Ooja, Grendel, and Luka

I would like to thank the above-mentioned, Goat-guardianed canines for putting Mark and Evelyn through a workout today that resulted in Mark's falling asleep on his back with his legs in the air and Evelyn's not whimpering in her crate for nearly two hours. Nice job! I would also like to thank TLB and Bihari, who are not technically canines but who are able to deeply imagine dogs' needs, for coming by to offer up additional exhaustion for the young pooches.

Southern Comfort

I'm driving a friend out to Austin in about a week, and we'll be making stops in Memphis, Oxford, and New Orleans. If anyone has eating, drinking, or cultural recommendations for any of these four places, I would be much obliged. Right now I only really know of Faulkner's house and a pretentious place to eat breakfast.

On an unrelated note, I'm reading Under the Glacier by Halldor Laxness. I want to like it because I like what it's trying to do but I don't much like it. The dialogue, in its defense, is pretty funny. Has anyone read Laxness? Am I losing something from the Icelandic?

Thisbe on Talk of Iowa this morning

At 10 am, AM 910.

"Awaiting Orders" by Tobias Wolff

New Yorker fiction -- July 25, 2005 issue


Well, this starts out seeming to be a story about the Iraq War only to slyly turn into a story about being gay in the military. The word gay is never used, though, which is part of the subtle charm of the piece. The story itself doesn't ask and doesn't tell -- outright anyway -- though it becomes clear enough by the second or third column.

Sergeant Owen Morse is the POV character, a quiet man going about his business in today's armed services, laying low, keeping his nose as clean as he can. He's career military: "He was a soldier, no longer able to imagine himself as a civilian -- the formlessness of that life, the endless petty choices to be made." When a soldier's sister calls the barracks, and Morse has to tell her Billy Hart has already shipped out for Iraq, he muses on this Billy Hart, who never actually appears.

A good-looking troop, though. Some Indian there, those high cheekbones, deep-set black eyes; beautiful, really, and with that slow, catlike way about him, cool, aloof, almost contemptuous in the languor and ease of his movements. Morse had felt the old pull despite himself, knowing Hart was trouble but always a little taut in his presence, fighting the stubborn drift of his gaze toward Hart's face, toward that secret knowledge playing on his lips.

On first read I was all, whaaah??? This is what sergeants think about? Times sure have changed since Full Metal Jacket. But you see the subtlety here. Nothing in that snippet necessitates a homoerotic interpretation, but on second read passages like that really pop.

We begin to get some background on Morse and his dangerous dalliances. He nearly got caught, was pulled into a mysterious investigation that never quite clarified or completed itself. This is why he is "awaiting orders." The love that dare not speak its name -- in the Army it dare not even appear to be suggesting that it might possibly exist, or one's career is over. I knew this was the case, but this story puts a character to the situation and thus fills out the emotions about it that recline latent in the reader. Imagine: while defending your country -- or while invading another country for oil, as the case may be -- having to hide your innate sexual preference. To lie. But lying is survival to Morse.

The sister (Julianne) calls back, has driven all this way to visit Billy, and Morse agrees to meet her at a "pancake house." She brings Billy Hart's young son with her -- "a fat-faced boy, maybe seven or eight," who says to Morse, "You look like a frog." So, to Morse's surprise, Billy Hart is, if not straight, at least a father. The boy's mother is back in rehab, and Julianne is saddled with parental responsibilities she never bargained for. What follows is a standard talky cafe scene. At this point we have four New Yorker columns to go in a Tobias Wolff story. Let's get out of this friggin' cafe! But no. It begins to rain. We seem to have entered a Raymond Carver story, or Hemingway.

"My dad's a soldier," the boy said, head still bent over the placemat.
"I know," Morse said. "He's a good soldier. You should be proud."

When I wake up, Morse is trying to give her money. She is too proud for that. She won't even let him get the check. As she and the boy walk into the rain, she mentions that they will be sleeping in her pickup truck because it's raining too hard to drive it. Much is made of this hard rain, but its significance escapes me.

Then we flash forward to later that morning, with Dixon, Morse's current fella, asking why he (Morse) didn't invite them to come home with him. And Morse, of course, nixed that due to awkwardness and danger involved.

And then what? Dixon waking up and playing host, bearing fresh towels to the guest room, making coffee, teasing the boy -- and looking at Morse in that way of his. Its meaning would be clear enough to Julianne. What might she do with such knowledge? Out of shock and disgust, perhaps even feeling herself betrayed, she could ruin them.
... What he feared, what he could not allow, was for her to see how Dixon looked at him, and then to see that he could not give back what he received. That things between them were unequal, and himself unloving.

Then we flash back to the pancake house goodbye scene. She and the boy again walk off into the rain! Twice! I'm all, whaaaaa?? This is what Tobias Wolff stories do now? Times sure have changed since "Hunters in the Snow."

I don't know what to do with this story, and I feel I may be missing something. If his relationship with Dixon is really the central problem for this character, then it seems like we should get more than two pretty stock paragraphs about it. Okay, he can't offer her a place to stay because he's afraid she will see he doesn't love Dixon as much as Dixon loves him? Is that it?

It's like there are two strains to the story: the Julianne Hart one, which goes nowhere for too long, and the Dixon one, which gets short-shrifted -- almost seems thrown in as an afterthought, there's so little of it. If the flashing forward/back ending is meant to tie these threads together, I fail to see how it does that.

What is this story about? What is its core? Don't get me wrong: If there's one thing I love about Mr. Wolff, it's his economy of language and structure, his ability to be to the point and pithy. He must be one of the most ruthless rewriters around. But here he seems to have trimmed deep into the muscle or even bone. I'm not asking for a dissertation on Morse's psychology and relationship -- just for something to tie all this together. What problem has been solved or brought to the surface? His relationship with Dixon? More of that, then, please -- and less sleepy minimalist dialog in rain-battered Waffle Houses.

Maybe the heat is finally beginning to boil my brains.

Reviewing reviewing

When it's not 103 degrees, and when our air conditioner is working, it's not a problem to find time to read and review one New Yorker story a week. But why am I having trouble even opening the Atlantic Monthly fiction issue? It's like a huge homework assignment that I just look at nervously every day. And even when I do ... am I really so shallow as to vastly prefer those skinny New Yorker columns and that lovely font? Moreover, I find that I like it when things are voluntary and not obligatory. I -- we -- may get to the AM stories, may not. I am retracting the promise to review all those stories. (Hey, if someone wants to pay me a salary to do it... otherwise, I have to maintain time for my own work.)

McCarthyism

I just finished No Country For Old Men and I'm having trouble with it.

I can say it is likely the grimmest book I have ever read. It's a book where Hope sits on the sidelines with its head in its hands while Depravity goes about its business efficiently and rather creatively. I'm not sure what to make of it - was this kick in the stomach good for me or not?

I do disagree with James Wood's assessment of it as "unimportant" (if this is unimportant, The Book Against God, Wood's own novel, is nonexistent) but I will agree with him when he calls the book frustrating. By the end it has devolved into an extended essay by McCarthy on the inevitability of chaos. I didn't think Coetzee got away with the same sort of disguised philosophizing in Elizabeth Costello and I don't want to let McCarthy gets off the hook either. The first two-thirds of the book are brutal and compelling but (and I don't want to give away too much here), the way in which all of that is discarded in service of the Revelation of St. Cormac feels like a cheat.

It's not like McCarthy's made a career out of being maudlin. Child of God with its necrophiliac serial killer protagonist didn't spook me like this. Blood Meridian was (to use an overused but apt phrase) an inquiry into the nature of evil - and is in my opinion one of the best American novels of the 20th Century. No Country For Old Men isn't about the nature of evil. It's a concession of defeat to it.

If anyone else has read/is reading/will read it, please tell me if I'm being too lillylivered about this.

To the wretched cowardly low-life who stole my bike

It cost me twenty dollars. I parked that bike all over the IC for three years and never once locked it. Never even thought about locking it. Last night, you saw it parked in front of the Java House and took it. How brave! How clever of you! Scratched to hell, rusted handlebars, slow leaks in both worn tires, only one brake worked -- it is a piece of junk, but it was mine. My mother always says we are not punished for our sins, but by our sins, which maybe doesn't seem to apply very well here, because now you are riding my bike around and I'm not, but the point is, the bike will never feel right to you, no matter how much you pretend it's yours. You will never feel 100% great riding that bike. Your eyes will be distracted, on the lookout for me! And the bike will never truly relax under your -- I hope -- fat, ugly ass, because it will always yearn for mine. Perhaps it or your guilty, imperfect attention will throw you just as a bus barrels by. Watch out.

You took a bit of the shine off Iowa City for me. Now I am suspicious of every bicyclist that passes by. I scrutinized with a sweaty scowl every bike I saw as I trudged home last night. This is a small town. I will know that bike when I see it, no matter how you try and disguise it, and when I do ... I will triumphantly reclaim it -- unless you lock it. A lock will cost you more than the bike cost me. You couldn't be bothered to find your own twenty-dollar bike, and if you shell out the cash for the lock, I hope the irony of that action chips away further at your puny, charcoal heart.

Who is John Roberts?

There is an extensive and thoughtful profile of the man in today's NYT that made me feel better about him.

Bush, Lincoln parallels?

Just finished Gore Vidal's Lincoln -- a ripping good read. The Supreme Court pick yesterday got me thinking 1) There is nothing new under the sun -- corruption, lies, deceit, and raw power politics have always been a game to the powerful who rule, and 2) There are some strange similarities...

Bush: Carefully crafted campaign persona as humble blue-collar worker (rancher) when truth is otherwise (trust-fund businessman)
Lincoln: Carefully crafted campaign persona as humble blue-collar worker (rail-splitter) when truth was otherwise (attorney)

Bush: Perceived as bumbling hick, laughed at, underestimated by Washington establishment
Lincoln: Perceived as bumbling hick, laughed at, underestimated by Washington establishment

Bush: Barely elected after spotty political past, minority president
Lincoln: Barely elected after spotty political past, minority president

Bush: Snuck into White House through back door to avoid protesters
Lincoln: Snuck into Washington in disguise to avoid assassins

Bush: Rushed to war, justified by patriotic appeals, to recapture defiant, radical states and secure source important raw material (oil)
Lincoln: Rushed to war, justified by patriotic appeals, to recapture defiant, radical states and secure important raw material (cotton)

Bush: Leader of larger business wing of Republican party with majorities in both houses of Congress, needs rabid, radical wing to maintain power
Lincoln: Leader of larger business wing of Republican party with majorities in both houses of Congress, needed rabid, radical wing to maintain power

Bush: Seen as inactive, unresponsive to needs of radical faction of own party, but supported anyway
Lincoln: Seen as inactive, unresponsive to needs of radical faction of own party, but supported anyway

Bush: Uses wily folksy charm to somehow outmaneuver more seasoned, sophisticated rivals with help from guru (Rove)
Lincoln: Used wily folksy charm to somehow outmaneuver more seasoned, sopisticated rivals with help from guru (Seward)

Bush: Reelection prospects iffy against peacenik military officer Democrat, barely wins anyway
Lincoln: Reelection prospects iffy against peacenik military officer Democrat, barely wins anyway

Bush: Perceived by enemies as craven power-hungry tyrant unafraid to toss aside Constitutional rights as necessity of war
Lincoln: Perceived by enemies as craven power-hungry tyrant unafraid to toss aside Constitutional rights as necessity of war

Bush: Nominated extreme SC justice to please rabid minority faction of party (Roberts)
Lincoln: Nominated extreme SC justice to please rabid minority faction of party (Chase)

Bush: Probably believes blacks should be forcibly colonized to South America
Lincoln: Believed blacks should be forcibly colonized to South America

Bush: No interest in foreign affairs except as war prospects, takes dim view of French
Lincoln: No interest in foreign affairs except as war prospects, took dim view of French

There may be others. This is partly tongue-in-cheek. And there are big differences (Rove sees Bush more as McKinley, himself as Mark Hanna, and the great battle to be over the reascendency of powerful business interests). The main change is that the overall liberal/conservative political equation, or the social side anyway, has flip-flopped between the parties, of course -- I would have been on Lincoln's side and seen him as a strong hero, whereas I'm on the other side when it comes to Bush. An evil tyrant is all in your perspective, I guess.

Worst Covers Ever

Perhaps a bored goat can find some book covers to match these amazingly awful album covers.

Best First Lines...and Worst?

Over at Michael Berube's web site, there's a discussion going on about best first lines. I myself am a huge fan of the Lolita and the Anna Karenina and the One Hundred Years of Solitude, but I have to cast my vote for a couple of different ones. The funny thing is that these aren't necessarily my favorite books--the lines themselves are, at least to me, more memorable than the stories themselves.

1. The Bell Jar. "It was a queer, sultry summer, the summer they electrocuted the Rosenbergs, and I didn't know what I was doing in New York."

2. "The Tell-Tale Heart": "True!--nervous--very, very dreadfully nervous I had been and am! But why will you say that I am mad?"

Votes, anyone?

Too hot to blog

It's 96 in Iowa City, with 45% humidity and a "very high" pollen count. Effects on citizens include lethargy, grumpiness, lack of initiative, faltering conversation, brow wiping and shaking of weary heads, a scowling scurry from AC'd building to AC'd building when motion is required. My dogs lie panting and listless in dusty dirt. Houseplants shiver away from AC drafts only to wilt in the windows. I don't know about others, but it's hard to write or do anything else in this glaring heat oven of a town.

"Long-Distance Client" by Allegra Goodman

New Yorker fiction -- July 11 & 18, 2005 issue


Mel Millstein has several problems developing as this story, set during the 1999 tech bubble, gets going: His wife is succumbing to a "fringe" Jewish sect called the Bialystokers and wants him to start calling her by her Hebrew name, Basha, because she thinks "Barbara" means "barbarian"; he is the oldest employee, a one-man HR department, at a wacky start-up called ISIS and thinks he is being replaced by Danica, the company secretary, who seems to do little but sit atop an exercise ball; and, thanks to a distracting electrician who hails him from a hole in the ceiling and a phone cord that's too short, he throws out his back and settles in for a life of chronic pain ... until Danica makes an appointment for him with Bobby Bruce, a practitioner of the Alexander Technique. Bobby miraculously fixes Mel's pain by "realigning" his body -- which involves merely touching him with his "healing fingers" on one shoulder.

Mel is amazed. But it turns out the technique only lasts a day or so and then he slides back into his old habits that have led to his imbalance, which leads to his pain. So he has to keep going back to Bobby, but Bobby starts canceling appointments on him because his (Bobby's) wife is ill. And even when he keeps an appointment, promptly on the half hour he boots Mel out of his office to see to a "long-distance client." Mel spends a good deal of the story wondering how long-distance Alexander could possibly work -- and who the client might be.

Maybe I have a soft spot for hapless characters. If this were a movie, you could cast Woody Allen or Jason Alexander as Mel. Everything in his life seems to be spiraling out of control and nothing seems to help -- except Bobby, but Bobby is becoming more and more remote. Mel took the HR job for the same reason everyone took risky jobs at startup companies back then: the money. "We're going to be gazillionaires," his ISIS bosses tell him as they convince him to come on board. But Mel doesn't fit in with the badminton-playing coders who type frantically all around him. He begins to regret taking the job. "He wondered what good zillions would be for him and Barbara. What would they possibly spend them on -- apart from a divorce?"

Barbara, or Basha, is becoming more remote, too. She believes Mel should talk to her rabbi. Mel sees the Bialystokers as freaks. She reads to him from a Bialystoker book:

Consider all the riches in the world, all its beauties and pleasures. How much greater is the Holy One Blessed Be He than these.... Consider all the suffering in the world, all its difficulties, poverty, and pain. How much greater is the Holy One Blessed Be He than these.

The pathos here, as in all good hapless character stories, is that such advice for Mel -- for his pain and his career -- is both right on and useless unless he acts on it. The heart of comedy, acording to Freud, is when you laugh at the misfortunes of others out of relief that it isn't you having the misfortunes. And this story is comical. Better Mel than me. But the story doesn't go anywhere I want it to. What happens at work? Does he stay on or quit -- or is he fired? What about his wife -- does he confront her? Separate from her? No idea. The ending has more to do with Bobby than with Mel. Bobby's wife dies, and at his last appointment Mel begins to realize how selfish and demanding and unfeeling toward Bobby he has been. He sneaks back after his session to spy on Bobby -- to see who the long-distance client is. Well, he just sees Bobby sitting alone in his office, staring. The end.

Huh? The reader is left wondering about the identity of the long-distance client. An unsolved mystery. But this reader, for one, doesn't care who it is. I spent my time and energy on board Mel's bandwagon, not Bobby's, and I want the story to resolve the crisis in Mel's life, not Bobby's. It's Mel's wife who should have an event happen to her, not Bobby's. We don't know Bobby. He is inscrutable -- a Kurtz, a Gatsby. It's Mel we identify with and want some kind of resolution for. So, the story disappoints. I did enjoy the chuckles it gave me, but it doesn't work as a short story for me. Its shape does not come around, and its balance is as off as Mel's back. Still, I did laugh a few times, so it has comedic value -- hence the yellow light.

Now, class, what do we do when a New Yorker story doesn't seem to work? That's right. Look on the Contributors page. And there we find that Allegra Goodman has a novel, Intuition, coming out in February.

Off to Minnesota to formulate otherdimensional counter-attack, relax

My novel research has plunged me unwittingly into a pitched battle with dark forces. It is now clear that an evil shaman has placed a curse on me, probably by hiding somewhere in the house and nailing me with a magic invisible dart. Item: last Thursday I was "stung" on the finger, in our living room, by a "wasp." Nuff said. Friday I was laid low by a chest cold that lasted three days. Nevertheless I rode my bike downtown Saturday morning to the Record Fair at the Englert, a voyage that ended in a spectacular, public, and humiliating low-speed crash that bruised my wrist and pride. And I saw no good records. Back to writhing and coughing in bed. What 4th of July?

Tuesday I woke up with both lips hideously swollen ("like rafts" -- Tracy). It was swiftly determined that 1) I looked like Rick Moranis, and 2) I should call my doctor -- who, stifling a yawn, told me to take a Benadryl. The swelling went down, but only as my back flared up with red welts and rashes and my gut was wrecked by extreme intestinal cramping and immobility, spurring my first experiment with a laxative, whose effects kicked into high gear toward the end of an otherwise lovely visit by PJKM, T. Moody, TLB, and Brando. (I apologize to them for my abrupt disappearance.)

But the curse seems to have failed. Today I'm fit as a fiddle as I prepare to head to the North Woods for four days of camping, conferencing with spirit allies, and spacetunneling my revenge on the cowardly witch doctor -- woe to those who maim but do not kill!

Back next week to enjoy Atlantic Monthly fiction issue.

The Loss of Leon Meed

Josh Emmons, class of '02, sends word that his first novel, The Loss of Leon Meed, is in stores as we speak. He also promises an Earth Goat interview very soon. Stay tuned.

The Adventures of Write-Boy and Hooky, the Iowa River Catfish, Vol. II

"At least a pork chop would feed you."

Our own lovely lady of prose, Cristina Henriquez, is now appearing in this week's New Yorker, with her story, Ashes. Congratulations!

Cloud Atlas: better late than never

Finished it today. Humbled and thrilled by Mitchell's precocious virtuosity. He has cleared a new section in the forest, it seems to me. We all owe him a beer. The matryoshka structure, the planning, the meticulous interthreading that he manages to convincingly deploy -- most impressive and thoroughly enjoyable. Kind of like Nabokov meets Anthony Burgess meets Jonathan Lethem meets etc. etc... I think the Frobisher bits were the most polished, the Ewing bits maybe my sentimental favorite, Sonmi the most exciting. But no part of it left me too dissatisfied. I will have to read it again in a few years to begin actually delineating every bit of the puzzle -- I have questions still (the tattoo? is it okay to go from ostensible reality to ostensible fiction and back and forth like that? actual cause of the Fall and its relation to concrete events in the book? How the Hawaii mission survived and why were they white? These may be or become obvious.). His overall theme of the strong overcoming the weak was resounding and powerful, more than enough engine to power the thing all the way. Thank you, Tom Hobbes, for that. As far as cons, I was left just a bit cold by the tone, maybe by the clinical precision in language that he employs throughout. The Luisa Ray bits came closest to annoying me as bad fiction, but they never made it there. Can you have heart and head both equally triumphant? He comes awfully close, but the head wins out here, I think. I felt closest to Frobisher and Ewing, like they were the most human. And Sonmi -- she also found her way into my emotions. The restraint she maintained while butting heads with the most enormous and deadly infuriating lies of power. I'm not sure it'd be possible to pull off a trick like this while also creating characters you fully fall in love with. But heck, maybe it is. If someone can come this close to marrying dazzling intellectual pleasures with heart-wrenchers and tummy-ticklers... Anyway, I found this delicious -- so thanks very much to all for the recommendation.

Shelby Foote, we hardly knew ye

Shelby Foote has died. I have yet to wade into his 3,000-page book on the Civil War, or any of his six novels, but his impish appearances and humorous/poignant anecdotes in the Ken Burns documentary brought that era to life for me and convinced me that writing about it was a good idea (see my novel, coming out in 2029). "Any understanding of America has to be grounded in -- and I mean really grounded in -- an understanding of the Civil War. It defined us. It defines us still."

Debating "The Notebook": when a movie totally sucks -- or does it?

First, let me apologize for the length of this possibly pointless post, and for the slapdash, rough-draft quality of the prose in it. There is currently such a dearth of material on EG, though, that I figure throwing content up here can only help you waste more of your time -- it's only fair, because I clearly am wasting my own.

Now, to the point: I am currently embroiled in a debate with freshly scrubbed youngsters on a message board at IMDB.com about the movie The Notebook. The film is getting very high marks on that site after more than 10,000 votes, and the external reviews -- even The Onion's -- are actually mostly positive (except Rolling Stone's). Ebert gave it thumbs up! "Yeah, up his ASS!" I screamed at our DVD player as the full implications of what we had done in renting this... this... well, I think the ... film ... is a .. gosh, is a ... well, see for yourself. We join our story in progress...

--

My wife and I watched "The Notebook" last night. Within ten minutes we were furious at how slow, cliche, and predictable it was. And then it just got worse and worse. It was so very very bad that we were actually drawn to watch in perverse, embarrassed horror as each scene plodded through stale, obvious dialog, and the actors tried to salvage what was obviously a terrible muddle by overacting. I can't begin to convey just how awful this movie is, in every sense. Leave aside the horrendously dull, cliche-ridden script, the terrible acting, the hamfisted directing, the swelling tear-jerker music, and the incredibly obvious plot -- Even the freaking costumes were terrible. The fake facial hair looked like it was done by 3rd-graders.

If movies are meant to fascinate, then this one did all right. I consider this the worst film I have seen in at least five years, but rarely if ever have I (and my wife) been compelled to stay all the way through such abysmal crap out of some sort of hilarious anger at how were were wasting our own time. I mean we were jumping on the couches and screaming in warped glee as each predictable plot point was tediously checked off the director's checklist. All the way to the very last shot (of the backstory) of her coming back and them hugging in a swirl of stock sentimental string music -- OF COURSE SHE COMES BACK.

And when (in the front story) they actually for God's sake died together, we could not stop howling with laughter and hitting each other with pillows -- not because we are heartless, oh no, we LOVE good movies -- but because for one, there was no hint that he was ill, so it was completely out of the blue, and two, there is no more cliche tear-jerker ending in the book. My God. Then I come here expecting to be vindicated and I find a bunch of glassy-eyed pod people who were actually taken in by this plodding, pathetic drivel. What in the world is up? I usually am with IMDB folks on their 7.8s, but man alive, folks, step away from the Kool-Aid.
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OMG! WTF IS UR PROBLEM?! IF YOU HAVE NOTHING NICE TO SAY DONT SAY ANYTHING AT ALL!! NAME ANY MOVIE, ANY MOVIE AT ALL THAT ISNT PREDICTABLE! im sorry, but that wasnt nice. some people actually like this movie, okay?...so if you dont like it, why are you even here?!...

and i also see that you have no other posts on IMDB. well, how cruel and stupid is it of u to hate this movie so much, that all u do is make an acount for IMDB just to trash this movie! okay, thats just stupid!

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I don't have a problem -- besides the $3.98 it stole from me. The MOVIE has a problem. I am merely trying to warn people. If I can ward away even 100 people, say, from spending their hard-earned cash on simplistic tripe like "The Notebook" -- from wasting precious little parts of their lives -- well, then I will feel I have done my job. That's why I'm here. I'm providing a free service for humanity.

btw, I don't recall reading in the board guidelines that only slavishly positive remarks were allowed. If I don't have something nice to say, don't say anything at all? What is this, second grade? Difference of opinion is the spice of life.

And actually, yes, I created this account to express myself about this film -- that's how much it infuriated my aesthetic sensibilities. I thought that's what discussion forums were for. Correct me if I'm wrong. As for your helpful information that some people actually like this movie, that is abundantly clear from reading the other posts, and it was that very depressing fact that spurred me to action. As I said, it's my mission to save these poor deluded souls from the terrible error they have made in their artistic understanding and appreciation. That's my quest, and it is a noble one.
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wow, you are pretty pathetic. don't waste your time typing up your review of how much you hated this movie. no one wants to hear your details anyway.

the greatest thing you'll ever learn is just to love and be loved in return.

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EARTHGOAT, you and your wife must be pretty old, so i can understand why you wouldn't like it...

remember this movie is for people 35 and younger...

just like we don't like your OLDIES movies... so i can understand why you don't like the NEW movies...
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im sorry, but WE like the movie. and you can take your ugly attitude somewhere else! tell me, whats one of the movies you like??...huh??...

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well in the case of you and your wife, its just that you two are going through one of those mid age life crisis deals...

and i guess you aren't into love stories either... i don't see how can you say its worse than any other love story... i mean they generally have the same plot line...

i'd rather have movies that make sense, instead of movies like Mulholland Drive, Vanilla Sky, etc, where you have no idea what is going on, what the plot is, what is imagined or real...

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Actually, we're not going through one of those mid-life crisis deals. Again, the idea seems to be to shift the focus to something not the movie, to something you don't know anything about. My wife and I have been living our love story for eight years now, since way before this film was a bad idea on some producer's desk, and it hardly needs to be be mentioned that our love story has been ten times more exciting, magical, and meaningful than the empty and silly two-dimensional romance shown in "The Notebook," where the characters either tearfully or robotically spout obvious lines that reveal approximately a third-grader's idea of love. Actual love is rich and unpredictable and utterly mysterious -- you wouldn't believe our story if I told you.

Instead of spending your life and money fixing up some house because you promised some girl that blew you off that you would, for example, you might spend your time GROWING SOME BALLS and GETTING HER BACK so that you don't let her wind up with SOME OTHER GUY while you WASTED your life on some pointless SYMBOL instead of keeping your focus on HER. If you're a girl, instead of trusting your CRUEL AND HEARTLESS MOTHER to give you letters, GO TO THE MAILBOX ONCE IN A WHILE. Or gosh, WRITE HIM YOURSELF. CALL HIM. And try to remember to not GET ENGAGED TO A STIFF, DOLL-LIKE MAN. Or maybe tell your horrendous mother to GO SCREW HERSELF. But no, these two "love" each other so much, they meekly say "okay" to the slightest obstacles and let life drift by them until they nearly blow the whole thing. And why again should they be together? The movie doesn't bother to show us. God help us if folks think this is love.

If by "make sense" you mean "is obvious and simple and predigested for me so I don't have to think or be challenged about anything, only spoonfed a predictable malaise of recycled cliche garbage," then I think I understand things better now. Comparing this film to films like "Mulholland Drive" and "Vanilla Sky," though, is like comparing a paper airplane to the space shuttle. It sounds like you'd better stick with the paper airplane. In fact, even taken solely for the love stories those films contain, both are approximatley 17,459 times more interesting than the brainless drift the two characters in "The Notebook" force us to suffer through.

It seems I am not going to get even a half-hearted attempt to defend "The Notebook," which is hardly surprising, and that satisfies me that I was right all along, that there is no defense for it. Thanks to you all for the clarification and vidication. I'm sorry if you've been hurt by my remarks. Some pain is good, remember -- surgery hurts, for example, but it can save your life.
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ok, you just take movies too seriously and overanalyze it...

its the same for every movie, you can say, why didn't this character do this or that, and then they never would have had to go through the trouble...

but then there would be no point in making a movie about that, if there were NO obstacles, and if it were easy...

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are you even aware that this movie was based off of a book? you blame the director for the "predictable plot." the director didn't write the story. nicholas sparks did.
there was no "fake facial hair" either...it's pretty obvious that ryan gosling is old enough to grow a beard. they filmed the bearded shots before they filmed the clean-shaven shots.
are you serious when you said there was no hint that the old noah was ill? they talked about his heart attacks before he ACTUALLY HAD A HEART ATTACK towards the end of the movie.
if you hated the movie so much, why did you continue to watch it? i will never understand the logic of people who do that.

by the way, i love this movie. the two young actors were amazing together. they were not boring, or mindless, or cliched. they acted with passion and heart. they make you want to be in love. this was a good, romantic story. i know that people like to get on these boards to just get a rise out of people, which you have obviously done, but if you HONESTLY think this was a horrible film then do yourself a favor and don't ever watch it again.

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you do know the book and movie have some differences though...

so we don't know if they are complaining about parts where it was also in the book, or about parts just in the movie alone...

otherwise i agree with the rest of what you said...

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Ha ha! It's funny that you actually did find one detail where I was wrong. I had forgotten about Noah's heart attack. The perils of not truly caring about the characters or plot. Well done. The first and only dent in my armor. Makes virtually no difference to my main thrust though.

There most certainly was fake facial hair all over the place and very awful fake facial hair at that. Look at any character with a beard or mustache. You can practically see the glue. Of course Ryan can grow a beard (who can't?), but he didn't for this movie. It's the wrong color, etc. If I'm wrong, I will apologize, but I've seen a lotta facial hair in my time.

Yes, I am aware the movie was based on a book. The transition from one to the other usually does not work well, because directors make the mistake of just transferring the plot from one to the other, instead of building a movie organically from the ground up. They are two totally separate things -- you cannot lean on a book because the film will just lie there, flat and dead, as "The Notebook" does. Usually the more the director parts ways from the book, the better. Check out the war segment of "The Notebook." How utterly false, brief, jarringly pretty, and ultimately trivial a treatment of WWII! It's like they picked up the service uniforms at a party store and used Tennessee fireworks for howitzers and artillery. I haven't read the book, because I have heard it described as "sappy and boring" by a friend of mine (see reviews of the book for concurrence), but I have to think the book at least gave the war some weight. Movies just can't compete with books in terms of handling long stories. Not enough room.

Why did I keep watching if I hated it? Well, like I said in my first post, I had never done that before. I had stayed on in certain cases for five, ten minutes, jaw dropped, indignant anger in my eyes, but always I gave up and switched the thing off in annoyance. This time ... it was so bad I just had to see how bad it would get. In a perverse way, I was not disappointed. And if you asked me "Did you enjoy The Notebook"? I would have to say yes! I had a great time watching it, though not for the reasons the director intended.

About the directing: Sure the script was crap and the acting wooden and bloodless, but a great director can get over even those obstacles. Look at many episodes of Twin Peaks -- deliberately bad script and acting, and yet there is a compassion and energy there that is infectious and fascinating, drawing in the viewer. A very, very subtle art, directing. You could give the script of "The Notebook" to David Lynch and he could make an intelligent movie of it. Why is that? Because in the end movies are about directing.

Music is also important. Music can make or break a film's mood. The music in "The Notebook" was the absolute worst of the worst, never failing to take advantage of the audience and manipulate the basest, most primary-color blunt and basic emotions. Again, it's like a third-grader did the music. Music in David Lynch, to stretch a really unfair comparison, is extremely subtle, supportive, suggestive, the perfect light touch, or when it's a heavy touch it complements the visual action and fits thematically and structurally.

As for never watching this horrendous embarrassment to filmmaking again... I dunno. My wife and I are seriously considering watching it again, during which we will painstakingly track just what it is that is so offensive and infuriating about its terribleness. I am really interested -- I'm not just trying to get a rise out of people. I am trying to pin down and describe precisely what it is that I object to so viscerally about this film. Clearly plenty of other people like it. Why? The film must be defined, stripped, searched, its pockets emptied -- a full physical. It's important to me (and to my career) to be clear and precise and totally honest about aesthetic jusgments. This movie seems to exist outside the equations of my personal artistic philosophy, like a black hole in space or a new species of worm discovered in a deep-sea volcanic vent.

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ok. if you watch the movie again then you need to watch it on dvd that way you can watch the extras at the end in which the director and ryan gosling clearly states that he grew a beard and gained weight for the second half of the movie.

anyways i do agree with you on the part where you say "and why again should they be together" "the movie doesnt bother to show us". totally true. i loved this movie only b/c i believe in that kind of love and the whole growing old part and still loving someone after all those years. the only thing i didnt like is the fact that they didnt build noahs character to the point that you would know for a fact that allie would choose him. of course you knew b/c it was predictable but i just wish they that could have set noah apart from lon which they didnt do to well. i mean think about it. lon loved allie, he had money, and he was very cute. noah also loved allie, had money but was not rich like lon, and is also very sexy. but the movie doesnt actually show why it is so easy for her to just go back to noah. the only thing that the movie shows is that she doesnt paint when shes with lon and that lon works all the time. i really dont know how to explain it but i think they needed to play on noahs love a little more that way it would show hoe easy it was to go back to him.

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well have fun with that then. though it seems to me like a waste of time. you obviously have made up your mind about the film. and now you might rewatch it just to analyze what you truly hated about it? unless you are a film critic, i don't see why anyone would do that.
and i will tell you why i think so many people like this movie. the majority of people in this world are in love with love. they want to find it and experience it and maybe one day grow old and die with it. and this, my friend, is a love story to the very end.

p.s. ryan gosling's beard was most definitely real in the movie.

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ok. if you watch the movie again then you need to watch it on dvd that way you can watch the extras at the end in which the director and ryan gosling clearly states that he grew a beard and gained weight for the second half of the movie.

anyways i do agree with you on the part where you say "and why again should they be together" "the movie doesnt bother to show us". totally true. i loved this movie only b/c i believe in that kind of love and the whole growing old part and still loving someone after all those years. the only thing i didnt like is the fact that they didnt build noahs character to the point that you would know for a fact that allie would choose him. of course you knew b/c it was predictable but i just wish they that could have set noah apart from lon which they didnt do to well. i mean think about it. lon loved allie, he had money, and he was very cute. noah also loved allie, had money but was not rich like lon, and is also very sexy. but the movie doesnt actually show why it is so easy for her to just go back to noah. the only thing that the movie shows is that she doesnt paint when shes with lon and that lon works all the time. i really dont know how to explain it but i think they needed to play on noahs love a little more that way it would show hoe easy it was to go back to him.

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well have fun with that then. though it seems to me like a waste of time. you obviously have made up your mind about the film. and now you might rewatch it just to analyze what you truly hated about it? unless you are a film critic, i don't see why anyone would do that.
and i will tell you why i think so many people like this movie. the majority of people in this world are in love with love. they want to find it and experience it and maybe one day grow old and die with it. and this, my friend, is a love story to the very end.

p.s. ryan gosling's beard was most definitely real in the movie.

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lol..that has to be one of the funniest post i've seen!! you're really trying hard to diss it lol!!! fake beard come on!!!!!! you're trying to hard now..you know very well that is not the case..unless you're T.V has a defect on it. Look earthgoat, let's face it love stories has two outcome you either going to love or hate it and just like Ryan Gosling said that movie is not made for everybody some people will love it and some will hate it and i have to agree with that. So it is not your cup of tea it's cool! just don't invest all your energy on a movie you hate..that ridiculous!!!