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A PHENOMENON COMES TO AN END
Two essays on ‘Breaking Bad’
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CONTRIBUTORS Nyantee Asherman ‘15 is a sociology/ anthropology major who is hoping to go into graphic communications and is unfortunately from Jersey. Christian Bermel is a writer living in Brooklyn. Yenny Cheung ‘16 is from Hong Kong (and she loves her hometown!). She is an engineering major and environmental studies minor, admires art and music, and co-founded a new a cappella group, Offbeat, at Swarthmore. Hanyu Chwe is a sophomore from Santa Monica, CA. He enjoys cheeseburgers and indian bar. Tom Corbani ‘17, an obnoxiously vocal London native, is still trying to reconcile his stereotypical interest in gensex with his alarming fascination for sea punk culture Liliana Frankel ‘17 is probably taller than you. Anna Gonzales ‘16 is out of jokes about her pre-Starbucks major. Philip Harris ‘16 is a prospective English major.
Letter policy Letters are welcome from all readers. We will not ever publish letters anonymously and we reserve the right to edit all letters for length and clarity without contacting the letter writer. Letters generally should run no longer than 1,000 words. They should be sent to ikornbl1 or agonzal4, both @swarthmore.edu.
How to contribute We solicit pieces from writers, though we will also accept submissions of long-form reporting, personal, argumentative and photo essays, book and movie reviews, short stories, poems, and anything else that seems suitable. Submissions will be considered from Swarthmore students, alumni, faculty, and staff, and will be considered anonymously, though we will not, except in rare cases, publish anonymously. Submissions should generally not go longer than 10,000 words. We are also looking for editors and staffers of all kind—staff writers, graphic designers, artists, web designers, section editors. Contact: ikornbl1 or agonzal4, both @swarthmore.edu.
Jackie Kay is a senior computer science major who dreams of possible futures and impossible pasts. Sometimes, she even writes about it.
EDITORS IN CHIEF IZZY KORNBLATT ANNA GONZALES
Billy Lennon is a sophomore currently on leave. Thank you Based God. Philip Queen ’16 is from Richmond, Virginia, and is considering majoring in [philosophy].
ILLUSTRATIONS NYANTEE ASHERMAN YENNY CHEUNG
Julian Randall ‘15 is a double major in English and black studies minoring in education. He is originally from Chicago but now lives in D.C.
POETRY SARA BLAZEVIC
Razi Shaban is a sophomore double-majoring in linguistics and philosophy. When not learning, Razi enjoys hanging out with friends, playing basketball, and working out.
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PUBLISHER & EDITOR AT LARGE KOBY LEVIN
S W A R T H M O R E
Founded 2012 | Vol. 2, No. 2
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PHOTO EDITOR RAZI SHABAN
Published by the Swarthmore Phoenix swarthmorephoenix.com
Annie Tvetenstrand ‘16 is deeply ambivalent. Z.L. Zhou ‘16 likes the punctuation in his name, as they clearly indicate the syllable boundaries. He is a linguistics major who tortuously pre-meds on the side.
MIKE LUMETTA Z.L. ZHOU
Design © 2013 the Swarthmore Phoenix. All content © 2013 by its listed author unless otherwise noted. The “R” logo is based on the font Layer Cake by Luzia Prado. The “Review” logo is based on the font Soraya by Pactrice Scott. See above for contact information. Printed at Bartash Printing, Philadelphia, PA. Please recycle this magazine.
I am really very ignorant about my predecessors... But it is such a pleasure to investigate the thing itself instead of reading the literature about it. Sigmund Freud
ARTS MOVIES & TV S
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Arts
COMMENT
BOOKS
THE END OF ‘BREAKING BAD’
5 Cheaters
The Franzen project
Jonathan Franzen and Karl Kraus take on modernity 25 by Philip Harris
Tracking the history accelerator 27 The Internet Age and social criticism in Pynchon’s new novel by Billy Lennon
Monogamy: fear, fragility, and futile fantasies
Two essays by Julian Randall and Christian Bermel
by Tom Corbani
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COVER ILLUSTRATION BY YENNY CHEUNG
LETTERS & corrections
An exchange on last issue’s Abercrombie & Fitch essay between Philip Queen and Lydia Bailey
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PHOTO ESSAY
MUSIC
The genius of Taylor Swift One song is worth close attention by Hanyu Chwe
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A moment of clarity A new album from James Blake 32 by Z.L. Zhou
by Philip Queen and Razi Shaban
MOVIES & TV
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Oral fixation ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’: not good by Z.L. Zhou
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Editors’ picks Brief recommendations of books, music, movies, and more from our editors
Summiting Virginia FICTION
POEMS
Anapa in the House of Gods
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by Jackie Kay
On the day you begin to die. 19 by Haydil Henriquez
Sonnet II 39
by Annie Tvetenstrand
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PERSONAL ESSAY
Niñita by Lily Frankel
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ILLUSTRATIONS
Nyantee Asherman 21, 23 Yenny Cheung 31
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LETTERS Hypocrisy about looks in A&F essay
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ydia Bailey’s September 2013 essay “My summer at Abercrombie & Fitch” is a fascinating insider story of working for one of America’s most hated retail stores. It reveals the gross meticulousness of image with which customers are drawn in, the gross conduct of many of the store’s shoppers, and, perhaps most interestingly, the gross conduct of the company’s managers and executives whose mentality resembles that of the middle school students they’re catering to. As much as I enjoyed the essay, however, here I am less interested in the story itself than the frame which Bailey chose to put it in—which is, evidently, a chunky hipster one. Bailey first describes herself as “a snooty New Yorker in chunky glasses and black skinnies,” and thus introduces the symbol that will stand as the antithesis to all things A&F for the rest of the essay: “hipster frames.” These glasses, banned in the employee dress code, serve as a physical sign of rejecting the “popular people” culture. Later on in the essay, she equates them with her “inner nerdiness,” making the glasses more than just a sign of a different fashion taste, adding a correlation between the wearer and his or her character, though clearly not in a “They Live” sort of way. She does, however, express her fears of becoming one of them, someone who works at A&F without all of the moral reservations she has,1 as the fear of giving up her “chunky glasses,” blurring
the lines between her fashion and herself. She further confuses the two when, in response to her manager not seeing her at Swat, she remarks: “I guess in the end he never saw my hipster frames poking out of my bag.” Here the entirety of her being-different, her intelligence, her moral integrity, her criticisms are reduced to a pair of glasses, something purely physical, which can be hidden or revealed, when in reality they are a part of her, and are independent of what she wears and how she looks. At this point, I’m sure I look like I’m overreacting. But I can’t help but find significance in the fact that every description of personality or character in the essay is given in terms of physical appearance. The secretary in the headquarters is described only as “stunning,” and Jack, the interviewer, is described solely as “tall and gorgeous in a tight flannel.” Bailey’s high school is claimed to have bred her against the “popular kid” mindset by placing an emphasis on “flannel and patching your own corduroys.”2 Acting like her coworkers is described as wearing a polo and losing ten pounds. The most striking example, however, is when Bailey finds the other floor model’s selfies, in which they had “a tangle of features, with multiple chins and cross eyes,” and responds “Oh my god… they might actually be humans.” Were they not humans before? Do double chins and crossed eyes make you more human? Do symmetrical features make you
Here I can’t help point out that it seems that Bailey’s judgments of her coworkers are based almost entirely on what they look like at work, and that she doesn’t consider that they may be pretending just as much as she is. Her managers parting claim to her, that she didn’t seem like a Swattie, confirms that looks on the job can deceive. I would go so far as to suggest that anyone who acts like a floor model for five hours is doing just that—acting. 1
Again I feel I must interrupt myself. Why are flannels the epitome of shallow coolness when our friend Jack wears them, but “hippie” when worn by Bailey and her high school friends? Can one be criticized without criticizing the other? 2
Cor r ections In our September issue, in the article “Having sex at Swarthmore” (p. 13), we failed to make clear that the names used in the articles are pseudonyms. Students who spoke with us for the article did so on the condition of anonymity. Any similarities between the names in the article and the names of Swarthmore students is purely coincidental. We apologize for not making that clear in the article. Notice an error? Please send corrections to ikornbl1 or agonzal4, both @swarthmore.edu. 4
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less? Since when can we judge someone’s worth based on their physical attractiveness? Since the time of Abercrombie & Fitch, at the very least. After all, isn’t that what their stores thrive on? Don’t they need the belief that if I don’t look right, and don’t dress right, then I’m not right? A&F is dependent on young teenagers’ need to feel popular, combined with the thought that wearing the right clothing, A&F specifically, is tantamount to being popular. Although Bailey is quick to reject the need to feel popular, by the superficiality of her judgments of herself and others, she is perpetuating the need to value oneself primarily on his or her physical qualities. To really combat the destructive force of Abercrombie & Fitch, and companies like them, it is the latter need that must be overturned. I can’t help but feel like I’m preaching to the choir. Bailey’s essay was good, and if it helped the fight against gross companies like A&F, can I complain? Swarthmore students don’t seem to be the target audience for them anyways. I guess I just saw Bailey’s chunky frame sticking out of her bag, and couldn’t help but point it out. Philip Queen ‘16
Lydia Bailey responds
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’m glad you picked up on this, Philip, but it was actually part of a deliberate irony in the article. To express myself in strictly physical terms, and to point out the plurality of flannel appropriations, and to reduce my supposed hipster-ness to a pair of glasses was a purposeful attempt to point out the silliness of putting such heavy emphasis on these physical symbols—a tendency to which we are all prone. Again, I think you misinterpret my writing (my own fault I’m sure!) in the moment where I found those selfies. It’s not the models’ double chins that made them human, but the goofiness and willingness to mess around like any other teenager. To see beyond their perfect features was difficult in the context of the store’s culture, as well as physically difficult without my glasses. Thanks for your response, and see you around Sharples! Lydia Bailey ‘16
fall back on. However, Paule is growing detached from her inexplicably unfulfilling lifestyle, one that she chose for herself after so many failed romances. In the midst of her questioning appears Simon, a gawky paralegal of fifteen years her cadet, who rapidly and awkwardly falls in love with her. Surprisingly, Paule finds herself following in his steed, and a playful affair is born of this encounter, as Paule goes along with Simon’s earnest attempts to woo her. She is swept away from Roger for the length of a relationship destined to fail, one where his passion reminds her of her youth but eventually fails to compensate for the years that have passed since then. In the end, she returns to Roger, to a stability she eventually longed for and a paradigm she is resolute to adhere to. This story, inspired by a distilled narrative of Françoise Sagan’s 1959 novel “Aimez-Vous Brahms?,” exemplifies the risk and uncertainty I mentioned. Although Roger is perfectly satisfied with their arrangement, Paule longs for further commitment from him. She finds comfort in Simon, but eventually the frailty of this romance that she associates with the foolishness of her youth sends her back into a life she will never be fully satisfied with. Her struggle and eventual resignation leave her eternally dissatisfied, a situation that I am afraid to fall into. And from the perspective of Roger, did Paule’s emotional involvement with Simon lie outside of the acceptable limits their relationship defined? Resolving this incident is probably impossible, but exploring it can provide a better understanding of what forces are at work. For this purpose, allow me to put aside the eclectically diverse relationship paradigms that have blessed modern romantic lives with templates suited to the involved individuals’ needs. What remains in the scraps of this jumble is the model that single-handedly and unequivocally governs our world, a dreaded bastion of traditional society. Monogamy has shaped the laws, religions, and social structures of the West. It even plays a central part in Paule’s story, in preventing her from feeling capable of balancing both her romantic involvements. This is because it relies on the systematic suppression of unwarranted sexual desires, and marriage (its sometimes religious, paper-sealed reification) on the assumption that so called “true love” transcends temporality and changing life cir-
COMMENT CHEATERS
Monogamy: fear, fragility, and futile fantasies
by Tom Corbani
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Photo courtesy of Sad Love Story
hat do you want? What kind of relationship are you looking for? What price are you willing to pay for fulfillment? We are bombarded with these questions from all sides by the world around us. As people around me seem to be finding their ideal little patch of romantic satisfaction, my own answers to the aforementioned queries seem all the more distant. Even if they weren’t, I would have no means of knowing whether they’re correct, and even less whether my partner knows any better (or partners, who can tell?). After all, compatibility doesn’t dictate the outcome of a relationship. Things fall apart, and nothing is to say the perfectly calculated relationship won’t be displaced by mere anarchy. The ensuing pain, the recurring emotion of so many romantic failures, is the risk and reality of the modern love story. As an example of a romantic grey area, take the story of Paule, nearing forty but clinging to a semblance of her youth. She has for the past five years been living with Roger, in a situation she can picture lasting indefinitely. They aren’t married, nor do they intend to be; their comfortable living arrangement is sexually open for them both (although Roger takes advantage of this more often) and provides an ever-present support for them to
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cumstances. Even though it works for some people, this flawed model binds us into lives we don’t actually want. However, for all of my rational reticence, I have been unable to rid myself of a sort of emotional nostalgia for the concept: the lurking hope that I will someday find a burgeoning charming boy, so charming my parents develop a worrying fondness for him, and as he blossoms into a man he roots himself in my life as a figure of support with whom I eventually wither away. My cynical frustration with the socialized ideal bitterly clashes with the nearly violent tenderness and warmth this prospect boils up within me. In times of fragility, I cannot shake off this image regardless of how much I numbly repeat to myself its flaws. This narrative screams of patriarchal worship, emotional dependency and unrealistic expectations given that the standard script has placed me in the unattainable female role of the gendered binary, maybe because I am predominantly attracted to men. Regardless, most people are at least familiar with a version of this story, and many will eventually land in a similar lifestyle. But at what cost? Indeed, the fragility of monogamous relationships is too often silenced, given that a single “mistake” can tear apart years of fostering and care. Cheating (or adultery, if there’s already a pair of rings to consider) is, as you all know, sometimes reason enough to end the longest-lasting relationships. It is considered a breach of the written or oral pact between two people, a betrayal of the cheated partner’s trust. From their perspective, their counterpart’s action popped the bubble in which they were floating towards their very own scripted ideal. Did Cinderella ever have a fling on the side? Soon enough, an even worse DO I LOVE question may appear: what did I HER ENOUGH do wrong? A solipsistic focus on the event spirals the thoughts of TO END MY the cheated party into self-blame. close parties may experiMARRIAGE? All ence this, as they avoid the real question: why did they do it? The demonization and mediatized IS HE REALLY hype of adultery has in part led the aforementioned inwardly WORTH ALL to directed blame, since nobody THIS SHIT? wants to believe their loved ones are intrinsically sinful as doctrine dictates. The illusion of perfect monogamy has left no place for the rationales of those who fail to obey its rules. They are left to fend for themselves through guilt, remorse, and shame as their normative environment rewrites their past. So what of the cheater? The mystified pro6
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tagonist of this sad tale, whose monstrosity fascinates us, holds the key to resolving this particular narrative. Whether it is lust, dissatisfaction, or unconscious impulse, cheating’s causal factor involves an eventual realization that something isn’t working in the monogamous paradigm, exactly like Paule did. The discrepancy between the projected and actual reality of a situation means that this person must accept they have let down their partner, their friends, and all those whose perception of monogamy as unanimously functional was upheaved. And so, soon it won’t be the people around them asking why they did it, but rather themselves: was I too attracted to him not to? Do I love her enough to end my marriage? Were they really worth all this shit? And so goes the tragedy of adultery, or at least one variant of it. I do not intend to speak for all parties involved in such circumstances, but rather describe a logical rationale for the emotions involved. It’s a selfish exercise, whereby I try and find salvation through explanations. When I see those I care about being hurt by the essentialist concept of “cheating,” I find solace in deconstructing the notion into its constituent characters, motivations and events; it stems from a denial to see those I love as a sequence of predetermined dichotomous adjectives. But really, this is just one way people get hurt in one kind of relationship, and can only serve as an example of other sources of discontent. Even worse, can we even say that the phenomenon has been explained? Can one truly justify or even fully describe this event, or is it a futile endeavor? The answer frightens me. And that answer isn’t the only scary thing. I’m afraid that the monogamous template I’m so deeply connected to fucks me over like it has so many others, that the promise of happiness monogamy offers is the lie I expect it to be, that even if I break away from it I never truly realize what I want. Marriages do work, relationships do last and for many people life-long satisfaction is an attainable and realized romantic goal. Regardless, I can’t help but doubt I will be of their ranks. Call me jaded if you like, but frankly, I don’t do justice to the term: I’m just scared. As I close this exposition, my main wish is for those reading who share my demons to confront them, so that with a shared consciousness we may distance ourselves from the toxic frameworks we have been socialized to have, into a region of critical thought within the flawed and currently immovable norm that surrounds us, and maybe eventually (and I say this with a reluctantly fuzzy smile) towards a realizable version of my ever-present daydream. u
We know you have opinions. Send them to us. Contact any of our editors listed on page 2 Our complete submission policy is also explained on page 2.
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Summiting Virginia The Swarthmore Outsiders’ fall break trip to Mt. Rogers by Philip Queen and Razi Shaban 8
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Razi Shaban ‘16; previous page: Razi Shaban ‘16
Saturday morning, the ten of us piled our gear and ourselves into a van, and drove 300 miles south to Buchanan, Virginia. There we stayed with a family friend of Philip’s, who let us set up tents in her yard. We cooked dinner over an open fire, and packed in early to rest before the hike.
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Shawn Pan ‘17
We got up on Sunday morning and drove two hours to the trailhead. We sorted out our gear and started hiking the eight miles up to Mount Rogers. We reached the summit, the highest point in Virginia at 5,720 feet, under the cover of the evening clouds. We slacklined and hung out at the top, and descended to set up camp on the Appalachian Trail just before night fell.
Shawn Pan ‘17
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Shawn Pan ‘17
Razi Shaban ‘16
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Razi Shaban ‘16
We woke up in dense clouds on Monday, and spent most of the morning playing around on the boulders in the sea of fog. We then descended to Grayson Highlands State Park as the clouds lifted, and we got our first views of the gorgeous sweeping plains that characterize the Virginia Highlands. Just after that sight, we got our first views of another characteristic landmark: the herds of wild ponies that roam the park. We descended all the way to the Cabin Creek Falls, and after a brief period of rest and meditation, made quick pace back up the mountain to get back to our base camp in the light. While we woke up in the clouds the day before, we woke up above them on Tuesday; as we looked out of our tents getting up, the entire valley was covered in a white sheet of cloud, extending for miles and miles. We spent the day trekking on the rough, uneven horse trails of the area, but were rewarded with one of the most beautiful open meadows that was put on this earth. Despite the hard hiking, everyone returned to camp in the best of spirits.
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On Wednesday we loaded up all of our gear, and moved campsites to the Old Orchard Shelter. On the way we came across a herd of free-range bulls, and ate lunch overlooking a large cattle herd at The Scales, where cattle used to wait to be taken to the market. We arrived at the shelter just after lunch, and spent the afternoon slacklining, relaxing, and chopping wood to make a big open fire for the night, which we stayed up late talking around. We woke up to the first bad weather of the trip: a medium rain. Wet, and happy that this was a short day, we set off on the four and a half miles down to the van. From there we made one long drive back to Swarthmore, stopping only for much needed, and much deserved, Baconators.
Razi Shaban ‘16
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Razi Shaban ‘16
Shawn Pan ‘17
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Razi Shaban ‘16
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Shawn Pan ‘17
This description, however, can hardly do justice to the experiences of stumbling across wild ponies, sleeping on hard ground, finding stunning view after stunning view, spontaneously climbing boulders with varying respect for safety, pumping clean water, boiling ramen, running full speed down a winding rocky path, staying up late and having it only be nine, and that special combination of rest and pain that is in everyone’s feet, legs, and back at the end of the day. u
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On the day you begin to die. by Haydil Henriquez
On the day you begin to die your throat will feel it first. A cotton flower unwinds upwards Withers backbone Quickens past your gullet Stations itself on an iris How quickly a cotton flower becomes a calla lily. Calla lily. Neither a calla nor a lily Both names foreign to its carcass. Called her Zanteschia genus, named after an Italian botanist whose death was not recorded, record this. We fade. Our lives. Fleeing monarchs by the stone hedge. How much of us will remain? 1.8 people sink in exhale Now. While we remain. One whole and four-fifths of a person. Now. Now. The way Washington is washed in to us. Now. How many of us will just fade? Raided in our own apartments. Shot down. Fred Hampton. Our existence is eraseable. Transversable. Defaced by linguistic aesthetic standards, named after our masters, we were better off before you found us, hung to dry, our worn names, slowly fade, in. then out of style. reincarnates. is re-extinct. Is re-extinct. Is. Is. We did not know we could die twice. They should have warned some will not remain. We’ve been living in worlds dictated by our thud thuds, yet we greed as if dough could buy us palpitations. On the day you begin to die your muscle the size of your fist will feel it second. Your last inhale will stream down your lung pipes, Enter your fatigued emblem one last Lose itself in decaying temples. You often forgot to breathe. The crevasses on your dilapidated walls hold stories, Graffitied your existence unto bulwarks Notice our bodies seldom come in singles, Explains why we have alter egos, Confuse fucking with loving, Tattoo hearts instead of uteri. Must be the reason birthing feels painfully whole. On your wedding day, you toss the calla lily ornaments Wish for cotton flowers To properly wipe your name off your skin How much is permanently distorted? On the day you begin to die, your name will feel it last The ribs for our lungs rupture as your organ thrusts. Your name Inhaled. Pumped. Swooped. Beat. Butchered. Capitalized. Rise. No one seems to get it right. If your tongue can’t handle death, train it, cause I’ve been training mine. On the day you begin to die you will not see a calla lily A cotton flower will breed in your still organ Remember some of our breaths are distorted Not all of us is permanent Not all of us are permanent Not all of us is.
FICTION
Anapa in the House of Gods by Jackie Kay
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napa and I entered the wine god’s garden to destroy him. The wine god’s door was deep within the House of Gods. It led us into a leafy paradise of green and gold. We passed rows of trellises choked with grapevines, and my mouth watered at the sight of the fat purple fruits. I asked Anapa if I could take a grape. “Take what you need while they still bear fruit,” he rumbled. Massive and graceful, Anapa bore no weapons, only a farmer’s sickle. His white loincloth and gold ornaments shone against his midnight skin. There was little sustenance for my kind in the House of Gods. The taste of a single grape overwhelmed me with thoughts of home, of farmer’s markets and fresh peaches, of meals and drinks with friends whose laughter I could not remember. The look on Anapa’s face might have been pity. We came across the god under an olive tree, red-faced and naked, sharing a jug of wine with a fair, plump mortal. “It is time, young one,” Anapa told him. “Have you come to kill me?” The wine god was as playful as he was belligerent. “That farmer’s tool looks hardly adequate. Much like something else of yours, I dare say.” He was barely out of boyhood, though he had lived an eternity. Perhaps for the same reasons Anapa pitied me, I pitied him. “I have not come to kill you,” Anapa said. “She has.” I hesitated. I thought of refusing, spitting in Anapa’s face, walking out the oaken door. Instead I closed my eyes. When I opened them, the garden ran red with blood. The plants withered and dried. The olive tree’s branches bent like skeletal fingers, and its black leaves scattered in the cold wind. Horrified, the mortal woman held the wine god’s head in her lap and wept. It was always fast, almost instant. One would think an immortal’s life would end gradually as a mountain wearing down to gravel. Anapa knelt and shut the wine god’s eyelids. Later, as Anapa rubbed oil and resin into the corpse’s skin, I asked, “Where will
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they go, when we are done?” “Into the earth,” Anapa said. “Just as mortals do.” He wrapped the body in linen. I offered to help, not for the first time. Anapa refused. His long, thin fingers moved with such certainty that my attempts at assistance would only hinder his work. We walked the dim, silent halls of the House of Gods. They had been full of light and warmth once, before I killed the hearth goddess who tended the fires. I had extinguished the songs of revelry and battle which once resounded from the thunder god’s feasthall. Each death sapped my strength. I was young and strong when we began, but I began to feel like a limping crone, or a helpless infant. Anapa led me in the dark, his eyes aglow, like a wolf. “Where are we going?” I asked. “This place is like a maze.” “I feel their presence in the dark,” he said. “I see those who remain.” I heard the words hanging in the air: Those who have not perished at your hands. Those who have not taken their own lives to preserve their divine pride. To me, the halls were cold and lifeless until we opened the next door and stepped into a new world. We entered the domain of the goddess, a stone palace near the verdant bank of a wild, rushing river. “The water floods,” Anapa told me, “when she weeps for her husband. He has risen before, but he will not rise again.” The goddess awaited us inside. She stretched out her arms, and her arms were wings, unfolding in dizzying flash of green, scarlet and white. She enveloped Anapa in a feathery embrace. “Embalmer,” she said, “I am ready to depart.” “Of course, my queen,” he replied. His voice caught. I looked to him, but his eyes were shut, his face pressed against the queen’s. She fell limp in Anapa’s arms. Her feathers, dull and grey, floated to the floor. Anapa wept openly as he laid her on the embalming table. “Was she your lover?” He did not reply. “Your mother?” “She was everyone’s lover, and everyone’s mother. Everyone’s whore and everyone’s queen.” He touched her cheek
before he threaded the hook through her nose to extract her brain. “Then why?” I smacked the tool out of his hand. The clattering it made when it fell surprised me. “Don’t you feel anything? I’ve killed your friends, your family. Don’t you ever think about what you’re making me do?” “Only mortal thought can destroy the gods.” “I know!” I shouted. “You’ve told me a thousand times. But you never tell me why.” He picked up the hook. “Tell me!” My fists flailed against his broad chest. “Why me?” He closed his hands around my wrists and plucked me from the ground like a blade of grass. He placed me in the corner of the room and resumed his work: removing the still-warm organs of the goddess. “Death is the blessing of birth. The earth is not the end for us.” His golden eyes, rimmed with red, were focused on his task. “This world lacks the language to make you understand.” We climbed higher in the House of Gods, stair after stair, death after death, until I could not go on. Anapa carried me close, like a sleeping child. I saw my own locks of hair falling out, grey and thin, drifting to the ground like feathers. “It is done, mortal.” Though Anapa’s voice was a murmur, it rumbled like an earthquake in his chest. He crouched down, for we had entered a dusty, lowceilinged attic. “Is it?” I had almost grown used to the give and take. Wandering the hallways guided by a jackal. Anapa held me in one arm and pushed on the ceiling with another. A trap door opened, revealing a night blooming with stars. “Where are we going?” “We are sending the gods into the earth.” “The earth?” “Earth is sky,” Anapa said. “Death is birth.” He hoisted me onto the roof. Bones creaking, I stood. The roof glistened with thousands of sarcophagi, carved of polished stone or wood, or cast in clay. I recognized the purple and green coffin of the wine god, the feathered sarcophagus
of the mother-queen. The roof rose towards the sky, and the caskets of the gods seemed to become the stars, and the stars engulfed the graveyard on the roof. “You should go back,” Anapa said, gesturing to the trapdoor.
I obeyed. My body felt fresh, strong, alive. As I climbed down the door, I looked back. “Aren’t you coming with me?” “I cannot follow you into your world,” Anapa said. I guessed that he would not
want to if he could. “Wait,” I said. “When my time comes... will you come for me?” “Perhaps,” said Anapa, “you will come for me.” u
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PERSONAL ESSAY
~ Ninita by Liliana Frankel
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he glass separating the pizza guys from the rest of the restaurant lent their work an aspect of performance, which they mostly seemed to embrace. I could remember being small and laughing on a long-legged counter stool as they tossed spinning rounds of dough in the air. They were master mimes, somber and silent, but sometimes they would break the fourth wall to wink in my direction. Childishly I let myself be surprised after much passed time by the fact of their voices when we were introduced for my first day of hostessing. It was the beginning of senior year, and I wanted desperately to speak Spanish, their language. I’d spent the summer studying to pass into the AP course and emerged victorious; that is, my final was over, I had enough flashcards to paper my room, and with effort I could remember most of the lyrics to “La Camisa Negra.” Even during the emptiest moments, the restaurant’s spoken languages (Italian, Spanish, English) layered over one another thickly enough to mimic the humming ambience of a big crowd. Though my ears had trouble distinguishing specific words, I was easily carried along the familiar dramatic arcs of my coworkers’ small talk. You’ll get the silverware? Excellent… so THEN he… We folded napkins, paused to giggle, sipped soda when there was nothing to say. With a routine established, it became easier for me to tune into the Spanish spoken on the peripheries behind the glass. Its crescendos and sforzandos were largely unintelligible, but they propelled the night in certain directions with the subtle force of a movie soundtrack. Work conversations were confined and frequently broken by work priorities. There was still a sort of rhythm: talk— wait, sorry. Answer door. Resume: phone rings. Pick up. Wait. Forget what was being said. Fold pizza boxes. Resume. Sometimes I heard only the punch line of a story, leaving its context to my imagination. If I knew my coworkers at all, it was through inference. This was most true with the pizza guys, whose shouted cadenzas throbbed with emotions I could experience but lacked the vocabulary 22
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to source. We communicated in earnest platitudes, neither side dextrous enough to achieve irony in a second language. Cómo estás? Muy bien, y tú? It’s a beautiful day. Sí, claro que sí. Vincenzo opened his restaurant in our small town, a suburb of both Trenton and Philadelphia, in 1977. The success of Italian immigrants in the area is welldocumented and evidenced anecdotally by a high concentration of pizza shops; four, for instance, on our one commercial street. There are no comparable monuments for Central Americans, who arrived more recently and oftentimes without any documentation at all. Guatemala was the best-represented country on Vince’s staff. I knew almost nothing of it. Normally I could count on Wikipedia when trying to educate myself, but here the entry wrongly assumed so much prior knowledge that I crashed my web browser opening relevant background articles in new tabs. When I tried again, a quick skim yielded only vague impressions of color and violence.
A
crumpled receipt bounced off the nape of my neck and rolled under the counter. As I bent to retrieve it, two more balls of paper careened over the glass and collided with the other hostesses. In tandem, they swiveled to glare at the pizza guys, who were already doubled with laughter. I threw out the paper and rose to join in the standoff. When he caught my eye, Freddy snapped his teeth over a half-formed giggle and assumed his mime’s neutral. “Freddddyyyyy…” I couldn’t match his poker face, but he held strong. “QUÉ.” “Why are you throwing paper at us?” whined the girl to my right. He was shocked! “It’s not me, all him—” he pointed to Jorge, who held up his hands in protest. “No, no—that guy! Look—” There was a man I’d never seen before manning the cheesesteak grill. “Freddy, who is that?” “Se llama Victor. VIIIIIICTOR—” The man looked up, met our eyes, and quickly turned to face his work. “He’s new.” We stared at Freddy until he became bored and began to laugh again. He gave an exaggerated papal wave and inclined over his pizza dough. “Bye bye, bitches—”
“Freddy!” “QUÉ.” “Don’t call us bitches, nobody answers to bitches.” He considered, shrugged. “Adiós, bitchitas!” I rolled my eyes. The other girls snorted and clutched at one another. My boss Luigi chuckled to himself from the front desk. Victor, the new guy, was the only person not laughing. I watched as his knife moved expertly over half an onion, slicing it into mechanically thin strips. Gradually I was beginning to use my Spanish at work. I’d started the studied-for AP class at school, and with more practiced listening, words began to crystallize out from the syrupy mess of sound. Eavesdropping, I could catch maybe one in every five: “Si quisieras…se mezclan… pasas diferentes…hacer…con aceite…las madres…ninguno…ya sabes…así.” Sometimes I followed long enough to get the gist of a joke. Everything was funnier to me in Spanish because there was so much more to laugh at: the wit of what was said, the novelty of my comprehension, my own brain for its delay between hearing and understanding, the other hostesses’ obliviousness to the exchanges which surrounded them. On the best nights, I left work giddy and riled. I deposited my money and compared my ATM receipts with the prices of plane tickets to Latin America. Qué locura tienes? I asked myself. It didn’t matter. The worst nights were the ones where suddenly it did seem to matter. What madness do I have? A good question! I rolled silverware and let my thoughts roll too, mostly in circles. “Hey flaca, no te pongas afligida!” “Afligida?” I didn’t know the word. “It’s like, tired, sad. Like suffering.” Afflicted, okay. There’s my cognate. “I am not afflicted! Don’t worry, I’m just thinking.” A neutral fact.
F
reddy and I were both in one of my afflicted moods. He stood kneading a pizza, world-weary and comic/tragic in his checked pants. I knelt cramped into his habitual nook with my chin on my knees. Our lines of sight were reversed; usually I towered over him. La grandota, gigante. I tried to laugh at these
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nicknames even when I couldn’t gauge the kindness of his intentions. He was talking about his son, who was two years old and the most important person in his life. “Mi chiquillito,” he called him, each syllable fully unspooled. He spoke to me only in Spanish because he knew that’s what I craved. You’re a strange girl, he told me. Why, Freddy? You watch me the way my son watches me. “Ojos así,” he said, motioning. You might understand, but you never say what you think. “Eres casi muda,” he said. You’re almost mute. “Eres como una niña muy pequeña. Mi niñita.” My little girl. He patted my head. Like his little girl, I lacked the words to respond.
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y major Spanish-learning project outside of Vince’s Pizza was a slow fight through “100 Years of Solitude,” by Gabriel García Márquez. I’d cheated and pre-read the first third of it in English so that I could have a feel for the action, but the entire thing was just a meanly constructed ego challenge. García Márquez frustrated me by using words that didn’t appear anywhere in my Diccionario de la Lengua Española, and even when I could find a definition, it would often include more words I didn’t know. Qué quieren decir? I asked the books, flipping fruitlessly back and forth between them. What do you want to say? Gradually my hunger to follow the story won out over my desire to imbibe García Márquez’s vocabulary. Without the Diccionario, “Cien Años” sketched a blind contour, unclear but unbroken. Somehow I could follow. The characters were not quite human, but they represented truths so essential and familiar that I felt I barely needed to read to infer what would happen next. All the complexities of human nature boiled neatly down into a universal archetype—a revelation! I kept reading. There were scores of words I’d never seen. I said them out loud until they made sense to me, or until it became clear that they never would; in the latter case they lingered on my ear as pleasant mysteries. Some of them I would look up later, but their meanings almost didn’t matter. Because everything in the book was a symbol, it seemed appropriate that its words should be reduced to symbols as well. Nouns were now suggestions, representing the possible instead of the concrete. These ambiguities had little impact on my understanding of plot or tone, which was mostly verb-dependent—it’s not what you
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have, but what you do.
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he new pizza guy, Victor, was an anomaly. He could be overheard speaking neat, unaccented English to customers at the front desk, but he never came over to tease or talk to us. The other girls wrote him off as too serious. I was less sure. His clothing choices called my attention: he’d cut his Vince’s Pizza shirt at the neck, breaking its boxy lines to expose a silver cross pendant and a tan slice of skin, and better yet, he alternated weekly between a “Notre Dame IRISH” and a “Banana Republic” baseball cap, which I decided was ironic. He was totally trying to stick it to the man. We began talking because he knew that I was learning Spanish, but really he was hungry to practice in English. Despite Victor’s good accent, his vocabulary’s narrow scope limited us to pizza shop basics. It became my goal to push our conversations into the more personal, where he would be forced to switch to his native language. I was ruthless in my pursuit of his stories, his opinions. The way he fit his words together delighted me even when I was shocked by what he said. You must always listen to your father, he told me. But you said that your father left your family when you were just a boy! Yes, he inclined his head. He’s still the person I most respect. Victor worked two jobs, six days a week at Vince’s from 11 a.m. till 11 p.m. and then three days after that at another pizza place in Trenton, 11 p.m. till 3 a.m. He had a wife and a son and a new baby. He wanted to be a state policeman. So how are you going to get there? I asked. He looked despondent. I don’t even have a high school education, he said. Well, you can get a G.E.D. That’s basically the same. That would let you take college classes, if you wanted to. He was unmoved. I don’t have the time or the money. Besides, I don’t know how to look up the classes on the internet. I grinned at him, a starting point in sight. That I can do for you. His eyebrows rose. You would do that? It was a rare push back into territory personal enough for me to call on my English. “Of course…You know Spanish and I don’t, so you help me. I have a computer and you don’t, so I help you. It’s only fair.” I hoped that he couldn’t see how ragged this acknowledgment of our differences made me feel. As it turned out, G.E.D. classes were free and offered in both of Victor’s two languages. I made him a list of numbers
to call, which took maybe fifteen minutes. The only task remaining was to corner my Spanish teacher for the final and most important question. “Señor, will they ask my friend from work about his immigration status if he wants to get a G.E.D.?” Well. It was complicated. Victor could obtain his G.E.D. unquestioned. However, if he wanted to compile the college credits necessary to become a policeman, he would need his identity verified. Probably it would be best if he were a citizen, and under current circumstances that was not a realistic goal. So…Tell your friend that he should take some time to reevaluate. I wanted to cry. My teacher offered a sympathetic shrug, and I thought of Freddy patting me on the head. I rose to leave. When I was almost at the door“Hey, how do you know this guy, again?” I turned to face him. “He’s just a friend from my job at the pizzeria. Why?” His face folded inward with skepticism, and a hand rose to indicate the poster on the wall to my right. Block lettering: CARAS, VEMOS, CORAZONES NO SABEMOS. We see faces, we don’t know hearts. “Que tengas cuidado… Una jovencita bien guapa como eres tú…” The thought of Victor wanting anything from me other than some sympathetic company felt silly. He was ten years older and married. Besides, he had much more consuming priorities.
M
y friendship with Victor was a curiosity to the rest of the hostesses, who he still mostly
ignored. “Victor, why don’t you ever talk to the other girls?” “I only like you.” His tone was disaffected enough to muffle any natural alarms which might have sounded at such a statement. “But you want to practice your English, right? And you and me speak a lot of Spanish. You should try talking to them.” He curled his lip. “You are different from them.” “No…” I protested the obvious. “They’re cool. They’re my friends, and they would all like you.” But we had arrived at an impasse. Victor could force a smile for anyone, but it was only me who got shreds of olives tossed in my hair and only me who caught the follow-up laugh, only me he would continued on page 39
BOOKS The Franzen project
REVIEW
Jonathan Franzen and Karl Kraus take on modernity
by Philip Harris
J
onathan Franzen’s reception at Swarthmore last spring was lukewarm. He spoke fatalistically of the social impact of fiction and disavowed the readings of his books that would point to any social messages. When he admitted that the one explicit goal of his latest novel, “Freedom,” was to give voice to the feline plight of the song bird, he was met with laughter; to be fair, we thought he was joking (perhaps if he’d been championing avian gender politics). His reading somehow failed to win The Kraus Project by Jonathan Franzen FARRAR, STRAUS AND GIROUX 336 pages | $27
over a crowd of college students who had more than likely passed the time before he took the stage checking Facebook or texting, and he didn’t make any friends during the Q&A: the first question was, rather, a statement (“Technoshock.”), and Franzen returned fire when a student asked what he thought of John Green’s use of social media (“Who?”). The general consensus: curmudgeon. He was everything Zadie Smith hadn’t been when she’d spoken several months before. Perhaps hesitant to be the bearer of bad news, Smith brought not one, but two visions of a literary future. The first involved a not-terribly-developed metaphor that cast writing as something like building a chair, the idea being that even if you don’t get published, there is virtue in the act. Initially this smelled of vaguely new-age self-cultivation, but it gradually took on ominous undertones: one could imagine a world of isolated, second-rate craftsmen knocking together three-legged literary stools while the pall of a second Dark Age settled over the land. Of course, this was quickly ameliorated by the second, and primary, vision, heralded by the glorious phrase that seems not to Photo coutesy of BiografieOnline.it
Karl Kraus
stick in your throat when the Penguin Press logo graces the spines of your books: “Social media and self-publishing are democratizing the publishing industry!” This phrase, bandied about like a mantra that one hopes has a cumulative effect, always reminds me of Churchill’s quip that the surest argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with one of your constituents. In any case, we have two visions of the future, one of techno-fear and the other of techno-joy; the question is, which should we embrace? Rather than answer this question directly, Franzen has decided in his latest book, “The Kraus Project,” to take a backseat to a still more fiery prophet, Karl Kraus. A German-Jewish intellectual, Kraus edited and published 922 volumes of his journal Die Fackel from 1899 to 1936; after 1911
he was the sole contributor. He was at the center of the Viennese intelligentsia, and his readership included Walter Benjamin, Kafka, and Freud. As a satirist he attacked psychoanalysis, German nationalism, and most of Vienna’s other periodicals. He was recognized for the wry aphorisms his essays generated, like “psychoanalysis is the disease of the mind for which it believes itself to be the cure,” or “bureaucrats lie to the newspapers and then believe the headlines.” Kraus was sly, funny, and vitriolic to the point of incomprehensibility. Although this last item could have potentially rendered segments of Kraus’s essays opaque to modern readers, the problem of occasional incoherence is ameliorated by Franzen’s notes. While Franzen’s warning that Kraus is deliberately hard was turned against him by snide readers in the Guardian’s comSWARTHMORE REVIEW
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ments section, to the tune of, “and I guess it’ll take Franzen and his big ‘intellect’ to guide me through,” this is exactly what he does, albeit with the assistance of scholar Paul Reitter and Austrian novelist Daniel Kehlmann, whose contributions are dropquoted within Franzen’s own footnotes. Franzen provides a number of illuminating annotations that clarify, contextualize, or, in the case of Kraus’s most furiously penned sentences, simply admit that they don’t really make linguistic sense. While the extensive annotation does result in a lot of non-linear page turning, ultimately it turns two potentially antiquated essays into engaging historical documents, intellectually and emotionally. This is of the utmost importance, because the bulk of the book is taken up by these two essays: “Heine and the Consequences” and “Nestroy and Posterity.” Ostensibly, these essays mirror one another: in “Heine,” Kraus is attacking Heinrich Heine, a celebrated poet he sees as overrated, and in “Nestroy,” he champions the misread and underrated Johann Nestroy. I say ostensibly because Kraus is so thoroughly satirical that what he seems to be criticizing is rarely what he’s actually, or, at least, most genuinely, criticizing. Therefore, while it’s impossible to miss the relish with which Kraus aims his polemic artillery at specific figures, Franzen’s annotations help to clarify the ways in which Nestroy and Heine are being used as springboards to talk about more pressing issues. Thus, the indictment of Heine becomes a critique of a degradation of the German language, a linguistic infection smuggled in by the “feuilleton.” Literally translated as “small sheet,” feuilleton referred to the essays, short fictions, and travel pieces that composed the “culture” sections of newspapers; it was, essentially, pop reportage. Along with Walter Benjamin, Theodor Adorno, and Robert Musil, Kraus spoke against the negative effects of the form’s proliferation. Seemingly intimate and clever, feuilletons were in fact mass-produced and, in the pre-television era, addictive commodities that were encroaching on the space reserved for serious literature. They were full of imprecise language, heavy on adjectives, low on substance (think of the strangely homogeneous openers to magazine interviews, which, across the board, generally amount to “this celebrity is a celebrity, but also kind of like us”). The fear was that as the slick, substance-less style of the feuilleton bled over into news reportage which requires journalistic objectivity, the focus would shift from content to 26
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form—until content was excised entirely. This begs a comparison with the modern day—where the blogosphere is glutted with posts written so individualistically as to be interchangeable, to use a kind of Krausian paradox—and Franzen obliges. “Heine and the Consequences” serves as something of a warm-up for the second essay, wherein Kraus, and Franzen, bring out the big guns. In “Nestroy and Posterity,” the reconsideration of Nestroy doubles as an indictment of the technological dehumanization of man. As Paul Reitter observes in a footnote, “For Kraus—as for, say, Marx—liberal faith in progress was the worst sort of ideology […] Once the popular imagination has atrophied, the likelihood that technology will be misused hardens into a certainty.” In this essay, the real goal of Kraus’s writing becomes clear: to galvanize the public out of their imaginative lethargy, even if it means spitting in their faces, dethroning cultural heroes, and bending language until it breaks. He wants to invert preconceptions, primarily the post-Enlightenment faith in a stable past, and the rose-tinted certainty that the only way for progress to go is up. His contradictions and paradoxes, his ultimatums, like stoically austere Germanic vs. ingenuously romantic Latin, and his penchant, as a German Jew, for anti-semitism, were all calculated, his aim to inject doubt into a culture that knew just where modernity was headed and “never [ventured] out without a guard of historians to club down memory for it.” Kraus was out to upset the popular consciousness; he was not out to make friends. And neither was Franzen when he published an assembled extract under the title “What’s Wrong with the Modern World” in The Guardian several weeks before publication. In a Krausian dichotomy, the comment section’s detractors were of two minds: some took issue with form, others with content. Those who criticized on the grounds of form gave voice to a strange phenomenon, namely that we require our satirists to address their issue of choice with a certain amount of, to use a Franzenian term, “coolness.” On the one hand, Franzen can be hard to defend: his references to AOL are archaic and the Mac vs. PC ads were a long time ago. At the same time, when Franzen’s points are judged on the basis of form alone, it is as if to say, “Yes, Mr. Franzen, I know Apple is evil, and has working conditions such that they’ve installed security nets around select factories to prevent employee suicides, and they cite a deficit of qualified STEM
graduates to substantiate their requests for additional H1 visas while circumventing taxation that is put in place expressly to provide funding to schools, and Facebook is very likely providing all of my personal information to the NSA; but do you have to be such a dweeb about it?” Disappointingly, the New Republic also opted for this line of criticism. The magazine recently published “top 5” lists (a feuilletonistic form if ever there was one) undercutting Franzen’s and Dave Eggers’s latest books, both critical of the technocracy, criticizing Franzen for his “pretentiousness” and Eggers for his technological ignorance. While Eggers perhaps should have known what an operating system is before writing a book about the internet, the criticisms against Franzen feel like cop-outs: accusations of pretentiousness are almost ad-hominem, Jennifer Weiner citing “male privilege” a non-sequitur, and “well, you haven’t even really embraced modern technology!” like criticizing the uninitiated for not knowing what the kool-aid tastes like. Those critics concerned with content are, at least, unabashed in their criticism. They stalwartly believe Franzen to be a Luddite, and that all technological progress is silicon manna. These types are more difficult to argue with. Perhaps the only productive counter I can offer is that whether or not they oppose Franzen on the grounds of content or of form, these critics still for the most part believe that the success of Franzen’s latest work is predicated on whether they approve of his presentation and/or agree with his cultural jabs. Perhaps though, in translating Kraus and saying the things he does, Franzen has a project of his own. His translation closes with a poem entitled “Let No One Ask.” It was written by Kraus in July 1934 following his months of silence in the wake of Hitler’s rise to power. The final line of the poem is clear: “The Word went under when that world awoke.” Kraus had been silent because there had been nothing to say. Satire is predicated on a discrepancy: when a bureaucracy says one thing and does another, the satirist’s job is to explode the absurdity with language. In fascism, there is no discrepancy. No margin exists for dissent, and the writers of clever articles are rounded up and killed. Luckily, we haven’t quite reached that point (although a government that “discriminately” trawls for personal data and defines probable suspicion of terrorism as three degrees of separation is less than reassuring). In his indictment of the modern world, Fran-
zen is most convincing when he is being least polemical. Scattered throughout the book are memoirish footnotes, mostly recounting his time spent in Germany on a Fulbright. These are a welcome relief from the occasionally arcane essays, and it’s a joy to listen to Franzen reflect on his young, pretentious self, whether he’s trapped in Oedipal struggles with Pynchon or writing Krausian letters to the Boston Globe. In one of his more pensive footnotes, Franzen reflects on his correspondence with and decision to marry his then-fiancee, and observes that, although he’s no fan of Freud’s template, he had perhaps let his id override him the whole time. He says this about a period during which he wrote reams of self-justification; today, self-diagnosis is regularly performed in 140 characters or less.
Franzen’s project then is, like Kraus’s, a linguistic call to arms. Language is a dangerous thing and our efforts to employ it often lead only to our circumscribing ourselves: we understand ourselves within a framework of language, and our construction is rarely without flaw. Self-interrogation and the recognition of oneself as fallible are not encouraged by social media, a blatant device of self-construction which practically celebrates the relinquishment of the reins to the id. But to focus on the institutions Franzen attacks (as in, his equation of Twitter with smoking) is to miss the larger point. The book is not an attack on the technologies of modernity, but rather the language of modernity. Franzen admits that he profits by technology just as much as the next consumer. It is when we cease to interrogate this profiting that we fail,
when we submit to rhetoric like “the unstoppable progress of technology” without wondering whether what lies beneath the contentless form of this language is not simply “I like what technology can do, and, as a resident of the moral gymnasium that is upper-class America, I can’t imagine anything I like doing also having repercussions.” We render language arbitrary at our own peril, because all the time we spend wrestling with it, identifying discontinuities and challenging personal axioms, is in preparation for the moment when it really and truly fails. For perhaps that is the last discrepancy that satire can register: its own disappearance. Franzen’s work, like that of all literary agitators, is to keep language alive by stirring it up, so that when the Word goes under, we will recognize its absence. u
Tracking the history accelerator The Internet Age, history, and social criticism in Thomas Pynchon’s new novel
REVIEW
that an event or product that happened or was released two years ago seems like it happened or was released an infinite amount of time ago—especially when compared to the newness of something two years after the fact in, say, 1890. Motorola Razrs, which were all the rage eight years ago, now seems like fossilized artifacts. Anyone remember when iPads weren’t a thing? This “history acceleration” occurs for two major reasons. On the one hand, the technology that is constantly released and improved upon, compared with our increasing willingness and skill to use the internet and technology for almost everything, causes the technological framework of our society, which is increasingly becoming bigger, to constantly change and morph. This change incessantly tempts us—and succeeds for the most part—to change the ways we work (increase productivity) and interact with each other, making MySpace obsolete and iPad Square credit card scanners the alternative to old-fashioned cash registers. Secondly, the amount of history that is literally created is much more than it’s ever been. Of course, there have always been numerous publications and newspapers that document numerous events and happenings, but never to the extent that we see on the internet. Add to that blogging, other forms of internet history-creating,
the effect of technology on scholarly research, and the amount of information available to read just to get yesterday’s news, and the amount of historical textartifacts—it’sabsolutely astounding. Enter novelist Thomas Pynchon (“Gravity’s Rainbow,” “V.”) into this picture. Proven to be an observant social critic in past novels, one would think Pynchon would have a hell of a lot to say about the Internet Age. In “Bleeding Edge,” set in “Silicon Alley” (New York City’s version of Silicon Valley) in the time between the dot-com bubble burst and 9/11, Pynchon tells a story with enough interesting relationships, twists and turns, and profound insight to keep the reader engaged and amazed throughout. While he doesn’t explicitly draw out any criticisms of the Internet Age, he suggests many very interesting points about it by showing how much things have changed in the past thirteen years. “Bleeding Edge” tells us the story of Maxine Tarnow. Maxine, a de-certified but still practicing CFE (Certified Fraud Examiner) has been hired by her friend Reg Despard to investigate hashlingrz, a mysterious growing computer security firm run by Gabriel Ice that Reg has been hired to make a film documentary about. Maxine tracks the financial dealings and footprints of the company, which leads her to many weird and interesting figures,
by Billy Lennon
W
hen I bring up the term “historical novel,” what comes to mind might be a poorly written Dan Brown novel, or “Manhunt,” the semifictional book about John Wilkes Booth’s killing of Abe Lincoln and his subsequent flight. Other classic novels, such as “The Great Gatsby” or “The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn,” might not be thought of strictly as “historical” novels, but they certainly capture, and to a certain extent, define what we know about a given time Bleeding Edge by Thomas Pynchon PENGUIN PRESS 496 pages | $29
period. That’s the function of a historical novel: to serve as a portal to some time in the past, usually centered on a distinct era, an instrumental event, or a famous (or infamous) person or group. Nowadays, however, the concept of the historical novel is changing rapidly. A major part of this change is due to the “history accelerator” that exists in our current techno-fetishistic society. What I mean by “history accelerator” is not that time moves faster in our day and age, but
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including a computer hacker with an extreme foot fetish, a worker for a website called hwgaahwgh.com, a programmer of zapper fraud, and a “freelance professional nose” named Conkling Speedwell. The deeper she gets into uncovering weird facts about the company, which seemingly has connections to all kinds of obscure events and places, the more inexplicable and sinister the actions of the company seem to be. While most of the book’s interest lies in themes brought up in the plot, Pynchon makes some important choices with his writing as well. An interesting stylistic choice by Pynchon throughout the novel is his use of internet slang-type spelling. Throughout the book, he routinely forgets to capitalize certain words, misspells words, and never says “says,” but rather, “sez.” While at first it may seem that Penguin messed up and didn’t perform a thorough enough spell-check, the repetition of the typos shows that they must be intentional. One might be tempted to think that the extent of the meaning of this kind of thing is to poke fun at the way our culture routinely shortens words for text messages, but Pynchon is actually bringing up a larger point with it. By using this kind of language, Pynchon questions whether or not the novel itself will be affected by this language. Shouldn’t the language used in novels be sacred to an extent? Or should they reflect the dialect of society? While I certainly think that novels should reflect our society and how we interact, and that novelists should be able to use whatever kind of language they want, I cringe at the idea of emoticons or hashtags being used in stories of the future. Pynchon manages to have it both ways: he, too, seems to cringe at this idea, and yet also, through these intentional typos, does hold up a mirror to our society’s use of language. The reader may think, “Wow, he spelled ‘says’ wrong.” Perhaps that was Pynchon’s point: to point out the obvious and to have us realize that we do this all the time. Throughout “Bleeding Edge,” Pynchon does not so much give us less his take on certain issues of society today as write challenging and interesting scenes with certain events and people coinciding and interacting with aspects of that society. His portraits of society come first, and any observations or criticisms are secondary, and usually made not by Pynchon, but the reader. One issue he brings up is the societal trend for many people, predominantly in 28
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liberal East Coast areas, to see psychologists to sort through problems. Pynchon suggests that there are some people who get professional help, especially in these areas, who really don’t need it. It is very clear throughout the book that Maxine is a woman who has her shit together, and does not suffer from a mental illness such as depression or extreme anxiety. Yet, she sees a Zen “Emotherapist” (at the advice of a friend) named Shawn who instructs her to just “go with the flow” and such whenever she brings up a pseudo-issue. He is painted by Pynchon as a fraud, a “compulsive surfer” whose only “journey
Pynchon’s novel suggests marketworshipping has taken on a new form in today’s technoconsumerism and in our automatic association of new technology with ‘progress.’ to the East (was) by Greyhound, from his native Southern California to New York.” He “speaks less to spiritual authenticity than to gullibility, otherwise seldom observed, among New Yorkers able to afford his fees.” While for most of the novel he seems to simply and exclusively spout meaningless pseudo-Zen facts on and on to the point that Maxine wants to just walk out on him and his sessions, he is very much on point when discussing 9/11 (which weirdly seems connected to hashlingrz, via Reg Despard’s covert film documentation) shortly after the events. When he talks to Maxine at one point about 9/11, he compares the Twin Towers to two twin statues of the Buddha he had talked about in a previous session: “The Trade Center towers were religious too. They stood for what this country wor-
ships above everything else, the market, always the holy fuckin market.” Shawn goes on to say, “Do you remember that piece of footage on the local news, just as the first tower comes down, woman runs in off the street into a store, just gets the door closed behind her, and here comes this terrible black billowing, ash debris, sweeping through the streets, gale force past the window… that was the moment, Maxi. Not when ‘everything changed.’ When everything was revealed. No grand Zen illumination, but a rush of blackness and death. Showing us exactly what we’ve become, what we’ve been all the time.” His criticisms extend to himself: a lot of the self-helpy things that we do will have be of no help when tragedy strikes. 9/11, in a way, put things in perspective. It is extremely conspicuous that this character, labeled all but an idiot by Pynchon, who literally cuts an appointment with Maxine short so he can catch a “Brady Bunch” marathon, quite poignantly slams our society’s marketworshipping, which has taken on a new form when paired with today’s technoconsumerism and a priori designation of “progress” being granted to any new technology. The tension between the former Shawn and the Shawn that critiques our society through 9/11 makes it very likely that this is a point that Pynchon really wanted to make, and may be close to his own views. Closely related to Shawn’s point is the most obvious tension at the heart of “Bleeding Edge”: that between technological progress and physico-emotional tragedy. No matter what kind of technology we develop, be it skyscrapers, iPhones, tanks, or cars, we are still very much vulnerable to the perils of the world, be they physical violence, depression, or events such as 9/11. Technology never affords us total protection. In the book, the form of this tension is represented in our time’s rapid technological progress around 9/11. Walter Benjamin, near the end of his famous essay “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction,” writes, “The destructiveness of war furnishes proof that society has not been mature enough to incorporate technology as its organ, that technology has not been sufficiently developed to cope with the elemental forces of society.” As I’ve stated, I don’t believe that the destructiveness of war is the only thing that proves such a hypothesis. In any case, by looking through the lens of Benjamin at this central tension of “Bleeding Edge,” it is clear
Thomas Pynchon at age 16, in his high school yearbook portrait, one of the only known photographs of the famed and reclusive novelist
that it would serve us best if we avoid, as Shawn suggests, making technology a “god” and to lower our expectations of what we expect from it: another 9/11 could theoretically happen at any time, and it won’t be technology’s, or necessarily anyone’s, fault. But we can certainly do more harm than good by blindly expecting technology to protect us from catastrophe, which view we as a society are certainly closer to adopting. Hell, we already expect that throwing money into educational technology is what is going Photo courtesy of Vice
to help our students learn best, instead of ignoring the basic human elements that make good teachers. While what Pynchon seems to suggest about our society is intellectually thought-provoking, I am even more pleased by the way in which he brings up and discusses issues. Pynchon’s way of bringing up issues is the difference between critiquing by telling and critiquing by showing and suggesting. One of the goals of literature should be for us to interact with texts for the purpose of
critiquing ourselves. When an author goes on lengthy diatribes about his or her views, with the plot being secondary, then this goal of self and societal critique is not being tackled effectively. The best form of critiquing is for the author to paint a vivid portrait of the recreated world in question not with her criticisms (if she has any) blatantly in the open, but for the text to function as a non-judgmental pseudomirror for the reader himself to create his own criticisms of. As you could see in the above section, Pynchon used Shawn to provoke thoughts in me, and my own thoughts and connections brought me to any conclusions or societal criticisms I have. Pynchon’s form of subtle social commentary is very much welcome in an age where social satire is as annoying as it has ever been. Nowadays, we have skilled writers, such as Ben Fountain, who take some sort of event or issue, and satirize the shit out of it (in Fountain’s case, the Iraq War, in “Billy Lynn’s Long Halftime Walk”). Most people eat this stuff up: it is enjoyed both because of the high quality of writing skill of the authors and because the viewpoints expressed, which are hardly ever controversial, are almost always shared by those reading. The views function as a praise of the reader’s political views (“Hey, you hate Fox News?! Me too!”). Pynchon gives his insight without shouting anything at us. (Unlike Jonathan Franzen in his recent “The Kraus Project.” Do not get me started on this. But of course, Franzen’s project is not a novel.) Pynchon simply paints us a vivid picture of New York a little over ten years ago, and in doing so gives us the opportunity to come to our own conclusions. At the end of the day, for all of the suggestions the novel makes, “Bleeding Edge” is simply one hell of a novel, and one to be thoroughly enjoyed by those who enjoyed its close sibling, “The Crying of Lot 49.” It is a joy to read, takes us back to a time that, while only ten years ago, seems like ages ago, and helps us a society to be more self-aware, especially as our framework is constantly changing. In this time of historical acceleration, we need authors like Pynchon who provide us, in such a way that we are challenged to come up with our own societal criticisms and not told what to think, with operative portals to times that we need to be increasingly aware of to intelligently progress during the Internet Age. If providing such a portal is one of the goals of “Bleeding Edge,” then it has certainly succeeded. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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MUSIC The genius of Taylor Swift
ESSAY
Why “I Knew You Were Trouble” is worth close attention
by Hanyu Chwe
F
orget the goat videos. Forget the horrible performance at the 2010 Grammys. Forget Taylor Lautner, the Jonas Brothers, and the various breakups she’s suffered. Taylor Swift might not be the most talented songwriter of our generation, but she wrote at least one amazing song. The 2012 hit “I Knew You Were Trouble” illustrates the influence of European dance on the American mainstream. Its Electronic Dance Music (EDM)-like structure creates dynamic contrast, fuelling an energetic and engaging song. “Trouble” speaks volumes about the state and direction of mainstream music. Purists might take offense, but it’s impossible to deny that Swift’s “Trouble” incorporates dubstep. In an interview with Time magazine, Swift revealed that she and producers consciously made the decision to imitate dubstep after Swift decided she wanted a “chaotic” bass line. The tumultuous emotions described in the lyrics reflect the wobble of the bass. Accordingly, the chorus of “Trouble” features the characteristic triplet “wub” bass that has made Skrillex and his ilk famous in the States. More subtly, the chorus shifts into half time, another key characteristic of dubstep. European electronic music on American radios isn’t anything new. Americans like Rihanna, Taio Cruz, and Pitbull have made their careers with synth lines ripped directly from Ibiza’s clubs. Similarly, it’s hard to avoid Europeans like Swedish House Mafia and Avicii on the FM dial. It’s only a bit surprising that Taylor Swift is stealing the best of South London. Swift’s first idols were Shania Twain and Faith Hill, not Daft Punk.
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Her use of dubstep is just another example of mainstream music’s cross-pollination. However, Swift’s use of dubstep is also further evidence of her songwriting excellence. She uses the structure of dubstep (and electronic dance music in general) to create dynamic contrast through instrumentation. Almost every piece of popular music recorded in the last half-century is
Swift’s use of dubstep is further evidence of her songwriting excellence. She uses the structure of dubstep (and electronic dance music in general) to create dynamic contrast through instrumentation. missing something. Unlike the pianissimos and fortes from “classical” music, almost no mainstream music has a change in volume. When you listen to recorded music, the “high volume” parts (like the chorus) of a song will produce less noise than the “low volume” parts (like a verse) will if you increase the volume manually. The absence of dynamic contrast in mainstream music can be traced back
decades. Old-school jukeboxes had no volume knob. Record executives believed that louder songs would attract more attention in diners and on car radios. Throughout the decades, CDs let the industry push volumes higher and higher, even to the point of distortion. Songs without dynamic contrast are boring. The reason the lack of volume isn’t obvious to the average listener is that artists are really good at hiding it. The best artists and producers are really good at making their music sound like it has a ton of dynamic contrast. Musicians can give you that oomph when the beat drops and give you chills when the gospel choir enters. For example, the end of Beyoncé’s “Love on Top” features multiple repetitions of the main chorus. Each repeating chorus needs additional excitement. Instead of achieving this effect through a change in volume, each chorus changes key. Beyoncé and her producers can increase the intensity of the songs through modulation rather than volume. Electronic artists do something similar when they construct drops. When Congorock wants to increase tension before his break in “Babylon,” he piles on two additional synth tracks, an offbeat vocal line, doubles the snare drum, and finally cuts out the higher frequencies and the bends the pitch of the main synth line. This build culminates in a single triangle hit, rapidly followed by the undulating bass line. Congorock is changing the instrumentation to add tension. The rapid loss of instrumentation in the drop contributes to the effect.
S
wift does pretty much the exact same thing. The first verse of “Trouble” features only Swift’s voice, a dry bass drum hit, and minimal rhythmic guitar. The second verse
Illustration by Yenny Cheung SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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adds rhythmic bass. The third verse adds gentle drum hits as well as very simple vocal harmony. Up to this point, “Trouble” is a very dry, rhythmic song without any electronic effects. Swift’s voice is the only melodic line at all. In the pre-chorus, the lines “I knew he was trouble when he walked in” are accompanied by a synthetic suspended cymbal roll. The new guitar chords accompanying Swift are not hard and dry; they sound ethereal and faint. Additionally, the vocal echo is much more noticeable and more artificial. As the prechorus continues, Swift is accompanied by all of the traditional trappings of dance music—the vocal line is doubled, fast drum machines enter, and an old school synth track emerges. After “I’m lying on the cold hard ground,” every-
thing culminates in a raucous, wubbing bass line and synthetic vocal parts. The volume of the song never changes, but the instrumentation does. In the verse, Swift is only minimally accompanied. As the prechorus starts, the amount of instrumentation increases and the timbre of the instrumentation shifts from acoustic to electronic dance. The chorus climaxes in throbbing dubstep. The first full minute of this song consists of the journey from minimal vocal line to full-fledged dubstep breakdown. Throughout the song, Taylor Swift manipulates the instrumentation to create dynamic contrast without manipulating volume. There are no stagnant places in this song. It doesn’t rely on particular vocal or melodic lines for contrast. Every verse propels the
listener towards the chorus. This song can achieve enormous dynamic contrast because of its EDM format. Swift is not only copying traditional electronic timbres—like in the chorus—but also the entire structure of the song. As in EDM, “Trouble” is all about builds and drops. This makes it an awesome song. We tend to think of mainstream, poppy radio songs as barely worthy of our ears, let alone our close attention. However, it’s worth it to keep a close ear to the mainstream floor because of songs like these. The continual theft of ideas in the mainstream often makes for repetitive, cookie-cutter songs. However, Taylor Swift uses European influence to create a fresh viewpoint on American pop. u
A moment of clarity
REVIEW
Chvrches’ first album promises nothing and delivers the summer
by Z.L. Zhou
T
he summer is over, but after hearing Chvrches’s debut album, “The Bones of What You Believe,” I don’t even mind. In a stunning explosion of ‘80sinspired synthesizer arpeggios and blue-skies-clear vocals, Chvrches (pronounced “churches”) is maybe just following the next great trend, following the success of acts like La Roux and Empire of the Sun into the neoned past, but maybe not. Never before has modern electropop sounded so genuine and so alert: for all that Lady Gaga did to help revive the genre, she certainly didn’t address the hollowness so often found at the core of electropop music—but with Chvrches, there’s definitely something there. It’s not difficult to pinpoint what exactly it is that makes “The Bones of What You Believe” so good. A work in progress since 2011, the album has been a long time in coming—about half of the music can be found on older EPs and assorted media—and although you could argue that the album simply harkens back to the past, that’s not really true. In terms of pure ‘80s motifs, “The Bones 32
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of What You Believe” certainly does go there and back again, but it always brings with it the present. With delicately balanced autotuned harmonies and shouted background vocals that we’ve all come to both love and despise, the album’s atmosphere is, at times, unbearably airy, almost too ethereal to bear—but it always manages to pull back into that perfect balance of treble haze and beating bass that marks exactly what we look for in a summer soundtrack—a perfect storm of energy and movement. That balance is really what makes Chvrches’s album so unique. But certainly not only in the musical quality—at times surprisingly threatening, “The Bones of What You Believe” does an incredibly good job of creating danceable, propelling beats intertwined with lyrics about exceedingly narrow, specific moments, about realizing that the end of the relationship is on its way and there’s nothing you want to do to stop it, and maybe that’s OK. Maybe that’s actually really OK. There’s something refreshing about that—the album never gets maudlin, never gets self-involved, never even gets sentimental, at least not in the dramatic, overblown way. All it does is lay out the story of an infinitesimal moment exactly like it is, and expects you to keep on
The Bones of What You Believe by Chvrches GLASSNOTE $12 (iTunes)
listening. The end result is something like standing at the edge of a cliff with the wind blowing in your face: you leave the music exhilarated and maybe a bit concerned for your well-being, but you’ll want to go back again and again. Unrequited love, after all, is very passé, so very overdone. Let’s do falling out of love instead. Ultimately, it’s surprising that such a heavy topic could remind anyone of summer at all—but the self-assurance, that exploration of minute detail found in every song, always brought me back to July. So there’s that. I heavily recommend “The Bones of What You Believe,” released September 24, to anyone who’s interested in accessible, high-energy electropop with a heartfelt twist. It is everything I didn’t even know I was missing in the genre, and everything I’ll be looking for from now on. It may not be the summer anymore, but in “The Bones of What You Believe,” the eternal moment lives on. u
MOVIES & TV
THE END OF ‘BREAKING BAD’ TWO ESSAYS
Farewell to a deplorable everyman by Julian Randall
I
t is not often that I draw inspiration from a man standing in the middle of the road with a revolver, rarer still that he is not wearing any pants. In fact “rare” is far too broad a term for it, the words I’m looking for are “once in a lifetime.” Truly that is the only way to describe “Breaking Bad,” an experience that I am more and more convinced was a once-in-a-lifetime television event. I am as always very wary of being a spoiler—I hate spoilers slightly more than is completely rational—so I will try
Courtesy of Business Insider
my best to focus more on the generalities and not ruin the experience for anybody else. In the spring of 2008 I was still very much having to beg people to watch this show with me. I even tried and failed miserably at bribing a few people with food (as it turns out I’m a better nerd than I am a cook) so me and Walt started our relationship pretty exclusive. From the beginning of the show I was hooked by something I had never really stopped to appreciate—cinematography. I’m no expert on the subject, but I know beauty when I see it and “Breaking Bad” was the most beautifully shot
television I had ever seen. Everything from the time lapses to the ideas of just where a camera could and should be (the Roomba cam was a masterstroke) was remarkably clear-cut and showed its purpose without beating you over the head with it. To get back, briefly, to the time lapses: they quickly became an answer to the ever-present question, “What is ‘Breaking Bad’?” “Breaking Bad” was a time lapse that showcased something true, something beautiful, something ugly about ourselves the viewers. It showed how quickly any of us could fall while still looking almost the same on the outside. SWARTHMORE REVIEW NOVEMBER SWARTHMORE REVIEW APRIL 2013
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As Bryan Cranston’s seemingly boundless level of talent calmly exploded, sometimes literally, off of the screen, he became more and more the morality we either dismissed or tried to justify. In the beginning Walt was so easy to root for, he was a simple man with simple pleasures and a run-of-the-mill middle class life. He had a wife, he had a son whose name was also Walt, and a daughter on the way. He had two jobs that he hated, one of which was washing the cars of his high school students, whom you couldn’t help but hate. Dang it, Walt needed something in his life and all he got in return was lung cancer whose roots were never fully explained. And that was the catalyst, a rootless cancer that seemingly out of the clear blue sky changed things completely for Walt and, unbeknownst to them, everyone around him. That was the brilliance of “Breaking Bad,” that the catalyst needed no explanation: even in the quiet story-building episodes we simply knew these to be the rules of the world creator Vince Gilligan inducted us into. A viewing experience that even in its rawest, most unbearable moments grabbed our
attention and would not let it go for even a second. For that, for the literally hundreds of t-shirts, Halloween costumes, the necklace I am wearing right now, and for bringing back flat brim hats, the credit rests squarely with the big three: Aaron Paul, Vince Gilligan, and the irrepressible Bryan Cranston. Truth be told, when the show was pitched to me I was not at all intrigued. “The dad from Malcolm in the Middle is a chemistry teacher who gets lung cancer and starts a meth lab” was probably among the top five worst sales pitches I’ve heard outside of somebody attempting to sell me a bootleg DVD. But every episode was further proof that this was a once-in-a-lifetime event, that there could be an episode like the nomadic “Bit by a Dead Bee,” and a character left as open-ended as the iconic Gustavo Fring was a testament to a writing staff that was firing on all cylinders all the time. But most of all Walt’s descent into darkness made this a story of transformation unlike any in modern television. I could go on for pages more but instead I will conclude with a product of
the inspiration I have been gifted with by this.
To’hajiilee
In winter nights that have never touched you I dream you on storied sands You with crimson mentality And a trailer full of liquid dreams Shattering blue sky when it dared reflect you Black barrel ventricle heart You’re alive And awake Unlike I Who have sketched your wanted poster for the last time Goodbye Walter Flat brimmed hat disguising an apocalyptic dreamer Showed just how easy it is to fall off your own cliffs Swim in your own broken solution and call it a miracle Break a life and call it legacy Show me all your ugly I will still always knock for you u
‘Breaking Bad’ ‘s populism problem by Christian Bermel
I
hold the strengths of “Breaking Bad” to be self-evident. The sins, not so much. When should I have known? Should I have been worried when we first met Todd’s Uncle’s Aryan Neo-Nazi gang? Even though the ensuing prison-shanking montage was such an utter delight? How about when the gang appeared again? Should I have known earlier, when Walt opens the trunk of a ’90s Volvo to find the M60 machine gun he has just purchased? But I was so excited! Or when Gus emerged from an exploded nursing home room, face half-off like Two-Face, and still had time to fix his tie? It was pretty cool, though! So when, then? When should I have known the show was on the decline? Who’s to say? Probably the first, real troubling sign was the introduction of The Cousins, in “No Mas.” The Cousins, two men with shaved heads but full-blown goatees, and are apparently associated with the Mexican drug cartel, don’t speak much.
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They’re pretty much silent. And they light trucks on fire and walk away slowly, as they explode, too, like people in dumb movies. Scarface movies. And their manner of murder reminds this writer of popular fictional killer Jason, known best from the film, Freddy vs. Jason, or of Michael Myers, the character from Halloween, not the actor, though that actually might have been preferable. Maybe we’re supposed to think that their silence is scary, and indicative of their lack of emotion. Or probably we’re just supposed to think that it’s badass. Someone had the good sense to kill them off, though. The writers sensed the flaws, they’ve since admitted, and cut the storyline off early. And so, we got the absurdly tense scene at the end of “One Minute,” which I have no chance of describing effectively, so I will refrain from describing at all. And we got Mike’s “half-measures” speech. We got a tearful Jesse forced to shoot Gail. And we got a show, having redeemed its mistakes, now heading into a fourth season with all the momentum in the world, looking to solidify itself as perhaps the greatest drama
of the ’00s. It was not to be. I shouldn’t have to mention this to you, right, reader? We both know how it turned out. It’s pointless to talk about the absolute, tonal disaster that was the season finale, isn’t it? But I do want a paragraph to talk about the final season’s antagonist: not Hank, unfortunately, but Uncle Jack’s men, a Neo-Nazi gang that Walt calls on earlier in the season to carry out a round of prison shankings. I think most viewers were geared for Walt’s showdown with Hank in the final season. And that excitement made sense: Hank was a competent, interesting character tangled up in Walt’s dealings from the start. The show had been building towards a Hank-Walt confrontation since the first episode. Instead, Gilligan zagged, and blessed us with an uncharacteristically clichéd bunch. In a show with unhinged psychos like Tuco and ruthlessly calculating men like Gus Fring, nothing about a bunch of racists with tattoos scans as remotely interesting. And thus, I posit that Uncle Jack’s men stand as “Breaking Bad”’s biggest failure. Vince Gilligan, it seems, had nothing
left in his noggin when it came time to write the last season. Consider what he revealed on the “Breaking Bad” Insider Podcast, post-finale. High off the success of the finale, Gilligan dropped a couple of alternate endings that he and the writers had considered. The stunning lack of imagination in each ending is both shocking and telling. Gilligan’s first idea, he says, had Walt using the machine gun “in Rambo fashion. … [But] that felt wrong for Walt to go out brawn over brain, go out like Rambo. Walt on his best day was never Rambo.” OK, Vince, fine. I think we’re all glad he tabled this one. Though I refuse him credit for passing over what sounds like one of the more clichéd ways a violent TV show can end. That’s just common sense. Gilligan presents his second idea: “We thought, gee, is it too obvious he’d use [the machine gun] on a bunch of bad guys? … So we had versions that we talked about for instance where the police come and get him. He uses it on the police. But we didn’t like that. It just didn’t seem right.” This sounds like a more specific version of the first idea. Glad they didn’t use it. Cool. Good on you, Vince. Though I’m hard pressed to understand how this idea “just didn’t seem right,” when Walt rigging a machine gun, a gun which fires into a compound where a murderous Neo-Nazi gang resides, a gun which is able to annihilate every member of the gang as it sprays bullets like a lawn sprinkler, to a robotic arm in his car that he activates with a remote-control somehow passed inspection. I wouldn’t expect these ideas in a Michael Bay movie, let alone a well thought out, thrilling, nonboilerplate TV show. Did ol’ Vince really just run out of ideas? So maybe it is important to consider what Vince was thinking. There’s this “Mr. Chips to ‘Scarface’” quote, cited in far too many magazine articles, blogs, and message board posts, that is actually kind of indicative of Mr. Gilligan’s thinking. See, Vince, I think, knows what he was doing. He’s a smart guy, smarter than me or you or even the editor-in-chief of this magazine. Let’s examine that quote: “I originally pitched it to the studio with one line,” says Vince Gilligan, the creator of ‘Breaking Bad,’ “I told them: ‘This is a story about a man who transforms himself from Mr. Chips into Scarface.’” The line turned out to be a clincher, and it remains as good a description as any of a show that wins Courtesy of Ace Showbiz
Should I blame Gilligan? Should we? Probably not. In the constant artistic struggle between character and plot, in the end, the plot tipped the scales.
Vince Gilligan
serial Emmy awards and is frequently described by fans as being the best drama on TV. It may also be why you’re likely never to have seen it.”
This from an article in the Guardian, before the first half of the fifth season kicked off. A show about a chemistry teacher is a tough sell, no? Especially if you compare the teacher to Mr. Chips, the well-loved teacher in the novella you haven’t heard of called “Goodbye, Mr. Chips.” The network might come around though, if you promise a little Scarface. They might jump at the thought, even. Gilligan admits that comparison sealed the deal. And when AMC is promised Scarface, you’d better give AMC Scarface. But the best of “Breaking Bad” wasn’t about Mr. Chips or Scarface, it was about that amorphous middle ground between the two, the transformation of a prideful man as he gets in deep over his head. No
one likes the first season or the last best, unless he or she is insane. “Breaking Bad” was strongest in the middle, when it was mixing its Mr. Chips with its Scarface, its schoolteacher and its drug lord, its thoughtfulness with its action. Jesse shooting Gail works not just because of its shocking violence, but because of the moment’s context, with both characters victims of Walter White’s circumstance. What about that last line in that Guardian quote, though? “It may also be why you’re likely never to have seen it.” Lack of viewership is not what any auteur wants. That’s got to bother any serious artist with commercial aspirations. And thus, I think, the problem of “Breaking Bad”’s finale rests with Gilligan’s intentions. As Mr. Gilligan morphed Walter White from Mr. Chips into Scarface, he began to turn “Breaking Bad” from a Mr. Chips-like show, one with unblemished critical acclaim, into a Scarface-like show, one with massive ratings. And in this second transformation lies Gilligan’s misstep. Most viewers, this one included, fell in love with seasons two and three, as the show danced the Chips-Scarface tightrope perfectly. But just as season one, rough, interesting, and dry, had a little too much Chips, season five, polished, stylized, and violent, ended up on the other side of the Chips-Scarface line. Hence, disappointment. One wonders how long Gilligan thought he could have his cake and eat it too, or as they say in Lithuania, how long he could keep the wolf fed and the lamb safe. In straying too far into the Scarface camp, however, Gilligan certainly succeeded in one way: “Breaking Bad”’s last season ratings are already basic cable legend. Now let’s get this out of the way, Gilligan’s previous work indicates he’s no high-minded auteur. A long-time writer on “The X-Files,” Gilligan has a keen mind for plot and character, as any viewer of “Breaking Bad” can attest. But there seems to be no attempt towards highminded ideals. He’s not a David Chase or David Simon, chasing a grand idea. This isn’t a bad thing, at all. The second season of “Breaking Bad” ranks as one of the greatest television seasons of all time, up there with the Sopranos or The Wire. But across Gilligan’s oeuvre, there seems to be a greater pursuit of plot than in works mentioned in the same breath as “Breaking Bad”. Gilligan is a populist. And that’s cool. I sympathize. But maybe I should have known Gilligan’s season five misstep was inevitable. Perhaps I should have SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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known at the first title card: Created by Vince Gilligan. Should I blame Gilligan? Should we? Probably not. In the constant artistic struggle between character and plot, in the end, the plot tipped the scales. As the show escalated, this consequence was almost inescapable. It would’ve happened with most of us at the helm. We’re all
Vince Gilligan. I sympathize. I just wish Vince Gilligan wasn’t the one finishing off one of my favorite TV shows. In the lead-up to “Breaking Bad”’s final season this year, in a period with no teasers or trailers, a promo emerged: Over shots of New Mexico desert, Bryan Cranston read Percy Shelley’s “Ozymandias” in the ominous voice that’s won
Oral fixation ‘Blue is the Warmest Color’: not a good movie
by Anna Gonzales
A
t one moment in “Blue is the Warmest Color,” Adèle (Adèle Exarchopoulous) and Emma (Lèa Seydoux) are so wrapped up, so completely absorbed in kissing each other that they can barely pause to brush Adèle’s long, messy, extremely French hair out of their way. Earlier, before the full twenty minutes’ worth of sex scenes to come, Adèle leans back on her elbows beside a seated Emma while the two picnic in a park. The camera shows us Adèle’s gaze, focusing on a small strip of exposed skin under Emma’s arm, encapsulating in one shot lasting a few seconds all of Adèle’s emotional and physical longing for Emma and the confusion of her ongoing sexual awakening. I wish that moments like these—relatable, realistic, and subtly evocative and erotic —characterized the entire film. Unfortunately, watching “Blue is the Warmest Color” is a didactic, claustrophobic, and almost completely unpleasant experience, and its problems are not limited to its entirely artless sex scenes, as some critics have suggested. The film opens in Adèle’s high school classroom in a small town in France, where her French literature professor and her classmates discuss “The Life of Marianne,” focusing on a passage in which the main character exchanges a charged glance with a future love interest. A few scenes later, we see Adèle, who is at this time still having sex with boys, and Emma, a blue-haired, rather conventionally soft-butch lesbian art student, share exactly such a glance. I hoped
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that this would be the only instance of heavy-handed symbolism in the film, but I was sorely mistaken. Adèle and the viewer must suffer through several more French classes, as well as a visit to the art museum to admire statues and paintings of naked women, and many conversations about art, philosophy, or the supremacy of the female orgasm over that of the male. Each scene is followed almost immediately by a clumsily handled repetition: the events of Adèle’s life imitate those of the books she reads for class; she is repeatedly shown asleep, splayed in the position of the reclining nude; we see her and Emma furiously… something (more on this particularly hilarious failure later). Probably the most irritating stylistic tic of the film comes in the form of the director’s incessant, unending focus on close-ups of Adèle’s mouth. We watch this mouth smoke cigarettes, sip wine, gnaw at Adèle’s hair and her sleeves, slurp down spaghetti bolognese, chomp on chocolate bars, and masticate a gyro. When she’s not eating or chewing in some way, she’s asleep, her mouth always slightly open. All of this is exactly as disgusting as it sounds, and I think that after the third time watching Adèle scarf down another helping of spaghetti I had a pretty good understanding of her insatiable hunger for food and sex and companionship, which permeates the entire movie. These close-ups, which are mostly limited to Adèle’s mouth but sometimes cling uncomfortably to the faces of other characters, were absolutely suffocating in their forced intimacy, and failed to bring me any closer to an understanding of her character.
him three Emmys. The parallels between the downfall of Walter White and the downfall of Shelley’s titular king were clear, and the spot excited me for the final season, as any good commercial should. Unfortunately, parallels between “Ozymandias” and Vince Gilligan exist as well. I look on Gilligan’s final work, and despair. u
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This was one of my greatest frustrations with the movie—somewhat like an unreliable hookup, it was willing to get extremely physical, but would never commit. There were several moments in which the film could have gone much deeper to actually explore Adèle’s emerging, possibly queer sexuality and the loneliness and pain which stem from her discoveries. One day after school, Adèle’s friends publicly torment her after spotting Emma outside. With absolutely chilling accuracy, they portray the hysteria over the unique way in which lesbianism threatens teenage female friendship. Anyone who has ever experienced this type of disgusted, fearful reaction at the hands of former friends will surely be moved by this scene, but its true power is lost in Kechiche’s insistence on a shakycam documentation of the flying hair, hands, and of course, lips and teeth and tongues, of the bullies. Similarly, the scenes in which Adèle and Emma meet each others’ parents over dinner hold out the promise of enormous emotional power. By this point, the two are (supposedly) deeply in love, and we watch the emotions pass over Emma’s face: first of pure joy, as Adèle’s parents mention how much their daughter has talked about her, then, suddenly, the slightest flicker of confusion as Emma realizes that her lover’s parents believe that she is tutoring Adèle in philosophy. Here, Emma effects an almost terrifyingly smooth transition into this heterosexual framework, and I expected this moment and its preceding betrayal to create conflict and pain later on. But nothing more is said on the matter—the director is more interested in the couple having sex in Adèle’s bedroom
Adèle Exarchopoulous and Lèa Seydoux in Abdellatif Kechiche’s film, “Blue is the Warmest Color,” which won the Palme d’Or at Cannes.
rather than the fact that her parents think Emma is sleeping on the cot. These failures stem at least in part from Kechiche’s insistence on a post-gay frame for the film. This is disappointing for several reasons, not only because an acclaimed and sensitive portrayal of a queer relationship would be meaningful and instructive for many people. The director absolutely refuses to acknowledge that, except on an aesthetic level, a romantic relationship between two women might be different than one between a man and a woman (interviews with the director are characteristically peppered with claims about the universality of love). This refusal actually robs the movie of much of its potential emotional impact and thus of its power as a work of art. Because Kechiche leaves those decidedly queer, complicated moments hanging, he stunts the development of the characters, and thus cannot provide any sense of what’s at stake in either the success or failure of Adèle and Emma’s relationship. Personally, I’m uncontrollably sentimental when it comes to fictional couples, especially when those couples are lesbian, and will always root for the success of even the worst relationships (I cried my eyes out at the end of “Twilight: Eclipse, Part II”). But Adèle and Emma’s Courtesy of PolicyMic.com
breakup scene, which involved much screaming of the word “whore,” as well as a lot of (finally) non-sexual smacking and tears, felt contrived and a bit pointless. After the initial, rather unconvincing passion of their beginning (and this may be a failure of acting or writing as well, for Exarchopolous gives us barely anything to work with in the way of either words or facial expression, besides that slightly-open mouth), the two do not fall spectacularly and explosively out of love, as the violent breakup scene, and its ensuing months of misery, suggests. Instead, they simply settle into domesticity, become a bit bored and lonely, and drift apart, as people who aren’t the great loves of each other’s lives tend to do. Who cares? Why should we care? I couldn’t answer these questions at the end of the film. Blue would be boring with a straight couple or with lesbians, and does not even offer aesthetic pleasure—unless you enjoy watching people eat—as a reward for sitting through three hours of a stiff, uninventive plot. As for the “sex,” I don’t think it’s even worth the ink and paper to condemn Blue or its director, because the acts displayed are so abjectly ridiculous. Suffice it to say that I laughed my way through all 20 minutes. Additionally, I found it
rather telling that the critics falling over themselves to endorse the sex scenes were all male, while those who disliked the sex were—surprise—women and actual, real-life lesbians. Try as I might, I didn’t pick up on “the profound marking of the characters’ souls by their sexual relationship” that Richard Brody from the New Yorker saw in the film, nor did I discover “the force and the firepower of the lovers’ intent: a fusillade of cries and clutches, grabs and slaps—a pitch of pleasure so entwined with desperation that we find ourselves not in the realm of the pornographic but on the brink of romantic agony,” as did the New Yorker’s film critic Anthony Lane. Maybe it just went over my head, but, sitting in a theater in Philadelphia surrounded by men over the age of 40 who had come to the movie alone, as I watched the two lead actresses reverse-cowgirl-scissoring, their flesh floodlit in a style extremely reminiscent of certain unmentionable websites, I found myself agreeing with Julie Maroh, the author of the original graphic novel which inspired the movie: she described the sex scenes as “a brutal and surgical display, exuberant and cold, of so-called lesbian sex, which turned into porn, and made me feel very ill at ease.” u SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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EDITORS’ PICKS Brief recommendations of books, music, movies, and more from our editors
Short stories: ‘The Magical Barrel’ by Bernard Malamud Bernard Malamud was a child of the Depression, but his fiction emerged in the 1950s, a time when, as Robert Solotaroff wrote, “our gross national product doubled, and the consequent complaints that our spiritual lives were being vitiated by our attachment to material goods and physical comforts more than doubled.” Such complaints have rebounded through American fiction ever since, but they never appear in Malamud’s work. It might be said that he was among the last gifted American authors able to ignore the problems of prosperity. The problems of Malamud’s fiction are problems of survival; his characters’ deepest fear is of fading away. The stakes are very, very high. The narration is marked by its economy, its intimacy with its subjects, whose inner lives seem to subsume the murky world that contains them. In “The Magic Barrel,” a collection of stories which won the 1959 National Book Award, is the rarest of birds. Harold Bloom said: “Malamud is perhaps the purest storyteller since Leskov.” —Koby Levin, Publisher and Editor at Large
TV show: ‘Masters of Sex’ If you’re like me and watch a lot of sex on television but come away constantly unsatisfied, Showtime’s new series, “Masters of Sex,” may be exactly what you’ve been looking for. The show follows the real-life story of William Masters and Virginia Johnson, two scientists who pioneered the field of sex research and completely shifted American attitudes about sex and pleasure. Its shameless, scientifically motivated (but also definitely hot) portrayals and discussions of sex have been missing from television since the final season of “Sex and the City” wrapped. Perhaps the show’s most compelling feature comes in the form of its treatment of female characters. While “Masters of Sex” is ostensibly focused on Dr. Masters himself, and his research, the show feels as though it might be more appropriately titled “Mistresses of Sex”: it engages with its female characters—with their interiority, complexity, subjectivity,
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struggles, and desires—in a way which feels fresh and genuinely interested, rather than voyeuristic or placating. Currently, the show is still in its first season and is concerned with unlocking the secrets of human satisfaction, contrasting the way in which male and female characters answer this question with what science says. Masters of Sex will make you think, make you laugh, and turn you on—I’m not sure what more you could want in a TV show. —Anna Gonzales, Editor in Chief
Album: ‘Escalator Music’ by swelo I listen to a lot of music and find only some of it interesting. There’s a certain lack of creativity that’s nice—I love constantly having music playing, but that continuous involvement means that, if I’m listening to cool music all the time, I end up not doing work and just listening to music. Escalator Music is not interesting, but it is perfect for casual consumption. The artist, who is apparently a high school math teacher in his spare time, sings almost every part and plays every instrument in the whole album, an impressive endeavor slightly marred by his rather obvious inspiration/ stealing from Daft Punk and the better hip hop of the past decade. Still, listening to his played-for-laughs rapping and hearing his exaggerated breaths in between the lines, it’s cute. This is a man who knows his limits and is trying to compensate, or obviously not (one of the better tracks is titled “IDGAF”). What it lacks is innovation, but there’s a lot of charm involved. It’s probably perfect for when you need to hang up laundry but would rather be dancing. Released this past August, “Escalator Music” is an album by swelo and is available for free on the internets. —Z.L. Zhou, Poetry Editor
Live music: West Philadelphia Orchestra’s Balkan Dance Party West Philadelphia Orchestra shows bring a medley of brassy Eastern European dance partying into any room—be it the clubby atmosphere of Underground Arts, or an Old City theater filled with elderly
opera-goers. Their sets are a skillful combination of stomp-inducing funk, old-timey drunken waltzes, and raw soul as raucous and chaotic as the best Balkan weddings (minus the Kalashnikovs). Their website describes their sound as everything from gypsy punk to klezmer to big-band jazz, with a heavy dose of all-of-the-above. They play at the Balkan Dance Party at Underground Arts once a month (21+, or, befriend one of the cuties in the band), as well as playing shows in New York and Philly with other fixtures of the Balkanmusic-in-diaspora scene (see: Slavic Soul Party!, Raya Brass Band, Veveritse Brass Band). —Sara Blazevic, Poetry Editor
Movie: ‘Francis Ha’ “Frances Ha” is about 27-year-old girlchild Frances Halladay (Greta Gerwig) who has trouble taking herself seriously. Frances is a dancer but if you aren’t looking for another “Fame”, be comforted by the fact that the movie downplays this aspect of her life (I was). Frances is the embodiment of the best Swarthmore tropes and her experiences are anything but esoteric. Painfully and sometimes endearingly awkward, she stumbles through post college life: looking for mentors, working odd jobs, and tackling the hard task of leaving behind structured and stable student life for relatively unpredictable adult life. Frances is desperately grasping for the next rung on the latter up to a “whole”, adult self, whatever that is. Although as a character Frances adds light and laughter to the movie, if you watch the film, be ready for some serious introspection. —Nyantee Asherman, Illustrations Editor
Movie: ‘12 Years a Slave’ A couple weeks ago I found I very much liked long and complicated movie shots, such as a famous three-minute shot of a couple entering a nightclub in “Goodfellas.” The concept, the planning, the hundreds of extras, the timing, the many failed attempts at execution I liked to imagine— all this gives the final shot a sense of fine accomplishment. There is one such shot
in “12 Years a Slave,” but when I saw it, it didn’t register as anything of the sort. I simply felt revolted. It’s absolutely revolting: several minutes of a naked slave being mercilessly whipped, as the camera moves between the men doing the beating, coming closer and moving further away, and then turning 180 degrees and showing, for a painful length of time, the slave’s rippedup back as the whip hits again and again.
The shot, like most all of “12 Years a Slave,” is so good in large part precisely because it doesn’t register as an accomplishment. Its accomplishment is submerging the viewer in a part of American history that’s easy to call shameful but hard to really imagine. For the movie to draw attention to itself as a work of art would feel like a way of making the history more palatable, less distressing, the product of a formal system
rather than a brutal lived experience. This movie doesn’t tell a story of progress or of resilience of spirit. It shows the terrible things America once did, and in so doing makes them seem a lot less distant. It’s a simple project, but one that requires tremendous skill. Everyone should see this movie. —Izzy Kornblatt, Editor in Chief
~ Ninita, continued from page 24 take the phone for in busy moments, only me he shifted out of his path with a hand firm on the small of my waist. His eyes followed me across the restaurant as I swooshed tablecloths, stacked plates, slid from customer to customer.
I
n “100 Years of Solitude,” the characters’ motion is cyclical as opposed to forward or backward and leaves them prone to terrible bouts of nostalgia. At some point, each person comes to realize that his or her life has long since been decided. My reading experience iterated a proof of García Márquez’s theorem that everything is already written. This was how my provincial thoughts had somehow attained the universality allowing me to infer the significance of words I could not literally understand. I felt what I felt in some preordained pattern. I knew the people around me only as archetypes, because that was all we were.
V
ictor had been eyeing me with an aggression I was unused to. When the night began to wind down, I ambled over to the cheesesteak grill, where he was scrolling through his phone. Now that I was so close, he wouldn’t look up. I knocked a knuckle on the glass and he started. Our eyes met unsmiling. “How does it feel to have an American girlfriend?” Without preamble. “I’m probably the wrong person to ask,” I told him, still hoping to turn it into a joke. “I’ve never had one myself.” “I’d like to know.” He stared at me baldly. All pretense was dropped. I felt uneasy under his gaze. “Well, how does it feel to have a Mexican wife?” He twisted his lips. “Malo.” Bad? “Peor que nada.” The worst ever. There were customers at the door. I circled through the restaurant to seat them, from door to table to the waitress writeup
in the side hallway and back around past the counter to where Victor waited. He stood blank, insistent in his countenance. He was planted and grown, and I was just an itinerant child.
Sonnet II by Annie Tvetenstrand
Though I was glad to catch his eye The feeling was short-lived. We talked But rarely afterwards. I’d try And falter, lose my nerve. I balked At every twist and turn with him Til one day, almost on a whim With all my flair and flawless style I told a joke and saw him smile. So if he didn’t know before That I’m a girl of words and wit He’s surely now aware of it. For when my silver tongue explored His own, I almost wished to say That it can please in different ways.
“What do you think?” he wanted to know. “I think you’re married.” “If I wasn’t—” “You are, though.” I looked at him. His face was tortured, but not by me, la niñita. He was looking for the American dream. “Where are you going to college?” “The other side of Philadelphia. Far.”
“What, an hour in the car? That’s not far. I wait for you. Four years is not so long.” “Victor, qué locura tienes?” The words to the familiar question were lying in wait as if put together for this moment. “La locura de ti.” The madness of you. Nobody had ever said something comparable to me in English, and I hoped they never would. I clarified, as nicely as I could, that I thought he was being ridiculous, and that never in any circumstance could I be convinced to live in Yardley again once I had moved out. The thought stuck with me, though. Victor saw me as a woman when I still felt myself to be a girl. It was getting on time to grow up; the gravity of what was written was exercising its pull. I could understand my fascination with Spanish as an outgrowth of the same nostalgia which plagued the characters in “Cien Años de Soledad.” The humility required of me to truly listen and learn was something I had not felt since childhood, and something I feared losing once I became an adult. I tried to infer the passage of my own life the way I inferred passages of García Márquez. I could marry Victor and use the money my family had saved for college to rent us an apartment on Main Street. He could hang his mutinous hats on a hook in the hallway and have his kids to visit on the weekends. I could tutor him in the G.E.D. and listen to him speak Spanish and show our eventual children how to make the best of Yardley, PA. I was supposed to recognize the futility of trying to escape from what was constant and settle into a rhythm which spun me back to the start. But I didn’t—instead I’m here—which is sort of like an extended girlhood, since all my needs are met, but also the fastest I’ve ever been pulled into growing up—and I have yet to infer que quiere decir. u SWARTHMORE REVIEW
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