Nobody Here

Before I left for my trip I finally got around to renting The Machinist, which is about a guy whose life gets a little weird after he fails to sleep for an entire year. I won't say why he hasn't slept for so long, in case anyone out there is so lulled by the painfully slow pacing of this story that they aren't able to pay enough attention to guess halfway through, and don't want the surprise spoiled. And anyway that's not the point.

The point is, said guy is supposed to look ill, desperate, ghost-like, wasted-away. Christian Bale, um, embraced this aspect of his character. If you haven't seen it, take a look at these two photos. See?

You hear a lot of actresses tell James Lipton they don't feel exploited by nudity if it's "right for the story" (you never hear any actors say this, because men will never feel exploited by nudity for any reason at all). People take off or put on weight or get muscles or cut their hair or whatever for a role all the time. I remember seeing Castaway and thinking Tom Hanks might have gotten a little unhealthy there in his pursuit of authenticity. But this goes beyond a little unhealthy and straight into dangerous. If you don't agree, I'm guessing it's because you haven't seen the movie and those photos aren't doing it justice. It is positively shocking to look at him, and not in any good way. And the camera adds ten pounds?

I like Christian Bale. Equilibrium is a household favorite. He's a good actor and clearly committed. But at some point "committed" crosses the line into "irresponsible." Not to anyone other than himself in this case; his body is hardly glamorized in this film, nor is it marketed to teens or anything. It's his body, and if he wants to kill his heart and kidneys and liver for a story, even a frankly predictable, worn, and uninterestingly told one, well, he's a grown-up. But I don't particularly want to pay for the privilege of seeing it.

Luckily for me, as a writer the most I'm called upon to abuse my body for a story is the five pounds of fun-size Snickers weight I gain while writing it. Maybe it's easy for me, working in the medium I do, to sit around unseen and judge those who tell stories through more physical means. But dude. Your hip bones are practically jutting out of the screen and poking me in the eye. Too far.

Murray finally got his first rejection today. My agent sent it off to two houses in mid-May and both have had it all this time, which seems long to me, but I imagine a.) things slow down in the summer and b.) peeps don't devour folders containing manuscripts by me the way, say, Paula might go after a margarita cake.

I can't be the only one out there who feels happy to get a rejection? No, not as happy as I would be to get a call saying they love it, they think it would make a great series, and how do I feel about a 3 book deal, I'm not crazy. Maybe relieved is a better word. But by the time my agent forwards along a rejection, I have an inkling it's coming, because if an editor has something for a couple of months, I'm suspicious that it isn't bringing down the house over there. Oh, I know this is not an accurate assumption, that they probably just haven't gotten to it yet, that editors do buy things they've had on their desks a long time. But the agents who've rejected me have done so after lengthy sojourns with my partials while the one who took me on did it less than a week after my initial query, so, in my beaglesque mind, that is how acceptance and rejection work forever.

So by the time the actual letter arrives, I've already assumed the worst, and all I really want is two things: to see what feedback, if any, is in there that I can take away, and to see scrawled along the bottom "on to XXX," where XXX is not Vin Diesel, but the next house he's sending it to. Especially the latter. Because that equals hope. That means it's not a lame duck anymore, it's no longer on the desk of an editor whose only use for it was as an okay coaster (meaning no offense to the editor, you have to put your tea down somewhere), and may be, at this very minute, on the desk of the one who's going to buy it.

So, you see, contrary to what certain blonde, dimpled dreamboats at my high school might have led me to believe these many years ago, it turns out that rejection can mean there's hope.

Here's what I'm saying: if Ted Williams was a book, he'd be a great book. If Bridge to Terabithia played baseball, it might be a good solid fifth or sixth in the order, but it wouldn't go around getting 410 total bases in a season. These things are true regardless of what decade we imagine Williams to be published or Bridge to be wearing a Sox uniform in.

Maybe I should back up.

Anna Dale’s Whispering to Witches is a good, solid, well-written middle-grade novel, but what struck me about it most wasn’t the story, but the way it’s being marketed. I found Whispering to Witches in Borders (which isn’t odd), right up front on one of The Tables of Books You Cannot Miss and Should Totally Buy, next to bigselling mainstream grown-up folks like Jennifer Weiner (which is).

Now what was a children’s book - even a good one - doing on one of The Tables instead of back behind the big cardboard frogs? Actually, the big cardboard frogs are at B&N, but you get my point. This isn’t a front-of-the-store genre. It could’ve been a mistake, but my (admittedly limited, and based entirely on rumor) understanding is that it takes a lot of pull, and money, to make it to one of The Tables, so that seems unlikely, doesn’t it? It could be that the publisher thought this book would sell to adults as well, but I doubt that too. It seems to me that the crossovers among kids’ books are the ones whose worlds are sufficiently intricate or sweeping struggles sufficiently grand to attract your adult nerd crowd. Whispering, while it will appeal to a whole lot of kids, doesn’t quite fit into that category.

What, then? Could it be that publishers are beginning to figure out what television and movie producers have known, and gotten fat from, for years? Namely, that pre-teens have disposable income, and they will spend enough of it on entertainment to make it worthwhile to target them with power, with big guns like The Table?

Maybe. Or like I said, maybe it was just a mistake. But there’s no question that things have changed. Back in the days when children’s librarians were the most powerful people in the world of kidlit (and they’re no slouches now, mind you), a middle-grade novel could be small. It would grow slowly over a course of years, stay in print for much longer than its adult counterpart, but without ever making as big a splash. Now the genre has followed the grown-ups into the world of the blockbuster. Nobody wants to buy a book that’s going to take decades to pay off, they want to buy a book that’s going to justify a huge first print run and have movies and action figures and bookmarks and Halloween costumes. They want Lemony Snicket, and Artemis Fowl, and a certain boy wizard whose name we’ll leave out of this because if we don’t, he’ll get blamed, and really it’s not at all his fault and anyway hasn’t he got enough responsibility already? They don’t want Bridge to Terabithia.

I neither celebrate nor bemoan this. It is what it is. Things change. Nothing is as it was. And Bridge to Terabithia, while prettily written, doesn't really have much of a plot.

If this is the game you choose to play, you don’t stand around bitching about that new-fangled DH rule, much as it may suck. You get on the field and you take your swing. If you strike out, you practice until you're better, and then you try again. Sure, maybe once in a while you get nostalgic for the days of Ted Williams, because he was, after all, the greatest.

But you also realize that in the current market Ted Williams would still be the greatest. Maybe you’d have to call him The Chick-Fil-A Greatest and you could only get your Ted Williams pajamas at participating Mobile stations with a tank of gas, and maybe the business side of the Ted Machine, the commercialization and the marketing and the product placement, would get on your nerves. But none of that would change how Ted played ball.

The business is the business, but the story is the story. The former is a part of the game you need to learn to play well, if you want to make it in the big leagues. But the latter is the game itself.

*Post title ripped off from Tom Petty

I'm going away for a week without my laptop. Perhaps you worry about being deprived of my wisdom in your Haloscan for that long, but you needn't fear; I'm leaving behind a store of comments for any posts that may be written in my absence. Each time you put up a new post on your blog, please retrieve your comment from the following automated comment generator based on the time-honored cootie catcher system:


Step 1: Choose a color:

1. Orange
2. Yellow
3. Purple
4. Lime green

If the color you chose is an odd number, proceed to step 2a. If the color you chose is an even number, proceed to step 2b.


Step 2a: Choose an animal:

1. Dog
2. Cat
3. Owl
4. Wildebeest

If the animal you chose is odd, proceed to step 3a. If it's even, proceed to step 3b.


Step 2b: Choose a food:

1. Cake
2. Salad
3. Sushi
4. Burger and fries

If the food you chose is odd, proceed to step 3a. If it's even, proceed to step 3b.


Step 3a: Choose a supreme court justice:

1. Mark Twain
2. Arnold Schwarzenegger
3. Jon Stewart
4. Obe-wan Kenobi

Please proceed to the comment corresponding to your response’s number.


Step 3b: Choose a song:

5. “I Second that Emotion”
6. “Jungle Boogie”
7. “Back in Black”
8. “Fly Me to the Moon”

Please proceed to the comment corresponding to your response’s number.


Comments:
1. What kind of frosting?
2. Four.
3. Totally. You go, girl!
4. Are not.
5. Is too.
6. Lord of the Rings.
7. Breakfast.
8. Freak!

Please note that in keeping with my usual method, the comments have been listed at random and do not reflect my personal views of your responses.

Look, I’m not proud of this, OK? But the truth is, I’m unlikely to engage in a story I know is going to be depressing, no matter how well done. I’ve never seen Schindler’s List, and although Saving Private Ryan was a very good film, I’ll never see it again. I'm shocked that I’m the only one who realizes that The English Patient and Cold Mountain both suck. I’ve never read all of Anna Karenina, and I’m so totally not sorry. It’s not that I’m a head-in-the-sand girl in general. I’m not one of those people who won’t watch the news or pay attention to politics because it’s too depressing. It’s just not usually what I read for. If Quizilla had a quiz called “What Kind of Reader are You?” my catchy internet quiz title would be The Escapist.

This being the case, Lolly Winston’s Good Grief is not the sort of book I generally pick up. A story about a young widow trying to battle through her depression and rebuild her life? Yeah, OK, touching. Tell it to Lifetime. Not my thing. On the other hand, I hadn't done a yeah-it's-sad-but-it's-so-good since The Lovely Bones (Ya Ya doesn't count, I haven't finished it), so I was due, and I obviously wasn't going to read Anna Karenina. Plus, there's bunny slippers on the cover, which is not something you see all that often. So I bought it anyway.

It's good. The heroine is irresistible, the voice rings completely true, and the secondary characters generally are interesting and well-drawn. The story is touching and flows well. But more importantly, it's not depressing. Not even in the really depressing parts, which feature some of the book's funniest writing. Lolly Winston infuses the story with a wry humor that lightens the sad subject matter without treating it inappropriately, a perfect balance of bittersweet that has eluded so many who’ve tried taking up the so-sad-it’s-funny style. Yes, I’m talking to you Eggers.

It does have flaws. I thought the romance seemed forced, the token one required of a girl-starting-over story, and I didn’t really find the guy very interesting. But ultimately the flaws are easily ignored, because Winston’s got the one essential element of a character-driven story: a compelling character (narrating in first person, which helps. I can’t quite figure out why so many people try to do character-driven stuff in third person.). What drives you forward is, simply, wanting to know what she’s going to say next.

Tagged by Paula, and quicker than what I had planned to write about Richard Matheson's Somewhere in Time, which can wait until tomorrow.

7 things I plan to do before I die:
"Plan" is a strong word. I'm going with "hope":
1. Raise my daughter to a healthy and happy adulthood
2. Publish a book
3. Visit Edinburgh
4. Visit New Zealand
5. See a Broadway show. Nope, never have.
6. Finish the laundry
7. Bake a seven layer cake

7 things I can do:
1. Manicotti
2. Chocolate chip cookies
3. Recite all the words to nearly any song from the 80's
4. Recite the batting order of the '86 Sox
5. Dance, sing, drink wine, and cook dinner all at once
6. Bring home the bacon, fry it up in a pan...
7. Sleep

7 things I cannot do:
1. Creme brulee
2. Touch my toes
3. Call for a pizza
4. Make frosting flowers
5. Dance, sing, drink wine, and drive all at once
6. Eat scallops
7. Fly without getting sick

7 things that attract me to the opposite sex:
1. Wit
2. Strength (not physical)
3. Tolerance
4. Confidence
5. Ambition, but in a good way
6. Well-read-dedness
7. Genuine smile

7 things that I say most often:
1. Lyrics to Disney's The Little Mermaid's "Part of That World"
2. Lyrics to "Rock Candy Mountain" (O Brother Where Art Thou version)
3. Slow down, and watch out for the dog
4. What now?
5. Bugger
6. Okay
7. Huh?

7 celebrity crushes:
"Crush" is also a strong word. Here's seven performers I enjoy:
1. Bruce Willis, duh
2. Hugh Jackman
3. Sting
4. Colin Firth
5. Paul Bettany
6. Matt Damon
7. John Cusack

7 people I want to do this:
I don't think I have seven readers who haven't already been tagged. I want Roy, Hip, and Grace to do it, though.

I really need to start reading and watching local news. CNN, having bigger fish to fry, didn't mention that there's absolutely no gas to be bought for any price where I live, and that it may be that way for a week. Don't get me wrong - in light of the real problems those who've been truly affected by the hurricane are facing, I wouldn't dream of complaining, nor do I feel any urge to, over being housebound for a few days. It's just that I feel so dumb; if I'd known this was coming, I might not have driven twenty minutes to the Earthfare for the special Elmo crackers, you know?