What are you reading on your summer vacation?
I’ve been reading Thomas Mullen’s Darktown (which has been fascinating thus far) while staying at Keuka Lake in Upstate New York. I will be tackling Ron Rash’s The Risen next.
Of course I’ll be leaving personally autographed copies of my own Then Came Darkness at the summer rental and the Little after Library up the street.
Well, I’m a little over three weeks into this new fatherhood thing (our son having arrived auspiciously early last month), so it was rather serendipitous that Ron Rash’s long-nursed Something Rich and Strange short-story collection (seriously, I’ve been working this one for like three years) was in closest reach when I found myself with a short window of respite.
The next story up just happened to be “Badeye” and I don’t know if it was simply the pure joy I found in being able to read something amidst the exhaustion that made me feel the way I felt about it, but, man, it’s got to be my new favorite short story of his. Like an Appalachian set Stand-by-Me where the narrator reaches back to his childhood and tells us, “That summer was the longest of my life…”, Rash’s story is about a little boy who loved snowcones and snakes, his mother’s spiritual and moral battle against both, how he found a way to connect to his previously distant father, how the father comes through in a big way in the boy’s time of need, the mysterious man who delivered the snowcones, the secrets both adults and children keep from each other, and the tales we weave about it all.
It instantly brought to mind one of my favorite short-stories of all time from arguably the greatest short-story writer of all-time, Raymond Carver’s “Bicycles, Muscles, and Cigarets” from his Will You Please Be Quiet, Please? (fitting words for this time in my life) collection. Like Rash’s “Badeye”, Carver’s masterpiece is also about a father and son, and the secrets both adults and children keep from each other. Carver’s harried, cluttered, suburbia of 1950’s California seems a far cry from Rash’s brutal yet beautiful Appalachia of the same time period, yet the stories share universal themes, and as a new father with a newborn son, I can appreciate them on an added level above just their brilliant craftmanship. Continue reading
In Above the Waterfall, Les is a sheriff on the eve of retirement just trying to keep the peace…find some peace…in his small North Carolina mountain town. Becky is an environmentalist with the streak of a poet working as a park ranger and taking refuge in the natural beauty of her environs. While high-end resorts push natives (both human and animal) to the fringes, meth poisons the town’s less hardy residents. Ron Rash, while ever vivid in his descriptions of his Appalachian universe, attempts to go poetic minimalist here, alternating POV’s between Les’ fact-based fatalism and Becky’s yearning artistry. This attempt to balance timely sociopolitical commentary (meth came after the 2008 crash) with a timeless aestheticism (one wonders if Rash is working on an Appalachian Poetry side project) threads thin…the polar opposite of the epic gothic complexity of Serena.
Unlike the meth, much of the novel feels undercooked, as if it began as a short story that Rash later fleshed out, and those who enjoy his modern short stories will connect to this more than those who lean towards his period-piece and cross-generational novels (such as Serena, The Cove or his earlier One Foot in Eden). I fall into the latter group, and thus had mixed feelings for this effort, especially as it devolved into a not-so-compelling and seemingly manufactured “who-dun-it” concerning the poisoning of trout.
There were, of course, as is always the case with Rash, moments of genius that leave indelible marks. Continue reading
I picture the caption for the screenshot above to be something along the lines of, “Jenny, baby, look, we’re in one of the worst films ever made!”
I couldn’t help, while watching the travesty that is Serena, of the infinite monkey theorem (and believe me, thinking about the infinite monkey theorem is a better way to spend two hours than watching Serena), which states that if you sit 100 monkeys at 100 typewriters for an infinite amount of time, eventually their random keystrokes while churn out the works of Shakespeare…or any given text, really. Any given text. Like Christopher Kyle’s feces covered script for Serena. Had monkeys actually written the script for Serena, at least we could’ve said, “Hey, 100 monkeys at typewriters wrote that? That’s not too bad considering it was monkeys…but let’s not try this again…like, ever.”
But it’s not just the script for Serena that is so bad. It’s everything. Every damn thing is awful. Continue reading
Ausable Chasm – Upstate New York -This past spring while up at Saratoga Springs for some R&R I took a scenic drive up I87 towards the Canadian border and stopped at Ausable Chasm. I don’t recall much of this – only that there was a pretty cool waterfall…
Original Photograph by D. H. Schleicher
…that brought to mind a rather Twin Peaks-ian moment…
Original Photograph by D. H. Schleicher
Anticipation.
Our sweet-natured, sad-soul heroine Laurel anticipating her life to begin after a string of bad luck toiling away in the gloaming of the titular cove. Waiting for love to find her.
Hank, Laurel’s brother who has returned home from Europe after losing his hand, newly betrothed and anticipating a fresh life to begin outside of the shadow of his cursed homestead.
The handsome flute-playing mute named Walter who finds his way into the cove and into Laurel’s heart always looking over his shoulder anticipating his good luck to run out and his past (and the authorities) to catch up to him.
A nation anticipating their native sons to return from a war-torn Europe to safer shores.
The reader anticipating something…anything…interesting to happen in Ron Rash’s lukewarm but evocative Southern-spun WWI-era gothic romance. Don’t worry…it does…eventually.
It’s telling that Rash would follow-up his masterpiece, Serena, with a novel drenched in atmosphere and taking place in a gloomy hollow, eternally in the shadows of the Appalachian mountains (the same mountains where in Serena the Pemberton timber empire loomed ominously and supreme) which cast darkness on the hearts of the inhabitants there. It’s almost as if Serena Pemberton is casting the greatest shadow, as Rash will never be able to conjure a character to match her nor can one imagine a follow-up novel that could scale the same mythic heights. Continue reading
Quite an unusual docket is shaping up for 2012, 2013 and beyond. Despite the usual shit Hollywood shovels, there are some upcoming films worth talking about.
First up on the horizon is the new news around the film adaptation of Ron Rash’s Serena, which ranks as one of my favorite novels of this century and I instantly imagined as a There Will Be Blood meets Macbeth in the Carolina Highlands film epic. Originally, and promising though preditable, Darren Aronofsky had been on tap to direct with Angelina Jolie in the lead role. But now the tides have shifted, and Oscar winner Susanne Bier is taking the helm. It’s definitely out of Bier’s comfort zone, but if handled right, it could be a breakthrough for the Danish director and she definitely has the chops to put on an interesting spin – but it could also be a disaster.
Can Jennifer Lawrence transform into the menacing Serena Pemberton?
Even more inspired is the choice of Jennifer Lawrence in the lead role. She seems way too young, but as Winter’s Bone showed, she’s capable of being a true chameleon while getting down and dirty, and along with Bier, she has the opportunity to really turn heads here. Less inspired and downright troubling is the casting of no-talent ass-clown Bradley Cooper, a smug comedic actor who lacks the gravitas needed for playing George Pemberton. Maybe the idea is to cast someone like him so that Lawrence can really shine – but it’s a gamble – and it will be interesting to see if it pays off. Continue reading
The calm between the storms: And just where do they plan on fitting another foot of snow?
They sure do like to rush the sequels these days. Just barely 72 hours after Snowmageddon dumped 20 inches or more over most of the Mid Atlantic, the sequel was rushed into production and now we have Snowmageddon 2: The Sleetpocalypse, arriving mid-week no less and snowing-in the same area (and then some) once again. As Dickens would say…it was the best of times, it was the worst of times.
But it seemed the perfect cabin-fever brew to stir up some inspired work on that novel…you know…the one I’ve been babbling about since — For the Love of Pete — April of 2008! Though I have much of the outlining and research completed and even drafted a very rough first chapter, one thing I have been wrestling with is crafting that perfect, killer opening line. They say you have to grab a reader’s attention instantly, and if you don’t hook them with the opening, then they are less likely to come back. I decided to test that theory and thought what better way to procrastinate than to hit my bookshelves and crack open some of my favorite novels and current reads to see how the masters of their craft hooked readers with that opening line.
I invite my readers and fellow bloggers to do the same and leave some of you favorite (or worst) opening lines to novels (or screenplays) in the comment form!
Here are some of my findings: Continue reading
My Fall 2009 Travel Season came full circle. In October, I visited upstate New York and the greater Cooperstown area where James Fenimore Cooper wrote and set many of his novels, most notably, The Last of the Mohicans. In December, I visited North Carolina and the greater Asheville area where director Michael Mann and cinematographer Dante Spinotti used the vast wilderness of the Blue Ridge Mountains to double for upstate New York in their epic film adaptation of Cooper’s Great American Novel.
It was quite a thrill to drive up those winding roads into the mountains to Chimney Rock Park and see that rock-face where Alice Munro (played by Jodhi May) achieved the pinnacle of old-school romanticism by flinging herself off the edge in Mann’s The Last of the Mohicans. Continue reading
With his ambitious novel, Serena, Ron Rash creates a new American legend.
The Great Depression enshrouds the nation. In the Western Carolina highlands, George Pemberton and his indomitable new wife, Serena, are forging a powerful timber empire come hell or high water. If someone or something gets in their way…there will be blood. This is the milieu of dread where Ron Rash’s new novel, Serena, lingers. Three things soon stand in Serena’s path: her husband’s bastard child, Jacob; the child’s young mother, Rachel Harmon; and a groundswell of conservatism looking to incorporate the Pemberton timber tracts into a national park. Thus two women come at a crossroads, both empowered by their innate wills to survive: Serena feasting off her insatiable greed while Rachel is driven by the unstoppable love for her child. Continue reading
