THE MT VOID
Mt. Holz Science Fiction Society
02/06/04 -- Vol. 22, No. 32
El Presidente: Mark Leeper, mleeper@optonline.net
The Power Behind El Pres: Evelyn Leeper, eleeper@optonline.net
Back issues at http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper
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Topics:
MISSION OF GRAVITY Discussion (announcement)
Philcon Convention Report (announcement by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Nominations (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Las Vegas (more comments by Mark R. Leeper)
BIG FISH (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS (and cataloguing) (book review and
comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
This Week's Reading (A POUND OF PAPER: CONFESSIONS OF A
BOOK ADDICT, THE SUN ALSO RISES, THE HOUSE ON
MANGO STREET, and TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE) (book
comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
===================================================================
TOPIC: MISSION OF GRAVITY Discussion (announcement)
There will be a discussion of Hal Clement's MISSION OF GRAVITY at
the Holmdel (NJ) Barnes & Noble on Friday, February 20, at 7:30 PM.
===================================================================
TOPIC: Philcon Convention Report (announcement by Evelyn C. Leeper)
My Philcon 2003 convention report is now available at
http://www.geocities.com/evelynleeper/phil03.htm [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Nominations (comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
In this time of Oscar nominations, it's worth remembering that
it's an honor just to be nominated, and that even so, the best
works don't necessarily win, or even make the ballot. In the
spring drama competition in 431 B.C.E., Euripides's "Medea" won
only third place. (Euphorion, a son of Aeschylus, won first prize
and Sophocles second. No record of which plays won. None of
Euphorion's, and only seven of Sophocles's plays, survive.) [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: Las Vegas (more comments by Mark R. Leeper)
Last week I was talking about how Las Vegas does all sorts of odd
things to bring gamblers in.
But there is something intriguing about Las Vegas that I was not
expecting. This is a place where private enterprise has gone
manic. There is apparently big money in being the casino that
attracts the greatest number of gamblers. There must be at least
decent money in being the casino that attracts at least some
gamblers. But you see fabulous buildings being built in the hopes
that when they are opened, they will be THE PLACE TO GAMBLE. And
if they make it to the top they seem to be on top for only about
six months. Then someone else's fabulous casino hotel is opened
and the one that was opened six months before is demoted to being
just another one of the biggees. When it stops earning it is torn
down, usually with a spectacular dynamite detonation, and another
giant casino hotel is built in its place. It is like private
enterprise gone time lapse. Every time you come to Las Vegas it
is a different town from what it was the last time. Things happen
fast here. Come back in a year and the town will be noticeably
changed.
I commented in my Japan trip log that Japan is to the United
States as the United States is to Canada. Actually it might be
better to say as the United States is to Western Europe as Western
Europe is to Eastern Europe. Japan is vibrant, exciting,
changing. People are anxious to try out the new. The United
States is a little more laid-back and casual. But at least in the
20th Century the United States was more vibrant than Western
Europe. Newt Gingrich as a boy spent time in France and was
surprised to see buildings that were still, as he was told,
"damaged from the war." He was even more surprised to find out
that they were talking not about World War II but about World War
I. In America those buildings would be repaired or gone in less
than a year. In Tokyo it might be even faster.
Japan is more vibrant than the United States in general, but Las
Vegas beats Japan. That may be why you see so many Japanese
tourists in Las Vegas. Or there may be another reason. Casino
complexes are really big in just the way that very few buildings
in Japan are. Things in Japan are very compact and cramped. In
Europe the standard for showing opulence in a building is putting
gold all over it. I think the French are in love with gold leaf.
In Japan opulence is shown by space. The grounds of the Emperor's
palace are big and spacious, but the average Japanese lives in a
well designed but confined little space. The big corporations in
Japan have big buildings with big open spaces in them in Shinjuku
and all that space is to show off their wealth. The Las Vegas
casinos are huge. A walk to a different part of the same casino
complex can take twenty minutes or even more if you don't stop to
look around. The rooms may be at one end of the casino and the
shops at the other end. If at all possible to walk from one to
another takes a long walk past hundreds of gambling machines. To
Americans this design merely looks sumptuous. I would guess that
to the Japanese it looks really magnificent.
Some of these casinos are so big they can build a full-sized
roller coaster on top of them. One casino must have started that
but apparently many others followed suit. You can be standing
laughing at the garishness of some new casino and suddenly you
hear a roar over head. Over the top of the casino comes
thundering a roller coaster with people screaming. It may be
totally out of place with the decor of the building, but there it
is. Take the casino New York, York. I don't think that New York
is particularly associated with roller coasters the way it is with
the Statue of Liberty but there is a roller coaster over the whole
affair. Maybe it is supposed to be evocative of Coney Island, but
I doubt it I think it is important to attract younger gamblers.
There are not that many middle-aged gamblers using the amusement
park rides, but they probably bring in the kids. Get the kids
gambling early. Casinos try to outdo each other. The Stratosphere
has two roller coasters; Circus Circus has one; the Boardwalk and
the Sahara each has one. I might guess that the Las Vegas Strip
has the greatest concentration of roller coasters of any place in
the world.
Next week I will talk a little about the tourist bargains I have
found in Las Vegas. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: BIG FISH (film review by Mark R. Leeper)
CAPSULE: Tim Burton directs this study of a troubled father-son
relationship. The dying father's fairy tale stories of the
significant events of his life have always been a major barrier
between himself and his son. The story has long fantasy sequences
that pull the viewer into the stories studded with giants,
werewolves, circuses, huge fish, Siamese twins, and more. The
subject is really the upside and the downside of a strong
imagination. Rating: high +2 (-4 to +4) or 8/10
Will Bloom (Billy Crudup) has not spoken to his father Edward
(Albert Finney) for three years. Everybody loves Edward for the
outlandish stories he tells at the drop of a hat. But Will never
really got to know his father because of those same stories. Dad
will never get serious and talk about his life. Instead, he makes
up these absurd tall tales and uses them as a barrier to keep
other people at a distance. Edward would rather live in his
fantasy world than to get serious. Now Edward has had a stroke
and is probably dying. Will leaves his job as a reporter in Paris
and returns to his Alabama home to be with his father and perhaps
to get some final understanding between the two of them. The last
thing that he wants is to hear more of his father's whoppers, but
that is really what his father wants to give him. And the stories
start coming. Dad tells about how he tamed a giant and how he
visited a strange magical hidden little town called Spectre.
Tim Burton is no stranger to themes of our real world sitting
beside and blending into a magical one. In EDWARD SCISSORHANDS he
has a magical castle overlooking suburbia. BATMAN RETURNS and
BEETLEJUICE both have juxtapositions of a fantasy world with ours.
Where the script of BIG FISH perhaps falls down is that the
stories are imaginative but not really enthralling. The young
version of Ed Bloom (Ewan McGregor, who almost looks like he could
be a young Albert Finney) spends time in the magical town of
Spectre, but what he does there simply does not make for a good
story. Further, the story of the wild storyteller and the skeptic
is not dissimilar from the plot of the recent SECONDHAND LIONS.
The timing of these two films coming out so close to each other is
an unfortunate coincidence. (And the title could conceivably
cause some confusion with FINDING NEMO, another timing problem.)
Cinematographer Philippe Rousselot, who filmed HOPE AND GLORY and
DANGEROUS LIAISONS, did the visual work which is perhaps a bit too
unsubtle with scenes in the real world having a cold, washed-out
look and fantasy scenes having richer color. But somehow the
fantasy images have a decided Americana feel to them. In the
scenes where this American fantasy works it is effective and has a
different flavor from the fantasy that Burton has put on the
screen in the past. His character becomes a sort of Southern
Baron Munchausen. Tim Burton has assembled a notable cast even
for lessor roles including Jessica Lange, Helena Bonham Carter,
Robert Guillaume, Steve Buscemi, and Danny DeVito.
This is a brand of fantasy that will not appeal to everybody,
particularly sitting as it does cheek-by-jowl with a more serious
story. This film does not argue for the need for fantasy as some
films do, but for tolerance for those who need fantasy to survive.
As such it is Tim Burton's answer to HARVEY. I rate it a high +2
on the -4 to +4 scale or 8/10. [-mrl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: A SPLENDOR OF LETTERS (and cataloguing) (book review and
comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Nicholas A. Basbanes has finished his trilogy of books on books,
following A GENTLE MADNESS and PATIENCE & FORTITUDE with A
SPLENDOR OF LETTERS: THE PERMANENCE OF BOOKS IN AN IMPERMANENT
WORLD. This last (as the subtitle indicates) is primarily about
the survival of books and the destruction of books (which includes
both the destruction of libraries as acts of war and the "de-
accessioning" of books and periodicals by libraries). (Basbanes
has another book, AMONG THE GENTLY MAD, which is apparently not
considered part of this series, being about book collectors rather
than about books.)
As part of his discussion of how it is not just the primary
content of a book that is important, but all the other aspects,
such as dust jacket and title page, Basbanes gives the example he
gives is DEAD SOULS by Nikolai Gogol. If one looks at the first
(Russian) edition of the book, the title page says in very small
print at the top "Chichikov's Adventures", then underneath that in
the smallest possible italics the word "or", then under that "Dead
Souls" in big, bold letters. Why? Well, the Russian censor, a
devout Christian, objected to the implication that immortal souls
could die. When Gogol said that the title referred to serfs who
had died, the censor decided it was an attack on the serfdom
system and didn't like that either. But Gogol was a well-
respected author, the censor compromised by saying Gogol could
keep "Dead Souls" but only as a secondary title. Even if the full
title is kept on an edition these days, the fact that "Chichikov's
Adventures" was in very small print is probably not.
I was quite surprised that in all his discussion, Basbanes did not
mention the National Yiddish Book Center, which has been rescuing
Yiddish books for about twenty years now. They have rescued well
over a million volumes and are redistributing many of them to
libraries around the world. They are also digitizing them for
both print-on-demand and on-line access, and deal with a lot of
the issues Basbanes talks about, such as the need to destroy a
book by cutting off the spine in order to scan the book in, or the
question of what to do about ephemera (e.g., ticket stubs found in
books, Yiddish playbills, or old letters).
I found the discussion of books on various media particularly
relevant, as I am currently in a "cataloguing crisis." Well,
crisis is perhaps too strong a word. But it is confusing. It
used to be that a book was a book, a magazine was a magazine ("New
Destinies" notwithstanding), and as far as text went, that was it.
Oh, there was the occasional "spoken word" LP, but most people
didn't have to worry about that.
Of course, we had lots of spoken word cassettes, but those were
all old-time radio shows.
Now I find myself trying to figure out if the 23-CD unabridged
audiobook of "Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix" should be
catalogued in our book catalog, or with the radio shows. And what
about the CD of an abridged version of "Middlemarch" I got in
England a couple of years ago? Now to mention the CD-ROM of the
1993 Hugo nominees, or an episode of a radio show included as an
extra on a DVD, or a CD-ROM bound into a book, ... well, you get
the idea. [-ecl]
===================================================================
TOPIC: This Week's Reading (book comments by Evelyn C. Leeper)
Of interest to science fiction fans and film fans is John Baxter's
A POUND OF PAPER: CONFESSIONS OF A BOOK ADDICT. (Yes, this is
John Baxter, the film critic.) The publisher has decided to give
it a Dewey Decimal classification in "Book collecting" rather than
"Biography", but it is more the latter, and talks at length about
Baxter's growing up in Australia, how he first discovered books,
and films, and science fiction, and science fiction fandom.
Baxter relates how he got started writing for the pulps, and how
his attempts to craft a writer's life in Australia that matched
what he saw in Hollywood films were less than entirely successful.
(As he put it, "My career as Australia's answer to Noel Coward
didn't last.") Baxter has all the same interests as I (and many
science fiction fans) have, and I heartily recommend this book.
On the other hand, a lot of "classics" are not going to get
stirring recommendations from me. I've been reading books from
the high school summer reading lists. First, let me explain what
these are, in case you are not familiar with them. Apparently,
many school districts assign students to read over summer vacation
one (or more) books from a list of approved books. Now, I never
had assigned summer reading, probably because I was an "Air Force
brat" and so always lived in a town and went to a school where
there was a large turnover between June and September. (This
never stopped me from reading books over summer vacation, of
course. :-) )
Anyway, our book discussion groups are having problems rounding up
enough library copies of the books we choose, so we decided to try
some on the summer reading lists, since the library has at least a
dozen copies of each. Some we had already read (e.g. Daniel
Keyes's FLOWERS FOR ALGERNON, Homer Hickam's ROCKET BOYS). Some I
had read and was comfortable recommending (or disputing). But I
decided to read a few with an eye towards their suitability.
One was Ernest Hemingway's THE SUN ALSO RISES. It is a classic.
I did not like it. Simple declarative sentences are fine, but
they get boring after a while. One longs for a dependent clause,
but one doesn't find one. All the people are obnoxious. The
narrator was injured in the war, but Hemingway cannot say how.
Who cares?
Another "modern classic" was Sandra Cisneros's THE HOUSE ON MANGO
STREET. I suppose it can be useful as a view into a different
ethnic group for most students, but at that level it seems aimed
maybe too much at a juvenile level for an adult discussion group.
Mitch Albom's TUESDAYS WITH MORRIE is the story of the author's
visits with his old college professor, who is dying of ALS. I
suspect it was chosen for high school students because it does
deal with old age, and serious illness, and death. The advice his
professor gives is good, but hardly new, and the work is too
overly sentimental for me. [-ecl]
===================================================================
Mark Leeper
mleeper@optonline.net
Quality questions create a quality life.
Successful people ask better questions,
and as a result, they get better answers.
-- Anthony Robbins
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