Episode 9: Leverage

I have infinitely much to say about Leverage. I tried to keep it within limits.

Here is the scene from The Big Bang Job that is so gloriously over the top that it fills me with utter joy. The entire rest of the series is NOTHING like this so don't get the wrong idea!

https://youtu.be/JdA2cdyGXb0?si=xhegxndOxCkYOXI2

Here's the list of my favorite episodes:

In order of best beloved episodes first (yes, eight are tied for first place)

1 S2E11 The Bottle Job

1 S1E5 The Bank Shot Job

1 S3E11 The Rashomon Job

1 S5E9 The Rundown Job

1 S5E10 The Frame-Up Job

1 S5E6 The D.B. Cooper Job

1 S4E13 The Girls' Night Out Job

1 S4E14 The Boys' Night Out Job

2 S3E3 The Inside Job

3 S3E15 The Big Bang Job

4 S4E1 The Long Way Down Job

5 S4E6 The Carnival Job

6-7 S1E12-13 The First David Job, The Second David Job

8 S1E7 The Wedding Job

9 S4E18 The Last Dam Job

10 S5E1 The (Very) Big Bird Job

 

Favorite episodes in chronological order

S1E5 The Bank Shot Job

S1E7 The Wedding Job

S1E12-13 The First David Job, The Second David Job

S2E11 The Bottle Job

S3E3 The Inside Job

S3E11 The Rashomon Job

S3E15 The Big Bang Job

S4E1 The Long Way Down Job

S4E6 The Carnival Job

S4E13 The Girls' Night Out Job

S4E14 The Boys' Night Out Job

S4E18 The Last Dam Job

S5E1 The (Very) Big Bird Job

S5E6 The D.B. Cooper Job

S5E9 The Rundown Job

S5E10 The Frame-Up Job

 

 

Roald Dahl: Matilda

I don't know why I pulled this off the shelf the other day, but what an amazing book.

It's odd to read a book first as a child then much later as a professional literature analyzer person. You see things a little differently, put it that way. 

Matilda is a book about terrible abuse, but we don't think of it that way. We think of it as a tiny girl who reads a lot who gets rid of the mean headmistress and then gets to go live with her nice teacher instead of her mean family. But back up a minute. Her family is horrible to her. Her dad tears up one of her library books. She starts punishing him for his meanness in various ways that are satisfying to us if we identify with a tiny powerless person in a household of people who don't care about her, but ultimately don't accomplish much. He does get cowed a little bit every time one of the punishments happen, but it doesn't ultimately solve her situation.

I'm fascinated by this little novel (or chapter book technically) because it's a master class in writing. You can watch Dahl write himself into a corner. Right there, where I just stopped, that is a narrative dead end. Matilda can't do horrible things back to her family for very long before we stop liking her. So we need to raise the stakes.

She goes off to school, where there's a much bigger, scarier, more violent, and worse bully. Aha! Stakes raised. But even Miss Trunchbull, who is outrageously awful, can get got. It's a little girl named Lavender who gets her back, putting a newt into her water jug. But now we're in the same narrative pickle as before. When the victims of bullies are mean back to bullies, at a certain point we stop sympathizing with them. Now we just have two bullies! That's no good.

So we need a victim of Miss Trunchbull who is worse off than the children at the school. That victim is Miss Honey, the absolutely lovely and utterly sympathetic teacher of Matilda's class. She's so good as a character! Because yes she's gentle and kind and intelligent and sees how smart Matilda is, which her parents don't--her father told Miss Trunchbull to look out for Matilda in particular as a troublemaker--but also she's in an awful situation that is very like the one Matilda is in, only much, much worse.

Setting aside the unlikely nature of the scene in which a kindergarten teacher reveals her appalling abuse to a five year old, we find out just how bad it was for Miss Honey growing up with Miss Trunchbull as her abusive aunt and guardian. Well, we get hints about much worse things than we hear about. Miss Honey keeps saying things like, "We don't need to get into details." Yikes, Miss Honey. 

The point is, now Matilda is fighting for someone besides herself. That makes us really like Matilda and also raises the stakes even more. Miss Honey lost her family home and her father's money and is living in extreme poverty because Miss Trunchbull made her sign over even her salary, saying Miss Trunchbull deserved to have it for paying for her all those years. Which she didn't. But also, that's your job as parent or guardian. Obviously.

Everything we learn about Miss Trunchbull is more outrageous. The kids at the school even say that's part of her method. She does things so outrageous that nobody would believe them ON PURPOSE. So when she swings a little girl around by her pigtails and throws her over the fence into a nearby field, that's way out there on purpose, so nobody would believe it happened. 

Matilda says what everyone says to every victim of domestic abuse or domestic violence: why didn't you just leave? This is where a child's chapter book gets extremely real. Miss Honey has to explain that when you're that beaten down, you can't stand up for yourself anymore. It's true. It's something nobody gets who hasn't been in that position, but you can easily imagine it in a workplace if that's more accessible. 

Imagine it. Your boss is so awful and invasive and controlling and mean. They tell you over and over you'll never get another job. They increase your workload and hours without increasing your pay. These are the kinds of bosses it's hard to walk away from, not because you want to stay, but because you start to think that people in general are horrible, everyone is awful to you, maybe you're awful and deserve it, no doubt it'll be the same anywhere else you go so why change anything? And you know you won't get a recommendation or reference from this person. They beat you down until you don't know you have other options.

Miss Honey gives such a good explanation of this mindset. It kind of blew me away when I read it yesterday. I've been thinking about it ever since. 

It's also the only way to make someone staying in that situation sympathetic. Because otherwise people tend to blame someone for putting up with a bad situation. Oh, that is the most normal thing of all time. "Why didn't you just...?" I promise you, there's a good reason.

Never ask anyone "Why didn't you just...?"

The narrative crisis Dahl is now in is that this tiny child needs to overcome a big terrifying powerful woman who has even other adults daunted by her bullying. When I read this as a kid, I was all set to learn how to do this. How? How? I was so disappointed that it was a supernatural power. Matilda does this thing with her eyes where she can stare and move things. Dahl wrote about a similar thing in the short story "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar," which is well worth looking up. Well, so it's not good real life advice, but it does give a tiny girl a way to overcome Miss Trunchbull.

Even then, though, she doesn't take a direct physical approach. She works and works on her skill until she can write on the board with chalk. She waits until Miss Trunchbull is in the room and writes on the board with chalk from a distance, in the voice of Miss Honey's father, telling her to give Miss Honey back the house, the money, and her salary. It works! Miss Trunchbull goes away, Miss Honey gets everything back, and all is well.

But also Matilda's awful dad gets caught for his used car mafia connections and the family flees the country, except Matilda gets them to agree to leave her with Miss Honey instead. Happy ending to the story! There's a wonderful Quentin Blake drawing of Miss Honey holding little Matilda at the end of the book. 

She needed a new family and that's what she got. Amazing! Satisfying! She did it herself! But she did it in service of helping someone else who needed that help even more than she did!

This is such a great book. But it also reminds me that the victims of villains in fiction need to be managed carefully so they don't turn into villains themselves. Hitting back is still hitting. When you can set someone up to bring themselves down by their own crimes, that's the best thing ever, like Matilda's dad. I still keep thinking Miss Trunchbull should have been brought down by her own crimes somehow, but can't think how. Also if I could make one tiny change it would be to set up that she's terrified of ghosts or something like that, maybe early on, like they aren't allowed to have Halloween because she's so afraid of that sort of thing. I don't know, who am I to make editorial suggestions to a book this great?

Anyway that's Matilda. I have strong feelings about the almighty chapter book as the pinnacle of fiction in a lot of ways. It does all the best things fiction does and leaves out all the worst ones. It can deal with terrible things in a matter of fact way, like this one does. It's just the best genre. I know, isn't it weird I never write them?

But it's like with Coraline, the way adults get terrified because they don't know things are going to turn out okay, while children love the story because they trust things will turn out all right in the end. I don't believe things will turn out okay! I need more of a chapter book mentality, maybe. I might read a whole lot more of them. I did read Charlie and the Chocolate Factory last night. So moralizing! But also wonderful, obviously. 

Episode 8: Good girl, sad boy

Another episode is up!

In it I get worked up over this insidious trope in fiction that dates back two thousand years to the earliest Greek novels that were the source for the narrative shape of virgin martyr stories, gothic fiction, and ultimately young adult fiction. Self-sacrificing and self-abnegating good girls. Sad boys who therefore deserve to get everything they want.

But don't worry, I solve all that in 35 minutes. 

Subservience! Doing things that aren't good for us! Training people to be doormats! STOP IT.

And a whole lot of my computer freezing up on me and dropping the audio. "You bastard, computer," I said to it at one point. I have to take drastic steps with this thing, no lie. Possibly involving an axe.

ALSO I have resolved the issue with Podcast Connects so you should be able to search and find us in Apple Podcasts any minute now. Any minute! I have no idea how fast it works, actually. But it is published and live and will be happening. OH BOY!!!

There were some obstacles today, dear cheese listeners. But we persevered. I need a nap.

https://www.emmaburns.org/sacred-cheese-of-life-podcast

 

 

Episode 7: Dual storylines, past and present

Go get it!

https://www.emmaburns.org/sacred-cheese-of-life-podcast

Also: new intro and outro music by Shaolin Dub, a song called Dark Daze. Infinitely better! And I wrote the old one myself, ha.

The website now allows you to access the podcast using podcatcher, including Apple Podcasts.

Copy the URL. Paste into the window you get when you click the three dots at the top right corner of the Library page of Apple Podcasts.

That was entirely backwards narratively. I apologize. 

Go to Apple Podcasts. Click Library. Click the three dots at the top right corner. Paste the URL into the window. Now time is running forwards again.

http://sacredcheeseoflife.squarespace.com/sacred-cheese-of-life-podcast?format=rss

I believe this one also works:

http://www.emmaburns.org/sacred-cheese-of-life-podcast?format=rss

But if one doesn't work, try the other. 

I'm working on getting it directly into Apple Podcasts but it's hung up on something about the cover art. I DON'T KNOW AND THEY WON'T SAY. Not that I'm frustrated by spending hours on it or anything. It's FINE.

Go to this link to hear the whole song Dark Daze. It's so good! It's been stuck in my head all day.

https://freemusicarchive.org/music/Shaolin_Dub/Enclosed_Systems

Slacker!

Whoops, sorry about the delay--I'm not sure what happened there. I owe you a podcast episode! Possibly two! I need to pick a day of the week and stick to it. Probably Monday for the moment at least.

I want to talk about mirroring in fiction as I've just read a book that was full of it, then realized of course I'm doing a ton of it in Summerlands. 

I'm also fascinated that my subconscious goes to the bookcase and picks out a book for me. I mean, I go along with it. I am present in this situation. But I pick a book not really consciously thinking about why, then it turns out to be extremely pertinent to what I'm working on.

I also got mildly wigged to run into someone Finnish on Blue Sky with the same name as one of the characters in Summerlands. I know it's just recency bias or something. Is recency a word? Why does that not look like a word? 

Really nothing could be more likely than that I pick a name from a baby name list and then happen across a person with that name. I just wouldn't have noticed it before. Also I keep forgetting it.

I stared at his picture like he was the grown-up version of this little boy character. You guys. HE'S NOT.

Fiction! I get so absorbed in it that I don't even realize how absorbed I am. 

Anyway mirroring, coming soon, also dual storylines. Maybe I'll do both this week since I think construction is going to stop on the nearby house. This is actually a big deterrent to recording. It is SO LOUD and the dog barks and it's a whole thing. They start at 8 a.m., too. Heavy equipment that shakes the house and crashes and beeps and on and on. 

However due to an unrelated tragic circumstance they may not be working on it for a while, I'm not sure. If you see two episodes, that's why. 

Let's hope for tomorrow, okay? Okay!

Hong Kong, I am so curious!

I see a lot of readers are in Hong Kong and China! What brings you here? What do you like? What would you like to see more of? Any books or stories I should read and write about? Leave a comment and let me know!

I just realized that a) I had a setting so that only people with Google accounts could comment and b) just found out that Google isn't so much a thing over there. Is blocked? Oh no! I did not mean to block you from commenting and I apologize.

Leave a comment and introduce yourself if you would like!

And welcome!

Dual storylines, past and present, part one

I'm very interested in novels with alternating dual storylines when one is the past and one is the present. Who knows what when? How do they find out? And most of all, what does it even matter?

I'm working with this in my current novel draft, using diaries to supply the past. That's helpful because it's set in stone, it's unreliable, and it's something that actually happens in the present, the reading of it. Also it adds a level of mystery in that someone is supplying photocopies of diary pages. Who the hell is doing that and why? 

I can't really think of any that I've read except Code Name Verity, a BRILLIANT novel. But there are probably more. Wait, that one named for the road...Jellicoe Road! EVEN MORE BRILLIANT. It's called On the Jellicoe Road in Australia where it's from. There's one more I am thinking of by a scifi author about a black woman who goes back in time but can't remember author's name or title, so that's not helpful. Octavia Butler, Kindred! GOT IT.

I'm fascinated by the ways we interact with the past in fiction. Why does it even matter what happened back then? What does it change here and now? 

It's like when people try to excuse heinous deeds by saying: oh but they were abused/addicted/unhappy/hit by an asteroid. It changes nothing about what they did. It doesn't make their victims hurt any less or get any less dead. It doesn't get you back all the money and time and affection they stole from you. Or your fucking PhD that they ruined. Whoops!

So what does the past matter? 

I suppose it can change something if, say, someone stood you up for the biggest day, but you found out they were abducted by aliens, not just sleeping off a bender. You'd still be stood up though. It just turns into a more interesting story. If you believe them. Like if they reappear twenty years later when you're bitter and alone and they're the same age they were that day, maybe I'd believe them, but I might also not stop being bitter, see what I mean? I don't get those twenty years back. 

So I have thinking to do about when and how the past matters. Granted that I am angry and stubborn about grudges and I don't really think excuses have a lot of value when someone gets hurt regardless. Again, doesn't make them less hurt!

But then I'm writing this book where knowing the past dramatically affects choices these two girls make in the present. 

A better example: you really like someone and they're rescuing you from a bad situation, but then you find out they were horrible to other people in your position in the past. Oh no! But also: VERY GOOD TO KNOW. 

Sometimes the past means having all the facts suddenly! You can choose differently. I think that's the rule. The past has to be useful to the people in the present and change things for them. Change choices in particular.

What I really hate is that facile way modern tv has of going oh X happened to this person, that's why they feel this way, NOW IT'S ALL BETTER. Like revealing a fact makes someone get over their patterns and cures all the harm. Nope. Not even a little bit.

I assembled a list of recommended-to-me titles that I have NOT read, but it's on my phone in screenshot format OMG so unwieldy so here's a handy collection I can access anywhere. And you can read it too. You are totally welcome. It's in no particular order. I tried to keep authors together but Kate Morton is on there three times somehow and only two are grouped. Oh well!

Kate Morton, The Clockmaker's Daughter

Robin Talley, Pulp

Rebecca Makkai, The Great Believers

Meredith Jaeger, Boardwalk Summer

Claire Legrand, Furyborn

Fiona Davis, The Masterpiece

Simone St. James, The Broken Girls

Chanel Cleeton, Next Year in Havana

Chanel Cleeton, Our Last Days in Barcelona

C.J. Tudor, The Chalk Man

Rachel Hauck, The Love Letter

Christina Lauren, Love and Other Words

Riley Sager, The Last Time I Lied

Amy Mason Doan, The Summer List

Sunil Yapa, Your Heart is a Muscle the Size of a Fist

Alexander Chee, The Queen of the Night

Idra Novey, Ways to Disappear

Hannah Tennant-Moore, Wreck and Order

Kristopher Jansma, Why We Came to the City

Ethan Canin, A Doubter's Almanac

Belinda McKeon, Tender

Mona Awad, 13 Ways of Looking at a Fat Girl

Helen Oyeyemi, What is not Yours is not Yours

Jung Yun, Shelter

Lynn Steger Strong, Hold Still

Anton DiSclafani, The After Party

Rumaan Alam, Rich and Pretty

Leopoldine Core, When Watched (stories)

Brandy Colbert, The Blackwoods

Abdi Nazemian, Only This Beautiful Moment

Jandy Nelson, I'll Give you the Sun

Autumn Allen, All you have to do

Jordyn Taylor, The Paper Girl of Paris

Jordyn Taylor, Don't Breathe a Word

Kristin Dwyer, Some Mistakes were made

Sabaa Tahir, All my rage

Ashley Woodfolk, Nothing Burns as bright as you

Dahlia Adler, Going Bicoastal

Julia Kelly, Light over London

Diane Setterfield, The Thirteenth Tale

Lisa Jewell, Then she was gone

Alex Michaelides, The Silent Patient

Kristin Harmel, The Winemaker's Wife

Kristen Harmel, The Book of Lost Names

Kate Quinn, The Alice Network

Fiona Davis, The Lions of Fifth Avenue

Hannah Mary McKinnon, The Neighbors

Julie Clark, The Last Flight

Sonali Dev, A Distant Heart

Rhys Bowen, The Venice Sketchbook

Marjan Kamali, The Stationery Shop

Stephen King, 11/23/63

Tracy Chevalier, The Virgin Blue

Anne Fortier, Juliet

Tara Conklin, The House Girl

Kristin Hannah, The Nightingale

Kate Atkinson, Life after life

Kate Morton, The Forgotten Garden

Kate Morton, Homecoming

Jojo Moyes, The Girl you left behind

Felix Palma, The Map of Time

The Glass Ocean (three authors)

Susanna Kearsley, The Firebird

Lauren Willig, Two Wars and a Wedding

Dolen Perkins-Valdez, Take my hand

Serena Burdick, The Stolen Book of Evelyn Aubrey

Kristen Loesch, The Last Russian Doll

Nguyen Phan Que Mai, Dust Child

Ella Berman, Before We Were Innocent

Cheryl Head, Time's Undoing

Brenden Slocumb, Symphony of Secrets

Lynda Cohen Loigman, The Matchmaker's Gift

Richard Mirabella, Brother & Sister Enter the Forest

Charmaine Wilkerson, Black Cake

Carley Fortune, Meet me at the Lake

Rebecca McKanna, Don't Forget the Girl

Episode Six: Andor

I got excited about the tv series Andor! It's extremely good at making everything cascade, one event to the next to the next, everything causing what follows. I've only seen season one.

Boy does it bother me when events a) are random or b) lead nowhere. No! It's fiction, not reality! Everything means something. Every choice causes the next consequences.

Audio issues here: first, I was unwell when recording and was kind of quiet. Second, I used "truncate silence" when editing and that removed the ends of some words. I had already saved when I discovered this (I'm a constant saver) and couldn't undo it. Gaaaah! So here are some extra word endings you can add where needed:

ing

ing

ing

s

s

s

There, that should do it.

Sacred cheese of life!

emmaburns.org