Category Archives: literature

literature, movies

>F.X. Toole – Pound For Pound

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>I was recommended this book by work colleague Ronnie Haag the other day and I was totally blown away. My fellow worker is into boxing, Bukowski, writing and real life – amongst many other things, of course (check out his books, one about Charles Bukowski and one about Muhammad Ali) – and since real life is a bitch, and this book is all about that, it’s a book that touched my soul. It made me cry, just like when I read The Road by Cormac McCarthy (I wrote some words about that masterpiece in 2006, read the article here).
At first, it may seem like it’s a book about boxing. Nothing wrong with that, since F.X. Toole (pen name for Jerry Boyd), a boxing trainer himself, is a magician when it comes to describing the art. However, to me this ain’t that much about boxing. When you get past the first fifty pages or so, you’ll see that this is about life and its setbacks and tragedies, the grieving of lost friends and family, sorrow and tears, shattered dreams. It’s about friendship and trust. Loneliness and sadness. But as darkness descends there’s still light at the end of the tunnel. Or is there?
It’s a truly heartwrenching story that really made me think deeply about life. You know, the usual crap one thinks about everyday, but sometimes some things make you think harder. Pound For Pound is such a thing. Mind you, it’s not a Rocky story. Life has very few happy endings…

Toole’s way of handling characters is magnificent. The characters are real. The story is real. You can feel the pain and the intensity. You can taste the blood and defeat. Like it says on the back cover: ”Pound For Pound is the story of men down but not out: old men whose lives have been tough and young men searching for glory”.
But don’t get caught up by this ”men” thing, though. It’s about people, not about gender.
In fact, I first noticed F.X. Toole when Clint Eastwood adapted Toole’s collection of short stories Rope Burns: Stories from the Corner into the worthy film Million Dollar Baby in 2004. The movie tells the story of Maggie Fitzgerald, a 31 year old white trash waitress who decides to make a difference through boxing. I think the movie kind of captures the sadness and melancholy, how life is about finding your passion and giving it your all, even though you still won’t make it (whatever that means). It’s about being able to look back and say ”I did alright” instead of ”I did nothing”. When reading Pound For Pound this feeling is so much stronger.
As real as it gets, to quote an old UFC slogan.

F.X. Toole
Born 1930
Published Rope Burns, his first book, in 2000 at the age of 70
He died in 2002
Pound For Pound was released in 2006
literature, movies, reviews

>Some thoughts about Watchmen the movie

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>Who watches the watchmen? Well, I did yesterday, alongside two men in their early 30’s who hadn’t read the book and didn’t know shit and thus kept asking themselves what the hell was going on. I don’t think they enjoyed the movie, and I don’t think they will read the book.

99 times out of 100 the book is better than the movie. The book gives you the insight and depth, whereas the movie brings the visuals, the surface. The Watchmen comic book is the creation of Alan Moore (author) and Dave Gibbons (artist). The Watchmen movie is directed by Zack Snyder. Claudio Marino comments on my earlier Watchmen post: ”A friend of mine said that Snyder has made an adaptation of Gibbon’s part, not Moore’s”. I totally agree with that. Still, I enjoyed watching Watchmen. A lot.
Having read the book at least three times in a short period of time just before seeing the movie was a good thing to do. I knew every part. And my jaw dropped to the floor when faced with what Snyder has created. It was awesome seeing the comic book come to life in a frame-by-frame way. So many details! I guess I missed 90% of all the stuff going on in the background, but when it’s released on Blu-ray I’ll catch up.


However, everything CGI is pretty much crap, especially when they’re on Mars. And the sex scenes and some of the fight scenes are very dull and could’ve been made a whole lot better (Speaking of sex, I noticed that Dr. Manhattans cock is way larger in the movie. You digest that for a second… *insert smiley here* )
As for the fight scenes I had expected more ”normal” stuff, not The Matrix fighting. I mean, only Dr. Manhattan is supposed to have real superpowers, right? The whole thing with the superhero story is that it’s ordinary people doing what superheroes do, but in a realistic way. Saying that, I think the movie focuses on the superhero thing too much. In my opinion the book is not at all about superheroes…

The casting is good, but again – only on the visual side. The actors look like they do in the comic book, but that’s pretty much it. I cannot feel the characters as much as I do in the book, with one exception: Rorschach! Hail Jackie Earle Haley! He’s definitely spot on. The rest of the actors are pretty much meaningless, soulless (so I guess Billy Crudup playing Dr. Manhattan does a good job after all…).

The music is quite different than expected (I chose not to read reviews before watching this one, so I didn’t know anything about the music); Jimi Hendrix, Leonard Cohen, Simon and Garfunkel, Bob Dylan… Sure, there are references to Dylan’s lyrics and such in the book, but I’m not sure if the actual music fits. I like the songs, but nah… It felt strange. I laughed at the Apocalypse Now reference in Vietnam, though.


So, the visual take on Snyder’s Watchmen deserve applause. But Alan Moore, who has always hated his stories turned into movies (check the end of this article), will definitely hate what Snyder has done. There’s no depth to be found. Whereas the comic book takes on so many different aspects of story telling (the news vendor, the kid reading the comic book about pirates, the gay cab driver and her activist girlfriend, The New Frontiersman, the imaginary books and articles, the in-depth dialogue about politics and philosophy…), the movie mostly focuses on the visuals and the superheroes. In the comic book characters working in the background take on leading roles (for example, the pirate story becomes part of the narrative), and the level of details and depth is simply amazing. That’s what makes the book so fascinating. The importance of all these techniques and characters is pretty much left out in the movie.
Also, changing the ending was not a good move.

All in all, I still rate Watchmen 4 out of 5. It’s the best adaptation of a comic book so far and it is very well put together. 2 hours and 45 minutes went in a rush. I’m really looking forward to the Blu-ray release which hopefully will bring extended scenes, audio commentaries, documentaries, behind the scenes…
I’ll be checking out Watchmen: The Complete Motion Comic and Watchmen: Tales of The Black Freighter as well. Read about those releases here.

Below, a Watchmen viral.

literature, movies

>Watchmen – The end is nigh

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>I wrote an article about Watchmen in September last year (read it here!), and now the movie has finally arrived. It’ll be damn exciting to watch the Watchmen, I tell you! I hope they’ve kept the darkness and seriousness which is always present in the brilliant comic novel, or else I’ll be disappointed. I mean, it’s tough enough to make a comic book about superheroes seem mature, but that’s where the comic succeeds 110%. It’s extremely good and I deeply urge each and everyone of you reading this blog to give the book a try. It’s one of the best books I’ve ever read.
From what I’ve seen so far the movie looks really good. Director Zack Snyder made a great visual impact with 300 (I wrote a bit about that here), so I have no doubts there… The big question is how it feels.

Dog carcass in alley this morning, tire tread on burst stomach.
This city is afraid of me. I have seen its true face.
The streets are extended gutters and the gutters are full of blood and when the drains finally scab over, all the vermin will drown. The accumulated filth of all their sex and murder will foam up about their waists and all the whores and politicians will look up and shout “Save us!”… and I’ll look down and whisper “No.”
They had a choice, all of them.
They could have followed in the footsteps of good men like my father or President Truman. Decent men who believed in a day’s work for a day’s pay. Instead they followed the droppings of lechers and communists and didn’t realize that the trail led over a precipice until it was too late.
Don’t tell me they didn’t have a choice.
Now the whole world stands on the brink, staring down into bloody Hell, all those liberals and intellectuals and smooth-talkers…
and all of a sudden nobody can think of anything to say.
Rorschach‘s journal, October 12th, 1985

literature, philosophy, religion

>The Selfish Gene

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>I know absolutely nothing when it comes to evolutionary biology and zoology or whatever it’s called. I know I love sex, but that’s about it. I believe sex is a part of evolution… ;)
Nevertheless, having read Richard Dawkins‘ amazing book The God Delusion (I wrote a bit about it here. Also check steve austin’s runthrough (in Swedish) here.), I decided to try his old masterpiece The Selfish Gene. I’ve come across the title several times when reading about religion, and especially when reading what the Young Earth creationists have to say. These comedians seriously believe that the universe is less than 10,000 years old. It is estimated that 47% of Americans hold this view, and almost 10% of Christian colleges teach it. No wonder the world is a fucked up place!

However, when reading The Selfish Gene I’m so fascinated by this whole thing called existence, I’m almost willing to submit to the idea of Intelligent Design and whatever the hell these crazies (EDIT: the creationists) are talking about. It’s really that amazing. There’s a lot more to evolution than many people realise. And I mean a lot more!
Dawkins, just as in The God Delusion, argues like the professional he is, but it’s never a dull read and even people who aren’t the slightest interested in the theory of evolution should enjoy this book if they only gave it a fair chance. It’s not hard going and Dawkins provides a lot of interesting examples that’ll make your brain flip because they’re pretty mindbending and thought-provoking.
I don’t know, maybe die hard biologists think Dawkins’ simplifying and dramatising ideas, often using sweeping statements, are laughable. I like it, though.
But what struck me, me being a Spenglerian (or at least having read a lot of Spengler stuff and liked it), is that Dawkins’ argumentation leaves little room for the influence of culture and individuality when it comes to human development. Even so, he apparently coins the term ”meme” in this book, meaning ”a unit of human cultural evolution analogous to the gene, suggesting that such “selfish” replication may also model human culture, in a different sense” – or ”a unit or element of cultural ideas, symbols or practices; such units or elements transmit from one mind to another through speech, gestures, rituals, or other imitable phenomena”.
I have the feeling I will return to this book when reading Spengler further on…

Anyway, this is probably the best popular science book I’ve ever read. If you decide to read it, make sure you get the 30th anniversary edition (yes, it was originally published in 1976!), since it includes a very large selection of notes which offer an additional perspective to many topics.
As for the title, The Selfish Gene: it’s kind of a metaphor describing the behaviour of genes, where altruism is an integral part of the so called ”selfishness”.

I read Charles Darwin‘s On the Origin of Species some 15 years ago, and I think that kind of got me started on the anti-Christian (left hand) path, and I’m re-reading it right now.
Still, I feel I know nothing. Like Manuel.

literature, quotes

>This is not an exit

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>

“Well, we have to end apartheid for one. And slow down the nuclear arms race, stop terrorism and world hunger. Ensure a strong national defense, prevent the spread of communism in Central America, work for a Middle East peace settlement, prevent U.S. military involvement overseas. We have to ensure that America is a respected world power. Now that’s not to belittle our domestic problems, which are equally important, if not more. Better and more affordable long-term care for the elderly, control and find a cure for the AIDS epidemic, clean up environmental damage from toxic waste and pollution, improve the quality of primary and secondary education, strengthen laws to crack down on crime and illegal drugs. We also have to ensure that college education is affordable for the middle class and protect Social Security for senior citizens plus conserve natural resources and wilderness areas and reduce the influence of political action committees.”
The table stares at me uncomfortably, even Stash, but I’m on a roll.
“But economically we’re still a mess. We have to find a way to hold down the inflation rate and reduce the deficit. We also need to provide training and jobs for the unemployed as well as protect existing American jobs from unfair foreign imports. We have to make America the leader in new technology. At the same time we need to promote economic growth and business expansion and hold the line against federal income taxes and hold down interest rates while promoting opportunities for small businesses and controlling mergers and big corporate takeovers.”
Price nearly spits up his Absolut after this comment but I try to make eye contact with each one of them, especially Vanden, who if she got rid of the green streak and the leather and got some color – maybe joined an aerobics class, slipped on a blouse, something by Laura Ashley – might be pretty. But why does she sleep with Stash? He’s lumpy and pale and has a bad cropped haircut and is at least ten pounds overweight; there’s no muscle tone beneath the black T-shirt.
“But we can’t ignore our social needs either. We have to stop people from abusing the welfare system. We have to provide food and shelter for the homeless and oppose racial discrimination and promote civil rights while also promoting equal rights for women but change the abortion laws to protect the right to life yet still somehow maintain women’s freedom of choice. We also have to control the influx of illegal immigrants. We have to encourage a return to traditional moral values and curb graphic sex and violence on TV, in movies, in popular music, everywhere. Most importantly we have to promote general social concern and less materialism in young people.”
I finish my drink. The table sits facing me in total silence.
American Psycho, Bret Easton Ellis, 1991

I’m a huge fan of this novel. Not for the violence – that was what caught my attention when I was 15 and heard about it for the first time – but for its brilliant and clever take on satire. I think the above quote shows just that. Patrick Bateman (nice reference to Norman Bates in another famous novel: Psycho), a yuppie investment banker who is in fact a serial killer totally devoid of emotion – living next door to Tom Cruise (!) – explains how to save America from impending doom. Hilarious!
I still haven’t seen the movie. I hear it’s pretty good. I also hear that the novel is being turned into a stage musical on Broadway! Even more hilarious!

Abandon all hope ye who enter here…

literature, politics, quotes

>Jonathan Littell on Israel, the Holocaust and life

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>
I’m reading Jonathan Littell‘s Les Bienveillantes (The Kindly Ones, English translation due in March 2009, De välvilliga in Swedish) and I like it – but what must be repeated over and over again is this: this is fiction! The descriptions of everyday life in Nazi Germany bear little resemblance to reality. As with Elie Wiesel‘s Night, and to a certain extent Anne Frank’s Diary, this cannot be seen as some kind of evidence or witness description of the Holocaust. Unfortunately, a lot of people will use it that way because the majority of the people in the Western hemisphere are brainwashed and cannot think rational thoughts when dealing with such a sensitive subject as the Holocaust.

However, what I wanted to touch upon is Littell’s real life opinions about Israel and the Holocaust. Littell, of Jewish background, seems to have a clear standpoint that I consider very sane. Hear him out, quoted from an article in Haaretz, Israel’s oldest daily newspaper:

“My reading of what you call ‘Holocaust’ is also less Jewish and Judeo-centric than that of my father. I think that what happened was far broader than a narrow issue of ‘Germans killing Jews.’ The English word ‘holocaust’ is certainly the wrong term to describe what happened. It is a religious term, rife with non-historical meaning. I don’t think the word ‘shoah’ is any better. It’s a controversy among historians. Raul Hilberg described it as ‘the destruction of European Jewry,’ but he encountered criticism because that was also the Nazi terminology.

Ulrich Herbert calls it the ‘National-Socialist extermination policy,’ and I find that a far more accurate description because it also includes the extermination of the homosexuals, the Gypsies, the disabled and other minorities.”

Indeed, according to Littell, the “National-Socialist extermination policy” was “only one of the several big genocides that have happened in human history.”

But doesn’t the unprovoked nature of the destruction of the Jews, the underlying ideology, the apparatus that was created to implement it, its scale, make it exceptional in human history?

“I personally understand the arguments for the exceptionality of the Holocaust, but I don’t agree with them. The basic argument is that the Nazis wanted to kill all the Jews, but I don’t see the difference between that and an extermination policy that was aimed – and implemented on a large scale – at groups such as the peasants in the Soviet Union or in Cambodia. Every genocide is exceptional.”

“I think the extermination of the Jews is a universal problem, I think it concerns everyone. Beyond that, I think that today the issue is being used for political purposes in Israel.”
[…]
It is political, a mechanism. It has no connection to what actually happened. The Holocaust, I think, is being exploited politically, in a way that the Nazi extermination policy against other groups – Russians, homosexuals, Gypsies – is not.”

Asked whether he thinks the Holocaust shapes Israeli actions today, he replies: “On the one hand, Israel is a country that underwent a serious trauma, and the Holocaust made it dramatically paranoid. But then there is also greed and land-grabbing and all that shit. That’s just inexcusable. I’m sorry, but this cannot be excused by traumas that occurred 60 years ago.”

Littell says Israel uses the Holocaust to justify “inexcusable” acts, by which he means the situation in the territories, and he likens the actions of the Israel Defense Forces to the behavior of the Nazis in the period before they came to power.

Would you really compare the two?

“No, we cannot compare: There is nothing like genocide in the territories, but they are doing absolutely atrocious things. If the government would let the soldiers do worse things, they would. Everyone says, ‘Look how the Germans dealt with the Jews even before the Holocaust: cutting the beards, humiliating them in public, forcing them to clean the street.’ That kind of stuff happens in the territories every day. Every goddamn day.

[…]
“Like how what the Americans are doing in Iraq is unacceptable. I’m not talking about the war but about torture and things like Abu Ghraib. Understanding the Germans of 60 years ago may make you feel that you’re not that far from it, as Americans or as Israelis. So maybe it will be possible to enforce our social mechanisms to prevent our societies, at least, from going completely off the wall.”

What should your Israeli readers do?

“I think the Israelis, instead of beating their breast, should take a long, hard look at what they are doing now. I am not saying that present-day Israeli society is comparable to Nazi society in World War II, but it is definitely one of the most crazed Western societies.”

“Look,” Littell sums up, in a delayed response to the question of his motivation and perhaps that of his protagonist as well, “Life is a question of a search for meaning – what’s it all about? Are we here to have fun? Make money? Have sex? No, clearly not. Then you have this whole religion thing. A lot of people find meaning in that – I don’t. I adhere to a point of view that says our existence is completely meaningless and completely absurd, and all the horrible things we do to each other are completely unjustified. And anyway, we are going to die. So the question is how you get through life if you accept this approach as the fundamental parameter. Personally, I sometimes find it pretty amusing, but most times it’s just grim. And I focus on the grim, because it’s there.”