William J Cobb on books & film

So I’ve reviewed Thomas Mallon’s new novel Watergate in the Dallas Morning News today, and it can be found here:

http://www.dallasnews.com/entertainment/books/20120217-book-review-watergate-by-thomas-mallon.ece

Janet Maslin reviewed the same book this week in the daily NY Times book reviews, and I thought her gushy, over-the-top paean to it was embarrassing and suspect: There were some lively moments in the novel, but she made it sound like the next best thing since flush toilets. Of course, we all know the adage about opinions, and that’s what book reviews essentially are. But still. I tend to flinch when seeing gushy book reviews. One I remember a couple years back: Jonathan Lethem raved about Lorrie Moore’s novel A Gate at the Stairs (2009) in the Sunday edition of the NY Times. So I read it, and felt cheated by Lethem. Then again, every industry probably has its share of brown-nosing. I’ve known other reviewers who have confessed to me they’ve raved about this or that book because the writer is a friend of theirs or a friend-of-a-friend, or some such reason. The lesson is? It pays to suck up.

So as we slide down the (snow-free) hill that is the rest of February 2012—usually the coldest month here in central Pennsylvania, temperatures usually below freezing, and often in the single digits at night—I think we should (un)officially start dubbing this one The Year Without a Winter. Our temperatures here have been over 40 for most of the last month, almost unheard of in this neck of the woods. It’s weird. The only thing I’m glad for: lower heating oil bills. But climate-change deniers be damned, this is a sign of things to come. And although the deniers are over-represented in the media—in this country, unfortunately—mostly I ignore them, except when I can’t: Joe Nocera recently had a pro-Keystone XL pipeline op-ed in the NY Times, here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/07/opinion/nocera-the-poisoned-politics-of-keystone-xl.html?_r=2

What isn’t mentioned: Nocera was a former editor at Texas Monthly, and his “Texas rich,” business-is-good attitude is effecting his myopia here. Yes, in the short term the pipeline would mean more money and business (for Texas and other states), but in the long run, as many have pointed out, the exploitation of these tar sands will likely spell our doom, and some have pointed out Texas may be greatly affected by drought, as it was last summer. But the political good ole boys in Texas (my home state, which I love, and know many intelligent people there who are embarrassed by its politicians) don’t believe in climate change at all, or simply want the money now, to hell their children’s future. Take this little gem about the water commission report, which doesn’t mention fracking or climate change at all:

http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/16/426122/water-gate-texas-state-drought-never-mentions-climate-change/

Lastly, it’s no secret that the Republican party is basing its Know-Nothing identity on “questioning the science” (read: taking Big Oil payoffs) of Climate Change, and Timothy Egan in the NY Times has an eye-opening column about just how few people are actually voting in all of these wacky Republican primaries, favoring one nut job (Santorum) over another (Gingrich), alternating them on a weekly basis, in a desperate attempt not to nominate the front-runner Romney.

http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/02/16/the-electoral-wasteland/?scp=3&sq=timothy%20egan&st=Search

Here’s also a good piece in the Climate Progress blog refuting Nocera: http://thinkprogress.org/romm/2012/02/09/420143/joe-nocera-joins-the-climate-ignorati/

And actually, the wacky Republicans could (or perhaps “should”) all be extras in this wacky movie:

So I’m reading Charles Murray’s much-talked-about analysis of the state of our States, Coming Apart: The State of White America 1960-2010, and I have to say that so far it’s fascinating. I’m on the opposite end of the political spectrum from Murray, and it’s an understatement to say he doesn’t score any points with me when, early on in the book, he cites David Brooks’s Bobos in Paradise: The New Upper Class and How They Got There (2000) for some demographic data and cultural analysis, as I find most of what Brooks writes to be the glib pronouncements of a conservative dimwit. And I know enough about Murray’s “conclusions” (although I haven’t reached that section of the book yet) to say I find them rather ridiculous. But the beginning of the book, which focuses mainly on the changes in the U.S. between 1963 and 2010, is lively, if  a bit disconcerting. Mainly it’s a matter of the maldistribution of wealth, of the rise of greed and inequality, and the breakdown in a strong American work ethic. I’ve noticed these things as well, and would draw very different conclusions than Murray, but he does quantify them in interesting ways.  He contrasts the enormous differences in wealth in the upper classes of 1960 and 2010, essentially our country returning to a Dickensian tradition of “the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.” College attendance and graduation is also a great contrast between 1960 and 2010, with many more people going to college now, but those who don’t in a much worse off position than in 1960, when good working-class jobs were still available.

And I should confess that I’m reading it this election year in the same way that I often check out the CNN website: to see what mainstream, conservative America is thinking. If I only look at liberal news, I get a skewed viewpoint—more to my liking, of course. But I want to know what all those people who think Santorum is a legitimate presidential candidate are thinking. Part of me thinks, How crazy are they? And part of me thinks there must be some real disconnect and outrage to fuel ridiculous candidates like Santorum or Gingrich.

So I love this, in the NY Times today: “A study published last month in the journal Cyberpsychology, Behavior and Social Networking found that the more time people spent on Facebook, the happier they perceived their friends to be and the sadder they felt as a consequence.” That little gem appears in a funny article titled “Don’t Tell Me, I Don’t Want to Know,” by Pamela Paul. Much of it is quite humorous, and I won’t spoil the fun. But some of it includes a paper cut: “Think of a life without closure: The boy you made a fool of yourself over in high school is now a private-equity king with 400,000 followers. The face of the guy who date-raped you in college pops up as Someone You Might Know.” Here’s the url:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/12/fashion/tmi-i-dont-want-to-know.html?pagewanted=2&ref=general&src=me

And I promise to refrain from posting vacation pictures involving me having a great time, while you’re not! (More likely: my photoshopped images are faked, and you’re having a great time.) Oh, what the heck. Here’s me teaching my daughter to swim! It was fun!

So I’ve recently reviewed Thomas Mallon’s new novel titled Watergate, due out this week, I believe, and watched Terrence Malick’s acclaimed film The Tree of Life (2011). First off, Malick’s film is gorgeous if at times a bit pretentious and melodramatic. I watched it on my home system, which is a nice HD TV with sound connected to speakers, but the whispering voiceover was irritating, though it would be much louder and more comprehensible in a movie theater. I won’t be giving anything away to note that the storyline, what little there is, concerns a trio of brothers and their parents, with a kind of style and feel similar to Malick’s outstanding Badlands (1973)—lots of close-ups of beautiful nature scenes contrasted to moody humans. Brad Pitt plays the father, and although I’m no fan of his, I’d say he does a fine job in the role, and has more personality now that he’s older, shedding some of his pretty-boy plasticity. The ending made me groan a bit, with its images of all the characters walking along, reunited in some netherworld heavenly beachscape, but overall it does make you think, which is one thing art should do. And the entire film is visually amazing, captivating, which is certainly most of its charm. It’s one of the few films that I’d say is actually “haunting.” Malick already has two new films in the works and due out some time in the future, and I’d run to see them.

Thomas Mallon’s Watergate seems an election-year tome, with its various characters—most of them based on actual people, though with some admitted fictional maneuvering—depicting the debacle that was the Watergate scandal. I’d say it’s fairly sympathetic to the conservative goons who ran the country into the ground (at that particular moment in time, as opposed to the current conservative goons doing their best to do the same thing again), especially Nixon himself, who comes across as petulant and moody, but hardly diabolical.

So I’m having a little more sympathy for the famous “Tiger Mom” Amy Chua (author of The Battle Hymn of the Tiger Mother) of late, as I’m now trying to work every day on teaching my daughter to read. She attends a Montessori school, with nice teachers and much encouragement, but it seems to me a fairly relaxed, easy forum. I’m tough on Lili, drill her, cajole her, and sometimes argue with her as I try to get her to spell “skate,” “gate,” or “butterfly.” But she’s improving noticeably lately, and is at the stage where she’s now reading entire sentences. I won’t make any claims of her being a prodigy or genius (a la those learning-scam commercials on Noggin: “Your baby can read!” “Your baby can operate a forklift!”), as I think she’s at a typical reading-development stage for a five-year-old. But I know she’s responding to my disciplined approach, even if we’re not practicing spelling/reading five hours a day. But Chua’s book sounds interesting, and I can see why it’s stirred a debate about parenting. Being demanding is itself hard work, but I think it does have a tendency to pay off, as long as it doesn’t backfire. And here’s a photo of my little monkey/genius, relaxing in between her hours of rote memorization drills on how to spell “egregious” and “martinet.”

So as is becoming known throughout the university world and blogosphere, Penn State cut the funding for its MFA program, of which I’m the director, and we’ve chosen to cease admitting new students, rather than expect them to pay many thousands of dollars for a degree that is not a sure ticket to huge paychecks. We’ve been a fully funded program for many years, and during that time have not cheated our students, but have offered an excellent education in creative writing, practical teaching experience, and no debt.

But the times have changed.

I see it in terms of the future world described in H.G. Wells’s The Time Machine. Our lit students are fully funded, and I didn’t want our creative writing students to become the Morlocks to their Eloi.

There’s much I could say about this, but won’t. We fought for a year to get our funding back, and failed. Does this say something that, when budget-crunch time comes, the arts are first on the chopping block? Of course it does. Is this a disgrace? Of course it is.

So although the (dubious, limited) charm of Netflix streaming wore off long ago, I do sometimes find something interesting there if I troll enough, and there are two new films I recommend:  Werner Herzog’s remarkable documentary about 32,000 year-old-cave art, Cave of Forgotten Dreams (2010), which I originally saw in the theater in 3D, and Atrocious (2010), a Spanish horror/suspense film that’s worth watching. Cave is worth it just for the shots of the stone age cave paintings in Southern France (naturally), much of it amazingly beautiful, and the hint it offers about European life in the Ice Age. Atrocious has a deliciously devious trick up its sleeve. Although the plot hints at some malevolence, most of the film is quite banal and ordinary-seeming—think Blair Witch Project or Paranormal Activity—until the action heats up toward the end, and you the viewer still don’t know what’s going on—that is, until the very end. When the mystery is solved it almost feels like a solution in the spirit of Clue. You should guess it, but you never will.

So after mentioning that I had watched Contagion recently and posting some musings about pandemic/bird flu fears, which is in the background of my new novel, The Bird Saviors, I was slightly taken aback by the recent news that two separate teams of scientists, in the Netherlands and in Wisconsin (though working together, as I understand it), have succeeded in creating a SuperFlu in the lab, the kind that some have said could naturally occur in mutation. Contagion imagines a scenario in which bats (which really aren’t birds, but anyway) defecate into hog farms, and the virus becomes airborne-transmissible through this cross-species mutation. That’s standard virus-mutation theory.  The two teams of researchers created this airborne-transmissible bird flu (with potential mortality rates of 50%, which is devastation-level) using ferrets as the cross-species animal, and state that they have done so to understand how this could happen. (It’s also a commonplace theory in climate change science that new viruses often emerge during periods of climate upheaval, caused by species migration into new areas.) Here’s a chilling quote from one of them: “Dr. Fouchier said he was surprised by how easy it was to change the virus into the very form that the world has been dreading. Now, scientists around the world will have to grapple with what to do with Dr. Fouchier’s creation.”—New York Times article, see url below.

Fouchier is a virologist who was part of the research team. This is one of the few things I’ve read that makes the fears seem well-grounded: a scientist creating exactly what we fear the most, and saying “he was surprised by how easy it was.” Here are two urls detailing the recent news:

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/21/science/scientists-to-pause-research-on-deadly-strain-of-bird-flu.html?_r=1&hpw

http://thechart.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/21/details-of-new-lab-created-bird-flu-strain-may-be-too-dangerous-to-publish/?iref=allsearch

And while we’re on the subject, here’s the book jacket of my new novel, The Bird Saviors, which will be released on June 21st.

So for all the Cormac McCarthy fans out there, of which I am a most enthusiastic one, here’s an odd bit of info that just fell into my lap about the film version of The Road (2009). Before I saw the film I wondered how they would handle that scene late in the novel when the father & son see a pregnant woman and a couple of men in the distance, and then later come upon their camp, only to discover the newborn baby roasting on a spit over a campfire. I remember thinking the first time I read the scene, Now that’s too much. The film certainly kept quite close to the material of the novel, but that is one scene not present in the finished film. But . . . .

Apparently originally it was meant to be. How do I know this? I met Baby Eater No. 2! (Or it may have been Baby Eater No. 1. I forget.) He’s actually a student in one of my classes. He was an aspiring actor in the Pittsburgh area, and he auditioned for a “hairy male” role in the film, and got it. They filmed the scene, but it ended up on the cutting room floor, as they say. He seems to think they decided it was too gross. (I’m not surprised.)

There’s also one other bit of Cormac McCarthy news in the air: He’s apparently written and sold a screenplay, titled The Counselor. This is not really shocking, a foray into screenwriting: In interviews he mentioned that he had originally written No Country for Old Men as a screenplay, but couldn’t sell it (??), and then wrote the novel. Here’s the link about the new screenplay:

http://flavorwire.com/250324/new-cormac-mccarthy-written-screenplay-needs-filmmaker