The 21 Balloons by William Pene Dubois. I loved the book so much that I named my production company 21 Balloons Productions (21balloons.com). Into The Dream by William Sleator was another favorite book as a kid.
What's your most memorable author moment?
Having one of my favorite writers--Miranda July--surprise me at one of my readings in L.A. Also, having my beloved writing mentor Charles Baxter surprise me at a reading I did last year in Minneapolis.
What talent or superpower would you like to have (not including flight or invisibility)?
The ability to make any piece of fruit perfectly ripe.
What are you obsessed with now?
The web series "Tarantula" by writer/filmmaker/animator/musician Carson Mell. Here's the first episode: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NGu3RnUFzgo&feature=relmfu
What are you stressed about now?
The Detroit Tigers and the AL Central pennant race.
What are you psyched about now?
Finally getting a chance to share My Heart Is An Idiot with my friends, acquaintances, and strangers after 5 years of working on it!
What's your most prized/treasured possession?
My silver necklace--I traded a car for it when I lived in New Mexico!
Author crush?
Anna Stothard (author of The Pink Hotel, among others, out in 2013 from Macmillan)
Pen Envy - book you wish you'd written?
The Ice Opinion by Ice T
What's next for you?
Heading to 79 cities this fall on the My Heart Is An Idiot book tour! Can't wait to see some old friends and make some new ones. http://www.myheartisanidiotbook.com/tour/
Favorite line = "What's your name?"
Procrastination = Reading NYTimes.com
Temptation = Whiskey
Vice = Women
Collecting? = Documentary films, cult classic movies on VHS, and my favorite authors' books.
There has to be a bit of irony in compiling every issue of a comic called The Invisibles, because at over 1,500 pages the omnibus is anything but difficult to see. Originally published by Vertigo Comics in single issues and then later collected in trade paperbacks, The Invisibles is probably best first ingested in segments, as its subject matter is dense, heady, and disturbing. Taken in one giant-sized horse tranquilizer of an omnibus, it's nearly incapacitating.
The Invisibles is a very Vertigo, very prototypical Grant Morrison comic. Rampant paranoia oozes from the page; the superhero team is subverted, anti-heroes abound; and the plots and visuals coalesce into hallucinatory spiderwebs, eventually snaring the reader. The central narrative follows Dane, a young man from Liverpool who is recruited by the Invisibles team to help battle alien gods. Known as the Archons of Outer Church, the series' villains secretly control mankind and only Dane and the Invisibles are aware of their grand plot. That, however, is but the thinnest initial layer of Morrison's own master plan. Music, magic, urban myths, and the collective social consciousness underline and drive the storytelling, sometimes sprawling into incoherency but always viral. Ever the master of suggestion, Morrison lures readers into his own personal narcotic narrative.
Then there are the visuals. Over 30 artists are listed in the collection's credits, including Phil Jiminez, Jill Thompson, Frank Quitely, Cameron Stewart, Dick Giordano, Duncan Fedrego, Sean Phillips, and many more. Experiencing them all at once is a jarring trip, furthering the schizophrenic nature of The Invisibles"”the beauty and the underbelly in one fell swoop of a hardcover. This is not a book for everyone. It's a frightening flip-through and a disturbing absorption, promising a greater high with every turn of the page but delivering a bitter itch when it's put down.
The omnibus features a new introduction by My Chemical Romance frontman and Umbrealla Academy scribe Gerard Way, over 50 pages of additional materials: designs by cover artist Brian Bolland, a series proposal and essays by Morrison, and plenty more for anyone brave enough to make it through to the end. Hold tight because, according to Grant Morrison, this is how the world ends"”with a conspiracy both whispered and screamed"”and a smile.
In recent years, the Library of America has begun to turn its attention to science fiction and fantasy. They've released the two-volume Peter Straub-edited American Fantastic Tales, the work of Kurt Vonnegut and Philip K. Dick, and fiction from Edgar Rice Burroughs: Tarzan of the Apes and A Princess of Mars. Now they've come out with the two-volume American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, edited by Gary K. Wolfe and including work by Frederick Pohl, C.M. Kornbluth, Theodore Sturgeon, Leigh Brackett, Richard Matheson, Robert Heinlein, Alfred Bester, James Blish, Algis Budrys, and Fritz Leiber. Wolfe is a well-known literary critic in genre circles. His most recent book, Evaporating Genres, won the Locus Award.
Editing a set of previously published novels seemed to us to be a vastly different undertaking from either selecting new material or editing a magazine or anthology. So we interviewed Wolfe via email to get some insight into the process.
For example, how much material did he have to read through to reach final selections? "Quite a bit," Wolfe said, "but it would only be a guess to estimate the number of novels I looked at and re-read. The Library of America staff had already identified major award-winning novels, and I added to this from various chronologies and histories, such as the ones in John Clute's Science Fiction: The llustrated Encyclopedia. That gave us a pretty long list, and I started reading and re-reading, as did the Library of America editorial staff after I gave them my suggestions."
Making some selections were by default easier for Wolfe than others. For Sturgeon, "The Dreaming Jewels was the only other one I looked at, but it's far less important than More Than Human.The Cosmic Rape is fairly minor, and Venus Plus X had a publication date of 1960. We were really looking at novels only from 1950-1959."
Part of the editing process also included research on variant texts, some of which are "included in the notes at the back of each volume"”for example, three chapters from the original Galaxy appearance of Gravy Planet [The Space Merchants by Pohl and Kornbluth] that were excluded from the book version, or introductions or forewords added to later editions of The Shrinking Man, The Big Time, and A Case of Conscience. There were some texts that were more difficult than others to establish as authoritative, such as The Stars My Destination, but we didn't want to stray too far from the texts that were the most widely read by contemporary readers in the 1950s. I can't take credit for establishing the texts except in an advisory capacity; most of the research was done by a very talented and meticulous researcher for the Library of America named Matt Parr, and you can get a sense of his meticulousness by the detailed lists even of corrected errata and typos, such as the one in the "Note on the Texts" for The Big Time."
Two considerations in choosing the novels were that they be genuinely from the 1950s "conceived as novels, rather than what Van Vogt called "fix-ups" of stories originally published in the 1940s" (which left out Asimov's Foundation series and Clifford Simak's City) and also that they "should reflect some of the concerns and culture of the 1950s, while still being enjoyable to a modern audience."
second consideration expresses itself in different ways throughout the two-volume set. "We have essentially a Cold War novel in Budrys's Who?, a nuclear-fear novel in Brackett's The Long Tomorrow, a consumerist satire in Pohl and Kornbluth's The Space Merchants, and so on. There's even a connection to the SF-movie boom of the 50s with The Shrinking Man, for which Matheson wrote his own screenplay (a rarity for any SF author). My sense in reading all these and other novels, and trying to place them in context with several timelines that are on the website, was that the 1950s was an odd combination of optimism, prosperity, and sheer terror, with some notable evidence of highly volatile issues"”civil rights, the role of women, the beginnings of the computer revolution"”bubbling near the surface, getting ready to erupt into the 60s and 70s."
As might be expected, not every great novel fitting the focus and constraints of American Science Fiction could be included in the two-volume set. "The Library of America wanted four or five novels in each volume, and so some obvious titles like Miller's A Canticle for Leibowitz were simply too long to fit the format. There was at least one title we couldn't get permission for, and some that seemed to cover ground too similar to others already [in the set]"¦Some of the titles I regret not being able to include, all classics, are Ward Moore's Bring the Jubilee, C.L. Moore's Doomsday Morning, Edgar Pangborn's A Mirror for Observers, possibly Asimov's The End of Eternity"”I could go on. My hope is that the interest shown in this set will encourage other publishers to bring some of these and others back into print."
Then, of course, some novels just didn't stand up to the test of time, in Wolfe's opinion. "I felt I should at least take a look at Hugo nominees and winners, and while some held up pretty well, others like Mark Clifton and Frank Riley's They'd Rather Be Right didn't. Asimov is possibly a glaring omission, but things like The Currents of Space or The Stars Like Dust now look awkward, and the robot novels are as much mysteries as SF. Much as I enjoyed these growing up, I ended up believing Asimov's major impact came from the Foundation and Robot short stories and novellas, while an interesting novel like The Gods Themselves came much later. As I mentioned, though, The End of Eternity was a reasonable candidate."
In many ways editing American Science Fiction struck us as a wonderful adventure, so we asked Wolfe about his greatest pleasure in taking on the project. "I suppose the snarky answer is getting back at those teachers who disapproved of my reading these novels when I was a kid in the 1950s, but that's not entirely a joke. Science fiction has been a very energetic part of American culture for nearly a century now, yet it's still largely unacknowledged outside its own networks of writers and supporters; just look at the 'no science fiction' rules still arbitrarily imposed by many creative writing programs. Reprints of classic novels, even in paperback, aren't as common as they used to be, and some of these works were in danger of disappearing altogether. So I feel that with these books, along with earlier volumes of Dick and Lovecraft, the American hardboiled and noir volumes, etc., something is going on that's akin to the American Film Institute's film preservation project. It's really gratifying to be part of something like that."
The two-volume set hasn't just been lovingly put together in terms of the content: the packaging, with a stunning slipcase, also shows evidence of extreme care and thought"”with art by Richard Powers and Ralph Brillhart. Wolfe considers these choices to be "crucial" to American Science Fiction's reception by readers. "It was because of Powers's distinctive semi-abstract covers that, as a kid, I first learned to distinguish one paperback publisher from another"”I don't think I'd given any thought to publishers before that"¦Powers, with his allusions to Tanguy and surrealism, seemed to represent SF that didn't want to be pulp and wasn't trying to look mainstream"”it was as though his aspirations in trying to create a new kind of science fiction art paralleled the aspirations of the writers of the time."
In support of American Science Fiction: Nine Classic Novels of the 1950s, Library of America has outdone itself by supplying an associated website with essays, audio interviews, cover galleries, even audio and video files of radio and TV adaptations, "along with bonuses such as five additional Fritz Leiber "Change War" stories."
Highly recommended even if you're not a devoted science fiction reader, this sumptuous and beautiful collection is definitely worth your time.
The Diviners is not only one of the best books of September, I think it's one of the best books of the Fall, combining the glamour and excitement of 1926 New York (think Ziegfeld girls and Prohibition gin) with totally creepy occult murder, secrets of the supernatural, and a diverse cast of characters. The Diviners has the goose bumps factor of an early Stephen King novel with an impeccably researched look at the history and pop culture of the 1920s--the Labor movement, speakeasy jazz, and young women like Evie O'Neill with their feathered headbands and chutzpah.
Author Libba Bray (who won the Printz Award in 2010 for Going Bovine) has been getting lavish praise for The Diviners, which is the first of a new four-book series (yay!), and when I talked to her earlier this year about the new book--see the video of our interview after the jump--I had a really hard time not laughing into the microphone because she was cracking me up. One of the things we talked about was Bray's love of horror--Salem's Lotis one of her all-time favorite books and she refers to it as "Our Town with vampires" (that should give you a clue about her sense of humor). In the spirit of things that go bump in the night Bray came up with something special for Omni readers: the funniest top 10 horror movies list I've ever seen (the movies are scary as hell, it's Libba Bray who is hilarious). Did she include any of your favorites?
"MY TOP TEN FAVORITE HORROR MOVIES"
Horror, how do I love thee? Let me count the ways. I love your ominous, cobweb-encrusted mansions and staircases leading to bad things. I love your neighbors who might be Satanists and your slowly rising corpses. I love your screams, your maniacs in hockey masks, your creaking doors, and your beasties roaming the moors under a full moon. I love you so much that I had to make a Top Ten List of my favorite horror movies of all time. Because that's how my love rolls"¦like a severed head"¦bouncing down the stairs and landing at the screaming heroine's feet. Wait"”why are you moving away from me?
A warning: This list will contain spoilers, so if you haven't seen some of these movies, and you prefer to remain unspoiled, do not read any further. You have been warned. You know, like in a horror movie prologue.
For a kid who grew up loving Hammer Horror films AND National Lampoon magazine, this is the perfect movie"”a great mix of horror and comedy. David (David Naughton) and Jack (Griffin Dunne) are two college pals backpacking on the moors of chilly England where they run afoul of a local werewolf. Dude, that was sonot listed in the Frommers Guide. David is taken to a hospital in London to recover but is visited by his now-undead-and-not-loving-it, toast-eating pal, Jack, who warns David that when the moon is full, he's going to change. A lot. Like, don't make dinner plans, and don't be wearing your best clothes when it all gets real.
If you ever wondered why teenaged girls suddenly stopped babysitting and started working at the local Taco Bell, look no further than this movie which singlehandedly moved babysitting from "Great way to make a few bucks on a Saturday night" to "Great way to meet a homicidal maniac." To this day, the sound of an icemaker dropping its frosty load makes me run for cover. And if I ever pick up the phone and hear, "Have you checked the children yet?" I will need defibrillation paddles STAT.
Teenaged babysitter and all-around good kid Jill (Carol Kane!) is babysitting in a darkened house when Billy Crystal jumps out and says, "It just so happens he's mostly dead!" and"¦oh, sorry. Wrong movie. Strike that. Anyhoots, Carol's babysitting but she keeps getting these weird prank calls asking her if she's checked the children yet. It's starting to work on her nerves, and we are treated to lots of creepy build-up: the aforementioned icemaker sounds. A near attempt at going upstairs. A frightened Carol staring into the dark outside the windows. What could be out there, you think. Better stay inside, Carol, and keep those doors locked! Well, Carol hears you, and she does just that.
When she's finally good and terrified, though, she has the police trace the call and they phone her back frantically to let her know that the call is coming from inside the house! All together now: AAAAAHHHHHH!!!! And that's just the first thirty minutes of the movie, folks. There's another hour to go. I won't tell you what happens but suffice it to say that Charles Durning shows up, and you know that where he goes, bad things follow.
I'm not normally a fan of gore, unless it's highly stylized gore from Italian horror master, Dario Argento, and every death scene is like a nightmare-by-Missoni. Even the wallpaper in this movie seems malevolent.
Jessica Harper, who was the go-to girl for 1970's horror movies, stars as Suzy Bannion, an American dancer attending a girls' dance academy in Germany. From the get, things are weird: Suzy arrives in the middle of the night to see a panicked girl running away from the academy and into the nearby forest. Because that's not ominous AT ALL. Suzy's not real quick on the uptake, though, so she sticks around, even though maggots fall from the ceiling. Because, you know, sometimes that just happens.
There are murders galore"”INCREDIBLE murders!"”and an old blind man, witches, poisonings, glowing eyes outside windows, an attic filled with barbed wire, and one impaling that isn't the slightest bit phallic. None of it makes much sense. But the plot is incidental. In fact, if you go in expecting linear flow, you'll set yourself up for disappointment. Instead, allow yourself to be carried away into an Expressionist nightmare awash in surreal sets; Technicolor, Grand Guignol imagery; and the bordering-on-camp dark humor that makes for an XL 1970's Grimm's Fairy Tale. Add in that flesh-crawling soundtrack by Goblin (Fact: Prog-rock makes everything scarier) and you might just have to watch "Step Up" to reestablish your happy place when it comes to dance academies.
One thing's for sure: You'll never feel the same way about stained glass ceilings again.
"Redrum! Redrum! Redrum!" Never before has an index finger been so terrifying.
We all know that when it comes to horror, Stephen King is The Man. But King-meets-Kubrick? Now that's a pretty formidable combo. Jack Torrance (Jack Nicholson. Right? You're scared already.) is an alcoholic writer trying to make a go of it with sobriety and his wife (Shelley Duvall) and son, Danny (Danny Lloyd). He's been hired to be the caretaker of the looming Overlook Hotel for the winter season where he can write to his heart's content. Oh, sure, there was that unfortunate incident long ago when the caretaker went a little nuts from the isolation and murdered his entire family right in the hotel, but let's let bloody bygones be bygones, right? I mean, what could possibly"¦GO WRONG
Little Danny Torrance, in addition to having a creepy voice for his finger, has been gifted with "The Shining""”a form of telepathy that allows him to see blood washing out of elevators and dead twin girls in pinafores who want to play "forever and ever and ever." That is a gift I would want to return, frankly. Danny's got a bad feeling about the Overlook Hotel, and for good reason. It is the granddaddy of haunted houses. If you think it's hard to get stale smoke smell out of hotel walls, just try getting rid of entrenched evil. It becomes clear over the crushing long haul of days that something ain't right about the Overlook, and Danny's family is in terrible danger. Dun-dun-DUN!
Super scary moment: Danny, who has free run of the hotel, riding his Big Wheel around the empty hallways. The camera angle only lets us see what Danny can see. (What's around the next corner? We. Don't. Know.) But it's the sound of the Big Wheel tires rumbling across the wooden floor then going silent on the plush carpets before going loud again that is completely unnerving.
I started to list more scary moments and realized that there isn't a moment in this movie that isn't frightening. The "Overlook Hotel" is actually the Stanley Hotel in Estes Park, Colorado, not far from my brother's house. He drove me there once. I declined to get out of the car.
I should probably mention that I have a tiered system for horror, from mild thrills to major chills to I-Will-Need-You-To-Hold-My-Hand-Through-the-Night. Let me break it down for you:
Dude, Watch Out for that Freak (Friday the 13th, Halloween, Silence of the Lambs, The Beguiled) This stuff is scary, sure, but my reasoning is that if I can outrun, outthink, out-hide, or out-bludgeon the thing chasing me, I'm not gonna need a Depends for the movie.
Dude, This Place Ain't Right (The Haunting, The Amityville Horror, Turn of the Screw, Session 9, The Grudge) This is your standard haunted house/ghosts on the loose movie. I love that stuff"”love it like Belgian waffles on a Sunday morning served to me by Jeremy Renner in an apron. But still, I reason, I will nevereverever go into a decaying insane asylum. You can't make me. No, you can't.
Dude, No Offense, but Are You, Like, a Malevolent Being? (The Thing, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Salem's Lot, The Crazies, all zombie movies) Now we're cooking. This is the kind of flick that kicks up the paranoia quotient. The movie that makes you question your sanity, doubting what you see and whom you love and everything you hold dear as evil closes in. You know, like a family reunion held at DisneyWorld.
Dude, It's the Devil. We Are So Totally Screwed (Rosemary's Baby, The Exorcist, The Last Exorcism, Audrey Rose, The Mephisto Waltz, The Sentinel) This kind of flick is easily my #1 scarefest. It's not playing around with minor league ghosts and maniacs anymore. We're talking Evil with a capital E: Demons. Immortal soul threats. Antichrist shenanigans. Unicorn warlocks. Repeated showings of "Showgirls." *shudders*
"The Omen" fits neatly into this last category. American Ambassador Robert Thorn (Gregory Peck) and his wife, Katherine (Lee Remick), are stationed in Rome where they're raising their six-year-old son, Damien (Harvey Stephens), who seems to have a few"¦quirks. Lesson one: Never name your progeny something that sounds like "Demon." Lesson tw Casting director who found this kid? You are a stone cold genius. What happens when Atticus Finch finds out he just might be raising the devil's tattooed spawn? All hell breaks loose. Literally. Esteemed British actor David Warner is great as the Me Generation photographer in a Studio 54-certified ascot trying to warn the clueless parents. And revered Beckett actress Billie Whitelaw chills as the nanny with a questionable pet policy. ("Nice doggy"¦") After this movie, I was never able to listen to "Carmina Burana" or pull a nightgown over my head again.
"In space, no one can hear you scream," was the tagline for Ridley Scott's terrifying science fiction-horror masterpiece. I promise you, when I saw this movie for the first time, they could hear me scream all the way to space.
My friend, horror writer Dan Poblocki, calls "Alien" "a haunted house movie in space." It's also a monster movie, a commentary on class and dehumanization, an intense survival tale, and, as some critics contend, an exploration of primal fears of rape, vulnerability, and birth. Whatever you want to call it, it's downright terrifying in any universe.
The crew of the mining vessel, Nostromo (Oh we see what you did there, Ridley Scott. Yes, we do.) is heading back to earth after long months in space when they receive a non-negotiable directive from their corporate employer to touch down on a planetoid and investigate a signal. The blue-collar workers here look the part"”weary, sweaty, sleepy-eyed, cigarette-smoking, coffee-swilling. Scott takes his time building up the believability of the world and the characters, focusing on their relationships, the petty grievances and intra-crew disagreements, the resentment felt toward the uncaring corporate employer, and the palpable desire to just go home, so that by the time the thrills start, the audience is completely invested. That is one of the things that, to me, separates the great horror films from the merely okay"”the investment in character and the slow turning up of the gas.
The Nostromo, with its dimly lit corridors, dark and narrow air ducts, blind alleys, industrial design, and Things That Drip is as menacing as the alien"”claustrophobic and inescapable. H. R. Giger's spooky sets and sleek, beautiful-yet-hideous monster are, of course, iconic now, and they still terrify. My husband and I just watched this again recently and even though I've seen it a gazillion times, I was still pulling the covers around me. Now, that's a good horror flick.
Would you believe me if I said I think of "Jaws" as a great horror western"¦on the beach? A Stranger Comes to Town"”only the stranger here is a great white shark terrorizing the waters off quaint, coastal Amity (what is it about the name Amity, man?) Roy Scheider's Chief Brody (The Sheriff in these here parts) wants to shut down the beaches to protect the good citizens, but the profitable Fourth of July weekend is coming up, and the powers-that-be don't want to lose out on the cash. So poor Brody has to keep watch, jumping at every screech and bark, until the unthinkable happens: Director Steven Spielberg"¦
{SERIOUS SPOILER ALERT, IN CASE YOU DIDN'T HEED MY EARLIER WARNING}
"¦.kills a kid. HE KILLS A FREAKING KID, PEOPLE! That sixth grader and his inflatable raft are blood-in-the-water camera chum! After that, all bets are off, and there's no sense of safety for the audience. And Brody, who hates the water, is going to have to head out to sea like a maritime Gary Cooper (along with his sidekicks: oceanographer Richard Dreyfuss and seasoned shark killer Robert Shaw) to fight the bad guy threatening the peace of his town.
Sometimes, a movie becomes enmeshed with your personal life in a way that forever shapes it in your memory. When I saw "Jaws", my family had just moved to a small, northern Texas town where I felt like, well, a fish out of water. My parents were inching toward a divorce that would take a few more years to sort out; there were secrets in my family swimming in the murk under the surface and I could feel them with that sonar particular to children"”an early warning device devoid of denial's protection, much like the John Williams soundtrack here. That's what good horror does"”it gives catharsis to the fears you've yet to voice and allows you to deal with them in an abstract way until you can find the courage to do so in real life. So thanks for that, Steven Spielberg.
Favorite scene: The men's good-natured, slightly drunken, macho one-upmanship stories of survival morphing into Robert Shaw's slow, moody recounting of the U.S.S. Indianapolis is pitch-perfect, a real-life horror story that manages to be as heartbreaking as it is terrifying.
You knew this was coming, right? I mean, it's as inevitable as "Layla" and "Stairway to Heaven" on a classic rock station's "Top 100 Songs of All Time" Labor Day weekend countdown. But seriously, how could I possibly leave off "The Exorcist"? It ticks off every box on my checklist for good horror:
Slow build. (Check)
Doubt as to what's really going on"”is Reagan disturbed or possessed? (Check)
A formidable supernatural evil opponent. (Sooo check.)
Complex, flawed characters. (check)
Believable setting. (The Devil hangs out in Washington, D.C., believable? Like candy from a baby"¦)
Political undertones? (check)
Reagan (Linda Blair) is a good kid on the knife's edge of puberty living with her single mom, a famous actress (Ellen Burstyn). They've taken up residence in an old house in Georgetown for the duration of a film shoot, and that's where Reagan is introduced, via Ouija Board, to "Mr. Howdy." (Due to an adolescent experience, I find Ouija Boards incredibly creepy, which is why one figures into the opening of THE DIVINERS.) Soon, Reagan's a levitating, head-spinning, pea soup-vomiting, furniture-throwing, crucifix"¦defiling, Mercedes Cambridge-voiced, demon-possessed problem child giving two priests a run for their faith. No one's getting out of this unscathed.
In DANSE MACABRE, Stephen King argues that "The Exorcist" was a movie about parental fears of their counterculture teens, which is a great point. (And the "film" Ellen Burstyn's character is shooting involves student demonstrations.) But it's also about abandonment, fractured families, loss of faith, existentialism, adolescent angst/sexual fears, and loss. In fact, after the terror subsides, the feeling "The Exorcist" leaves me with is one of intense sadness. A horror movie that makes you think and feel? How frightening.
This is, without a doubt, my favorite horror movie as well as one of my favorite movies of all time. It has everything I love to get my scare on for: malevolent covens, anagrams, strange chanting, a creepy old apartment building, mysterious deaths and illnesses, paranoia, possible Satan worshippers living next door"”and all of it happening in my own backyard of New York City. I love "Rosemary's Baby" so much that the apartment building in THE DIVINERS, The Bennington, is influenced by the Dakota, and one of the characters, T.S. Woodhouse, shares a name with the protagonist of this film.
So often when we think of horror, we think of physical isolation"”the haunted mansion on the hill, the cabin by the lake, the motel room in the middle of nowhere. What I love about "Rosemary's Baby" is that it takes place in the heart of bustling, modern, crowded Manhattan, yet, the sense of isolation is palpable: a city of eight million strangers, neighbors we don't really know, a woman marooned inside herself, that "God is Dead" TIME magazine cover. It all adds up to an existentialist mood that's the real emotional undertow of fear and dread needed to make the ending work.
Rosemary and Guy Woodhouse (Mia Farrow & John Cassavetes) score a desirable apartment in the grand old Bramford Building off Central Park that has every New Yorker crying with real estate envy. Midwestern, lapsed Catholic Rosemary wants to start a family, though Guy, a rising actor with Hollywood ambitions, is reluctant. They settle into the building and become acquainted with the eccentric, elderly couple next door, Minnie and Roman Castevet (Ruth Gordon & Sidney Blackmer). After a really strange night of getting frisky that guarantees Guy some nail clippers as his next birthday gift, Rosemary gets pregnant. Friend Hutch (Maurice Evans) is concerned that something's wrong with fragile Rosemary beyond that unfortunate Vidal Sassoon haircut Mia Farrow got mid-movie. He leaves her a book on witches just before he slips into a mysterious coma and dies. Soon, Rosemary's doing detective work with Scrabble tiles and accusing her neighbors of witchcraft, and the New Yorkers in the audience get to feel relief about their crappy studio apartments with leaky toilets.
The majestic Dakota apartment building"”yes, where John Lennon was tragically shot and killed"”stands in for the Bramford here, and its gothic splendor is a perfect setting for occult doings. When you can make a simple linen closet into a totem of fear, you're doing it right. Ruth Gordon is a gem"”the overbearing-in-her-attentions neighbor every New Yorker has invented elaborate excuses to avoid. Is she just a nosy old lady? Or is she a minion of Satan?
As Mia Farrow's pregnancy and paranoia progress, so does her unreliability as a narrator. Is she right to feel afraid? Is she having some sort of weird, pregnancy-induced psychosis or is a cult of Devil worshippers really after her baby? What, exactly, is Tannis Root? And how come Charles Grodin isn't funny in this picture? Every detail is another card on the deck of creepy.
Years after I saw the movie, I read the Ira Levin book and was surprised to discover that the political flourishes I had attributed to Polanski"”the Pope's visit, the Kennedys appearing in Farrow's hallucination/dream"”were actually written by Levin, who knew a thing or two about scaring folks. And speaking of scaring folks, I read ROSEMARY'S BABY while sitting in a NYC park, pushing my infant son's pram.
Lauren Leto is the coauthor of Texts from Last Night: All the Texts No One Remembers Sending, published in 2010, which I'd touch only if I were, say, stuck in a hostel in Italy on a Sunday without another page of English in sight. (This may or may not be why I once"”once"”read Dan Brown.) But with that caveat snugly in place, I'm pleased to report that Leto's new offering, Judging a Book by Its Lover, takes today's standard-issue literary snark and elevates it to an art form.
By turns hilarious (in "Stereotyping People by Favorite Author": "Mitch Albom: People who didn't go to college but do well on crossword puzzles") and insightful (in "Open Letter to Ayn Rand Fans": "How can you be so focused and not see that you've chosen the most transparent philosophy to live your life by?"), Leto manages to avoid her own traps nearly all the time. Skip the silly intro and the occasional anecdote about her love life"”it's easy to see them coming"”and focus on her intelligent, biting, surprisingly useful insights about how what we read (or claim to read) reveals who we are.
But above all else, take advantage of Leto's exhaustive "How to Fake It" chapter, which chronicles the basic facts, best-known works, and cocktail-party anecdotes about all the authors you'll ever need to cite for street cred. If CliffsNotes had an opinion and a couple of drinks under their belts, they'd sound like Lauren Leto.
Full disclosure: Even if I hadn't thoroughly enjoyed most of Judging a Book by Its Lover, I'd have to recommend it anyway because there's an entire chapter about how the author never finished Infinite Jest. You might remember a certain Trend Stetter making a similar confession earlier this year.
Leto also has a penchant for cheap, ugly copies of books because "crappy paperbacks are tributes to use""”if she ever stops by my house for a G&T and a snarkfest, I know she'll appreciate the worn stacks of novels from the annual library sale. We're sisters of the dime-store edition. So for just a few minutes, if she catches me on a good day, I won't judge.
I have vivid memories of my dad loaning me his copy of Ken Follett's 1978 break-out bestseller, Eye of the Needle. I was in eighth grade and it was my first stab at a fat, hardcover grown-up book, which triggered a lifelong taste for literary spy thrillers. (Trevanian's Shibumi and The Eiger Sanction were other teenaged discoveries). Not content to remain a contemporary thriller writer, however, Follett has explored other genres and eras in his varied and ambitious career, most notably the wildly successful Middle Ages stories of Pillars of the Earth and its sequel, World Without End.
Based on the success of World Without End, Follett began planning another long historical story that would mix real and fictional characters, "something with the same kind of scale and sweep," he told me. The result is The Century Trilogy, an epic exploration of the wars and turmoil of the Twentieth Century. Winter of the World, the second book in the trilogy (the sequel to Fall of Giants), goes on sale today. I recently spoke with Follett by phone about the origins of the trilogy, how he brings his concepts and characters to life, about re-reading Dickens, and clipping photographs from magazines.
Why the Twentieth Century?
It struck me that this is actually the most dramatic century in the history of the human race. We had most of the terrible wars that we've ever had, we had revolutions, and we had enormous change, on a scale that's never been seen before. And yet, of course, most of my readers were born in the Twentieth Century "“ so it's where we all come from.
Once you get to the point where you've decided what the period is going to be, what's next for you as far as creating the characters and the story?
It occurred to me almost immediately that this wasn't one book, and it occurred to me to split it into three, and for each book to be based around a war "“ so it's the First World War, the Second World War, and the Cold War. So that gave me the structure. And then I worked for about six months on the overall concept "“ reading and research "“ and loosely planning the whole trilogy. And then I focused on the first book, Fall of Giants, and read in much more detail about the period, and began to block out the story.
Separate from the research books, along the way are there things you're reading, maybe something to take you away from your writing, just as an escape, or for inspiration?
Well, yes, I read all the time. I do a lot of re-reading these days. I quite often have five new novels on my book table, and I pass them over and pick up a Dickens or a Jane Austen. And I find that reading these books in my 60s is a completely different experience from reading them as a teenager or in my 20s. That period of literature--Victorian novels with a structured plot, with distinctive characters, characters whose choices change the course of the story--that is the kind of novel that I write. It's a nineteenth century tradition, and I write in that tradition, as indeed do most people on the bestseller list.
So, that process of re-reading. How does that affect your writing? Is it motivational? Does it keep you true to form? Or is it just a good diversion?
Well, I think it's all of those things. But I think all the time about the structure of stories. And if they're successful, I ask: What is this author doing right here? He's got my attention, he's got me completely riveted, and I ask: How's he done that? And If my attention wanders and I get a bit bored I ask: Okay, what's this guy done wrong? Do I not care enough about the characters? Is the story moving too slowly? Has the whole thing become a bit too abstract? I analyze novels all the time. And if I find a fault in a novel I sometimes look at a book I'm writing and ask: Well, have I made that mistake?
On that stack of novels on your nightstand, is there anyone you've particularly enjoyed?
I just read a novel that actually isn't out yet--but I checked and it's available for pre-order, on Amazon.com--by an English writer called Sebastian Faulks (Birdsong). His new book is called A Possible Life(to be published in December) and it's very unusual and very intriguing, though I'm not sure what he's trying to do. I recommended it to my wife, Barbara, and she's reading it with the same sense of rather pleasant bafflement.
Do you prefer British writers?
Not especially. I'm a geat admirer of Stephen King, who has probably been the most popular writer in the world for most of the time that I've been an author. And I know why... Just a terrific, terrific artist. So I read just about everything he does. And the literary novelist who never fails to excite me is Philip Roth, another American.
Your writing space... With a book like this, and a trilogy like this, I'm envisioning a lot of stuff around you, either maps or photographs. Describe your work space as it relates to this book.
Well, you're quite right, I'm surrounded by books about the history of the Twentieth Century. And maps. Maps are quite important, and very difficult to get. (e.g. maps of Berlin during wartime weren't widely produced).
I also have an easel, an artists' easel that I have in my library, that has a white board on it. And early in the process of writing a novel, I cut out photographs from magazine and books of people who resemble my characters. And I stick them on this board so I can look up and see the faces of the people I'm writing about. And I find that very helpful, especially in the early stages... Looking at their photos reminds me of the concept of their character, and their impression on the world around them. Beautiful, ugly, sexy, bald, fat, thin"¦
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We finished our chat by discussing his daily routine and typical work day, which begins at 7 a.m. and lasts until 5 p.m., with short breaks for breakfast and lunch, six days a week. Winter of the World took about two years, a third of that time on research and planning, a third on writing the first draft (about 1,500 words a day), and a third on rewriting. He saves phone calls for the end of the day, but doesn't mind interruptions from his grandkids or dogs, who wander in to "make sure I'm working." He doesn't listen to music, and is able to tune out distractions as he gets lost in the imaginary worlds he's creating. "Very little of what's going on in the real world around me actually impinges on me," he said.
Discipline, sitting and concentrating, has never been a problem. "For me the difficulty is not doing it. For me the difficulty is to take Sunday off," he said. "When I finish the trilogy I'm hoping to slow down a little."
Sara Nelson counts the ways she loves Penny Marshall, as revealed in the actor/director's memoir My Mother Was Nuts.
Penny, she's just like us--only funnier and a whole lot richer. What I also like about her is that she's very . . .
Openminded: Growing up in the Bronx in New York in the 50s, she "never paid attention to ethnicities or skin color." Though "to this day people think we're Jewish," Marshall--whose father changed the family name from Masciarelli--says she and her two siblings, including Garry Marshall, the TV producer, were all raised in different churches.
Compulsive: When she was a kid, she didn't want any of the food on her plate to touch.
Friendly: She met composer Marvin Hamlisch at Camp Edgemont, a horseback riding camp in Deposit, New York. "He sat at my table," she says. "I knew all of his food allergies."
Tough: When casting "A League of Their Own," she made her actresses--including Madonna, Debra Winger, Marisa Tomei, and Geena Davis--play ball during the audition. Can you guess who was the loser?
And, of course, Modest: A new superstar thanks to "Laverne and Shirley," Marshall pretended to take her young fame in stride. But when she met Louise Lasser, star of the then-hit "Mary Hartman, Mary Hartman," the two of them went to the ladies room and jumped up and down screaming, "We're famous, we're famous."
Anyone who has written or read more than birthday cards has more than likely heard the terms "tight (or close) third person" and "distant third person." And yet, when it comes to nailing down exactly what they mean, when and how to use them, and why something feels off about someone's use of tight third person, it can start to get a bit complicated. At its simplest, all the two terms do is describe the zooming in and out of a book's literary camera. Tight third person means the literary camera has a tight focus on the viewpoint character (sometimes, so tight as to be just on their face) so as to emphasize the emotions and thoughts of the character. And distant third person means the camera is panned back a bit, to give us a less emotional and more literal view of things"”and also to show us the character has feet.
But where it starts to get complicated is when you realize there aren't just two kinds of third person. Tight and distant third person are actually part of a continuum that stretches all the way from outer-space distant--to right up inside your character's skull. The more distant the narration, the more emphasis there is on the narrator's voice and opinions (and the more important it is to have a strong voice). And the closer the narration, the more emphasis there is on the character's experiences"”to the eventual elimination of the narrator's voice.
Writers tend to be very opinionated about"”well, everything! But in particular about what distances are best. But, of course, in reality, you need all the distances (or at least, more than one). Sticking to just one distance would feel bizarrely monotone, like holding a single note for five minutes in place of a melody. Instead, most novels use different pacing, narrative distances, and vocabularies for different occasions, which the author weaves together seamlessly"”and naturally"”like a maestro.
Of course, that isn't to say you should use all the distances all the time"”and mixed up with each other willy-nilly. As engaging as the excellent use of distances can be, unexpected shifts in distance are discordant, and one of the surest ways to disengage your reader. So, to help tackle the issue, I've adapted the five "psychic distances" outlined by John Gardner in his genius guide to writing: The Art of Fiction, and gone over briefly some of the details of each distance and how to move elegantly between them.
Distant Third aka. The Historian "It was winter of the year 1853. A large man stepped out of a doorway.""”The Art of Fiction
The Historian tells his story from an omniscient third person point of view. Meaning, it is the all-seeing eye of ultimate narration"”and everything that happens in the story is fair game. Of course, that being said, the Historian strives to cover all the events of the story in as unbiased and factual a manner as possible"”becoming themselves invisible. For that reason, this distance is super formal, mostly informative, and is often used for setting the scene. It's about as far from realistic, intimate, and personal as you can get, but it can be awesome for giving your story the feel of a legend or myth.
The Historian risks getting dry and is too distant to give characters their proper attention, so it's a good idea to limit this distance to transitions, introductions, and endings. The Historian has a fantastic gravitas to it precisely because it reads like something out of the history books--but keep in mind, not many people read history books for funsies.
Opinionated Narrator aka The Storyteller "Henry J. Warburton had never much cared for snowstorms."--The Art of Fiction
Like the Historian, the Storyteller also spins his yarn from an omniscient third person point of view. But unlike the Historian, the Storyteller narrator often has a strong voice, with a distinct personality, vocabulary, and quirks. While the Historian strives to employ an invisible, unbiased narrator, the Storyteller's narrator is a character in and of itself"”telling the story to the audience in its own voice. Because of that, it's far less formal than the Historian"”and far more self-aware and intentionally artful. It's the kind of voice a fireside storyteller might employ when starting his tale"”personal, warm, and playful but also not intimately involved in the story. And while it has artifice, and you are aware of the words as you read them, that doesn't subtract from its value. It's easy to get sucked in by a strong Storyteller.
Of course, it's easy to go too far with this voice"”you have to be careful not to let it go from clever to stilted. And it also risks never letting the characters themselves have strong, unique voices.
Standard Narration aka The Literalist "Henry hated snowstorms."--The Art of Fiction
The most distant of the third person limited points of view, the Literalist is often the standard distance for a book, bridging the gap between the distant, narrator-heavy bits and the tight, character-focused bits. With the Literalist, you are literally writing down what happened"”but limiting it to what your viewpoint character could reasonably be expected to see. And that's where the "third person limited" part comes in: If the viewpoint character didn't see it? It didn't happen--at least as far as the reader's concerned. This may initially seem too limiting, as so many cool plot aspects will go unappreciated by the reader until their second read. However, it's a fantastic way to build narrative tension, as instead of drawing tension from reader knowledge, the reader shares the character's tension, creating a much stronger bond between the character and the reader.
As the most distant of the third person limited points of view, you can still hear the narrator's voice. The description is not exactly as the main character would think it, and the reader is allowed a comfortable distance between themselves and the characters, so they don't have to associate themselves with characters they don't fancy, and so that it still feels like reading"”rather than experiencing--a story. It's just more like hearing the story from only one person involved, rather than hearing the version that combines what everyone knows.
Close Third aka The Opinionated Character "God how he hated these damn snowstorms."--The Art of Fiction
This is perhaps my favorite narrative distance and is what most people mean when they say "close (or tight) third person." It's also the first distance where I'd say the reader experiences rather than reads the story. The Opinionated Character takes third person limited a step closer in--focusing on character thoughts, feelings, and sensations--and makes the character's voice more important than the narrator's. This means the vocabulary and opinions of the viewpoint character color the narrative, and if there isn't a good reason for the main character to think something, it shouldn't come up. It's also the first distance in which it is appropriate to put character's direct thoughts. This distance ties the reader's experience even closer to that of the character"”making it delightful to use with sympathetic villains, as it forces your reader to identify with usually unpalatable people, and maybe even tricks them into rooting for them.
Close third is used for the majority of the narration of most of my favorite books. But that doesn't mean it doesn't have its drawbacks. For one thing, it can feel a bit breathless"”and dense. It can be extremely jarring to be dropped into the middle of a scene in close third--like waking up to a cat's face one inch from your own. So yes, use close third--but make sure to give us some breathing room sometimes, too.
Stream-of-Consciousness aka You Are the Character "Snow. Under your collar, down inside your shoes, freezing and plugging up your miserable soul."--The Art of Fiction
This is where the camera pushes right through the back of the character's head and lets the reader see out of their eyes. In Gardner's approach, this actually slips into the "yous" and "yours" of second person, but I think there's room to take a half-step back and use this as a third person (very limited) that focuses solely on the sensations and emotions and thoughts of the viewpoint character, eliminating the narrator's voice entirely. It's perfect for very intense scenes"”like romantic, climatic, or fight scenes"”but unless you're doing an experimental piece, it's generally not appropriate for every paragraph use.
Changing Distances
Changing distances is like shifting gears: generally, you want to do it one level at a time, as shifting metaphorically from first to fourth can make for a jerky and uncomfortable ride. Likewise, if you are changing the point of view character (like changing the driver of a car), it is usually best to go distant to make the transition (or stop, even, with a scene break), rather than staying in tight third person and "head-hopping." Most scenes should stay at a medium distance, which gives you room to move closer for intense scenes (like climaxes"”which are often the most intense of all) and farther away for beginnings, endings, and transitions. That being said, you don't need to include all five levels in your book. Pick a range you're comfortable with, and work within that. So long as you have some range in your narrative distance, you'll have the flexibility of expression you need to tell a damn good story!
Blackburn Burrow, the story of a mysterious Civil War veteran and his battle against supernatural horrors, was released this week as a digital comic by Amazon Studios, featuring the work of top talents in the industry.
"This is a very exciting new venture for Amazon Studios. Beyond entertaining legions of comic fans, we see value in digital comics as a new way to test stories and learn more about fan engagement," said Roy Price, Director of Amazon Studios. "The 12 Gauge team has done beautiful work on the Blackburn Burrow digital comic and we are thrilled to share it with audiences to see how they react to the story."
The Blackburn Burrow digital comic is produced by 12 Gauge Comics, which teamed with renowned comics writer Ron Marz (Silver Surfer, Green Lantern, Marvel vs. DC, Batman/Aliens ) and veteran illustrator Matthew Dow Smith (Doctor Who, X-Men Icons, Mirror's Edge, Day of Judgment) to shape the story and look of the comic.
"I love period stories, I love supernatural stories, and I love collaborating with this art team. Working on Blackburn Burrow has been a great experience, especially with Amazon going to such lengths to put this story in front of as many readers as possible. That kind of commitment is real gift for storytellers," Marz said.
Blackburn Burrow Issue #1 (of four) is available for free at a variety of sites including the Kindle Store, Graphicly and the Amazon Studios Facebook page. The series will be released over a period of four months, with new issues coming out every four weeks. Each release will be accompanied by a poll about that issue and readers are encouraged to provide comments on the story.
Perelman's eagerly awaited Smitten Kitchen Cookbook (arriving October 30) brings all the best ingredients of her award-winning Smitten Kitchen blog--enthusiastic and frank guidance for unfussy, delicious home-cooked food--to over 100 recipes, mostly new, accompanied by hundreds of her own luscious photos.
Thanks for satisfying our curiosity, Deb!
What niche hope this book fills?
My hope is that The Smitten Kitchen Cookbook is filled with your new favorite things to cook--approachable recipes made with accessible ingredients that exceed your expectations.
Which upcoming fall cookbooks are you most excited about?
I am ridiculously excited about Ottolenghi's new Jerusalem book, as I've loved everything he's made so far. I have already tried out a couple recipes from The Mile End Cookbook, and can tell it's going to be an obsession all winter. I just spied brown butter snickerdoodles in the new Baked Elements book; I am pretty sure that needs to happen immediately. And I've been cooking out of the Sprouted Kitchen cookbook and everything has been fresh, wholesome and stunning.
What's your favorite restaurant"”or the best place you've eaten recently?
My husband and I are the last people to get to the Breslin in the Ace Hotel, but it doesn't matter--we fell head over heels and have been back three times in three months. The crispy boiled peanuts, lamb burger, fresh, crunchy salads and their grapefruit gin-and-tonic are unforgettable.
What's been your most memorable moment so far as an author?
The process of planning the book tour--making the jump from someone who types things to strangers who might or might not be listening via her laptop to someone who is going to show up in various cities at specific times to hang out with these strangers--is wild. I am not sure I've gotten my head around it yet, but I still can't wait to get on the road.
What other talent would you most like to have (not including flight or invisibility)?
Well, I wish I could dance.
What are you obsessed with now?
I've been on a running kick, although I'm really bad at it. No really: terrible. But strangely, that's my favorite part. Starting my day completely humbled by my inability to run half as long or fast as these people on the other treadmills (who can probably dance, too), well, the day only gets better from there. I'm hooked.
What's next for you?
The moon! Just kidding. I really hope to just keep doing what I'm doing--cooking, writing, having fun with my family and running around NYC like a tourist. My goals are less rooted in a desire for a designer kitchen (though, you know, if you have one lying around...) and balcony overlooking Central Park and more a hope that I'll keep having fun doing what I do, so that it feels as unwork-like as possible.
