found myself reading two upcoming film adaptations back-to-back. Both of them are fantastic in their own way. Both of them have trailers that show they are as perfectly-cast as you could hope for. And both of them will come out in 2016.

I began with M.L. Stedman’s 2012 novel The Light Between Oceans, which follows a young couple, Tom and Isabel, as they are living on a tiny lighthouse island off the coast of Western Australia. One day a small rowboat arrives, with a crying baby and a dead man aboard. Isabel, having just suffered with a series of miscarriages, and seeing that there is no proof of who the dead man is, suggests they keep the child. Tom, uncomfortable with them keeping a child that is clearly not their own, resists at first before accepting it may be for the best. All seems to be well until word carries out that the child’s real mother is still alive and has spent the past few years looking for her daughter.

To say any more would be criminal. This is a story that is beautifully told, but that also creates a situation in which sides will be chosen. I found myself sympathizing with Isabel’s point of view more than my co-worker, who strongly believed Isabel was in the wrong. It provides a great opportunity for discussion, and for a while, I felt the ending would be similarly conflicted. Whatever your opinion of the character’s actions may be, it does give way to one of the most beautiful endings I’ve ever read. It takes what could be a splintering reading experience and makes it something whole again.

Any movie that can boast having Michael Fassbender, Alicia Vikander, and Rachel Weisz is going to be worth anyone’s attention. Even better is that all the roles seem to be perfectly cast. But what I find the secret ingreident to be is writer/director Derek Cianfrance. His 2010 film Blue Valentine led a lot of couples to seriously examine their relationships and his ambitious 2012 film The Place Beyond the Pines seems to be gathering more praise as time goes on. All of this is to say this is not someone who does things in half-measures. You can be sure Cianfrance will dig for all the emotional depth the story provides, direct his actors to fantastic performances, and hopefully leave us with a film worth talking (and, who knows, maybe even arguing) about. It will hit theaters September 2nd, 2016.

While Jojo Moyes’ Me Before You takes place in a completely different time period and location, it is similarly about choices and the consequences of them. Here we meet Louisa Clark, a small-town twenty-something who is suddenly out of a job. Her boyfriend has distractingly become more and more enamored with his own triathlon training. Her family needs some financial support and she has little sense of how to do it. That is, until she hears of a rather particular job offer: working as a personal assistant to Will Traynor, the son of a rather wealthy family that lives nearby.

As simple as the job sounds, the challenge becomes clear: Will is a quadriplegic who, due to a sudden accident, has been robbed of his adventurous, thrill-seeking life. He is now confined to his wheelchair, and with it, his future has been boxed away. The first day on the job leads to Louisa convinced she can’t do it. She can’t change the mind of a men set in his ways of darkened rooms and limited movement. Only through sheer persistence is she able to break some cracks in the armor and let things breathe a little.

Louisa is determined to save Will’s life and make him see all the possibilities ahead of him. Will, on the other hand, has already decided what he wants. It’s nearly halfway through the book before you understand this as a reader, and when you do, it changes everything. Like I said, this is also a book about choices and the consequences that come with them. There is still a rather hilarious, exciting, and heartwarming story to be found within this book. But it also all leads to an ending that I found rather heartbreakingly incredible, but that which may put off others. I give Moyes credit for staying true to her colorful cast of characters all the way to the end instead of using wish-fulfillment fantasies to leaven the truth. It provides an immensely satisfying story that I was not ready to let go of.

Like The Light Between Oceans, the filmic adaptation of Me Before You appears to be as perfectly cast as one could hope for. I actually heard about the adaptation taking place as I was reading the book, and once I knew Emilia Clarke (Daenerys Targaryen to many) would play Louisa, I couldn’t separate the two. She seems perfectly cast, and the rest of the movie follows suit. I, for one, can’t for wait for June 3rd to arrive.

Worthy Reads: Noah Hawley’s The Good Father

March 28, 2016 by Adam Membrey

There are two TV shows that I have yet to see a single frame of and yet I am dying to witness: The Americans and Fargo. Both of them are on the FX Network. Both of them have had good to great first seasons that have taken a giant leap to greatness in their second seasons. At the helm of Fargo is showrunner Noah Hawley. The weird thing about names that come out of nowhere is how well they can stick. So imagine my surprise when, on a community trip to the local library with my students, I spotted the name Noah Hawley and immediately grabbed the book. I figured that whatever genius and skill lead him to the reigns of Fargo had to be evidenced in this very book, The Good Father.

The story follows the perspective of Dr. Allen as he is at home with his second family, watching the news coverage of the Democratic primary. The politician at the center of it all is the next Great American Hope, a senator who can bring both sides together and make the future something worth looking forward to. That is, until he is gunned down and later dies at the hospital. The suspect? Dr. Allen’s son, Danny.

I am a sucker for great first chapters, and The Good Father delivers one of the best I have read in a long time. It lays out the details of this horrible crime that took place, narrated by someone we have yet to identify, and then ends with “I am his father, you see. He is my son.” The stakes are laid out. A parent’s worst nightmare is about to be confirmed.

Hawley got the idea for this novel as his wife was pregnant with their first child. He wondered what kind of father he would be and what kind of person his daughter would become. In his interview with the New York Times, asked how fatherhood had influenced his writing, he said, “The other morning I realized with some horror that I had written a novel that requires me to talk at length about the only two subjects in American life that will get you into trouble 100 per cent of the time: parenting and politics.”

In this novel, there are no chapter numbers or titles. There are simple breaks in the text. Each time you see a shortened page indicating a new chapter, you’re given a chance to either take a deep breath or proceed ahead. What is so great about this novel becomes apparent in your breathing patterns. At times you will race to the next chapter; at times you will want to slow everything down.

What I am so struck by with Hawley’s storytelling is how he uses misdirection in a way that reflects how human we are. For the first half of the novel or so, it feels like an intense, clue-to-clue thriller broken up with short chapters about Danny. You are convinced that justice will be served and the father will be given a sense of relief that he, in fact, did not completely screw up his son. But, just as you start to get comfortable with the momentum, it pulls away. The pace elongates, the answers become fewer and less supportive, and the truth increasingly painful.

By the end, Dr. Allen does the one thing his son has asked him to do all along, and it is leaves us with a final line that is as painful as it is cathartic.

Worthy Reads: Nick Hornby’s A Long Way Down

March 25, 2016 by Adam Membrey

Nick Hornby has been the foundation behind a lot of great pop culture in the past decade. He wrote the books behind About A Boy, Fever Pitch, and High Fidelity. He also has developed a screenwriting career that has him turning in increasingly impressive work: 2009’s An Education, 2014’s Wild, and 2015’s Brooklyn. While Hornby’s name has always been on my radar, I decided this past Christmas that I needed to sit down and actually read some of his novels. A trip to Bellevue’s Half Price Books led me to Hornby’s A Long Way Down, a title familiar to me due to its recent film adaptation.

The premise is certainly dark: four complete strangers are all about to jump to their death at the same location on New Year’s Eve.

It does not ruin it to say that things don’t go according to plan. In fact, humor is immediately injected into the story when these 4 strangers begin arguing over seemingly tiny yet important things, such as who gets to use the ladder first and second (getting over the the safety fence is a bit tricky, you see), and on to more important things such as why they are up at Topper House in the first place.

Hornby takes a potentially depressing story and makes it something highly readable by giving us four very distinct characters: Martin, a TV personality who’s career is trashed due to some exceedingly poor choices; Maureen, a lonely single mother taking care of her son with special needs; Jess, a young teenager upset about a boy who doesn’t quite love her back the same, and JJ, an American who’s pizza delivery career is preceded by failed rock star dreams. The entire story is only told in first-person perspective from one of the four characters at a time. It’s a really interesting choice that pays off in huge ways – both in laughs and pathos.

I was reading this book at roughly the same time I saw Spike Lee’s 2015 stunner Chi-Raq. What really struck me is how both works of art use tragedy and comedy in ways that contrast each other. Sometimes the comedy is used to leaven the tragedy, and sometimes the tragedy just makes the comedy that much more refreshing and cathartic. Both elements work together in ways that only makes everything richer and more vibrant.

While I have yet to see the 2014 filmic adaptation, I cannot recommend this book highly enough. It’s deeply funny in a way that British writers seem to so effortlessly accomplish, and it has all the emotions you could ever ask for in a story: hope, despair, relief, anger, everything. Empathy is something that, in our internet age, seems to be in short supply these days. This is a fantastic antidote. You will get deep inside the heads of all four characters and see just how they can go all the way from a place as dark as Topper House to a place with bursts of light and resembling hope.

Book Review: ‘The Art of Racing in the Rain’ by Garth Stein

July 5, 2015 by Adam Membrey

I will always appreciate this book for it’s opening chapter. I gave it a shot one night, curious if the large print copy I had found at the local Goodwill would help me read faster. I wanted to start and finish a book at some point, I thought, and why not this?

When I read this quote, it struck me for obvious reasons: not just because I love animals (well, most of them) but because I work with students that often have to use some form of gesture to communicate what they don’t have the vocabulary for. I think we’ve come in contact with someone who feels this way:

“Gestures are all that I have; sometimes they must be grand in nature. And while I occasionally step over the line and into the world of the melodramatic, it is what I must do in order to communicate clearly and effectively. In order to make my point understood without question. I have no words I can rely on because, much to my dismay, my tongue was designed long and flat and loose, and therefore, a horribly ineffective tool for pushing food around my mouth while chewing, and an even less effective tool for making clever and complicated polysllabic sounds that can be linked together to form sentences.” (1)

I finished that first chapter full of awe and wonder. The story, told from the perspective of the dog at the center, managed to escape that cutesy twee feeling you get from narrative overreaches. I could hear this dog’s voice – and it was far more interesting than any humans’ I had heard in a while. So I told everyone about this book – on the first chapter alone. I knew I was probably overselling it, but I didn’t care. That first chapter. Damn.

But the story continues beautifully until about halfway through the book – that’s where the elegant tone Stein has so well-crafted is occasionally threatened by some rather cartoonish characters. He etches in the details of the owner, his wife, and his daughter through the particular lens of this incredibly philosophical dog. They are spare, but they leave you room to imagine. When he introduces the grandparents and some minor characters who take up the second part of the story, however, the balance is threatened. They feel like characters from a different, far-less subtle story. They do, however, provide an obstacle that the characters we side with must overcome. If there’s anything that works well about the dramatic characterization, it’s that our immediate hatred towards them makes us pull that much more for the characters we care about.

I also want to give credit to Stein for descriptions of what it’s like to race in the rain. Part of what gives the dog’s owner, a race car driver, an advantage over other drivers is his ability to drive well in the rain, something that many drivers tend to struggle with. The descriptions of racing here are so gracefully detailed, without become too much, that you feel you’re in the car yourself. It’s a great way to take something that could easily be an overwrought metaphor, and commit to it with detail and sincerity. It works beautifully.

In the end, this book isn’t nearly as sappy as I expected. I finished it – which felt like an accomplishment in itself. But your enjoyment with this book will depend on what you demand of your stories. If you want a simple, (melo)dramatic story with some great grace notes thrown in and told from the perspective of a dog, then this is a book for you.