Text-to-Screen Versus: Charlie and the Chocolate Factory

Image by Marobot, reprinted courtesy of That Guy With The Glasses.

(Editor’s note: Welcome to an alternate version of Text-to-Screen Ratio, the Text-to-Screen Versus. These articles will be longer studies, where I take two filmed adaptations of one book and compare them one after the other to see which one gets closest to the book. Again, this will not serve as a comparison to find which is the better or personal favorite film, but a reasoned assessment of which one captures its source material best, based on my interpretations. Expect spoilers though.)

As the Onion A.V. Club pointed out and I reprinted last year, the reactions of authors when their books are made into movies frequently fall into the negative spectrum. With the range of decisions that can be made for filming – rewritten stories, dropped plot lines, characters out of character – it’s certainly easier to offend an author than it is to please them. And if the right contracts aren’t signed and the author feels particularly insulted, they can make a lot of trouble for directors.

A somewhat surprising example of this is Roald Dahl’s reaction to the 1971 film “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” an adaptation of his beloved children’s book. Despite the fact that Dahl wrote the original screenplay he disliked the film intensely, so much so in fact that he withheld the rights to make any sequels. What makes it surprising is that the film was well-received at release and has since reached cult classic status, particularly due to Gene Wilder’s performance as the titular character.

Dahl’s estate continued to hold onto the story’s rights for decades, only releasing in 2005 to Tim Burton to remake it as “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.” With the inimitable visual style of Burton and his long-time partner Johnny Depp in the role of Wonka, the film had the promise of doing so much with the concept and what seemed like a genuine commitment to getting the story right. Dahl’s widow Felicity actually declared prior to the film’s release: “Roald Dahl, Johnny Depp and Tim Burton, absolutely unbeatable and completely in sync.”

But does it come out that way? Let’s take a look at each film in chronological order and see just what they do correctly, and see which one earns the Golden Ticket of Source Faithfulness.

1971: “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”

Had I never seen “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and only knew about its history, it would be surprisingly simple to be cynical about it, since it’s really a film that came to life as a promotional tool. According to “Pure Imagination,” a companion book detailing the film’s completion, the film was financed chiefly because producer David L. Wolper was in talks with the Quaker Oats Company to help market their Breaker Confections candy company, and they were persuaded to buy the book and change the name to The Willy Wonka Candy Company (which still exists today, keeping kids and sleep-deprived writers on a sugar rush of Nerds and Sweetarts).

So it seems in theory like a fairly easy project to botch: neglect plot in favor of product placement, turn the main characters into commercial puppets and throw in a few lousy one-liners designed to be printed on the candy labels. Which makes it all the more surprising that it has turned into the classic itself, and even more surprising that it it is also one of the more faithful adaptations produced.

For the uninitiated, a brief synopsis of the story: a genius candy manufacturer named Willy Wonka opens up his long-sealed factory to five lucky children, offering them a tour of how he makes his most famous creations. After a series of events removes four cartoonishly dislikable members, only a kind boy named Charlie Bucket is left. At this point, Wonka reveals the tour was a test, to find the right person to succeed him in the factory – and Charlie has passed with flying colors. “Willy Wonka” keeps to this structure, moving in order through the whole factory and not cutting out any of the major scenes – unveiling of the contest winners, the finding of the ticket, the Chocolate Room, the Inventing Room, the Television Room and the Great Glass Elevator are all there.

There are several side details that do get in the way of the story, the most noticeable being the expansion of the character Slugworth, a rival candy manufacturer the book mentions in passing. He is portrayed as conspiring against Wonka, trying to hire the children to steal Wonka’s latest invention. It’s a plot thread that mostly exists to set up a twist ending, but the twist it sets up doesn’t pull the film away from its narrative structure, and serves to accentuate Charlie’s own goodness and the selfishness of the other children. Minor details, like the death of Charlie’s father and the fact that Charlie works as a paperboy, are neutral ones that neither add nor detract to the way the story plays out.

But even more than the plot, true faithfulness to the film depends on one thing: the candy man. There’s a reason why the title was changed to “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” beyond marketing reasons – because everyone realized that the driving force of the story isn’t Charlie’s rise from poverty but the eccentric genius who made it possible, the mad energy that pushed everyone along. Dahl gets right to it at his first appearance in the book:

“And his eyes – his eyes were most marvelously bright. They seemed to be sparkling and twinkling at you all the time. The whole face, in fact, was alight with fun and laughter. And oh, how clever he looked! How quick and sharp and full of life!”

And if you’re looking for marvelously bright eyes and energy, it’s hard to go wrong with Gene Wilder, whose performances seem subdued (see “Blazing Saddles”) but never conceal the energy in his bright blue eyes. Wilder insisted on his character’s very first moment, limping down a red carpet and ending in a somersault flourish “because from that time on, no one will know if I’m lying or telling the truth” – and that edge defines the Wonka character perfectly. Yes, he was eccentric from being holed up in a factory for years, but he was also bubbling with excitement at the chance to show his world off to visitors, and liked playing with people who didn’t have the patience to go along with it.

Wilder doesn’t have the pixielike sugar high that Wonka carried in the book, but the essence of the character is fused to his performance. You have the feeling that he is laughing up his sleeve at his visitors but is always in control of events, cloaking it in cryptic morals and quotes ranging from Oscar Wilde to William Shakespeare. He’s convinced that everything will work out in the end and nothing truly horrible can happen in his wonderland, and can easily dismiss anyone who thinks otherwise.

Other cast members continue this trend, their performances chiefly faithful to the book but with some minor deviations that can be easily forgiven. Peter Ostrum plays a more independent Charlie Bucket than the original, but still conveys the fact that he is the only one of the children who really appreciates the world Wonka has created. Jack Albertson’s Grandpa Joe is a little less convincing, more gruff and opinionated than the book’s version, which felt more like a storyteller with a child’s heart. The other children and parents fit the unlikeable nature, greedy and spoiled and shrill at all the right places – especially Roy Kinnear as Veruca Salt’s father.

Visually the film is more hit and miss, doing as much as it can with the special effects available in 1971. Mostly shot in Munich, the village the film is set in was chosen for ambiguity, but it lacks any character and fails to make the desperate condition of the Bucket family believable – and its “Sound of Music” appearance always made me suspect the Nazis would be storming through at any minute. About the only convincing element was the factory, based on the Munich Gaswerks, which had the look of a long-shuttered factory where nobody ever comes out or in.

Though, once they do get inside the factory, the technical limitations of 1970s special effects catches up to them. Many of the key scenes have to be scaled back or completely reinvented – Glass Elevator replaced with Wonkamobile, grand pipe-like tunnels replaced with hallucinatory images, visual tricks rather than great hallways to make the factory larger. Overall it feels far more constrained than it did in the book, which had rooms the size of football fields hollowed out under the ground and needed a flying elevator plastered with buttons to get anywhere. Even the Chocolate Room feels more like a decorated park, without the scale it needs to produce the endless confections the factory churns out.

The film tries to add some extra fantasy elements with the Oompa-Loompa songs, though those clash with the original for two reasons: orange-skinned green-haired Munchkins look nothing like the tropical natives Wonka recruited, and the songs are original creations rather than the book’s verse. Yes, some like “Pure Imagination” are undeniable classics (and some like “Cheer Up Charlie” are not), but they’re not original content and sadly cannot be counted as such.

For all its differences though, “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” turns out to be a rather surprisingly faithful take on its source material. Partially it’s Wilder’s performance, partially its the avoidance of major narrative deviations, but mostly it’s the heart the film presents. It creates the factory as a place of whimsy, a place where “a little nonsense now and then is relished by the wisest men,” where accidents can happen but also a slice of something magical.

2005: “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory”

When Tim Burton chose to adapt “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” for modern audiences, he was working less against the limitations of the book and more the reputation of the film that had come before it. The directors and writers publicly stated that they were going to go straight from the book and pretend that “Willy Wonka” didn’t exist, even getting a scriptwriter who had never seen the original. This is certainly a wise move for any team working on an adaptation that has already been adapted – if the original is used as inspiration, it only gets further away from the source material, fading like a copy of a copy.

Despite my purism on adaptations I’m always leery of a film that sells itself heavily on being faithful to its source material, as it always reads to me like the filmmakers are compensating for something. However, in the case of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory,” at first glance it seems like they were living up to their word. Once again the majority of the book’s plot survives intact, and all major characters and plot points are presented in order.

A great part of this effect is because the film looks so much like the world it is trying to capture. Burton’s vision has always been saturated in fantasy, full of Gothic angled images and very stark colors, and it goes very well with the dark, often grotesque humor Dahl mastered in stories like “George’s Marvelous Medicine” and “Matilda.” Wonka’s factory is a tall monochromatic edifice, all smokestacks and slanted roofs, looming over a snow-covered city of identical buildings and the Bucket’s shack. He builds the excitement around the the finding of the tickets with beautifully rendered scenes, showing markets in Japan and Morocco selling candy bars like hot Christmas toys.

But it’s once they get inside the factory that things really come to life, casting set pieces in a way that not only shows the vastness of Wonka’s world but also clearly bear the influence of Joseph Schindelman’s classic illustrations. From the vast cathedral-like pipes in the Chocolate Room to the Inventing Room’s endless chemistry sets to the great pink candy Viking boat, this is Dahl’s world where around every corner something truly magical could happen. That magic could be either light or dark, and Burton presents both – there might be lights and swirls around, but it doesn’t take long to see the garbage chutes and Fudge Room pipes you can disappear into.

The film certainly resembles Dahl’s original visions for it, but while the film presents itself with a shiny wrapper it can’t disguise the fact that it made the bizarre choice to fill its chocolate treat with sour cream. That filling is Johnny Depp’s interpretation of Willy Wonka, a performance that’s the inverse of his masterful adaptation role in “Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.” Gone is Wonka’s sense of being in control of the situation, his grand speeches and excited explanations; instead there is choking on the word “parents,” painfully awkward tangents on beatniks and ugly forced laughter.

The chief indictment of his performance however is his interaction with the other characters. Depp’s Wonka seemed to treat the visit as an obligation rather than an opportunity, and his efforts to connect with them came across as stilted and uncomfortable. Everything he was doing in the film seemed geared to his self-interest first, less excited about their reactions and more like a spoiled child asking to be told how great he was – and saying it in the prissiest of tones to boot.

It also leads the film to commit one of the deadliest adaptation sins, creating a new back story for an existing character. The film tries to explore Wonka’s childhood, portraying him as the headgear-imprisoned son of an anti-candy dentist (Christopher Lee, in a role even more superfluous than his tragically abbreviated ending in “Return of the King”). The new story is designed to explain the changes in his character, but because the changes are so offensive all it does is make things worse, further divorcing Wonka from his original spirit. Wonka is supposed to be a figure of mystery, less the center of the story and more a catalyst to trigger the right reactions – it’s like seeing Gandalf’s high school years before visiting Bilbo at the Shire.

The other characters try to help, but wind up dragging the film down further. Freddie Highmore (whom Depp personally recommended for the film after collaborating with him on “Finding Neverland”) doesn’t have to do much with Charlie beyond making him a generally good person, but he takes it too far into the realm of self-sacrificing. Charlie’s willingness to throw the factory away for the good of his family is clearly met as a contrast to Wonka’s anti-parent attitude, but his beatific attitude is as out of character as Wonka’s social disconnect. His family remains appropriately in the background, save David Kelly’s Grandpa Joe, who does capture the puckishness his frail form couldn’t hold back.

The four competing children keep to this format, presented in very visually arresting ways but worse the longer you dwell on them. Two in particular go heavily against the book’s nature by committing another adaptation sin, modernizing pieces of the content: Mike Teavee is turned into a surly video game addict, and Violet Beauregarde is an overly competitive poster child for mothers living vicariously through their offspring. By definition they were supposed to be unlikable, but this crosses the line from stereotype to ugly high-gloss caricature.

Another aspect that modernization chisels away at from the original is what it does to the Oompa-Loompas. While the film does present their jungle home of Loompa-Land, it makes the bizarre choice to cast Deep Roy as every single Oompa-Loompa, giving the feeling of an army of clones in jumpsuits rather than the pygmies of the book. The film does earn points for using the original songs from the book and presenting them in the context of different muscial genres (psychedelia and disco for example), but the final choice of hair metal couldn’t be farther from Dahl’s world.

When it comes down to it, that is the sum total of the film: a project that obeyed its source material but tried to do something new with it, and in the process got farther and farther away from what it was supposed to do. If they’d slashed Wonka’s childhood, toned down the musical numbers and left the other children as is it could have been great, but as it stands only the candy shell is worth viewing. Burton and Depp have collaborated on some truly wonderful adaptations, but this is not one of them – save your enthusiasm for “Alice in Wonderland.”

Winner: “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory,” 1971

When it comes down to the two, each one has its pros and cons. The 1971 film certainly seems to get to the core of the story with stronger characters and storyline, while the 2005 version has far more compelling visuals, really capturing the scope of what Wonka was able to build free of social restraint. Each film also comes to the book’s conclusion but takes a few fairly major turns to get there – Charlie can’t simply be given the factory, he has to either pass Wonka’s test or convince him of the merits of family, a move that takes the story longer to conclude but adds the tension film audiences demand.

But when all is said and done, the 2005 film cannot survive the overall sense of wrongness that both Depp’s performance and the changes in storyline create. “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” is a childhood fable, a story dependent on its atmosphere and the sense of wonder that Wonka’s world creates. Yes, it has its moments of darkness (the winding dark tunnel of the chocolate river, the cautionary tales of the Oompa-Loompas) but it’s always a thrill to be a part of them. You’re appreciating a world beyond the normal, one that can twist you but also one that can reward you beyond your wildest dreams.

I do feel strange in passing a judgment against the way an author viewed an adaptation, but the 1971 film is truly the one that gets closest to its source material. All the actors manage to make their characters feel both like their source material and like real people – particularly Wilder, who has the heart to balance the mad genius – and the overall mood created as the story flows is enough to balance out its technical limitations. “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” has both the up and down sides of the factory’s genius, and it creates a world of pure imagination – a phrase Dahl may have never used but one that deserves to be forever fused to his classic story.

Extra Credit:

• For a comparison of the films based on their cinematic merits rather than a straight literary analysis, check out Willy Wonka vs Charlie, part of the “Old vs. New” portion of the Nostalgia Critic on That Guy with the Glasses. A special thanks to TGWTG and the artist Marobot for allowing me to reprint their custom opening image.
• And follow this link for a curious essay that takes the literary value of “Charlie and the Chocolate Factory” to a whole new level.

Classical Anna: Wuthering Heights

When Emily Bronte’s “Wuthering Heights” was published in 1847, the literary community reacted with such outrage that her sister Charlotte had to defend her from accusations of lewdness, callousness and impropriety. Few books have made such a stark break from conventions of the time: Brontë, a single, reclusive woman in her twenties from the English countryside, essentially raised a middle finger to all of Victorian literature, presenting a book that follows its own structure and puts forth a violent, amoral vision of the world.

Emily, along with sisters and fellow authors Charlotte and Anne, lived her life on the harsh Yorkshire moors, and it is upon this landscape that the entirety of the novel is contained.  Catherine Earnshaw and her adopted gypsy brother Heathcliff live in Wuthering Heights and share a deep bond as children; however, this connection is tested when Catherine comes in contact with Edgar Linton, the son of the wealthy family of Thrusscross Grange across the moors, and becomes torn between her marital ambitions and her attachment to Heathcliff. Heathcliff sees Cathy’s flirtation with Edgar and runs away, returning after her marriage as a wealthy gentleman full of anger and bitterness. He spends the remainder of the book attempting to destroy the Earnshaw and Linton families and their progeny, as revenge for parting him from Cathy.

While the book concerns the familiar trope of star-crossed lovers, it has no need for the devices of other Victorian novels. There is no blanching, rosy-cheeked heroine, nor an earnest young hero to woo her. Instead, Cathy and Heathcliff are shockingly nasty: physically violent, emotionally unfiltered, without compassion for the weak or needy. As a teenager, in front of the courting Edgar Linton, Cathy slaps a maid with “a stinging blow that filled both eyes with water” and then vents her temper on her young nephew:

“She seized his shoulders, and shook him till the poor child waxed livid, and Edgar thoughtlessly laid hold of her hand to deliver him. In an instant one was wrung free, and the astonished young man felt it applied over his own ear in a way that could not be mistaken for jest.”

Heathcliff is similarly abusive, degrading those around him to little more than objects. When he learns that Edgar’s sister, Isabella, harbors feelings for him he stares at her

“as one might do at a strange repulsive animal, a centipede from the Indies, for instance, which curiosity leads one to examine in spite of the aversion it raises.”

These characters were understandably repellent to readers of the time, and even prove to be a bit difficult for modern readers to swallow, despite the growing culture of antiheroes in literature. Indeed, most readers will likely call their sanity into question.

“Wuthering Heights” presents an animalistic morality, as opposed to the domestic, Christian values of most Victorian novels. For all the talk of the Bible and the Devil, impersonal nature is more powerful than God; the strong dominate over the weak, and when they do die they chose to take their own lives. Self-preservation is valued: even Nelly, the figure of traditional morality and Christian values, conceals important information from her master so she won’t get in trouble, much to the detriment of other characters. At one point, she comments in a frighteningly pragmatic tone,

“We must be for ourselves in the long run; the mild and generous are only more justly selfish than the domineering.”

Moreover, Emily Brontë breaks the conventions of Victorian literature by filtering the narrative of the story through two voices: the primary speaker is Lockwood, a womanizer from London renting Thrushcross Grange, who conveys the tale of Wuthering Heights as told to him by Nelly, a witness to all events. If one takes their narration at face value (as Bronte’s first readers no doubt did, unused to such narrative tricks), a modern reader will be transported into a Gothic romance of passion and insanity, and appreciate it as a scandalous ghost-story of the Victorian era.

However, if one delves beneath the literal narration, a deeper story about the power of human bonds revels itself. Brontë places clues throughout the novel alerting the reader that perhaps Nelly’s tale shouldn’t be taken at face value: though she is faithfully relaying the events to which she was privy, it becomes clear that she doesn’t understand them. Not only is she quite gullible (many of the more tragic events of the book occur because characters can so easily pass things over on her), but she seems uncomprehending of passionate, deep-seated emotions. When Cathy explains her bond with Heathcliff to Nelly, revealing that she believes they are literally the same soul – speaking the famous line “I am Heathcliff” – an appalled Nelly wants to hear no more. She likewise is confused by Heathcliff’s torment at losing the one person in the world who understood him.

When readers pay attention to the language Nelly ignores, they see that Cathy and Heathcliff are about far more than crazed lust and possession. Instead, they are trying to return to their inseparable childhood bond obliterated by adulthood and reality by breaking down any barriers that divide them: houses, people, skin, coffin walls, and finally the membrane between life and death.

Despite all these innovations and sly tricks, “Wuthering Heights” cannot escape the archaic language of typical Victorian novels, and this may be a barrier for many modern readers. The proclamations of love are laid on thick – “Oh Cathy! Oh my life!” cries Heathcliff – and people speak in exaggerated detail. However, as with Shakespeare or Austen, most readers will adjust to the language after several pages. Prospective readers are also advised to buy an addition with a mapped out genealogy included, as the family tree becomes very confusing as it moves down to the second generation of Lintons and Earnshaws, and Emily’s penchant for recycling names gives the reader more than one Cathy and Linton.

Emily died just one year after the publication of “Wuthering Heights,” succumbing to tuberculosis and, like her hero and heroine, starving herself to speed up the process of death.  Though she lived her life in the shadows, she left behind her a blazing beast of a book that continues to electrify over one-hundred and fifty years later.

Text-to-Screen Ratio: Sherlock Holmes

While as a critic of literature I try to treat most books with a neutral eye, even I am not immune to stubborn passions. There are things in literature I love unconditionally, and at the top of that list is the Sherlock Holmes canon. The reasons are varied and would take more time than I have, but suffice to say I consider the Holmes short stories the finest things ever written in the English language. They are masterfully crafted mysteries that manage to be regularly funny and quotable, they present a perfect frozen-in-amber view of Victorian England, and have two main characters that share a legitimately moving friendship. It’s something I keep on a pedestal, and will defend with all resources.

This of course regularly draws me out to battle. Arguably the most famous fictional character ever created, Holmes has essentially become public domain, leading to almost 200 films and countless books based off the character. The films give me headaches – taking him into the future or introducing him to Batman is just the tip of the iceberg – but even worse are the glorified crossover fan fiction novels, pairing him with everyone from Sigmund Freud to Oscar Wilde to Teddy Roosevelt. It destroys the perfect world that Doyle created, and in all comparisons the writing is unequivocally atrocious.

Being as defensive of the character as I am, I naturally had mixed feelings about the announcement that Warner Brothers would be releasing a new film based on the character. There were positive factors – Guy Ritchie as the director, Robert Downey Jr. as the titular character and Jude Law as Watson – but the imagery seemed worlds away from the traditional interpretation. There were several articles espousing the fact that they were going for a version more akin to Doyle’s original interpretation, but trailers that looked more like “Van Helsing” than Baker Street kept my cynicism levels peaked.

So when the film came out I tried to put my passion and prejudice off to the side, and study the film in the analytical Holmes fashion. And like Holmes at the end of a chemical endeavor, I found myself pleasantly surprised. While the film takes more than a few liberties with the subject matter and is clearly focused on flash over literature, there’s a clear loyalty to the source material and many of the changes made do bring forward elements of the character that are usually buried.

Viewing the short stories and novels as too limited for a contemporary action-adventure film (correctly I would say) the film focuses on the case of Lord Blackwood, a devil-worshipping nobleman who apparently rises from the dead after Holmes uncovers the evidence leading to his execution. With mass hysteria threatening to break out, Holmes must solve the case – while also dealing with his partner’s impending marriage, the reappearance of his rival/lover Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) and a regularly poisoned bulldog. It’s a bit of an outlandish story for the great detective, but it’s of course not the first time that the detective approached the supposedly supernatural or Watson’s romantic life.

The setting also doesn’t feel too divorced from the source. Despite the obvious steampunk additions, Ritchie and the producers have created a London that meshes with the original semi-regularly. Horse-drawn carts are the mode of transportation, London’s streets and sewers are appropriately dark and weathered, and and Holmes’ personal quarters are littered with chemical research, case papers and pipe tobacco in a slipper. It certainly doesn’t feel like the canonical setting – there’s no fog unless you count the film’s bluish-gray tint, and it’s a lot busier than the quiet of Baker Street would lead you to believe – but Holmes is clearly at home there, able to disguise himself perfectly after one stroll through a market.

And certainly when it comes to an adaptation of Sherlock Holmes, its legendary titular character makes or breaks the adaptation. Robert Downey Jr. was a surprising choice, without the excessive height and leanness the books describe and Basil Rathbone popularized, and his Holmes is at first glance worlds away. He is haphazardly dressed in a fedora, corduroy coat and tinted glasses, given to biting witticisms towards the local police force, and even enters the boxing ring for a few “Fight Club”-esque brawls. His mannerisms edge on bipolar, lounging in a dressing gown and firing off his revolver when bored and riveted on the little details when not.

It’s a different take on the character, but surprisingly Ritchie and producer Lionel Wigram have grounded it heavily in the original mythos. Holmes did take a variety of drugs for scientific and recreational purposes, took pleasure in fistfights (though that always happened off-screen), did idly pick at his violin when no challenge presented himself, and did keep his personal quarters in shambles with a patriotic V.R. shot into the wall “in one of his queer humors.” Downey revels in these eccentricities, but never presents them as out of character – they are all part of the strange genius that Holmes brings to his cases and relationships. Additionally, his speeches explaining his deductions are the ideal “Sherlock Holmes English-speaking vernacular,” quick and precise in the nature of Doyle’s famous summaries.

But while Downey has many of the Holmes mannerisms down pat, there’s an unshakeable feeling that something is off in his portrayal. Holmes did have his oddities and addictions but he was always depicted as perfectly in control, “a delicate and finely adjusted temperament,” and this new version doesn’t have the air of untouched infallibility the books conveyed. It really feels more like a hybrid of Jack Sparrow, Tony Stark and Gregory House, a massive intelligence with ego to match, a cunning wit used to deflect serious attention at him. The calabash pipe and deerstalker have been stripped away, and although this does let us see more of Holmes’ character traits the personality is out with the clothes.

This new portrayal also seriously changes the dynamic between Holmes and Watson, undoubtedly the most legendary partnership in literature. The two were certainly close friends, but their devotion to each other came out in subtle ways, Watson backing Holmes in his riskiest affairs and Holmes only dropping his shield to reveal praise and concern for the Doctor. Here though, it’s more like House and Wilson than Holmes and Watson as they snipe back and forth at each other like an old married couple, Watson even going so far as to express his distaste for Holmes borrowing his clothes. That tone belongs in stories inspired by their dynamic, not the real thing.

This is nothing against Jude Law however – he gives an admirable performance, and it’s a relief to see Watson portrayed as a tough competent partner rather than a bumbling foil. I am certain however that he could never beat Holmes to the punch on a chemical deduction, or use his hat in Oddjob-style in fistfights. And these fights are many, but thankfully not overwhelmed by Ritchie’s dizzying editing style – and quickly enlivened as Holmes breaks down a series of disabling moves as if he was listing off one of his deductions. (Indeed, Ritchie’s style works quite well with Holmes’ thought process, peppering in flashbacks and close-ups to illustrate the little details that only he could connect).

Other characters have the same depictions – different from the originals but still there in spirit. Irene Adler, “the woman” to Holmes and the only one to outfox him, is well cast in Rachel McAdams, more conniving and sultry than “A Scandal in Bohemia” suggested but still convincing as the only woman to throw Holmes’ legendary focus off track. Mark Strong is mainly there to look imposing as Lord Blackwood, running his machinations in the shadows, but the portrayal is on par with Holmes’ canonical adversaries Jack Stapleton or John Clay – both of whom clearly influenced his creation. And like Watson, Inspector Lestrade (Eddie Marsan) is finally treated with some respect, shown as not being the sharpest of detectives but certainly one of the most tenacious.

The movie does have the typical Hollywood ham-handedness in setting up a sequel, but – and this was the most surprising part of “Sherlock Holmes” – I find myself embracing the idea. The devious Professor Moriarty and Sherlock’s brother Mycroft, along with the loose threads of a few dozen more short stories, are all there to be adapted into this new rendition of literature’s most famous investigator. It’s not perfect – indeed, it would take Holmes itself barely a glance to point out the flaws – but it’s far more faithful (and entertaining) than you’d expect from putting the great detective through the blockbuster wringer.

Extra Credit:

To better understand my appreciation of Sherlock Holmes, please enjoy my favorite Holmes short stories, all available through the miracle of public domain and the good folks at Wikisource.

• The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
• The Boscombe Valley Mystery, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1891.
• Silver Blaze, The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes, 1892.
• The Adventure of the Six Napoleons, The Return of Sherlock Holmes, 1904.
• The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans, The Further Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, 1912.

Book Review: This Wicked World

This Wicked World

By Richard Lange

Published June 30, 2009

Little, Brown and Company

416 pp.

ISBN 0-316-01737-X

Reviewed: January 11, 2010

All major cities tend to inspire literature based on their hundreds of thousands of inhabitants – New York, London and Paris in particular boast a thriving canon – but for some reason those that come out of Los Angeles are the most distinctive. From Raymond Chandler to Charles Bukowski to James Ellroy, the city’s stories and characters have a curiously dark and jaded hue setting them aside from other metropolitan fiction. It’s a setting where failures outnumber success hundreds to one, full of cultural icons but also struggling immigrants, embittered lawmen and artists clawing for a break.

The sheer scope of Los Angeles also means that thousands of things can happen under the radar, as Tom Cruise’s assassin character pointed out in the film “Collateral” when he mentions a man who died on the train: “Six hours he’s riding the subway before anybody notices his corpse doing laps around L.A., people on and off sitting next to him. Nobody notices.” In Richard Lange’s debut novel “This Wicked World,” someone does notice one of those corpses – and following the path to discovery adds yet another chapter to the city’s bleakness.

Like “Collateral” this corpse is also found on public transportation, only this time it’s the body of a young Hispanic immigrant covered in infected dog bites. Seeking to find out what happened, his grandfather enlists the help of Jimmy Boone, a former Marine and convict currently making ends meet as a bartender. Boone takes the case, and finds the deceased was linked to an ugly world of dogfights, drug deals and counterfeiting – a world that’s not happy about him poking around in it.

Indeed, very few people seem to be happy in this rendition of Los Angeles – the mottoes “More good times than bad” and “Fail better” are each mentioned more than once, and each of the featured characters seems to have at least five bad stories from their past. Boone, the novel’s weathered hero, started out life as a small-town punk who chose the army over jail, wound up in a bad marriage with a rich Daddy’s girl and made one critically bad choice that destroyed a thriving security career. Other characters have been molested, their children shot themselves, they kept their mouths shut on bad shootings when they were cops – Lange leaves no one unburdened, and happiness on a short leash.

The negativity of the main characters is fairly overwhelming at times, but Lange invests each of them with surprising depth to match their detailed histories. There’s an ex-French Foreign Legionnaire who raises fighting dogs, a nervous young drug dealer who could be seamlessly replaced with the excellent Jesse Pinkman from “Breaking Bad” and a homicidal hitman who’s getting laser tattoo removal to better impress the judge who’s hearing his daughter’s custody case. Like any good mystery the split between good guys and bad guys is fairly nonexistent, all are on varied levels of being screwed over and finding a way to get through the day. Lange takes advantage of telling the novel in third-person present tense, swapping within chapters without ever losing the story in one character.

It also helps that the story is genuinely well-told, with the cinematic noir feeling of many of the better LA-themed mystery novels. On one half there’s the endless sprawl of the metro areas, “the bashing, crashing swirl of the city” with its half-abandoned bars and junkie apartments, and on the other half is the barren desert, “full of dust, no color she can name.” “Wicked World” doesn’t lack for atmosphere by a long shot, and as the course of events proceed – like all the right mysteries set off by just one little thing – there’s the concrete feeling that no one is looking out for anyone beyond themselves.

The events do get a touch convoluted after a while – the participants are entangled in one too many crimes gone bad – but it’s a testament to Lange’s skill as a writer that he’s able to keep a reader going until the end. It’s a cinematic feel that compelling executes a normally conventional plot, and actually leaves one genuinely concerned with how its diverse cast is going to turn out. “This Wicked World” is both proof of that and a very satisfying addition to the LA canon – proof that no matter how the world changes, the City of Angels will always have thousands of stories without a moral.

Text-to-Screen Ratio: The Road

I’ve never claimed to be prescient when it comes to the world of literature – more content to use my energies on what’s in front of me rather than what’s coming up – but I do have to admit I feel rather smug whenever I think about my take on “No Country for Old Men.” When I first reviewed the title back in 2005 I predicted that the Coen brothers (who had just acquired the rights) would make a powerhouse film, their directing techniques perfectly matched with Cormac McCarthy’s brilliant gift for minmalist dialogue. And I was completely right, as the film would go on to not only take four Academy Awards but also turn out to be one of the most faithful adaptations I’ve ever seen.

As a result of this success, I kept a close eye on the approaching release of “The Road.” Expectations were high – the 2006 novel received the greatest critical acclaim of McCarthy’s career and even earned him a Pulitzer Prize – but there was some uncertainty as “The Road” is a completely different animal to “No Country for Old Men.” It is not McCarthy’s typical Western with soft-spoken protagonists and open plains, showing one event and the consequences it brings, but the end of the world with no uncertainty. It had to hit despair and hope with equal measure, and while it doesn’t quite match the book’s connection it is a technical and emotional success nonetheless.

At first glance, the story of “The Road” seems like it will be simpler to adapt. After an unspecified disaster, the world has been reduced to a desolate wasteland of ash and snow, where nothing will grow and the few remaining humans travel in cannibalistic packs. In this world a father and his son continually walk south to the coast with no supplies save the contents of a shopping cart, no weapons save a pistol with two bullets and no company but each others’. The theme is once again survival, but money doesn’t matter here – all that matters is the indomitable will of one person to keep another alive.

However, while the story is easily summarized and the cast can be counted on two hands, filming “The Road” has one hurdle to climb beyond any technical aspect: atmosphere. Winner of my Silent Hill Award for Bleakest Setting, “The Road” may well be the most grippingly immersive book I have ever read. This isn’t the tension of pursuit but the cold certainty that everything around you is dead, with skeletal trees and ashen air and corpses dried to leather as if there was “some cold glaucoma dimming away the world.” Compounding the loneliness, the reason for the apocalypse is never even touched on – the only thing that matters from the world that was is whatever it left behind for you to survive on.

The atmosphere of “The Road” is such that, even in the hands of a director like John Hillcoat (no stranger to broken lonely worlds himself with 2005’s “The Proposition”) it can’t be transferred completely. While a film can project the scope of what has happened to the world with long scenes of death and the worse-than-homeless condition of its survivors, the pure despair always feels just out of reach. It’s especially noticeable due to the quality of McCarthy’s words, brief dark sentences that all add up to show how little there is to be said in the face of nothing.

But while the film cannot match the level of despair the book has, that doesn’t mean it fails at drawing you in – quite the opposite in fact. Hillcoat has expertly crafted “a world in severe trauma” as he described it to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, filmed in the bleakest ares of Pittsburgh’s coal country and the sides of Mount St. Helens. The cinematography is beautiful in a sad way, with spilled matchboxes of dead trees and ashen decay on every farmhouse, and rare glimpses of color in canned food or bullets coming across to the father and son as artifacts to bond over.

And perhaps more the atmosphere, it was mastering this relationship that would make or break “The Road” – and set it apart from “No Country for Old Men.” While the first one was heavily reliant on longer dialogues between three complex main characters and a cast of officers and civilians, “The Road” distills McCarthy’s gift down to only the father and the son, two people bound by an eternal pact and whose few words hold more meaning than any longer speech.

Thankfully, this relationship is treated with all the reverence it deserves. Viggo Mortensen cannot help but inhabit a role with every fiber of his being, and he brings the father to life with tenderness to his son and tightly wound caution toward the rest of the world. His interactions with his son (the excellent Kodi Smit-McPhee) are all transferred from the book, and there is an undeniable connection in each scene: sharing a scavenged Coca-Cola, bathing in an ice-cold waterfall, explaining the right way to shoot yourself in the head.

The film’s supporting cast, though defined only in their relationship to the father-son dynamic, also captures the book’s feel admirably. Charlize Theron as the wife is appropriately angelic in the Man’s fantasies and fatally broken in his memories, although her role has been expanded from the book and in several places the stretching shows. Robert Duvall steals the film as the Old Man on the road, half-blind but still able to see the world’s end, and HBO alums such as Garrett Dillahunt (“Deadwood”) and Michael Kenneth Williams (“The Wire”) capably carry the roles of the future’s predatory wanderers.

In an advance review Tom Chiarilla of Esquire said there was “not a single stupid choice made in turning this book into this movie,” and it’s hard to argue with that statement. From a technical perspective, it captures all the right notes from its source material – characters, conversations and storyline – and from an emotional standpoint its only fault is that it’s trying to reach the impossibly high standards of McCarthy’s eloquence. “The Road” is frightening, captivating and makes you need to hug your parent or child afterward – and I apply that statement to both versions.

Extra Credit:

For more on McCarthy’s relationship with his writing, his son and the films, check out these absolutely phenomenal interviews with the master himself.

• Hollywood’s Favorite Cowboy, by John Jurgensen, Wall Street Journal, November 20, 2009.
• Cormac McCarthy’s Apocalypse, by John Kushner, Rolling Stone, December 20, 2007.

Book Review: Tomato Rhapsody

Tomato Rhapsody: A Fable of Love, Lust & Forbidden Fruit

By Adam Schell

Published June 23, 2009

Delacorte Press

352 pp.

ISBN 0-385-34333-7

Reviewed December 29, 2009

With 2009 coming to a close, the book journalism world is awash in lists of the best titles of not only the last year but the last decade. The lists vary in terms of depth and focus, and the majority have selected some genuinely good titles, but nevertheless it feels like something’s missing. Words like “sublime” and “captivating,” “nuanced” and “illuminating” are all being tossed around regularly, but the one word that seems to be missing on the majority of these lists is “fun.”

Now I would never insist that literature try to avoid these heavier adjectives – being the aspiring alpha male of the literary criticism world that I am – but I do feel that too often literature is in the position of bringing people down. Sprawling character studies and painful memoirs have their place, but sometimes one wants to sit down with a book and feel good rather than insightful, pleasantly satisfied rather than enlightened. And this year, “Tomato Rhapsody” by Adam Schell was a book that provided that feeling in spades, an appetizing and ultimately joyful novel to brighten up a frequently dark field.

“Tomato Rhapsody” takes place in 16^th century Tuscany, where where its titular fruit is limited to one farm where it is grown by a young Jewish farmer named Davido and his grandfather Nonno. When a papal decree of free trade and allows them to bring their produce to the village, it brings them into contact with the village’s unique inhabitants: an almost mystical priest, a restless duke, a conniving orchard owner, his beautiful stepdaughter Mari and a drunken puppeteer to name a few. The events that follow generate a great deal of wine and partying, luck that leads to love and recipes which will shape the country forever.

Stylistically, “Rhapsody” is very similar to a Shakespearean comedy, broken up into three parts and involving a series of interwoven plot threads such as star-crossed lovers, clever servants and comic foils. Lively discussion in taverns and festivals is prevalent, as are the occasional comedy of errors and nobles “slumming” with the common folk for a change of pace. Don’t expect iambic pentameter though, or any other kind of formality: Schell’s is a writing style that goes around in many occasions, prone to asides and comments to the reader on Italian drama tradition.

It’s in the dialogue that the Shakespearean influence is much clearer. The majority of the peasants speak in rimatori, an “aabbcc” rhyming style that lends a singsong cadence to the book’s conversations. It could easily be forced but Schell handles the writing more than competently and in many occasions often veers into bawdy limerick territory, discussing the ravages of syphilis or the arousal of a donkey. The speech is quirky without ever being grating, particularly if you have a strong tolerance for dirty jokes.

And for those who don’t have a taste for dirty jokes, the book’s culinary obsession will more than make up for it. Fittingly for a book that deals so heavily with food – gardens, orchards and markets are the main settings, and food analogies regularly describe the main characters – much of the inner dialogue and conversation is devoted to recipes. Be it the Good Padre’s fried eggplant with mint pesto, Mari’s technique for curing black olives or simply the contemplation of a tomato on the vine, “Rhapsody” quickly makes the mouth water. This is a book that demands you have a small carton of cherry tomatoes on hand to pop between your teeth as you turn pages, or be sitting in a restaurant that serves big plates of bruschetta.

And in its culinary focus, “Rhapsody” manages to once again prove the old adage that the quickest way to the heart is through the stomach. Emotions regularly run high in the book, be they the ebullient joy of the Drunken Saint festivals, debate over letting the Jewish farmers into the village or the growing romance between Davido and Mari. Much like the tomatoes and olives that drive the plot along, this is a story that is full of life and joy – chaotic to be sure, but undeniably alive.

While “Tomato Rhapsody” is certainly far from perfect – the ending scenes of each act go a bit too long, and only a couple members of the cast have any depth beyond stock characters – its flaws are masked under a seasoned sauce of energy and humor. It would be hard to see it fitting into the more prestigious “best of 2009” lists, but if you let it take you in you’ll feel better after finishing it than most of the year’s releases – and still have the energy to head down to the local Italian place for an early supper.

Links of Literacy: Good News in the Book World

As I spend my nights carving into a pile of articles sure to challenge your perceptions on literature (or at least tell you what I think of various books and films based on books), a few things that make me happy have popped up in the world of bibliographic news. I would like to share them with you in the hopes they bring you good cheer in this holiday season.

1. Yahtzee moves to maximum punctuation!

Dark Horse Books have quite a reputation in the world of graphic novels – Sin City, The Mask and Hellboy are only a few of the unique intellectual properties that have been distributed under their imprints – and now it appears they have a solid stake in traditional literature. This October it was announced that their stable of authors will be joined by Ben “Yahtzee” Croshaw, creator of the Escapist video game review series “Zero Punctuation,” with his debut novel “Mogworld” in August of 2010.

In Yahtzee’s own words from his website:

Mogworld is the culmination of a few years’ work from an idea that took root back when I was playing World of Warcraft. It’s NOT a graphic novel, as you might assume from Dark Horse publishing it. It’s a proper wordy thinky brainy book. I feel that if I give myself free reign to go on about it here I’ll end up calling it a lot of pretentious things that it isn’t, so at the most basic level it’s a fun little comedic fantasy. But it’s also a bit of a satire on MMOs, the games industry, and the concept of heroism, and incorporates perhaps a hint of existentialism WHOOPS there I go.

I personally could not be happier about this – not only because Dark Horse is based in Portland and I support any and all creative minds who find links to the city. Yahtzee’s ZP videos were an endless distraction for me during my darker unemployed days, and his writing style has been a considerable influence both in my critical and humorous writings (as you may have noticed in the more colorful analogies I try to insert, as well as more subtle ways). I’ve enjoyed many of the longer pieces on his website – even though he disowns much of his early work they’re worth skimming – and his weekly “Extra Punctuation” column on the Escapist shows his thought processes and writing techniques are far more advanced than simply swearing at Sonic the Hedgehog.

So, August 2010 – mark your calendars for that. I believe this is a book worth anticipating, even though Yahtzee has called hype an invention of mean-spirited marketing executives who never discovered the true meaning of Christmas.

2. Natalie Portman aims for the head!

While I heard author Seth Grahame-Smith dropping hints about this during his book tour (mostly mumbling titles like “The Professional” and “Garden State” when asked about films) it’s a relief to see the formal news break. Natalie Portman, star of films as diverse as “V for Vendetta” and “The Darjeeling Limited” has been tapped to play the lead role in the film adaptation of the critically acclaimed title “Pride and Prejudice and Zombies.”

I’m slightly disappointed that my original idea of reuniting the original cast of the 2005 film in a brilliant burst of metahumor won’t come to fruition, but I have nothing to complain about with the selection of Portman. An actress who can move from drama to action films seamlessly – and survive the briny slop that was the “Star Wars” prequel trilogy – I have no doubt she has the talent and charisma to be on par with the college girls and amputee strippers who thrive in the zombie apocalypse.

At least I hope we’ll have a chance to find out. The film is pegged as in development with a potential 2011 release, and any number of things could happen between now and then. Hopefully this won’t wind up eternally in development hell, unlike some other book adaptations I’ve been waiting around for.

Poetry Review: My Zorba

My Zorba

By Danielle Pafunda

Published March 21, 2008

Bloof Books

80 pp.

ISBN 0-615-19593-8

Reviewed November 23, 2009

Some poets take language out for a long, leisurely lunch and a stroll. Danielle Pafunda drags language out of bed in the middle of the night and takes it on a desperate mission through the war-torn house of the body.

Mirrors explode and shattered glass rains down on the mostly female narrator of Pafunda’s book, “My Zorba,” as she fights with an imaginary, mostly male character named Zorba. “I could only think in small pieces!/I could not speak in first person! The copper wire/strung!/From my armpit, a personality exam, a pelvic diatribe” (In the Museum of Your Two Halves). Confusion, urgency, shape-shifting, and struggle maims every poem in “My Zorba,” producing language that is fragmented and mysterious, that jolts and halts like an ancient amusement park ride. It is as terrifying and difficult as it is beautiful; a drunk horror story covered in glitter.

This may not be true for every reader, but I couldn’t even start the book without thinking of Nikos Kazantzakis’ famous novel “Zorba the Greek.” In “Zorba the Greek,” the male character, Zorba, mysteriously appears and thrusts himself into the life of a young male character who, like Pafunda’s narrator, remains nameless. Kazantzakis’ Zorba teaches the writer how to be a man and how to enjoy the zest of life – a “zest” that primarily consists of bedding several women, who Zorba insists are all “something different, boss … something different. She’s not human!” A widower in Kazantzaki’s novel, who is thrust sexually by Zorba upon the narrator, is even stoned to death because of Zorba’s actions. However, it seems a trivial tragedy, necessary even, for the narrator to gain a full sense of his “manhood.”

In both Pafuda’s and Kazantzaki’s work, the Zorbas happily upstage the narrators. They can’t help themselves. They persistently impose themselves onto the narrators, determined to control his and her actions. And yet, while Kazantzaki’s work yields direction and “epiphany,” Pafunda destroys, cuts, and confuses in a search for “femininity.” If indeed Pafunda is making a reference to the bestseller, she’s created a dark lens to view it through.

She pulls the lens wider, too, focusing her sights on long-documented story of the male “rite of passage.” What has long been seen as a kind of eye clearing journey turns out to be a drug-induced stupor for the female in “My Zorba,” with female narrator fighting to regain authority over her own consciousness and reality. “I was so KO’d, so tanked, so regal, furtive, dormant, a champ./I was so full of vitamin mash and protein” (Building a Nest, the A-Z). Pafunda turns the “strong” and “powerful” journey of gender discovery on its head and twists its neck into a series of awe-inspiring, but obviously painful positions.

Despite all of these comparisons I’ve just made, I have to emphasize briefly that knowledge of “Zorba the Greek” is not necessary in any regard to getting something out of “My Zorba.” The poetry is first and foremost about sexuality: the rush, the horror, and the confusion it manifests in any young person, male or female.

As children often do, the narrator created Zorba when she was young as a source of protection against her own inexperience and insecurity. “He drew a drawbridge, she drew a gangplank He an awning/she an armory” (My Sea Legs). That protection comes with a price as Zorba emphasizes the domineering, hierarchal aspects of a parent figure, rather than the more equal qualities of a friendship. The narrator addresses Zorba as “My little mommydaddy” (Nee Providential) but it’s apparent that Zorba is no “nurturing” figure. In fact, after reading all the poems the book’s harmless opening quote from a Margaret Wise Brown children’s book is unbelievably unsettling:

“If you become a fish in a trout stream,” said his mother, “I will become a fisherman and I will fish for you.”

It’s as if Zorba is already trying to get the first word in, even before the narrator begins speaking her verse. Zorba looks directly at the reader and says, “She will never escape me.”

There are times, in poems throughout the book, that the narrator aggressively fights back. “Zorba asked me to read their cards…I would not read the card for frontage/I would not read the card for Christmas…Nor bind/her breasts with bandages, iodine” (Tribune). It seems, as the character senses the natural progressive nature of her individuality, that she should make attempts to protect and take control of her sexuality, “I protected my creature with a complicated rigging, I took twofold/the barb and twofold the batting…For shortage. I shorted the sheets/of the privates” (In the Iron Cassion).

And despite all of Zorba’s authoritative, male posturing, mostly articulated through words, Zorba’s gestures and descriptions in the verse sometimes undermines what she/he she claims to be. “She put pantyhose over her athletic shorts. And a skirt/over that” (A Quarter-Hour of Recess). Pafunda may be hinting that Zorba’s power is superficial, a power that lean heavily on the pills, sex force and brainwashing speeches fed to the narrator, rather than any real truth.

Perhaps these imaginary characters are creatures we battle in real life, as well. Maybe Pafunda suggests in these poems, with all the gender switching and the heavy struggle associated with “instructing” a young person about gender, that young men and women share more androgynous, indecipherable qualities between each other, contrary to what the assorted dominant, parent figures in their lives may tell them.

The book ends with a poem filled with one of most common images associated with femininity: birth. “Zorba asks me to deliver this speech. A birthing…I took extra care/in applying my makeup, affixing an eyelash…My eyes were ruddy with grief…I haven’t a coffee spoon, marmalade, a clue” (Sweets). The character ends the book by performing what is considered to be the greatest achievement of the female gender. We give birth to new life. But, in this instance, can we see “birth” as something new, or as an imposing act meant to perpetuate a violent cycle.

I don’t think, though, that “My Zorba” is just for women. Pafunda is an effortless daredevil when it comes to imagery and an eccentric butcher of the English language (if the cover art didn’t already hint at that) She has a chilling gift for story-telling and costumes that makes puts you right in the middle of a coked-out dance floor. Anyone will have a fabulous time trying to keep up with her.

Book Review: Democracy in Print

Democracy in Print: The Best of The Progressive Magazine, 1909-2009

Edited by Matthew Rothschild

Published May 1, 2009

University of Wisconsin Press

390 pp.

ISBN 0-299-23224-7

Reviewed November 22, 2009

Out of all the casualties the economic crisis has been wreaking on the world (your humble narrator’s well-paid publishing job among them) one of the most tragic has been the regular shuttering of newspapers and magazines. Print media has been in a bad position for the last few years with its base of readers and advertisers going to digital news, and newspapers from Seattle to Boston have shut their doors. Others have laid off staff, slashed their size and made the move to publish solely online – sad stories that don’t do much to reassure our descendants will remain well-educated.

But for all of these sad tales there are still a few inspiring moves out there, and fittingly one of the recent ones comes from The Progressive. In August, Editor-in-Chief Matthew Rothschild issued a personal appeal to all readers that the magazine needed $90,000 to keep publishing, saying that it was in more danger than it had been in the last 25 years. Readers responded by donating over $120,000 in two weeks, saving the publication Senator Robert La Follette founded as “a magazine of progress, social, intellectual, institutional.”

For the key examples of this tradition – and reasons why readers see The Progressive is worth defending – one need look no further than “Democracy in Print,” released to coincide with the magazine’s centennial. Collecting close to 200 essays, speeches, interviews and poems, the book is a keen collection of the left’s thoughts, as well as a valuable source for arguments that still remain relevant as of today.

Like most compilations of articles, this is definitely a book built for browsing rather than reading in one sitting, going to one particular issue for reflection or research. Wisely, “Democracy in Print” chooses not to split its content up chronologically but by issue, focused on several of the most hot-button issues of the last hundred years, ranging from the rights of women, African-Americans and gays, to serious reform for labor and environmental policies and an end to wars. Writers reflect the depth of the magazine’s contributors, with La Follette and his extended family, senators, union activists and media critics all expounding on their favorite topics.

The Progressive has always been a magazine with a mission – I see it as the polar opposite of the National Review, standing athwart the gates of history yelling ‘Go!’ – and unsurprisingly the content of the book rarely deviates from the far left: war is never the answer, equal rights for all, etc. It can’t boast variety, but what it can boast is undeniable passion. Its history and content boasts a willingness to fight for ideals, calling out our highest officials and even fighting a prior restraint judgment from the U.S. government to publish an article on the hydrogen bomb.

Several of the essays also come across as shockingly relevant to our current political climate, and (tragically) are far more articulate than the existing discourse. Witness Harold Ickes, FDR’s secretary of the interior, speaking on how the wealthiest families and companies led America into a “peacetime catastrophe,” it’s clear that the circumstances that put us in the recession are not new ones. Or La Follette, railing against how workingmen who lose limbs are paid per appendage – an argument that would probably come in handy as the Senate debates healthcare.

“Democracy” is not entirely speech-based however, as the book also explores the history of The Progressive’s cultural ties by reprinting a selection of interviews with musicians and authors. Each of the figures being interviewed waxes on a particular topic tied to their work, and each one is uniquely enjoyable: Kurt Vonnegut on how politics has devolved into entertainment, Allen Ginsberg on sex and authority, Frank Zappa on the decline of art to name a few. The interviews give a sense of not just being experts, but also defenders of traditions that seem to be dying out.

The recent campaign for funds waged by The Progressive proves that defending its beliefs is never going to be easy, but the content they have generated proves that they have the energy and brainpower to keep going. “Democracy in Print” is a solid collection of liberal journalism and eloquent discourse on its most important fields, and a valuable tool in the arsenal of anyone writing about the issues of the time – ours, last decade’s or last century’s.

Link of Literacy: TV Girl

In the last few years I’ve grown more and more appreciative of television – helped chiefly by its maturation as a storytelling platform. Witness “The Wire,” best viewed as a five-part novel on a city’s life and conflicts, told with such character depth and intertwined storylines it could give some of the great Russians a run for their money. Or “Deadwood,” which creates a community amongst disjointed individuals who realize they don’t fit in anywhere else; or “Breaking Bad,” arguably the next big step in television storytelling by painting a chemistry teacher/drug dealer’s path to Hell (the special kind reserved for child molesters and people who talk at the theater).

So I have a great deal of interest in the narrative of television writing, but it’s not something I can see myself placing much focus on in this blog as books are our first focus (though some shows, like “Dexter,” are in the queue for proper analysis). There are many people who do make this their focus though, and a new source for such study has popped up in Tarah Scalzo’s “TV Girl.” Tarah, a fellow alumni of the Daily Cardinal’s arts columnist fraternity as the author of “The Taraminator” movie column in 2006-2007, has turned her attention to TV shows in a blog that adheres to the tagline “Television is literature.”

It’s a fairly brief affair so far with only four posts – three on Christmas episodes (part of a Top 10 list I assume) and one on the decline of “House” as a TV show (which I wholeheartedly agree with) – but it’s off to a good start. The writing reflects the crucial entertainment blogger attribute of both knowing and caring about your subject matter, and the writing is engaging without the semi-frequent dips of pretension the Onion’s A.V. Club is guilty of.

So if you’re a professional TV viewer (thanks to my Portland drinking partner Kevin for that phrase) I endorse paying attention to it in upcoming months. There’s always more than one way to tell a story after all.

http://tarahthetvgirl.blogspot.com/