Thirty-First Situation: conflict with a god

Georges Polti wrote a book not quite a hundred years ago called The Thirty-Six Dramatic Situations. When you consult this manual you are amazed and fascinated by the classification scheme. You probably have to have a touch of madness to be a taxonomist of any sort. Not that I don't appreciate such things. I suppose I'm more of a 'lumper' than a 'splitter,' but I love reading this bizarre little book. It is a lot of fun to play the game and think about all the various situations he describes. Stories are about love and death. Not much more than that. I could have said sex and violence, but it's the same thing. Squeezing thirty-six different plots out of those four fundamentals is an accomplishment. Nutty, but that's OK. The clincher for Polti, though, is the impossibly overwrought prose, leaden with allusions and drowning in names and references in foreign tongues. You can hardly get through three sentences without gagging or guffawing, which makes it brilliant. I picked up my copy for fifty cents or some pittance at a the local library book sale. I love discards. Where else can you find treasures like this? Here's part of the discussion of the Thirty-First Situation, or "conflict with a god":

This remarkable grouping has been in our day almost entirely ignored. Byronists as we still are, bon gré mal gré, we might yet dream of this superb onslaught on the heavens. But no! -- we treat even the evangelical subject of the Passion, while we pass by, this genuinely dramatic situation, and content ourselves with sanctimoniously intoning the idyllo-didactic phrases which preceded the sacred tragedy, -- itself left unseen.

I think they invented WTF as means of textual commentary far too late. Isn't that fabulous? It's the sort of writing, because of the fact that it is actually real and has been reprinted as recently as 1973, that makes me believe crazy stuff like what Dan Brown cooks up in his DaVinci Code books. Part of the problem is that that original work is in French, and this is a translation (by Lucille Ray). But only part. This Polti guy is a kook, but a well-read one, and it is hard not to enjoy his obvious sincerity. I've actually learned a bit about literature as well. He uses examples of his plot types or "Situations" that reference the famous Greeks like Euripides and Sophocles, which inspired me to get some books and read them both. Here's a few of the other Situations: Ninth, Daring Enterprise; Sixteenth, Madness; Twenty-Fifth, Adultery; Thirty-Sixth, Loss of Loved Ones. There are a lot of ways one could slice-and-dice the various forms into which most of our stories fall. It would be pointless, because you cannot classify the infinite. The human heart, head, and soul make a lethal combination. That trinity can generate quite a variety of mayhem, be it good mayhem or bad mayhem, and it all makes for good stories and plots. Whoops, I mean Situations.

Speed's Trail

West of me, about a mile and a quarter as the crow flies, is a high knobby peak. It didn't have a name until today. The USGS topo for Yreka says it is 1154 meters (3786 feet) high, which is 344 meters (1129 feet) above my house. We hiked up there in honor of Martin L. King, Jr., and discovered a sign that read "Speed's Trail" and below that "Speed Jones, 1923-2007." I guess we'll call it "Speed's Peak" from now on. The combination of roads and trails that zigzag to the top could keep you busy for months, but we managed. Speed's Peak is the highest of a northwest-to-southeast trending group of four knobs that drop successively to 947 meters (3107 feet) in about three-quarters of a mile. It's a funny little fingerling ridge that seems only remotely connected to the commanding Humbug-Mahogany Point-Gunsight Peak prominence that marks the eastern terminus of the Klamath Mountains. This little cluster of steep, rocky hills is a popular playground. Kids paintball in the lower parts, dirt bikes crisscross the midsections, hardy mountain bikers leave tracks at the junctions on the wide saddles, and a few hikers push on to the top. There are abandoned party spots and homeless hideouts amidst the scraggly cedars and skinny pines. It's not in the guidebooks, but it is a hell of a view and a good workout. I got lost trying to make sense of the geology. I could see cobbles of quartzite, and broken masses of phyllite, chert, and possibly schists. The rocks were green with what I think was chlorite, and there was lots of serpentinization. Large clusters of dark stuff bewildered me. The map was no help, lumping it all into "Mezosoic meta-sediments" and other non-committal verbiage. I suppose it's not the rocks that matter, but the story of how they got there. We got there by putting our boots on and huffing and puffing and sweating on this cold but calm and sunny day.

The Last of the Innocent

I'm a huge fan of the work of Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips, the writer-artist team responsible for Criminal. The latest installment (the sixth graphic novel collection) is called The Last of the Innocent and manages to continue the impossibly high standard of the previous releases. These guys really understand that noir is so much more than a two-fisted alcoholic P.I. beating people up while pursuing his twisted sense of justice. Not that that can't work--Ken Bruen pulls it off marvelously with his Jack Taylor books. But too many hard-boiled stories fall into the trap of a standard mystery camouflaged with lots of f-bombs and bar fights. That is not a bad thing, mind you, just a little tiresome. Messrs. Brubaker and Phillips are more interested in characters and the web of complications that life brings. Sure, there are hit men, mobsters, gamblers, tycoons, whores, junkies, thieves, crooked cops, and femme fatales aplenty in Criminal. But what makes the whole thing work is the humanity of the protagonists. They all have a "regular joe" side of their characters that gives the reader empathy for them and their various plights, even if they do (and they will) something stupid or evil. Moreover, their entanglements are entirely believable. They are motivated by their hopes, fears, and dreams, just like all of us. And when they get sucked into the maelstrom of violence and death the stories morph into tragedies. And I love a good tragedy. Genre fiction rarely gets the attention of the serious literary critic, and comic books hardly ever get the notice they deserve. But Criminal is the real deal--serious, poetic, profound, and thoroughly entertaining. Val Staples continues with his beautiful colors (ably assisted by Dave Stewart). Check out The Last of the Innocent and the rest of the Criminal series. You might find yourself hooked.

Somewhere West of Life

It's an allusion. Brian Aldiss' 1994 novel Somewhere East of Life is a strange and terrifying book, and its images still haunt me. My notes (I've kept a log of my reading since 1990) tell me I finished it in 2000. I recently added Mr. Aldiss' Forgotten Life (1988) to my pile, I suppose I'll have to tackle that next. But this is not about his excellent work, but rather that of another writer, an American named Nathanael West. In the 1930s he wrote two short novels, Miss Lonelyhearts and The Day of the Locust, that were ultimately made into Hollywood movies. I salvaged a Nathanael West anthology from a discard pile (he published only two other short novels) and powered my way through both dark and twisted stories. I suppose they aren't stories so much as plots. Weird guy hangs around other weird people who all go crazy and shit happens and it's all fucked up at the end. I don't mean that as a criticism, just an observation. You read these stories because these crazy people are all real and recognizable. They lie beneath our surfaces, lurking, ready to burst out when the veil of middle class respectability finally splits from the tension of accumulated injustices. None of us like to believe we have the savage beast within our breasts, but Mr. West says emphatically that we do, and we'd be fools not to accept that fact. Mostly the two tales are about the failed American Dream. Everywhere West looked he saw phonies, hucksters, con artists, bullshitters, and storytellers. And he saw the Great Depression, which shattered a lot of dreams and surely influenced a generation of writers and artists. He died in a car accident three years short of forty.

Choke Hold

The hard-boiled field is mostly a man's racket. The heroes and anti-heroes are tough guys. The writers are overwhelmingly male. Women are usually victims, femme fatales, or side stories. Thankfully things have changed in the 21st century and no one exemplifies that more than Christa Faust and her heroine Angel Dare. I posted about both of these ladies a few years back when I received Money Shot from Hard Case Crime. Well written, tightly plotted, and action-packed, Money Shot was one of the best of the entire line. I was quite enthusiastic when Choke Hold, the sequel, hit the bookshelves earlier this year. Angel Dare is a sort of male fantasy dream woman: an ex-porn star with all the requisite looks, bravado, and skills one expects from such a character. In the first book, Angel's life is turned upside down by Croatian gangsters running a sex slave operation. Taken captive, she fights her adversaries with a courage and relentlessness she did not know she possessed, eventually killing most of them and ultimately testifying against others. At the end she has to leave everything behind and join a witness protection program. The new book starts with the vengeance-mad criminals managing to track her down and she has to go on the run. She hooks up with a young MMA fighter and his trainer out in the southwestern desert and they do their best to fend off the mobsters, a Mexican drug lord, and a crazed, jealous dojo owner and her coke-addled teenage minions. Choke Hold is a fast and furious ride where once again Angel has to call on all her considerable talent and warrior spirit to stay alive. Suffice to say the ending screams for a sequel. Ms. Faust has done it again. Money Shot featured a brilliant Glenn Orbik cover and Choke Hold, as you can see, is equally spectacular. Mr. Orbik is my favorite of all the Hard Case illustrators. I can't wait for the next one!

The Veil

The ancient Celts believed that the Samhain marked the time between summer and winter. This "cross-quarter" day (half-way from the Autumnal Equinox to the Winter Solstice) actually makes more sense as a seasonal dividing line for those of us living in the temperate zones. After all, it has been below freezing at my house--just south of the 42nd parallel--for the last week. The Celts also believed that this time of year was when the veil between the material and the spirit worlds was the thinnest. Thus you made masks and carved scary faces in vegetables (probably turnips, pumpkins are from the New World) to keep the ghosts of the dead away. I love the fall, and the approach of winter is always exciting because I like to ski. This last week I've been reading a book called The Meaning of Quantum Theory by a UK writer named Jim Baggott. This remarkable theory is at the heart of contemporary physics and is wildly successful at predicting the outcomes of experiments. The problem is that no one is quite sure what it means. The results of quantum theory are spooky and give a picture of "reality" far at odds with that of the classical mechanics of Newton. Quantum mechanics probes the veil between physics and metaphysics. What the theory tells us is unequivocal: particles behave like waves some of the time and like particles some of the time, measuring the position of a particle makes it impossible to also measure its momentum, and the properties of two separated particles appear to be dependent on each other. Quantum mechanics may possibly violate the postulates of special relativity (another wildly successful theory) and might entirely upend our notions of causality and the flow of time. Or not. No one is quite sure even though the leading minds of the world have been working on it since the 1920s. I'll finish the book tonight if I don't get interrupted too often by trick-or-treaters. It's good stuff. I'll admit that I have to skip most of the math parts as calculus was over thirty years ago. There's like this veil between the squiggles on the pages and my brain!

Skepticism

According to Eric Partridge, my word guru, "skeptic" is from Greek and means "doubt." Skepticism is a good thing. In science, it is crucial. Many confuse the meaning of the word with that of "cynic." Having been accused--many times--of being a cynic, I'm used to the mix-up. The ancients who called themselves Cynics ("the snarlers") were contemptuous of society's conventions but nonetheless strove for virtuous conduct. The modern meaning of cynic is one who doubts all motives but selfishness. That is, a person who does not believe altruism exists. This has nothing to do with asking good questions and demanding to see the evidence before making a conclusion. People don't like skeptics because skeptics don't like sloppy thinking. Skeptics like to account for all the possibilities before embracing a course of action. This often comes across as contrariness or obstructionism, but it is really just trying to see things as clearly as possible.

Those in the American political scene who doubt the science behind climate change are called skeptics, but this does a disservice to real skeptics. Real skeptics are not merely deniers. Real skeptics look for flaws in an argument and demand to be convinced with logic and facts. Deniers don't require that sort of rigor. They already have their minds made up and you won't get anywhere with them using silly things like evidence. One skeptical scientist--Richard Muller of UC Berkeley and Lawrence Livermore Lab--recently published a piece in the Wall Street Journal explaining what his current research has revealed about global warming. His was a sort of meta-research as his team looked at already-existing data and analyzed its reliability. They concluded that the numbers were good--global temperatures are on the rise. They made no statement about whether the cause is anthropogenic, but that wasn't the point of the study. Here's Dr. Muller:

When we began our study, we felt that skeptics had raised legitimate issues, and we didn't know what we'd find. Our results turned out to be close to those published by prior groups. We think that means that those groups had truly been very careful in their work, despite their inability to convince some skeptics of that. They managed to avoid bias in their data selection, homogenization and other corrections.

That's science in a nutshell. If the data is good, it will hold up to scrutiny. If the methods are good, the data is trustworthy. Transparency and openness lead to progress. This is exactly the opposite of politics, where lies and half-truths are the meat-and-potatoes of campaigning. Where secrecy, denial, and re-writing history are the essential skills candidates master. Where visceral responses are more important than analysis and where being brainy is a handicap. Screw politics and learn to think like a scientist!

Read some more about Muller and the BEST project here.