The Return of the Lord of the Deathly Hallows

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows

Warner Bros. Pictures

Release date: don't care, saw it last night

An epic and scenic quest through the wilderness to destroy a dark lord. A few invisibility-producing magical items (i.e. cloaks) used to thwart that evil being's cronies who happen to be chasing the good guys. A powerful evil talisman that contains a part of that same dark lord's soul, and that, when worn around the protagonist's neck, produces negative feelings and pisses everyone else off. An ancient sword reclaimed by one of the good guys (not the protagonist) that is used to defeat the evil things. A dumbass but lovable sidekick who eventually proves valuable. A friendly wizard who gets killed. Gnarly dudes in black who fly around and try to maim/destroy the good guys. Annoying British accents. A lot of character names, places and jumps in continuity that would be much easier to understand for viewers who have taken the time to read the book that the movie is based on. Elves. 

I haven't read any of the Harry Potter books, so I may be a little late on this one, but doesn't this latest Potter movie seem a lot like another popular series of books/movies about good triumphing over evil in a world that isn't our own? It looks to me like J.K. Rowling might have had a little writer's block when she sat down to write Book #7, which is understandable. But it also looks like she pulled down her favorite J.R.R. Tolkien edition from her bookshelf and did a little more than draw inspiration from it. Maybe that's what happens when you live in a castle, I don't know. Like I said, I haven't read the books, but if I were to draw a comparison with this to Lord of the Rings, the entire Harry Potter series would be like if Frodo and his buddies chilled at Rivendell for like six years learning a bunch of useful stuff before setting out on the final quest thing. I don't know, maybe not. I fell asleep halfway through the movie due to a turkey hangover.

And I'd take Hermione over Liv Tyler with elf ears any day.

                                                    Thanks emmawatsonon.blogspot.com!

My uncle and dad looking gangster in 1968

This is Jersey. This is Good Writing.

The Suburban Swindle by Jackie Corley

So New Books, 2008

99 pages

I haven't been reading enough contemporary female writers. My bad. It's not intentional. I won't bother with the lame excuses -- women speak to an experience and a perspective I'm just not interested in, I can't think of the phrase "contemporary women writers" without picturing Curtis Sittenfeld, J.K. Rowling, and that Mormon chick who wrote Twilight. Puke. Even though that's partially true, there are some badass ladies whose work I eat up whenever I get the chance, two of those writers being Lydia Davis and Anne Carson. Anyways, the point I'm trying to make is that books like Jackie Corley's 2008 short story collection "The Suburban Swindle" remind me that there are a lot of younger women writers out there putting out raw material with teeth (and not fangs). 

Corley kicks the reader out of her beat-up Nissan and immediately skids off, leaving him in the wrong part of town. A battle-scarred suburban wasteland, that circus of human dregs otherwise known as New Jersey. Everyone knows that the Turnpike is gross, but the book suggests that what lurks off the exit ramps might be a little more harrowing -- a white-boy gangster who carries a butterfly knife and takes pleasure in kicking the shit out of punks at the local diner, a drop-out drifter who engages in a sexually abusive relationship with her cousin, a filthy alcoholic that only gets off on being speared by a used-up stripper's high heel. These are fractured souls, wonderfully splintered post-school waste-cases who have been molded as much by who they've been hanging out with as by the landscape they inhabit, a place they grudgingly know they'll never leave. The wild-eyed boy held back from the prospect of adventure by the violent shards of a masochistic high school romance. The Manhattan reporter who wakes up on the bathroom floor of her ex-boyfriend's apartment as he's absentmindedly pissing on her. The Jersey tractor beam, Death-Star-strong, always pulls them back.

But what ultimately makes the stories so addictive is not in the misery they project, but in their inherent holiness. There is religion here, maybe not sainthood or even catharsis, but certainly a form of transcendence through martyrdom. A secret joy in clinging to the beaten (and beaten down) path. As much as the characters gripe and grimace at their everyday circumstances, you get the feeling that the unbearable ball of energy that governs the minutiae of their lives is also what sustains them, lets them shine with a light that, if nothing else, is their own. It's what makes the characters, as the narrator of one story puts it, "not attractive, but compelling."

Regardless of the stories' geographical setting, the plight of the early 20s small-town burnout, of being too young and too old and caught in the intertia, is universal. Maybe you're the coke-bruised and booze-weary native son whose face is melting into the same cup of coffee at the back of the diner. Maybe you're his now-prim ex-girlfriend who's broken the tractor beam -- degree, job in the City, banker fiance -- but has come home for the weekend and decided to walk into the diner to revisit the ghosts of a life you forfeited. We all know soldiers in both camps. What Corley's suggesting is that the wreckage of home is far more interesting and vital than the gem-like sheen of "out there." That the wreckage is the gem.

Short, Fast, and Awkward

Got a new story out on Short, Fast, and Deadly. It's called "Recurring Childhood Nightmares 16 & 17". It's weird so I thought I'd explain it a little. For those who haven't checked out the site, it's comprised of really, really short poetry and prose pieces, "literature for the ADD generation." The site's fiction pieces are shorter than a Facebook status update and the poems are shorter than a tweet. The story itself started as an assignment for this poetry class I took in grad school. Basically we had to write a poem about recurring dreams we'd had. When I was a kid, I always had nightmares about having a sibling, usually an older sister. I say 'nightmares' because, being an only child, I never wanted a sibling. Who would want to actually have to share toys and Christmas presents with someone else??? Not to mention your parents' undivided attention. I think it would be cool to have a brother or sister now, but back then I was a spoiled little shit. In the dreams, Sibling A or B and I would go on adventures that always ended with random, creepy events like a dog I didn't own in real life getting smacked by a truck. Lovely. I'll shut up because this post is now 158 words longer than the story itself. Later.