THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/29/08 -- Vol. 26, No. 35, Whole Number 1482
El Honcho Grande: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
La Honcha Bonita: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
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Topics:
The Bell Curve (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Netsuke (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
CHOP SHOP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
Robert A. Heinlein (letters of comment by Rob Mitchell
and Taras Wolansky)
THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
This Week's Reading (THE PAINTED VEIL and OPENING ATLANTIS)
(book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: The Bell Curve (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
I saw a copy of THE BELL CURVE in my local library so I thought I
would try to see why the book was so controversial. But it is a
thick book and a heavy slog to read the book. I have been
reading it for a week. I am still more than a standard deviation
from the center of the book. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Netsuke (comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last summer I visited the Toledo Museum of Art in Ohio. I was
discussing the museum with a friend who had also visited it
recently. She had enjoyed their exhibit of glass. I told her
that we had spent a lot of time looking at the netsuke
collection. She did not know what netsuke was. I guess if she
did not know, there are other fans who also do not, though I
first heard about it from other fans and it is to some degree
fannish. I thought that rather than just explain it to her, I
would write an article about this small but interesting art form
dating back to 17th century Japan.
This is a whole field of art that came about because the wearing
of kimonos is in some ways inconvenient. Kimonos, you see, have
no pockets. What you take with you when you wear a kimono is
what you have in your hand or hide up your sleeve or attach to
the kimono. They do have belts or sashes called "obi". The
Japanese who wore kimonos before pockets were known had no good
way to carry their valuables. To solve this problem the user
would carry nicely decorated boxes called "inro" or "sagemono".
They were about the size of a hand held flat. These boxes hung
from silk cords that were pulled up through the obi. The rope
would fall back through without a toggle at the end to keep the
rope from slipping back through the belt. That toggle was called
a netsuke. I assume the toggles were originally plain. But not
content to leave these toggles simple the decorative artists
started to get better ideas. Fancy carved netsuke became their
own art form. Soon it was a status symbol to have a beautiful
toggle at the top of the obi. All sorts of strange themes were
used and many interesting figures were carved for use.
See http://tinyurl.com/2rwucw
The Japanese love decoration and they love tiny art. Bonsai
trees are popular in Japan and so are intricate sword fittings.
The toggle or netsuke (pronounced "nets-kee", by the way) started
to be a very beautiful item. It became an entire art form to
carve figures on a scale of about an inch and a half. Sometimes
the figures are animals, sometimes demons, and sometimes people.
They can be made of ivory, wood, porcelain, stone, bone, turtle
shell, amber, or even metal. They are carved in amazing detail.
Generally they are about an inch and a half high.
The subject matter could be funny looking people, animals,
demons, monsters, people in erotic positions, or just scenes from
everyday life. To see some of these lovingly carved pieces you
can just set your search engine to look for images of netsuke.
Among my favorites is a figure of a little puppy looking in
amazement around at his back where a fly has landed. This is all
carved in very precise detail. Another piece I rather liked was
at first appearance a fearsome demon. If one looks inside the
mouth of the demon, however, one sees that it is really a
festival costume and inside the mouth you can see the head of the
man wearing the costume and a big grin on his face.
There are few restrictions on the artist who made netsuke. The
figures have to be strong. I have an imitation netsuke that is a
coiled snake with a delicate forked tongue. Part of the tongue
broke off transporting it home, but it was a small loss. Whoever
the artist was he did not understand netsuke. A real piece of
netsuke should be carved with great detail, but the result should
not be delicate. Real netsuke get pushed back and forth through
the obi and anything that can break off will or might snag a silk
kimono. Real netsuke do not have flat uncarved bases. They
should look complete from every angle but for the fact that they
may have the holes through them for the cord or if not a place
where the hole can be carved out.
People have a fascination with the miniature. Because of its
small size the netsuke has a certain delicacy and charm that is
missing from larger sculpture. I recommend the reader to go
through go to the search engine pages listed below. Look at not
just the top page but the next and the next. You will see a lot
of very nice pieces from sites all over the Internet. Remember
each is only about an inch and a half across.
Google: http://tinyurl.com/27fx4v
AlltheWeb: http://tinyurl.com/2bljrb
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: CHOP SHOP (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Life on the streets of Queens, New York, is a hand-to-
mouth existence for a twelve-year-old Latino and his sister. The
camera seems simply to follow young Alejandro around and show us
the story of his life and his relationship with his older sister
with whom he shares a plywood-clad room over the title auto body
shop. Made on a very small budget, this film is actors in front
of a camera telling a story that seems very real. The low-key
drama has a real feel for the texture of life in the underbelly
of Queens. Ramin Bahrani (of MAN PUSH CART) directs and co-
authored the script. Rating: +2 (-4 to +4) or 7/10
This review contains minor plot spoilers.
Using no music, little cinematic artifice and an almost
documentary style, we are ushered into to the world of Alejandro.
Ale (played by Alejandro Polanco) is a Puerto Rican boy about
twelve surviving by doing whatever he can. He lives in an auto
bodywork shop in Queens. Roger Ebert's review informs me that
this area is the "Valley of Ashes" that F. Scott Fitzgerald
describes us in THE GREAT GATSBY. It has not greatly improved
over the years. Now it is the kind of dead end trap that we
think of as being in the Third World.
Ale goes from one small job to the next. He works at the shop
and tries to drag in customers; he does day labor for
construction; he steals hubcaps; he hawks illegal DVDs; he sells
candy on the subway. When he does the latter he announces to the
subway car that he is NOT selling for a basketball team. In fact
he does not go to school at all. We simply follow Ale around
with a handheld camera and watch as he gets himself in and out of
trouble. Ale's sixteen-year old sister is Isamar played by
Isamar Gonzales. The five major actors all use their real first
names.
Isamar has just run away from a safe house and is now living with
Ale above the chop shop in a room with plywood walls and
apparently one small bed. Together the two of them banter like
brothers and sisters do anywhere. Their dream is to own a taco
and beans truck. Isamar says it should have her name painted on
the side, Ale insists it should have his name. Isamar cooks and
cleans the tiny room, Ale hustles earning what money comes in.
He and his friends talk in a disarmingly normal way about
baseball and hookers. Trouble begins as the boys watch the
hookers ply their trade on the ugly streets and Ale thinks he
sees Isamar in a truck cab. Now the snack truck means to him not
just an easier living, it is also how he hopes to rescue his
sister from prostitution.
Ramin Bahrani is an Iranian-American filmmaker whose film MAN
PUSH CART was well-received on the film festival circuit. In
this follow-up film, he uses a style with a real feel of
authenticity. Before the plot takes hold one might almost think
this was a documentary. Yet eventually, as with THE BICYCLE
THIEF, the scenes start adding up to a poignant plot. Alejandro
Polanco has a lot of personality that holds this very low-key
drama together as the story wends it way to a melancholy and
inconclusive conclusion.
The setting may be New York, but it could be Africa or Central
America. And the story could be from post-war Italy with
filmmakers like Vittoria De Sica. I rate CHOP SHOP a +2 on the
-4 to +4 scale or 7/10.
Film Credits: http://us.imdb.com/title/tt0990404/
[-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Robert A. Heinlein (letters of comment by Rob Mitchell and
Taras Wolansky)
In response to Evelyn's suggestion on what early Heinlein to read
("STARSHIP TROOPERS ... A reading binge of STARSHIP TROOPERS,
Joe Haldeman's THE FOREVER WAR, and John Scalzi's OLD MAN"S WAR
would not be unreasonable to suggest.") (made in the 02/22/08
issue of the MT VOID), Rob Mitchell responds, "As the Distinguished
Heinlein Apologist Laureate, I respectfully disagree with Evelyn,
or at least potentially disagree. I'd recommend THE MOON IS A
HARSH MISTRESS, especially if the potential reader is a history
fan. Sure, the math and computer technology is dated, but the
book played a fundamental role in developing my adult character.
STARSHIP TROOPERS (a great book, in my opinion) forced me to ask
myself, "What do I owe Society?", but THE MOON IS A HARSH MISTRESS
forced me to ask myself, "WHat does Society owe me?" [-rm]
And Taras responds to the initial question from Joe Karpierz in the
same issue by saying:
If I had to pick one (1) Heinlein novel from the Forties and
Fifties, it wouldn't be STARSHIP TROOPERS. Heinlein admitted that
book was written in a rush and partly as a polemic, so it doesn't
show him at his best.
Not that it might not be interesting for other reasons to read, in
order, STARSHIP TROOPERS (thesis), Haldeman's FOREVER WAR
(antithesis), and Scalzi's OLD MAN'S WAR (synthesis).
It is cool to realize Heinlein was writing STARSHIP TROOPERS and
STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND at the same time. For Heinlein, the
defense of sexual freedom was one of the reasons you had a strong
military.
But to pick one novel to represent Heinlein in the Forties and the
Fifties: how about METHUSELAH'S CHILDREN, serialized in 1941 and
edited into a book in 1958. This book introduced Heinlein's
fictional alter ego, Lazarus Long (a.k.a. Woodrow Wilson Smith),
who later starred in TIME ENOUGH FOR LOVE (1973), a curious grab-
bag of a novel which Heinlein may have thought was going to be his
last.
Among the so-called juveniles, I have a special soft spot for THE
STAR BEAST (1954), which shows off just how far ahead of his time
Heinlein was in thinking about race and gender. [-tw]
===================================================================
TOPIC: THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES (letter of comment by Dan Kimmel)
In response to Mark's review of THE SPIDERWICK CHRONICLES in the
02/22/08 issue of the MT VOID, Dan Kimmel writes, "It's actually a
decent condensation of the series. The books themselves are slim
volumes with lots of pictures, so together it's only one standard
size novel, but there's a lot of repetition. In one they have an
encounter with goblins, in another with fairies, in the last with
the ogre. So the team of writers (if they even met each other)
managed to hit the highlights and find the through story while
paring away a lot of stuff. I thought it was an entertaining
movie. [-dk]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
THE PAINTED VEIL by W. Somerset Maugham (ISBN-13
978-0-099-50739-0, ISBN-10 0-099-50739-0) was this month's
selection for the "original" book discussion group. Mark and I
had seen the movie a while ago, and Mark suggested the book for
the group. The screenwriter changed a lot; more specifically,
he added a lot. There is no aqueduct-building in the book, and no
insurrection or civil war. (The ending is also significantly
different.) I think the reason for this (besides wanting to add
action sequences) was that the book was told entirely from
the main character Kitty's point of view, and that was considered
undesirable for the movie. First of all, it would mean that the
lead actress would be in every scene, which is hard work. And
second, this in turn would make the film "a woman's film", at
least to the backers, meaning that it would not attract a wide
enough audience. So the screenwriter added scenes of Walter Fane
in the lab, scenes of Walter Fane in the hospital, scenes of
Walter Fane by the river, and so on. Of Kitty's feelings about
the nuns and their life and emotions--the main focus of the book--
very little is left.
They also moved the location of the British "colony" from Hong
Kong, to Shanghai, for reasons I can't figure out. (Maugham
himself had to change it from Hong Kong to the fictional Tching-
Yen when the book first came out for legal reasons.)
[The film is set in the 1920s and to add dramatic tension they
inserted anti-Western rioting in China's nationalist struggle.
It was part of the same struggle you see in the film THE SAND
PEBBLES. That would not work in Hong Kong where the British had
a lot of control, but it did go well with Shanghai. It makes the
film less faithful to the book but a whole lot more interesting.
-mrl]
The notions of marriage in THE PAINTED VEIL seem very similar to
Jane Austen's: Kitty is pressured to marry by her mother because,
as she ask, "How long can you expect your father to support you?"
Also, her younger sister gets engaged and Kitty feels she must
marry, or be "shamed" by her continued spinsterhood. This is
expressed more explicitly in the novel, which gives more of
Kitty's history, rather than just the few days before her
wedding.
OPENING ATLANTIS by Harry Turtledove (ISBN-13 978-0-451-46174-2,
ISBN-10 0-451-46174-6) is yet another alternate history from
Turtledove and is the start of yet another series ("the first of
a brand-new trilogy"). And there has already been another story
in this setting published elsewhere. But at least this series
seems to be a group of relatively independent stories with a
common setting, rather than one very long story published in
multiple volumes. In fact, OPENING ATLANTIS is not one story,
but really three novellas set about a hundred years apart. The
first, "New Hastings", is the most interesting, postulating the
discovery and colonization of a land (large island/small
continent) between Europe and North America. Or perhaps more
accurately, it detaches the eastern part of North America and
moves it a thousand miles or so east. Because this land (named
Atlantis by its discoverers) is much closer to Europe, it is
colonized fifty years earlier than in our world, and pretty much
simultaneously by the English, French, and Spanish. (The
stories, however, are all told from the English point of view.)
The other two stories ("Avalon" and "Nouveau Redon") are less
interesting. The second seems to be a fairly mundane pirate
story, not substantially different from what one might find in
our world, and the last a conflict among the three nations who
have settled Atlantis. The stand-alone, "Audubon in Atlantis",
was probably the best of the series so far.
As is often the case, one complaint I have is that European
history does not seem to diverge enough as times progresses. The
Hanovers still follow the Stuarts who presumably followed the
Tudors who followed the Yorks, but with English colonies in the
New World a hundred and fifty years sooner, one suspects that
European politics would be fairly different (e.g., less threat
from Spain). [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Suppose atomic bombs had reduced the population
of the world to one brother and sister;
should they let the human race die out?
-- Bertrand Russell