Author Archives: greengeekgirl

Review: Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan

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crapalachia

Book: Crapalachia

Author: Scott McClanahan

Published: March 2013 by Two Dollar Radio

First Lines: “There were 13 of them. The children had names that ended in Y sounds.”

Rating: 4.25/5 calls to 911 to get the ambulance to take you to the store to buy 7-Up for your son

HOLY BALLS YOU GUYS I AM WRITING A BOOK REVIEW. Yes, yes, I actually read my ass a book and now I’m reviewing the motherfucker*.

*Apologies to Scott McClanahan and Two Dollar Radio for referring to the book as “motherfucker.” I have no evidence at all that the book fucked any mothers.

I didn’t know anything about Crapalachia when it arrived in my mailbox. I didn’t read the blurb on the back of the book. I knew two things going into it: one, that Scott McClanahan had a somewhat cheeky way of referring to Appalachia, to which I can relate, having my own roots sprawling through the same area of the world; two, as a setting, it would (or should) feature highly in the book, since the cover had “A biography of a place” as the tagline.

I have no damn idea how to sum up how I feel about this book, and that’s the truth. So, I’m not going to try to sum it up. Here are some thoughts I had about this book:

  • I didn’t get any sense of place from the book, even though Appalachia seemed to be intended to be present enough to be an additional character. I grew up in Kentucky and my mom lived in West Virginia (where the book takes place), so I admit I had some expectations; I didn’t really feel Appalachia in this book. Other than some brief references to coal miners and coal mining, it could have been set in a bunch of different places.
  • After I readjusted my brain from expecting a story about Appalachia, I thought his stories about his family were just about perfect. So much so that I actually just deleted a bunch of stuff I wrote and bumped up the star rating a half-star. No, it wasn’t the book I expected to read. But it was a book I really enjoyed reading once my brain wrapped itself around the actuality of the book.
  • I found McClanahan’s style a little jarring at first, but it smoothed out quickly.
  • People who liked Running With Scissors and/or The Perks of Being a Wallflower will probably enjoy this book. Or people who generally like books featuring fucked-up families.
  • I’m half-saddened, half-happy that McClanahan felt the need to add an appendix to the book to talk about what was true and what he had taken liberties with. Saddened for the obvious reason–has it really become necessary to strip away the magic of a book because some people can’t friggin’ figure out that literature is not the same thing as journalism? (Thank you, James Frey, for putting one over so hard on Oprah that this is now a Big Fucking Deal.) McClanahan, however, handled the appendix so well that it was a great addition to the book. I’ve read other books where the “confession” retroactively diminished the power of the story I’d read, but this one didn’t, and I was glad.
  • Reading this book directly after reading a book by Barbara Kingsolver is probably not the best idea and might have been what flummoxed my brain.

Overall: yes, I think this is a book to read. Once I stopped looking for Appalachia, the magic of the stories got under my skin and wouldn’t let go. The characters rolled off the page and tapped me on the shoulder. I laughed and I grew somber. I felt. I related. Good job, Mr. McClanahan.

Do you ever not feel like reading?

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I told some friends recently that I hadn’t read anything for a month. Not a single book. Barely part of a book (light poetry for a post, but no heavy reading). These were friends I connect with digitally, but I could feel them giving me a blank look over the miles–something akin to the look I might get if I unzipped my face and revealed that I have been, this whole time, a lizard person.

And then we had a fight IN SLOW MOTION

And then we had a fight IN SLOW MOTION

“Wow,” they said. “I can’t even imagine not reading a book for a whole month.”

My friends weren’t being snotty about it–I’m not trying to imply that they kicked me out of the reading club because I hadn’t read anything lately. No, they were genuinely dumbfounded. It’s not that I just hadn’t read anything to review, or just hadn’t read anything pressing on my TBR, or just hadn’t read anything _______________ (fill in your own reading distractions here). I just hadn’t felt like reading anything. At all. Not a novella, not a short story, not a misleading back-of-book blurb.

Am I weird for going through phases like this?

This hasn’t been the first time I have completely stopped reading for a period of time. Actually, I’ve gone far, far longer than a month before–I’ve probably gone half a year without picking up something to read. Especially since I got the internet fifteen years ago . . . cough. It doesn’t really bother me when I’m not reading; I read when I get the urge, and when I don’t feel like reading, I find other things to do. I make jewelry or knit or watch 50 hours of Northern Exposure* in a row. I make ice cream or take up a new hobby that I will surely abandon at some point.

Oh, TV Guide from the 90's.

Oh, TV Guide from the 90′s.

*I don’t actually know if there were a full 50 episodes of Northern Exposure. But damn, that was a good show.

Then, out of nowhere, the urge to read comes upon me again and I devour a stack of books in a week. This time, I broke my hiatus with a re-read of Prodigal Summer by Barbara Kingsolver, followed closely by Crapalachia by Scott McClanahan. Which is apropos of nothing, really, except that sharing what we’re reading is kinda what happens at this ‘ere blog.

What I’m curious about is, does this happen to you, too? Or are you more like my friends, who would feel weird if they went for a long time without reading a book? If you take the occasional hiatus, what brings you back to reading? What are some good books you’ve read after a dry spell? Leave it all in the comments below!

 

Warren G shouldn’t have been allowed to regulate.

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So, I said I would be writing about more things than just books here. Mostly, I’ve still been writing about books; so, I thought, what better way to introduce general entertainment posts than with a post about mid-90′s rap? Super perfect. (fist pump)

Warren G’s “Regulate” came out when I was 11; the song, along with the upstairs neighbor who was allowed to watch as much MTV as she wanted, helped define my middle-school-era musical tastes. I would listen to it over and over again . . . which, I probably shouldn’t have been allowed to do, since it doesn’t exactly speak kindly of women. Recently, when I needed to put together a workout mix, I turned to the mid-90′s rap that I still pretty much love. Listening to “Regulate” again for the first time in quite awhile made me arch my brow  (especially after reading this hilarious post about it).

Warren G is a terrible regulator.

No, seriously.

I mean, at the very beginning of the song, he says you can’t be any “geek off the street” if you want to regulate. You’ve gotta like, you know, be good at it. In fact, he says that–”and we’re damn good, too.” So, let’s see how the night goes for Warren G:

  • Goes out looking for females.
  • Stops for a dice game and has guns pulled on him.
  • Proceeds to get robbed at gunpoint in his own town.
  • Starts wishing he was a bird so he could fly far, far far away.
  • Is saved by Nate Dogg.
  • Is led to a car full of stranded women, found by Nate Dogg.
  • Presumably scores with one or some of the women, but Nate Dogg got the one that he said was “sexy as hell.” Sexiness status of the other women is unknown.

Is it just me, or does Warren G kind of sound like a chump? Rolling up to a game of dice and getting robbed at gunpoint seems exactly like something that would happen to a geek off the street. And Warren G was definitely not handy with the steel (ie, his gun, which, let’s be real–they probably stole from him). Then, Warren G didn’t even help with finding the lay-deez for that evening’s romp. I bet Nate Dogg even had to pay for the hotel rooms, unless they recovered Warren’s stolen property before leaving the scene of their mass murder–or, I guess, mass-self-defense.

Also . . . in a dangerous situation, it doesn’t seem very tough to me to wish you had wings to fly away instead of doing something proactive, like reaching for your own gun or, y’know . . . fighting back somehow. I would fully expect a regulator to be able to take on a bunch of random thugs on the street. (Regulators are kind of like Batman, right? That’s what I’m getting from that song. A Batman who goes out trawling for “hoes”.)

At this point, I kind of feel like Warren G is Gilligan to Nate Dogg’s Skipper. Not very competent, but Nate Dogg keeps him around because he just loves his “little buddy.”

Gilligan-The-Skipper-gilligans-island-26546640-800-597

‘Man, I wanted to find the freaks this time.’ ‘Someday, little buddy, someday.’

Filed under: Yes, these are things I really think about. Welcome to the inner part of my brain.

Meet Matilde, the love muse of Pablo Neruda.

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Serena asked me if I would participate in her National Poetry Month blog tour and I said yes, of course! Amy and I would both write posts! (Hers is here.) I initially intended to write a post about Jim Carroll, my favorite poet of all time–a poet that I’ve written poetry to. Then, this popped up on Facebook:

nerudalovepoetry

Sigh. Pablo.

When I think of (successful) love poetry, I think of Pablo Neruda. Love is one of the most moving, but one of the most difficult, subjects to tackle in verse; love poetry can go from sensual to porny, or from sweet to saccharine, or from devoted to obsessively-stalkery if the tone is just a hair off. As a subject, love is both inspiring and terrifically complicated to navigate.

The first Neruda love sonnet I came across was Sonnet XI. I was seventeen, and it gripped me from the first lines: “I crave your mouth, your voice, your hair. / Silent and starving, I prowl through the streets.” I connected to Neruda because I feel that we experience love the same way. In fact, we used lines from Neruda in our wedding ceremony; they seemed apt.

I don’t love Pablo himself, though. Not only because I adore my husband (shifty eyes), but because loving Pablo Neruda was the place of his wife and widow, Matilde Urrutia. His famous collection of love poetry, 100 Love Sonnets, was inspired by his love for her, which I think makes her one of the most well-loved women in all of poetic history. Neruda dedicated the book to her with a love letter, even: “I built up these lumber piles of love, and with fourteen boards each I built little houses, so that your eyes, which I adore and sing to, might live in them.” I decided that, for National Poetry Month, I wanted to get to know Matilde a little better. A woman who inspired the kind of poetry that Neruda wrote could be fascinating.

Neruda y Matilde.jpg

Matilde and Pablo

Sadly, I didn’t find a great deal about Matilde Urrutia, even though she was a singer before she took up with Neruda. The pair met in 1946. Neruda and his second wife, Delia, were attending a concert in Santiago; Matilde caught his eye immediately with her fiery red hair. We don’t generally think of someone who can love so deeply and write about it so beautifully as being a bit of a scoundrel, but Neruda was; he hired her in 1949 to be his nurse while they began their illicit affair under Delia’s nose. He and Matilde eventually had a home together and had been “symbolically” married while Delia was still . . . well, I was going to say “actually” married to Neruda, but from what I understand, their marriage wasn’t completely legally recognized because of Neruda’s first wife. This wasn’t the first time Neruda had taken a new lover while still married, it seems.

The Pablo Neruda Foundation’s website notes:

Matilde Urrutia arrived in Paris. Neruda was in the GDR, participating in the Third World Youth Festival, at which Matilda had also been invited to sing. They met in Berlin. In her memoirs, she wrote, “that taste of sin, to be lying, to hide, to conceal, was the biggest incentive for our love, those furtive glances… the complicity of every minute was something that grew the desire to be together, to touch, and this desire is devouring us, drags us to the conviction that we cannot live separately…”

Delia left Neruda permanently in 1955; Matilde transformed from a mistress living in the shadows to Neruda’s strong and loving wife. She left everything in her life to be with Neruda.

A painting of Matilde that hangs in their home, La Chascona, in Santiago. It portrays two faces–the public singer and the woman that Neruda privately loved. In her hair, Neruda’s profile is hidden to signify their secret relationship.

Matilde was Neruda’s last wife and fiercest protector. She forgave him his trespasses, and when she couldn’t, she sought only small revenges; instead of leaving him when he had an affair with her niece, she voted against his candidate in a major political election. (Granted, with Neruda’s political focus, voting against him wouldn’t have been “small.”) When he passed in 1973, she stayed with his body, weeping, unable to leave him. When she slept, she clung to him still.

After his death, Matilde took up the mantle of Neruda’s political causes. She suffered for this; the political climate in Chile at the time was stormy enough for many to believe that Neruda had been murdered by political enemies. In her will, she directed their estate to create the Pablo Neruda Foundation, primarily dedicated to maintaining his legacy.

I can’t say I approve of how Neruda and Matilde managed their affair, but it’s not my right to pass judgment. I feel for Delia (and his first wife, Marie, for that matter), but I can’t ignore that the love Pablo and Matilde shared was deep and significant. We should all be so lucky to have love like that.

I will leave you with a sonnet from Pablo to Matilde. Normally I would post a lovey sonnet (I kind of love love), but I saw this one and felt it really captured the turmoil of their lives outside of the love bubble.

Sonnet LXII (from “Evening” in 100 Love Sonnets)

Woe is me, woe is us, my dearest:
we wanted only love, to love one another,
but among so many griefs it was fated
that only we two would be so hurt.

We wanted the you and the me for ourselves,
the you of a kiss, the me of a secret bread:
and that’s how it was, infinitely simple,
till hatred came in through the window.

They hate, those who did not love
our love, nor any other love: those people,
wretched as chairs in an empty room–

till they were tangled in ashes,
till their ominous faces
faded in the fading twilight.

Sources: “Lover and guardian: Matilde Urrutia”

“Matilde Urrutia” from Universidad de Chile

The Pablo Neruda Foundation

Reading Rage: You can’t hide a self-published work under a vanity press name. Just don’t.

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hiding

I will just say that my book was published by Fancy Unicorn Pants Press and people will never know I published it myself.

Our review policy has undergone (is that a word? did I conjugate that correctly?) some changes in the recent past. I decided to stop accepting pitches from self-published authors because it was eating up an enormous amount of my time for very little return on my time investment. I changed the policy at that time to say that we would only accept books published by small and/or independent presses, because that’s kind of our bag when it comes to reviewing books.

An interesting thing happened when I changed the policy, which led directly to our new new policy (we just don’t accept books anymore). We started getting a lot of books that were “published” by small presses that I’d never, ever heard of before. Not that I’ve heard of every small press, but I’ve gotten fairly well-versed in small presses; when I see one I haven’t heard of, I like to look them up. Just for my own education–and, okay yeah, because some of these “small presses” were a tad suspicious. When I followed the Google trail for these presses, I found some interesting things:

  • Many of the small presses were vanity presses, where the author paid to have their book published. This? is not the same as being published by a small press.
  • Other authors actually made up small presses, which had only published their book, or maybe two or three selections (probably from their friends). The pages for these presses are usually nothing more than a makeshift, generically-branded shop where you can purchase the author’s book. It’s pretty obvious that it’s a fake press.
  • Still other authors didn’t even bother making any kind of online presence for their fake press. They would slap an appropriate-sounding press name on their book, but when I searched for any inkling of the press existing, I found nothing.

headdesk

Look, authors who have tried or are considering trying this–it’s really obvious when a small press is not a real press. It’s really obvious when someone starts a press (even if they’re legitimately trying to start a real press, which is only true about half a percent of the time in these cases) just to self-publish without being “self-published.” I’ve never run across this situation where I have had to carefully ponder whether the press was real or not. The evidence is immediately damning. The only way to be slick enough to pull this off is actually to fully launch a legitimate small press where you have editors and designers and you publish books for real… and then you’re not being sneaky anyway, you’re being industrious.

Pretending to have been published by a small press when you haven’t been is really annoying. For one thing, it’s totally lying, which I hate on its own. Only smarmy people and grifters lie about things that they’re representing or selling. If you published your own book, you shouldn’t hide that behind a fake press name–in my eyes, that’s tantamount to fraud. The difference between being published and publishing one’s own book is quite significant in terms of process; to indicate that you were published when you did the process yourself is to misrepresent your book. If you want to put a vanity name on  your book, then you need to make it clear that it’s a self-published book under the name of your vanity press. I shouldn’t have to go hunt through Google to try to figure out whether you published your book yourself.

(And if you’re reading this thinking “What’s the big deal?”–if it weren’t a big deal, it wouldn’t be happening in the first place; nobody would be trying to bury the self-published stigma under a fake press name.)

It was also annoying because it was disrespectful to us. Our policy clearly stated no self-published books. Even if your book has a press name slapped on it, if you self-published it, you self-published it. The fake press names were included specifically to circumvent our policy, which had 0% to do with whether a book had a press name on it and 100% to do with the differences in process between small-press publishing and self-publishing. Those authors were attempting to cheat their way into getting a review, and apparently didn’t think I would be smart enough to figure out their tactics. Because, you know, that’s exactly the kind of person you want writing a review of your book. Derp.

Dear respectable self-published authors: all of these shady jerkwads are ruining it for the rest of you. I’m so sorry you have to deal with stigma because a bunch of people don’t know how to be courteous and professional.

Here’s the deal, shady authors: bloggers such as myself put a lot of work into our blogs. We will do our homework if we specify certain policies. And we talk to each other–try to put one over on one of us, and word is going to get around to many of the rest of us. Information travels at high speed these days, and we don’t like to be tricked or lied to, so that’s information we will definitely pass along whenever the opportunity arises. So, you need to stop trying to loophole yourself out of being self-published. If you did the work yourself, own it! Don’t bury it under a fake press name. It’s rude and perilously close to fraud.

Have you experienced this tactic as a blogger or a reader? Have you bought books thinking that they were traditionally-published, only to find out later that they were self-published? What’s your favorite TV show? Leave your comments below!

The Evolution of an Insatiable Bookslut: Susie

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Reading

Not me, but a reasonable facsimile.

This is a new series we’re doing, talking about how we got into reading, how we got into reading what we read, and so forth.

I don’t know if I would be a reader if it weren’t for my mother. Mom has been a reader as far back as I can remember (and probably further back than that, although I’ve never asked her about her reading history); when I was little-little, she read to me every day. Some of my favorites: Ernie’s Big Mess, The Care Bears and the Terrible Twos (I totally had Care Bear sheets; I loved the shit out of some Care Bears, y’all), The Monster at the End of this Book, The Cat in the Hat and Green Eggs and Ham. Also that Dr. Seuss alphabet book.

Between her reading to me and watching as much Sesame Street as I could find on television, I learned to read when I was about three.  I know, Mom thought I was just memorizing the books, too–until we were at the grocery store one day, and while we were checking out, I pointed at something and said “Look, Mom! Buy one, get one free!” The surprise face that my mom makes when she tells that story is priceless. She loves telling that story, I think, because she’s the one who taught me how to read and write.

Thanks, Mama. Owe you one.

Mom is also the one who got me into my first big-girl chapter books. My parents got divorced when I was, mm, eight I think. My birthday was a few months later, and my mom sent me a box of gifts that included a Baby-Sitters Club book, Mary Anne Saves the Day. I downed that book in about an hour. What was this magic that was The Baby-Sitters Club? For years, I used my five-dollar-a-week allowance to collect the books. The best time of the week was getting to go to the bookstore and pick out a new, un-read book. My dad moved our single bookcase into my room (Dad was never much of a reader, although I did turn him onto Kurt Vonnegut when I was a teen–there’s a writer for everyone, I think) to hold my collection, which I took great pride in keeping very organized–unlike the rest of my room, which could have been declared a federal disaster area.

4,_Mary_Anne_Saves_the_Day

When I had all of the BSC books that the store had–and somehow, I never bought a duplicate; I could just remember which ones I had because I’d read them all five or six or fifteen times–I branched out into other books. At some point, I picked up my very first science-fiction(eqsue?) book, A Wrinkle in Time. Which I promptly read to pieces. I bet I read that book at least fifty times, maybe more. Maybe quite a lot more. The seed that it planted bloomed later when I discovered adult science fiction; I read Ray Bradbury in middle school, Asimov and Douglas Adams in high school, and went from there. I may not write about it much here, but I have a deep love of sci-fi and speculative fiction. And, okay, I admit it–I also love Star Trek and I read a crapload of Star Trek novels.

In school, I was a rather . . .  troubled student, up until about eighth grade. Low grades, detentions, and I took my fair turn being hauled into the principal’s office. I definitely got detention for giving a cafeteria worker the finger behind her back, and someone ratted me out (dirty snitch . . . in my defense, that cafeteria worker was a first-class twat). I almost had to drop out of accelerated English in 7th grade, because I was actually failing. Yes, I was failing English. Me. I got my ass in gear around that time, and I’m pretty sure everyone was completely shocked when, after summer break, I came back busting out A’s on every report card. It was like I had been replaced with a cyborg who did homework.

To go along with my new super-student status, I also joined the Academic Team. You know, that team where you memorize stuff and regurgitate it while taking tests or doing quiz bowl? My focus, being the reader that I was, ended up being Literature, and that changed my reading life considerably. Academic Team exposed me to books I’d never heard about before then, poetry and classics, and tons of literary terms that I had to memorize. I started getting curious about the books I was memorizing facts about; I started reading them in my spare time, in-between trashy horror novels.

apetit

Academic Team was like this, but less funny.

In related news: I was a giant nerd. That whole “geek girl” moniker is completely legit.

Two things happened when I was a senior that cemented my reading habits pretty firmly–at least, as firmly as they ever get cemented, since they’re always evolving somewhat. The Richards family had finally gotten the internet not too long before (seriously, it took us forever to get the damn internet) and I found myself frequenting a bookish chatroom. You know, back when you chatted with IRC? That’s where I met Rob way back in the day. (Fun fact? Also met my husband through people in this room. INTERNET ROMANCE.) Nearly everyone who visited this room was older and read quality stuff. I became a literature snob for a long time (thankfully, I grew out of that).

During this time, I also got a job at a bookstore, which gave me 1) disposable income with almost no bills save gasoline, and 2) a discount on books. I bought ALL THE BOOKS. I bought Kerouac and Burroughs, Salinger and Orwell, Márquez, Ellison, Vonnegut (which my father swiped from me). I didn’t even get around to reading all of these books yet, but I loved collecting them. The stories they held felt like magic. I was sad when I sold my collection off several years ago–I had carted them from place to place for years, much to everyone’s dismay who ever helped me move.

I didn’t grow up in an environment that exactly fostered reading; with my mom not being around, and being in a town that isn’t known for its great readers (for years, the only bookstore I knew of was a small Waldenbooks in the mall), reading was actually kind of discouraged. I can’t count the number of times my dad yelled at me to get my nose out of a book and go outside. I needed reading, though. I needed it badly–as an escape, primarily, but also as an education. Books taught me things that my family and teachers neglected; I learned compassion and critical thinking, rationality. And I learned about love and humanity. Reading saved my life.

Thanks, reading. Thanks, books, for always being there.

Book of Love

Don’t worry books; I will never do this to you.

You should read this: História, História by Eleanor Stanford

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historiacover400

Book: História, História: Two Years in the Cape Verde Islands

Author: Eleanor Stanford

Published: March 2013 by CCLaP

First Lines: ”We landed on the island of Sal on a July afternoon. We had been flying over unbroken ocean for hours, and suddenly we were descending, despite the fact that there was no land in view.”

Rating: 4.5/5 songs about sodadi, or deep longing

Before I even start this review, I want to point out something awesome about this book, and apparently this applies to all books put out in ebook format by CCLaP (Chicago Center for Literature and Photography): you can download e-copies of this book directly from their website for free. Not just a pdf, but also a MOBI or an ePub. Free. If you like it, you can pay voluntarily, any amount that you choose. So, if you think you’d like the book, go here and download it for your e-reader. Please also consider donating to CCLaP if you read the book, because this ebook policy? is fantastic.

História, História is a memoir in essay form, sort of like David Sedaris’s books (although not similar in writing style)–the essays are separate but also form a whole work when put together, rather than being fragmented.  Eleanor Stanford tells the story of her time volunteering in the Peace Corps, during which she was stationed in Cape Verde, islands off the coast of Africa that were settled by the Portuguese. She talks about the language, which isn’t Portuguese but a derivative called Creole (Kriolu); she talks about the people, curiously neither African nor Portuguese, and not fitting in with either; she talks about her marriage, trembling on ever-shakier ground.

Stanford’s prose is vivid; I could feel Cape Verde around me. To me, it felt like our travels through Mexico, especially the times we drove past the tourist areas and into small towns where the roads were dusty and unpaved. I could put myself there, and I could feel her love for the people, the culture, and the language. Her prose is also lovely, but without being flowery or affected. Stanford has a knack for including details that illuminate and nixing details that would bog down the story.

I loved the way that Stanford intertwined her personal journey and the culture of the islands, but I was initially disturbed when Stanford turned her observational skills on herself; twenty-two at the time that the events were taking place, the girl in the book was  . . . well, a bit whiny. Several pages after my thinking that, though, Stanford demonstrated that she has keen hindsight vision: “Later, I would want to shake that twenty-two year old girl, to tell her to get over herself, to stop being so serious”. I saw then that Stanford had deliberately and perfectly encapsulated that state of being twenty-two, not quite a full adult but certainly no longer a child. If it made me uncomfortable for book-Ellie, it’s because I remember all too well being in that state; I would also love to go back and shake some sense into myself.

I actually really appreciated the arc of herself as a character; she unfolded her troubles subtly, without beating the reader about the head with them. I worried that it would become a work of first-world self-indulgence, a risk that we always take when we read about Americans going to less-privileged areas of the world. Stanford wrote about herself candidly, without inviting pity but allowing us to be compassionate for the girl she was; she wrote about Cape Verde in the same way. I have a lot of respect for Stanford showing us her life from that time, at an age that many of us would love to forget ever existed.

I only wish I could have been reading this in San Quintín, where it’s too windy to fish and the beach is made of dunes. I definitely understand the feeling of sodadi, a kriolu word that Stanford explains means something like an aching longing. (Can you tell I’m a little heartsick for Mexico lately?) I really enjoyed this book, even if it stirred up a lot of longing feels. I hope you give it a shot, as well (especially since you can read the ebook for free. FREE YOU GUYS).

 

What makes a good villain?

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evilvillaindiagram

Possibly more comic-book-villain than literary-villain but YOU GET THE POINT

We love villains, don’t we? I mean, we love heroes, sure . . . but a good villain really turns our cranks. They get to be wild, unconstrained badasses; they get the best lines; they get to give into those primitive human urges that the rest of us only dream of dabbling in. They get to wear cool outfits and make funny jokes. Heroes can be kind of square, but villains? Far less likely.

What makes a villain good, though? I mean, besides the badassery and the well-timed barbs. I ask because it’s entirely possible to write a shitty villain. Just being a villain doesn’t make a character awesome. So let’s explore some of the characteristics that make legendary villains.

A good villain has complex motivations.

When we find out that someone did something heinous–killed a bunch of people, for example, although that’s probably not even the worst example–for something as piddly as basic greed, I think it tends to leave a bad taste in our mouths. “He did all of that.. just for money? What an asshole.“ I feel that way about certain real-life people (cough) who go around wrecking other people’s lives because they have the mentality of children seeing how much they can get away with before they get punished. I envision a fat little Dudley Dursley type, sticking his hand in the cookie jar again and again until someone finally smacks it. That’s not a good villain at all, that’s a chump villain–they can make great characters, and even great antagonists, but as the major nemesis of a hero? I think not.

A good villain has a good back story. He or she has a reason to be so fucked up. He’s not just greedy, or bloodthirsty, or generically “evil.” Something drives a good villain; he lacks something that he’s desperate to fix or fill. A good villain would scoff at someone who gave in so easily and crudely to base desires. Common murderer? Please. Where’s the passion? Stumbling into villainy is for amateurs.

We don’t need that back story explained to fucking death, though.

Nothing, and I mean nothing, pisses me off more than when people take a great villain and, after he becomes popular, go back and explain exactly how he got so disturbed in exhausting and/or convenient detail. An example off the top of my head: Rob Zombie’s Halloween. Is it just me, or was Michael Myers a hell of a lot scarier before Rob Zombie made up some bullshit white trash background for him? The original Michael Myers was a “force of nature,” with a complex pathology hinted at through his family background and first murder; Rob Zombie turned him into an episode of Jerry Springer.

The truth is, it’s really hard to completely explain extreme villainous behavior in back story. You’re looking at a potent brew of trauma, brokenness, bad seeds, bad timing, opportunity. But a good villain also has to own what they do, or they’re chumps–writers often get carried away creating elaborate reasons for a villain to have gone bad, but in doing so, they take away some of the significance of that choice to cross the line. Letting a villain off with the insanity defense makes him more of a victim than a villain–he can be both, but taking away the choice pales him as an antagonist.

There’s also the risk that a writer will end up writing a completely unbelievable back story that’s so full of holes Swiss cheese would be envious. Over-explanation can absolutely ruin a good villain.

A good villain should be as powerful as the hero, and probably just a tiny bit more powerful.

Imagine the story of David and Goliath. Now imagine reversing them. David, although still righteous, comes off a bit of a bully if he’s the big one and Goliath is the puny one. I mean, it wouldn’t even be a story. Big guy crushes little guy, yawn.

A good villain may have started off life weak and defenseless, but if he doesn’t become strong–either mentally or physically–then he doesn’t pose any kind of challenge for the hero. There’s no story there.

Weak villain syndrome is sometimes known as over-powered hero syndrome. The villain isn’t necessarily meant to be weak, but the hero has no weaknesses at all and defeats the villain without a lot of effort. (A lot of the J.D. Robbs lately have fallen prey to this . . .) If the hero doesn’t fail at least once, the story sucks. Let’s be real. There’s not even a point if the hero can just swagger in and take care of business without breaking a sweat.

A good villain is also not predictable.

If a villain telegraphs all of his moves so that the hero can counter them effectively, well, that doesn’t make for a very good story, either. See previous point about the hero needing to fail and break a sweat and etc etc.

Good villains have a multifaceted personality.

I always feel like a villain, in a different set of circumstances, could have been a hero. They have many of the same qualities–passion, inner strength, resolve, drive–but somewhere along the way, the villain got fucked up about something. Even totally fucked-up people, though–even super-evil people–have more than that to their personalities. The Joker is a great example; everyone knows that Catwoman and Batman have a sometimes-romance, but fewer people talk about the bromance between Joker and Batman. Joker, despite being a psychopath who constantly puts Batman (and many others) in fatal danger, is also one of the few people who really, truly understands Batman; the Joker’s understanding is, of course, a little twisted . . . but it’s there. In The Killing Joke, Alan Moore explores this theme, showing flashes of humanity in Joker that we rarely see; in the final scenes, Batman tries to convince Joker that he can change his ways, but Joker, regretfully, tells Batman that this isn’t possible. (The film The Dark Knight also explores the Batman and Joker connection but doesn’t show any real vulnerability in Joker.)

Showing a villain’s soft underbelly makes the character more complex, more sympathetic–hell, even likable at times. This can cause great emotional conflict in many of us (the Snape Debates still rage on: good guy, or bad guy?) because his actions make him so unlikable. Or it can spark understanding in us, which can be disturbing as we contemplate how we could just as easily end up in the same position. Emotional connection is good, but almost nobody can connect to someone who is pure evil and little else. Purely evil people simply don’t exist; even psychopaths have a distinct pathology that goes beyond “just evil.”

A good villain needs to be his or her own entity, not just a challenge for the hero.

This ties into having complex motivations and humanity, so I won’t linger here. Suffice to say that the villain needs his or her own momentum–a villain can’t just exist for the hero to fight against. It’s like how a love interest is boring if they’re only there to further the  protagonist’s arc. We have to be just as emotionally invested in the villain as we are the hero, so he can’t just be a throwaway pawn–he needs substance.

A good villain hits our hero right in the feels.

Wanna ratchet up the tension between hero and villain? Have the villain pull off some dastardly plot that harms a person or thing that the hero holds dear, or have the villain outwit the hero and pull off an amazing scheme while rubbing the hero’s nose in his victory. The hero just went from “Gee, this guy, he’s kind of an evil bastard” to “I WILL FUCKING DESTROY YOU.” A good villain is able to upset the hero, able to disrupt his whole damn life until their beef is settled.

What’s your favorite aspect of a good villain?

I’ve only scratched the surface when it comes to good villainy. What do you love in a villain? What makes a villain unforgettable? Also, what do writers do wrong with villains that drives you insane? Drop your thoughts in the comments below!

 

I do not like the thing that you like, and that is okay.

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Also books, television, films, and clothing.

If you’ve been poking around IB for awhile, you know that I have pretty distinct tastes in books. While I’m not a total book snob (see also, my husband, who will re-read War and Peace fifty times before he will ever finish On the Road. And those are both literature), I do tend to hug the border of book snobbery fairly closely. I’m not one to take recommendations from people because it puts me in an obligatory position–and more often than not, I end up having to pretend I really liked something when I really did not. I know I could just be honest and say it very kindly, but people still tend to get a puppy-dog look when you tell them that the book they asked you to read really was not your cuppa. The look, it wounds me.

So, I get literary elitism, to a point. I do. And yeah, I am firmly in the “some books are better than others” camp–not just that I like some books better than others, but that some books actually have more overall literary quality than others. I do believe that there are certain marks of “good” writing (although I’m probably a lot less rigid on those marks than some, admittedly). Yeah, the criteria were made up by people, and yeah, they are subjective–but they have been fine-tuned by hundreds, nay, thousands of writers, editors, and scholars through the years, so I think they’re legitimate standards of quality.

So I get it. I do.

Here’s where the whole subject of literary elitism–any kind of elitism, really–breaks down for me: when people start not only judging the work, but judging the people who like the work. Looking down your nose at someone because they enjoy something? Not cool. Not cool at all. Like, it’s fine to say you think Dan Brown is a talentless hack . . . but, you know, when your friend just told you how much they really loved the new Dan Brown novel, that might not be the best timing.

Cue the eye-rolling here, of course. Die-hard snobs–the ones who have this problem in the first place–feel that it’s perfectly acceptable to judge others for what they enjoy. Why should they worry about another person’s feelings? They’re the ones who have to live with their shitty taste. Etc, etc. The fault in this logic, though, is that it assumes taste is built solely on the perceived quality of the work and the ability of the person to appreciate works of quality. Taste isn’t just limited to how good the work is, though. You have other factors coming into play–emotional connection, nostalgia, memory, personality, life experiences, setting, mood. Taste can be as individual as fingerprints.

Even though this is a bookish blog, I’m going to use music as an example. Music is an area where I constantly feel insecure. I actually thought about writing this post when I realized that I almost never share music on my social media. I’m friends with a lot of people who have very strong opinions about music, and a few who have made it clear that they have no qualms telling people when they have shitty taste. I’m not going to subject myself to that kind of treatment for something that I like, even if what I like isn’t considered “cool;” I have my reasons for liking what I like, and I don’t have to apologize for it. But I keep quiet about it all the same, just to avoid grief.

I never want to make a person feel that way about what they like–especially because most of us slum it in some ways. I see literary writers on Twitter live-tweeting The Bachelorette; I see those same music snob friends going crazy on Facebook over candy-pop tween book series. These kinds of things are mindless entertainment, and why shouldn’t we be able to have that without people looking down their noses at us? I have admitted freely that I watch The Jersey Shore. Yes, it’s trashy, and that’s what I love about it. I love that I can get embroiled in someone else’s dramz for an hour or so and not have to think about things. It’s kind of awesome.

I guess the overall point that I’m trying to make is that, yes, you certainly can judge things to be good or bad–but for pity’s sake, shut the hell up about it if you’re in danger of hurting someone’s feelings over it, because you can’t judge a person by their mindless entertainment. You can, however, judge someone for being an elitist asshole. I have to beg to differ with Rob Fleming/Gordon, here: it’s not what you like, it’s what you are like that matters. And if you’re the kind of person who kills the joy that someone else finds in entertainment because it’s not up to your standards, you’re a fucking jerk.