"Don't say we didn't warn you!"

If you are interested in stories with happy endings, you would be better off reading some other book. In this book, not only is there no happy ending, there is no happy beginning and very few happy things in the middle. This is because not very many happy things happened in the lives of the three Baudelaire youngsters. Violet, Klaus, and Sunny Baudelaire were intelligent children, and they were charming, and resourceful, and had pleasant facial features, but they were extremely unlucky, and most everything that happened to them was rife with misfortune, misery, and despair. I'm sorry to tell you this, but that is how the story goes.

      The Bad Beginning
      A Series of Unfortunate Events, Book the First
      --Lemony Snicket

So begins the first volume of the most successful (to my knowledge) children's book series since Harry Potter.

This Christmas ("Coming Too Soon!"), Jim Carrey ("Bad actor. Worse villain.") will star as the evil Count Olaf, Jude Law as the series narrator, and Meryl Streep as Aunt Josephine when the movie version is released.

The movie is apparently based on the first three books in the series: The Bad Beginning, The Reptile Room, and The Wide Window. I tracked down at least one trailer and it looked impressive: faithfully preserving the bleak atmosphere and the morbid, tongue-in-cheek humor of the series.

I personally cannot stand Jim Carrey in almost any incarnation, but I suspect he was a shoe-in for the role of Count Olaf. I hope Daniel Handler (writing as Lemony Snicket) approves, because as of Christmas, Jim Carrey's portrayal of Count Olaf will become indelibly preserved as the character we all imagine.

It is my sad duty to attend and report on the movie, but there is nothing preventing you from watching something more cheerful this holiday season, if that’s sort of thing that entertains you.

Nineteen Sentences, Cross-Referenced

Last week I wrote of a piece of paper with nineteen disconnected, interesting sounding sentences upon it. If you read closely, you may have recognized the fourth sentence which appeared in my First Line Quiz several weeks ago. It is the opening sentence to “Portnoy’s Complaint,” first published in 1969 by Philip Roth. If you’re a Roth fan, you may have noticed that several of the other sentences also sound like his writing, at least the Zuckerman reference may have triggered something for you.

The sentences are, in fact, the first lines of each of Roth’s first nineteen published books taken in order and this time, cross-referenced below:

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. [1]   Dear Gabe, The drugs help me bend my fingers around a pen. [2]   Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized—that was the dream of his life. [3]   She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. [4]   Sir, I want to congratulate you for coming out on April 3 for the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn. [5]   It began oddly. [6]   Call me Smitty. [7]   Far from being the classic period of explosion and tempestuous growth, my adolescence was more or less a period of suspended animation. [8]   Temptation comes to me first in the conspicuous personage of Herbie Bratasky, social director, bandleader, crooner, comic, and m.c. of my family’s mountainside resort hotel. [9]   First, foremost, the puppyish, protected upbringing above his father’s shoe store in Camden. [10]   It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago—I was twenty-three, writing and publishing my first short stories, and like many a Bildungsroman hero before me, already contemplating my own massive Bildungsroman—when I arrived at his hideaway to meet the great man. [11]   “What the hell are you doing on a bus, with your dough?” [12]   When he is sick, every man wants his mother; if she’s not around, other women must do. [13]   “Your novel,” he says, “is absolutely one of the five or six books of my life.” [14]   Ever since the family doctor, during a routine checkup, discovered an abnormality on his EKG and he went in overnight for the coronary catheterization that revealed the dimensions of the disease, Henry’s condition had been successfully treated with drugs, enabling him to work and carry on his life at home exactly as before. [15]   Dear Zuckerman, In the past, as you know, the facts have always been notebook jottings, my way of springing into fiction. [16]   “I’ll write them down. You begin.” [17]   My father had lost most of the sight in his right eye by the time he’d reached eighty-six, but otherwise he seemed in phenomenal health for a man his age when he came down with what the Florida doctor diagnosed, incorrectly, as Bell’s palsy, a viral infection that causes paralysis, usually temporary, to one side of the face. [18]   For legal reasons, I have had to alter a number of facts in this book. [19]

      1. Goodbye, Columbus
      2. Letting Go
      3. When She Was Good
      4. Portnoy’s Complaint
      5. Our Gang

      6. The Breast
      7. The Great American Novel
      8. My Life as a Man
      9. Reading Myself and Others
      10. The Professor of Desire

      11. The Ghost Writer
      12. Zuckerman Unbound
      13. The Anatomy Lesson
      14. The Prague Orgy
      15. The Counterlife

      16. The Facts
      17. Deception
      18. Patrimony
      19. Operation Shylock

It took several library visits and repeated web searches for me to create that cross-indexed list of opening lines to Philip Roth's first nineteen books. But the idea of assembling those sentences into a single, unattributed paragraph was not mine. That's a story in itself and on Friday I'll post Philip Roth's unbelievable explanation.

A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound

Yesterday I expressed hyperbolic admiration for the beginning of The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls, John Irving's story-within-a-story from A Widow for One Year.

Today, for the first time, you can purchase the hardcover version of that children's story, retitled, "A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound," for $15.95 (three cents a word) at your local bookstore.

It is a word-for-word reproduction (yes, I checked) of the story The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls. There is only the title change and the addition of the single sentence, "It was a sound like someone trying not to make a sound."

Confused? Whether you read A Widow for One Year or not, you should be. But let me explain. Irving included three of Ted Cole's children's stories in his novel:

The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls:   This is the book now available in print. It's about a little boy who hears a frightening sound in the middle of the night. It begins with the wonderful sentence I applauded yesterday:

Tom woke up, but Tim did not.

A Door in the Floor:   This is the dark tale of a "little boy who didn't know if he wanted to be born," because of his awareness of the evil that awaits him. Even Irving terms it, "creepy," and "the darkest of Ted Cole's stories for children." Just to make it more confusing, it is also the title of the movie version of A Widow for One Year.

A Sound Like Someone Trying Not to Make a Sound:   This is the third Ted Cole story to appear in A Widow for One Year. It is about a moleman who captures little girls. It is wholly unpleasant—which is why I was shocked when I originally thought that this was the story now published by Doubleday. To magnify its terror in the novel, Irving carefully waits to recount it until a moment when Ruthie, now an adult, faces a scene of true horror.

In the introduction to his just-published story, Irving says, "I am not a children's book author." (I predict that many bristle at that careful distinction.) He claims to have:

"...created a character named Ted Cole, a most unsympathetic writer of stories for children. Years of reading children's books to my own three sons has given me a low opinion of the kind of children's literature that is intent on frightening the very young; there is a long, stubborn tradition of it. In creating Ted Cole (one of the more willful villains in my novels), I was conscious of taking such an author to task."

If that's the case, then I contend he fails. As much as I loved the opening sentence, the story itself is flawed and the ending ambiguous rather than comforting. I specifically doubt that the explanation for the sound of a monster being only a mouse crawling between the walls is reassuring to most children. It still leaves the very real concerns of the mouse getting into the room with them, scurrying beneath their beds, and crawling between the sheets rather than the walls.

I read the story to the boys yesterday. "Tom woke up, but Tim did not," I began. But they didn't know about the ghosts of Thomas and Timothy. They didn't gasp in appreciation. The consonance I admired only confused them. "Which is Tom?" they asked. "Which one is Tim?" "Why is he in a crib?" "Oh, I think I know what woke them up." At one point Justin said, "This is starting to get scary," but at the conclusion—the disappointingly phrased, "And that is the end of the story."—he pronounced it only "so-so" (in Spanish).

I am scheduled to be a guest reader in the boys' classroom next month. I'm considering soliciting additional opinions.

I should comment on the illustrations by Tatjana Hauptmann, though I am hardly a qualified art critic. I enjoyed her muted, moonlit blues and grays, and the teddy bear that accompanies Tom on his search of the house, as well as the long-shadowed mouse and the expressions on Tom's face. She does a great job creating a creepy atmosphere with shadows and by animating ordinary objects like dresses and pillows rather than depicting, "an armless, legless monster dragging its thick, wet fur." The boys commented on the illustrations, but failed to mention, I noticed, that neither parent appears in the book and that at one point Tom apparently ventures outside the house alone (I certainly expected the latter to draw comment from Kevin).

Illustrators have their own set of inside jokes. In Hauptmann's case, I spotted in the background of one illustration, a small photograph of a man in a wrestling outfit: undoubtedly intended to be John Irving.

Sentences That Go Bump in the Night

Last month I mentioned reading the John Irving novel, A Widow for One Year, which features a somewhat villainous author of children's books. Of Ted Cole's first terrifying yet successful book for children, Cole's assistant, Eddie O'Hare, believes "there was no better beginning to any story than the first sentence of The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls."

At the time I read that, I presumed Irving had painted himself into the proverbial corner. Besides Eddie's admiration, we are told that Ted Cole's daughter, Ruth, who grows up to become a better novelist than her father, "would always envy that sentence." The Mouse Crawling Between the Walls, we learn, had "frightened about nine or ten million children, in more than thirty languages, around the world."

How could Irving possibly craft the first sentence to that fictional children's book after so much buildup? Well, not only does he reveal the sentence by page thirteen, he includes the entire text of Ted Cole's story by page twenty. It is classic John Irving at the top of his game.

So how does he accomplish it? Through a series of brilliant brush strokes that foreshadow the story and cleverly manipulate the reader. A Widow for One Year begins with four-year-old Ruth waking to an unfamiliar sound in the night. As Ruth investigates, we learn that her parents once had teenage boys, Thomas and Timothy, who are dead. Ruth never knew her brothers, but she knows a great deal about them, having heard numerous stories about the dozens of photographs of them that hang throughout the Cole's household. Ruth believes she sees the ghost of one of her dead brothers and she screams.

That scene ends with typical Irving dark humor, but he moves quickly to another scene, another time when four-year-old Ruth wakes up frightened by "a sound like someone trying not to make a sound." And that's a sound that is terrifying even for an adult. A sound that prompts her father to tell her a story, "One night, Ruthie, when Thomas was your age—Timothy was still in diapers—Thomas heard a sound."

"Did they both wake up?" Ruth asks, prompting Ted Cole to begin the recitation of his famous novel:

Tom woke up, but Tim did not.

Ruth shivers in her father's arms. I shivered with Irving's book in my hands.

Seven words. Twenty-one letters. Nicknames of poetic consonance, subtly revealed. A sentence of haiku-like precision, the conjunction perfectly balancing three syllables of nine letters on either side. I believe I may have gasped audibly when I read it.

Of course, I have read other Irving novels. I know his penchant for black comedy and tragic loss and imperiling children. And now I read him for the first time as a father. And the thought of what he might do with a beginning like that made me shudder.

Tom woke up, but Tim did not.

I had been expertly manipulated. The ghosts of the dead brothers, Thomas and Timothy, were already haunting the novel. The terror of Ted Cole's first children's book had been well established. Because of the clever setup, one infers so much more from that single foreboding sentence than seven monosyllabic words alone can convey.

It is a brilliant beginning—and after weeks of discussing favorite first lines—one that took my breath away.

Nineteen Sentences

Imagine being a twenty-three year old aspiring author, returning weekly to the same diner, and one day discovering a single typewritten sheet of paper, revealing "in the form of a long single-spaced unindented paragraph... nineteen sentences that taken together make no sense at all." An unattributed exercise by one or more authors (who knows?) that reads as follows:

The first time I saw Brenda she asked me to hold her glasses. Dear Gabe, The drugs help me bend my fingers around a pen. Not to be rich, not to be famous, not to be mighty, not even to be happy, but to be civilized—that was the dream of his life. She was so deeply imbedded in my consciousness that for the first year of school I seem to have believed that each of my teachers was my mother in disguise. Sir, I want to congratulate you for coming out on April 3 for the sanctity of human life, including the life of the yet unborn. It began oddly. Call me Smitty. Far from being the classic period of explosion and tempestuous growth, my adolescence was more or less a period of suspended animation. Temptation comes to me first in the conspicuous personage of Herbie Bratasky, social director, bandleader, crooner, comic, and m.c. of my family’s mountainside resort hotel. First, foremost, the puppyish, protected upbringing above his father’s shoe store in Camden. It was the last daylight hour of a December afternoon more than twenty years ago—I was twenty-three, writing and publishing my first short stories, and like many a Bildungsroman hero before me, already contemplating my own massive Bildungsroman—when I arrived at his hideaway to meet the great man. “What the hell are you doing on a bus, with your dough?” When he is sick, every man wants his mother; if she’s not around, other women must do. “Your novel,” he says, “is absolutely one of the five or six books of my life.” Ever since the family doctor, during a routine checkup, discovered an abnormality on his EKG and he went in overnight for the coronary catheterization that revealed the dimensions of the disease, Henry’s condition had been successfully treated with drugs, enabling him to work and carry on his life at home exactly as before. Dear Zuckerman, In the past, as you know, the facts have always been notebook jottings, my way of springing into fiction. “I’ll write them down. You begin.” My father had lost most of the sight in his right eye by the time he’d reached eighty-six, but otherwise he seemed in phenomenal health for a man his age when he came down with what the Florida doctor diagnosed, incorrectly, as Bell’s palsy, a viral infection that causes paralysis, usually temporary, to one side of the face. For legal reasons, I have had to alter a number of facts in this book.

I recently heard the incredible story of that sheet of paper and I will share it next week, after giving those sentences a chance to marinate with you over the weekend.

You Read It Here First

Every so often you read a book that entertains you and holds a quiet place of private pleasure on your bookshelf and in your memory. You may speak of it to others, but more often than not it remains obscure and personal, just another jigsaw piece in the never-finished puzzle that represents your own eclectic taste in literature.

That is, until someone options it and transforms it into a blockbuster movie and suddenly everybody is raving about what was once your unheralded and private treasure.

That happened for me when W. P. Kinsella's little gem of a baseball novel, Shoeless Joe, was transformed into the wildly successful Field of Dreams starring Kevin Costner, and when the oddly titled Philip K. Dick pulp fiction novel, Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep? became the cult classic Blade Runner with Harrison Ford.

There was a time when I would purchase The Princess Bride and give it as a gift--often with the suggestion, "Read this aloud at night to your pregnant wife. She'll love it."--confident that I was introducing the reader to something new and wonderful. But that was before the 1987 movie assured that a much wider audience knew of the story and now had their images of Buttercup and Westley, Fezzik and Vizzini, permanently linked to the performances of Robin Wright Penn and Cary Elwes, Andre the Giant and Wallace Shawn.

It continues to happen, this adaptation of lesser-known books from one's library to the screen, but not always with the same degree of success. Smilla's Sense of Snow, for example, and Snow Falling on Cedars were hardly theatrical blockbusters.

Recently, I have been surprised at several of my reading choices that were made into movies. One expects books like The Notebook and Cold Mountain, and one day, Prey, to make it to the screen. Even adaptations of more literary endeavors such as The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay come as no surprise--it won the Pulitzer Prize after all, so it easy to imagine someone having the vision to snap it up.

But I confess genuine surprise that the following books, each on my nightstand during the past two years, made it to the screen:

A Widow for One Year, by John Irving.   OK, Irving knows his way around Hollywood and several of his novels have made it to the screen. And admittedly, by the time I got around to reading this novel in paperback, it was evident from the packaging that it had already been made into a movie called The Door in the Floor starring Jeff Bridges and Kim Basinger. It's when you read it that you find yourself pondering how well it translates to the screen--so much of it is about writers and writing, and after the first third it jumps ahead over thirty years. I tried unsuccessfully chasing it down during its limited theatrical release, even contemplating driving seventy miles out of my way while on vacation, but surrendered and have decided to settle upon watching it on DVD.

The Orchid Thief, by Susan Orlean.   It's a non-fiction account about a man who is arrested for breaking into a preserve in the Florida swamps and stealing rare orchids, for goodness sake. Only the rare talent of Susan Orlean could spot it as a magazine piece, develop it into a book, and discover a unique and fascinating goldmine in the theme of obsession. Who would ever consider optioning such a book as a potential movie? Whoever it was landed the unconventional Charlie Kaufman as screenwriter and made the spot-on casting choices of Nicholas Cage, Chris Cooper, and Meryll Streep. But when the bizarre self-absorbed Adaptation begins truly spinning out of control into a tale of sex and drugs one is left amazed that Susan Orlean admitted any attachment to the resultant mess at all, let alone terming it "brilliant."

House of Sand and Fog, by Andres Dubus III.   I selected the book on a whim, enjoyed the writing, found the plot intense, and appreciated the local settings. It didn't remain in first run theaters for long, but I managed to slip off one night and catch it with Val who cried (I had tissues), but offered several interesting insights as I had expected.

The Human Stain, by Philip Roth.   Who makes Philip Roth's books into movies any more? Who even saw this one? Who had the audacity to cast Anthony Hopkins as Coleman Silk? Even the additional star power of Nicole Kidman couldn't rescue this movie. I read the book--indeed, I slogged my way through it--my first Roth novel in over a decade, but I never expected it to be filmed. Missed it in the theater, but intending to catch it on DVD.

Ella Enchanted, by Gail Carson Levine.   It's a children's novel, and a good one, but heck there are hundreds to choose from and most children's movies come from Disney and Pixar properties or well-tested formulas like Spy Kids. Occasionally someone will get Holes or Tuck Everlasting made into a movie, but few children's authors are going to get rich off the movie rights to their novels. Ella Enchanted benefited from the recent star power of The Princess Diaries' Anne Hathaway (who is about to shatter her good girl image with the upcoming Havoc), but it only fared so-so in its initial release. We didn't catch it until the DVD came out, but the boys were curious--having recalled when I was reading it--and it turned out the entire family enjoyed watching it.   (Justin did ask me at bedtime, though, why they thought it was necessary to include so much potty humor, which he then faithfully enumerated for me.)

I continue reading; others continue adapting; and so, should I learn that The Life of Pi or Crooked Little Heart, or perhaps You Will Know Our Velocity or Drop City, maybe even The Tipping Point or Fast Food Nation is scheduled to appear on-screen, I'll be sure to let you know.

A Little Monkey Business

I've occasionally spoken with parents, teachers, and librarians who are disenchanted with Barbara Park's Junie B. Jones series. After all, Junie B. struggles with irregular verbs and she is often unkind and insulting. But her books remain popular and many parents overlook their initial reservations, happy just to have their child reading something.

I'm always interested in what makes any given series successful. We've plowed through many of the Magic Tree House and the A to Z Mystery series in our house. It doesn't take more than a few books to see the formula (not that that guarantees success: there are countless imitators of the popular series who cannot find their way into print).

Raising boys, I never expected the Junie B. Jones series to become popular at our house. Boys, so we are told, quickly develop a gender bias and soon begin refusing to read stories featuring girl protagonists. (This is especially frustrating for the authors of "middle readers" who hear, "Great concept. Can you rework it and change the main character from a girl to a boy?")

So when the boys brought home their first book from the school library this year it surprised me how excited Kevin was to have selected Junie B. Jones and a Little Monkey Business. He skipped right over the Dr. Seuss and Frog and Toad and Little Bear "early readers" and insisted that Junie B. was the book he wanted to read aloud to me (he reads a few pages and then I take over).

Kevin is unlikely to admit it, but I think he enjoys Junie B.'s mischievous behavior and willingness to talk back to her parents and teachers. He grins with delight at her verbal assaults and he asks me to reread the funnier passages:

I made a big fist at him. "HOW WOULD YOU LIKE THIS UP YOUR NOSE, YOU BIG DUMB JIM?" I hollered.

Then Principal frowned at me. And so I smiled.

"I hate that guy," I said nicely.

No problem with the irregular verbs, either: the boys have almost made a competition out of being first to detect and shout out corrections to Junie B.'s faulty grammar. And they react with shock at the inappropriate behavior, even the more subtle and sneaky variety--and it still makes me feel good to see how finely tuned their moral compasses remain.

And the Junie B. series is funny, make no mistake about it. As bored as I am with the A to Z Mysteries and the Magic Tree House series, I have to confess that even I found myself laughing while taking my turn reading Junie B. aloud the other night.

Because her Grandma refers to her new baby brother as the "cutest little monkey" she ever saw, Junie B. concludes he is an actual monkey which causes all sorts of conflict at school when she insists upon it. Eventually the Principal explains that adults sometimes use expressions like lucky duck and busy bee that can be confusing to children. Junie B. and her classmates quickly get the concept:

"Hey! I just thought of another one!" I said very excited. "A dumb bunny isn't a real alive bunny, either! It's just a plain old dumb guy!"

Then my friend Lucille raised her hand.

"I've got one, too," she said. "Sometimes my nanna calls my daddy a couch potato. Only he's not a real potato. He's just a lazy bum."

"Yeah, and I'm not a big pig," said my new boyfriend Ricardo. "But my mom says I eat like one."

[The lesson quickly ends...]   Then I gave Lucille back her red chair. She was very nice to me.

"I'm sorry that your brother isn't a real monkey, Junie B.," she said.

"Thank you, Lucille," I said. "I'm sorry that your daddy isn't a real potato, too."

After this great example of fine literature, it came as no surprise to me when I saw the books the boys brought home from the library yesterday: Justin had Junie B. Jones Has a Monster Under Her Bed and Kevin had Junie B. Jones and her Big Fat Mouth.

One Minute Book Reviews

I have been remiss in commenting upon the books I've read the past few months. To wit:

The Fortress of Solitude, by Jonathan Lethem.   Thoroughly enjoyed this. Swore as I read it that Lethem and Michael Chabon must have worked in adjacent cubicles while the latter finished Kavalier and Clay. (It turns out they are friends, along with Dave Eggers, and travel in similar circles...more on that some other time.) Fortress nails the seventies: the music, the culture, the changing times. The language is terrific; the characters compelling; and the pace unhurried (I did not say boring). And honestly, it is a great bookend alongside The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay--one day some careful reader will undoubtedly compose a thesis comparing the two; some are already making the comparison.

A Widow for One Year, by John Irving.   Irving's best since The World According to Garp. It is clear to me now that it was the excesses of A Prayer for Owen Meany that put me off Irving for so many years. But Widow has fewer of those excesses while preserving many of Irving's hallmark traits including black comedy, Dickensian characters, metafictional conceits, uncommon sexual obsessions, undercurrents of grief, and as one Washington Post reviewer points out, "there's hardly a writer alive who can match [Irving's] control of the omniscient point of view." (Which odd as it may seem to select that quote, it should resonate with any reader and would-be author of children's literature.)

Under the Banner of Heaven, by Jon Krakauer.   Krakauer follows Into the Wild (a man's ill-fated pilgrimage into the Alaskan wilderness) and Into Thin Air (a tragic ascent of Mt. Everest) with this disturbing tale of Mormon Fundamentalism and an examination of the 1984 murder of a woman and her baby by brothers who insisted they were acting upon a commandment from God. I found the book ill-organized and repetitive, often difficult to follow, but I couldn't put it down or get it out of my mind. I know of careless-thinking readers who finished it with a condemning view of all Mormons, but it's the still flourishing Morman Fundamentalist sects of which Krakauer is most concerned, and what he reveals is both sad and chilling, and frankly, morally repugnant. I found myself haunted by and sickened at the fate of many unprotected and ignored teenage girls in America who even today are being brain-washed and abused.

Prey, by Michael Crichton.   Michael Crichton still knows the formula for creating a page turner. I ripped through this one in three days, just like Jurassic Park and Congo, and as I have all the way back to The Andromeda Strain which I read in high school. Once again Crichton combines technology, plot, and pacing to create a thriller that has you up late, reading long after your self-prescribed chapter limit. It's an enjoyable diversion--one that ends too quickly as is often the case with this genre--and it doesn't take much imagination to envision the blockbuster movie to follow: in fact, there are one or two blatant examples of artistic license that Crichton arguably employs because he foresees how compelling the special effects will be on a large movie screen. But, hey, the man is a master entertainer, wildly successful with novels, movies, and television shows (notably ER). Who am I to quibble with his formulas for success?

Cosmic Accidents

"Time for me to get back to my day job, which means that it’s time for me to stop blogging."
      --William Gibson     Friday, September 12, 2003

One thing leads to another. While searching for a screenplay, I discover hundreds of downloadable scripts and among them, several unproduced screenplays including a few of my favorite novels.

I wrote about finding an abandoned script for A Scanner Darkly. About that same time, I found another unproduced screenplay that caught my eye: "Neuromancer," from the seminal William Gibson sci-fi novel of 1984 that arguably ushered in cyberpunk.

Alas, like the Charlie Kaufman screenplay for A Scanner Darkly, the alleged Neuromancer script also remains a work of questionable authenticity. Although his name appears on the title page, Gibson denies authorship and the script remains in circulation, but quickly loses its appeal once one learns that Gibson disavows any authorial relationship to it.

But all is not lost. It was while researching the authenticity of the Neuromancer screenplay that I was lead to the official William Gibson web site. And it was there that I discovered the artifacts of his nine month experiment in blogging from a year ago.

I’ve found blogging to be a low-impact activity, mildly narcotic and mostly quite convivial, but the thing I’ve most enjoyed about it is how it never fails to underline the fact that if I’m doing this I’m definitely not writing a novel – that is, if I’m still blogging, I’m definitely still on vacation. I’ve always known, somehow, that it would get in the way of writing fiction, and that I wouldn’t want to be trying to do both at once. The image that comes most readily to mind is that of a kettle failing to boil because the lid’s been left off.

This has already proven to be a terrific discovery. Among the tidbits I've already gleaned:

• He disavows the Neuromancer script (crediting Chuck Russell instead...and discrediting the "shabby Dickensian script-floggers" who forged his name to it).
  
• He claims not to have been influenced by Philip K. Dick; in fact he admits to having read only The Man in the High Castle.
  
• On the other hand, he readily admits to having been influenced by Jorge Luis Borges, Thomas Pynchon, William S. Burroughs, Timothy Leary and Dashiell Hammett (but not Raymond Chandler).  --How reassuring that all but Leary claim shelf space in my library.
  
• He enjoyed The Matrix; expected to dislike it, was dragged to it by a friend, enjoyed it, and went back to see it again.
  
• He mentions a shoe store, Huf, in San Francisco that Cayce, the brand-allergic heroine of Pattern Recognition would love.
  
• There are countless great quotes, including several that follow.

Re the compulsion to blog:

In spite of (or perhaps because of) my reputation as a reclusive quasi-Pynchonian luddite shunning the net (or word-processors, depending on what you Google) I hope to be here on a more or less daily basis.

Re the perfect book:

The Borgesian meta-library contains a copy of every book ever written, but my dream-artifact is already, and always, every book every written (sic), on demand -- yet feels, looks, and even smells exactly like an ordinary hardcover book. Only the content is protean. That simple. The end of the world as we know it, and a good read every single night.

Metaphysics:

But I regard my being me, ultimately, as a sort of cosmic accident.

Re Timothy Leary's funeral:

His very last call consisted of him inviting me to his wake, and assuring me that I’d be “on the A-list”. I told him I’d be there, though I knew I wouldn’t. I had an abscessed tooth, was scheduled for a root canal, and, besides, I knew he wasn’t going to be there. He wouldn’t miss me, and I didn’t want to go all the way down there just to miss him even more.

All of which has yet again whet my appetite for things Gibson. Thankfully I have both his nine month blog experiment to peruse and, thanks to my brother, a DVD of No Maps for These Territories, a documentary about Gibson's life, work and influences.

Lost in Translation

"Mother died today."

That's the way I quoted Albert Camus's famous opening line to "The Stranger" in my First Line Quiz. But I knew even as I included it that what had always made it wonderful to me was not the first line alone, but the unforgettable existential combination of the first two lines together:

      "Mother died today. Or, maybe, yesterday; I can't be sure."

Those are the sentences that have resonated with me and for many Americans for decades. But of course, the novel Camus wrote was in French and for forty-some years we have been reading a British translation, that of Stuart Gilbert.

Now after all these years a new translation by Matthew Ward has appeared. In his Translator's Note he describes Gilbert's version as employing a "certain paraphrastic earnestness" in an "effort to make the text intelligible, to help the English-speaking reader understand what Camus meant." He then suggests that in his own translation he has "attempted to venture farther into the letter of Camus's novel, to capture what he said and how he said it, not what he meant."

He gives a few instances before dropping the bomb:

"No sentence in French literature in English translation is better known than the opening sentence of The Stranger. It has become a sacred cow of sorts, and I have changed it. In his notebooks Camus recorded the observation that “the curious feeling the son has for his mother constitutes all his sensibility.” And Sartre, in his “Explication de L’Etranger,” goes out of his way to point out Mersault’s use of the child’s word “Maman” when speaking of his mother. To use the more removed, adult “Mother” is, I believe, to change the nature of Mersault’s curious feeling for her. It is to change his very sensibility."     (Note: the emphasis is mine.)

So how does the new and improved opening to "The Stranger" read in the hands of Matthew Ward? Here it is:

      "Maman died today. Or yesterday maybe, I don't know."

Wow! How does that sound?

Admittedly, I am not bilingual, although French is the only language I ever studied. And the mere existence of a new translation forces me to consider for once that what I have read and loved in "The Stranger" is both Camus's and Gilbert's creation. The entire subject of translations I can see is a rich one and beyond the scope of one passing entry here.

But what about that first sentence? "Maman died today??" I find it fascinating that Ward dared to challenge a sacred cow, and then altered it by employing a word that is not even English--not only doesn't "Maman" have an entry in my dictionary, I never hear English speaking children use it, ever.

I hear "Mama" certainly, or "Mamma." And of course, go to any playground and you'll hear "Mommy" over and over again. So why didn't Ward elect to change the sentence to "Mama died today," or "Mommy died today," if he is so convinced of the sensibility of Mersault's feeling for his mother?

I looked up the French:

      "Aujourd 'hui, maman est morte. Ou peut-être hier, je ne sais pas."

That doesn't seem so difficult to translate, does it? In fact I fed it to my computer (Babel Fish) and it gave me this:

      "Today, mom died. Or perhaps yesterday, I do not know."

After all these versions, I may as well contribute my own suggestion, right?

      "Mom died today. Or maybe yesterday, I don't know."

That's got to be an improvement over Ward's "Maman" don't you think?

Which translation will endure, I wonder. Which will be the version read by thousands of high school and college students? And will they read Ward's translation and upon closing it treasure it and recall it for as long as many of us have recalled the Gilbert version we know so well?


Postscript:   Ward, incidentally, changed other sacred cows as well. The final sentence, one I also admired and found memorable, once read:

For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.

That's also the version I chose to include in my Last Line Quiz (it took visits to over a dozen bookstores and libraries to locate the once ubiquitous Gilbert translation--my copy currently residing in storage somewhere). But now "howls of execration" is gone--and here let's admit no one actually uses that phrase, as wonderful as it is. So perhaps many will prefer Ward's new closing:

For everything to be consummated, for me to feel less alone, I had only to wish that there be a large crowd of spectators the day of my execution and that they greet me with cries of hate.

More rejection

This time from Peachtree:

Dear Mr. --- (write author's name here),

Thank you for offering your work to Peachtree Publishers. Regrettably, we are unable to accept your manuscript for publication. Of the 20,000 queries and manuscripts we receive each year, we can only publish about 20 titles per year.

Our decision to decline your work does not reflect on its quality or on the ability that you bring to it. As you know, publishing is a very subjective business and another editor may feel differently about your work.

We would like to give you a more personalized response but time and the volume of submittals does not permit this; please know, however that your manuscript received a thorough reading and full consideration by our editorial staff.

Best of luck in your publishing endeavors, and thank you again for considering Peachtree.

Cordially,
Helen Harriss
Editorial Department

Just as I said at the outset, a one in a thousand chance is pretty poor odds. I'll give the other five major publishers I submitted to (shhh!) a few more weeks to polish their cover letters and then move on to the smaller publishing houses.

A Browser Darkly

I have been reading Philip K. Dick since high school. I still recall the oral book report I gave of Ubik. It's such a convoluted and paranoid vision and I was so tired of my classmates' closing line, "And if you want to know how it ends, you'll have to read the book...," that I concluded my book report by pronouncing, "If you want to know how it all turns out, I dare you to read the book."

I continued reading Dick over the years, met other fans, exchanged stories about his paranoid drug-distorted life, and even tracked down biographical material where I could. Although he labored in pulp fiction obscurity his entire career, his fiction is now hot material in Hollywood and at least six of his books and stories have made it posthumously to the screen and many others are under option.

If you enjoy science fiction movies, you've probably seen several that came from original material by Philip K. Dick: Blade Runner (from Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep), Total Recall (We Can Remember It for You Wholesale), Minority Report, and Paycheck among them. As Wired magazine noted in a terrific article from last year: two decades after his death, Philip K. Dick is "one of the most sought-after writers in Hollywood."

Even I have dreamed about optioning the rights to Philip K. Dick material ever since I first read A Scanner Darkly while living in Austin about 1980. It is a twisted and hyper-paranoid Dick tale about drug culture that alternates between laugh-aloud humor and lump-in-the-throat poignancy. When I finished it the first time, I sighed and thought, "I want to be the one who makes the movie version." As special effects improved over the years, especially when Terminator 2 style morphing technology became perfected, I concluded the conditions were finally right to bring A Scanner Darkly to the screen.

Clearly I'm not the only one who concluded this. Steven Soderbergh (sex, lies, and videotape) optioned the rights years ago. Charlie Kaufman (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) wrote the screenplay.

Rights changed hands. Now Kaufman's screenplay is out; Richard Linklater's (School of Rock, Waking Life, Dazed and Confused, Slacker) version is in. Keanu Reeves, Woody Harrelson, Robert Downey Jr., and Winona Ryder(1) star. Filming is underway in Austin (where Linklater shot many of his earlier films.)

At first I thought I couldn't imagine a better set of talents to tackle this project. Then I read the word, "animation." Shudder. But I haven't seen Waking Life and so I don't know Linklater's approach of filming live action and then layering on animation. I do know they have to try some kind of special F/X magic to create the constantly morphing scramble suits Dick envisioned. So I'll hope for the best.

Back to the Charlie Kaufman screenplay: I was originally intrigued by the thought of the writer of Being John Malkovich tackling A Scanner Darkly. On the other hand, I thought Kaufman destroyed The Orchid Thief, a brilliant book about obsession (Susan Orlean would love bloggers) with his self-indulgent wacky Adaptation.

But Kaufman, too, has his devotees and it was while following links to screenplays that I first discovered the link to his fan site, and was thrilled to find the unproduced script for A Scanner Darkly! Now how cool is that? I momentarily reveled in my discovery. It was at least a day before I learned Kaufman's script had been abandoned. So far, I have yet to read it. (But for those of you wonder, the first words spoken are, "Lately, Jerry Fabin stands all day shaking bugs from his hair." I'm willing to bet that Linklater's screenplay begins somewhere else entirely.)

But it was the discovery of an unproduced screenplay of a favorite novel, believe it or not, that was the original intention of this posting, viz., a follow-up to Monday's discussion of movie script sites with the bonus discovery that not only are there hundreds of screenplays available for free download, but that among them there are many still unproduced screenplays.

There's gold in them thar hills, I tell you.

In fact, in addition to my discovery of Kaufman's script for A Scanner Darkly, I also found screenplays for Spiderman 3, and Star Wars Episode 3--each of dubious authenticity, however.

I also uncovered one other nugget--but it, too, deserves a separate posting.

Stay tuned.

-----
(1) Look ma, a blog entry with a footnote! A decade ago during the world-wide web stone ages--back when you could count the number of interesting web sites in four digits--I used to receive a daily link at work to a site the company webmaster deemed interesting. He once linked to a Winona Ryder fan shrine and that was the first actress I'd heard of who had a whole site maintained by loyal fans (now there are dozens for Winona alone). If you've read any Philip K. Dick at all, you know that his prototypical female protagonist returns again and again under various guises and will inevitably break your heart. I think given the obvious affection and long-held weakness many have for Winona Ryder, she is an excellent choice to play Donna.

Reading Movies

My library includes a small selection of published screenplays--too small, in my opinion. I have The French Lieutenant's Woman, L. A. Confidential, three Quentin Tarantino screenplays, sex, lies, and videotape, and several others. I also have a few oddities including the screenplay for the obscure 1972 television movie, Between Time and Timbuktu, based on a compilation of Vonnegut material (worth having if only for the vintage Bob Elliot and Ray Goulding skits) and a production copy of the original Blade Runner script that a friend smuggled out of Hollywood several decades ago.

Other than that, I don't have nearly the selection I'd like. For one thing, the scripts for most movies never make it into print. Those that do, often include pages of movie stills which generally contributes to unreasonable price tags. Years ago one could occasionally track down rare screenplays in small specialty bookstores--I used to drive into San Francisco just to browse the collection at a great little shop called Drama Books.

All of this has changed with the growth of the internet. Now one can easily find dozens of web sites with downloadable text, Word, and PDF versions of hundreds of screenplays. And best of all is the price tag: you can find the screenplay for almost any movie you can think of available for free download.

After browsing through many of these sites, I recommend one in particular: the Movie Scripts and Screenplays web site not only includes direct links to hundreds of screenplays, but it also has a handy search engine and a well organized link section that linked back to each of the other sites I had already bookmarked.

What began as a search for a specific screenplay I was curious about soon turned into a shopping spree. Before I realized how greedy I had become for free copies of terrific writing by Robert Towne, Harold Pinter, William Goldman, Peter Shaffer, Stanley Kubrick, Francis Ford Coppola, Brian Helgeland, Tom Stoppard, M. Night Shyamalan, Joel & Ethan Coen, Cameron Crowe, Anthony Minghella, and myriad others I had downloaded and organized over three dozen screenplays--all for free.

The first dozen titles alone are all five star movies and scripts I've always coveted (which probably explains why it turns out I already owned copies of three of them). Nevertheless, here are the first dozen screenplays I downloaded.

      Amadeus
      Blade Runner
      Chinatown
      A Clockwork Orange

      The Godfather
      Good Will Hunting
      Jaws
      L.A. Confidential

      One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest
      Shakespeare in Love
      The Silence of the Lambs
      The Sixth Sense

I have to admit that what you get online for free is not always the highest quality. In several cases I could only find copies of dialog transcripts. In other cases, I only found early drafts that weren't as close as I desired to the final shooting script. If you're willing to pay, you might try The Script Shack; each script is listed for an average of $15 (but I can't vouch for the quality).

But I'm content to still browse and download. Before long I'll have a CD with a hundred favorite movie scripts for my library. Or I'll dump them onto an SD Card or memory stick so I can always have a movie to read while I'm out and about. And if I really get insane I'll invest in a ream of paper, some extra ink cartridges, and Kinko binders and I'll fill a shelf at home with some bound copies of favorite scripts--finally filling one gap in my library that's bothered me over the years.

Last Line Quiz--Post Script

[Spoiler warning: last lines of several novels are revealed in this posting.]

Last week's quiz had a few entries that troubled me. There were several instances when it felt unfair--arbitrary, really--to post only the very last sentence when I knew that the artistry of the novel's closing occured in the last sentence or two.

I've already published the quiz results, so I can now restore one or two of the entries to the longer, more enjoyable closings I would like to have posted:

      So [said the doctor]. Now vee may perhaps to begin. Yes?
      --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

      But, I also have to say, for the umpty-umpth time, that life isn't fair. It's just fairer than death, that's all.
      --William Goldman, The Princess Bride

      "Poor Grendel's had an accident," I whisper. "So may you all."
      --John Gardner, Grendel

There is one other quiz entry that I should amend. I included the unforgettable concusion to A Clockwork Orange as follows:

      I was cured all right.
      --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Unforgettable, that is, to American audiences of my generation as well as fans of Stanley Kubrick's 1971 cinematic adaptation of the novel. If you buy the version widely available today you will discover that the novel includes a final chapter that was excluded from the original American version for years, much to the dissatisfaction of Anthony Burgess, though he was powerless to prevent it at the time.

The novel as he'd intended it was divided into three parts, each consisting of seven chapters. The version published in the U.S. ended with Chapter 6 of Part Three and the memorable moment with Alex in the hospital listening once again to Beethoven and remarking ironically, "I was cured all right." That was good enough for the American publishers who concluded that their audiences wouldn't appreciate Burgess's final plot twist and moral statement so they excised it.

But now the novel is complete as Burgess intended it--though it is still a burden to him, believing as he does that though it is one of his lesser works, it is the one he is destined to be remembered for. And as the novel has been restored, so must my last line entry. Here then, is the line as I should have included it in my quiz:

      And all that cal.
      --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange

Out of context, it is not nearly as satisfying, is it?

The Class of 2020

Justin told me last night that the years are starting to go by faster. I marvel at such an observation from a not-quite-seven-year-old. I remember how long school years felt during elementary school. And how short summers felt by high school. But for Justin to notice this phenomenon of accelerating time at his age stuns me.

The boys began first grade this week. They will be seven in late October. When I entered first grade I was five, did not turn six until nearly Christmas, and had never attended a single day of pre-school, "pre-primary school," or kindergarten.

I find it remarkable when I compare the boys' first schooling experiences with my own. By the beginning of first grade my sons were fourteen months older than me, had five more years of school experience (a local co-op, a nursery school, two years of the PBS Early Learning Center, and a year of kindergarten), and had run up individual tuition bills rivaling my Ivy League education.

If they finish school in twelve years and college in four--and I know few California students who do these days--they will be graduates of the Class of 2020. I can't think of a better year to graduate.

This year's college freshman are members of the Class of 2008. Each fall I enjoy reading Beloit College's annual Mindset List, a compilation of cultural milestones that "distinguish this generation from those that preceded it." Each year the list holds a few surprises, and several mysteries.

Samples from this year's Mindset List for the Class of 2008:

• Baby Jessica could be a classmate.
  
• The Energizer bunny has always been going, and going, and going.
  
• There has always been a Rock and Roll Hall of Fame.
  
• There have never been any Playboy Clubs.
  
• Mike Tyson has always been a contender.

You can read the rest at Beloit's web site which also includes links to the lists for the previous six years.

The item that most caught my attention this year--the one that sent me to the internet to verify it--was the statement that for the Class of 2008, there have always been night games at Wrigley Field. Technically correct, I suppose, assuming two-year-olds weren't cognizant of a tradition of daytime baseball in Chicago: the first night game was on August 8, 1988 (and shortened by rain). I would have guessed that game was no more than ten years ago.

Justin's observation that the years pass more quickly is truer than ever.

Last Line Quiz--The Solution

[Spoiler warning: last lines of several novels are revealed in this posting.]

OK, here are the answers to last Friday's quiz:

1. I enjoy the movement of life—kids falling in love, performing birds (there was an article on Aderyn the Blind Bird Queen in a popular periodical just after she died), new gelato flavors, ceremonies, anthills, poetry, loins, lions, the music of the eight tuned Chinese pipes suspended from an economically carved and highly stylized owl head at our window facing the lake maddened into the sweetest cacophony by a tramontana that will not abate in its passion, the woman below calling her son in (his name is Orlando and she says his father will be furioso), the ombrellone on our roof terrace blown out of its metal plinth, the spitted faraone for dinner tonight with a bottle of Menicocci, anything in fact that’s unincestuous.
   --Anthony Burgess, M/F
   
   
2. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
   --Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
   
   
3. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.
   --Albert Camus, The Stranger
   
   
4. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
   --Herman Melville, Moby Dick
   
   
5. He thrilled as each cage door opened and the wild sables made their leap and broke for the snow—black on white, black on white, black on white, and then gone.
   --Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
   
   
6. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger…a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.
   --Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
   
   
7. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.
   --Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
   
   
8. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.
   --Angela Carter, The Tiger Bride
   
   
9. If cuckolds catch a second wind, I am eagerly waiting for mine.
   --John Irving, The 158-Pound Marriage
   
   
10. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
    --Joseph Heller, Catch 22
    
    
11. “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
    --J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
    
    
12. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.
    --William Goldman, The Princess Bride
    
    
13. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?”
    --Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-House Five
    
    
14. I been away a long time.
    --Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
    
    
15. The Ramans do everything in threes.
    --Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
    
    
16. He never saw Molly again.
    --William Gibson, Neuromancer
    
    
17. I was cured all right.
    --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
    
    
18. “So may you all.”
    --John Gardner, Grendel
    
    
19. “Terminal.”
    --John Barth, The End of the Road
    
    
20. Yes?
    --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint

OK, what fun's a quiz without a clever scoring system?

        0-2: Fear and Loathing   (Poor)
        3-6: The Strangers   (Fair)
      7-10: Scanners Darkly   (Good)
      11-15: Good Reading Hobbits   (Excellent)
    16-20: The End of the Read   (Superior)

Lettuce pray

I left a meeting at noon a few days ago and found myself near an In-N-Out Burger so I decided to grab a quick lunch. They have only about three menu options (though I have since learned about their “Secret Menu”--check the web site), so before long I was eating my cheeseburger and fries and naturally comparing them to McDonald’s. The fries just don’t measure up, I thought, realizing just how addicted I had become to IFF’s so-called “natural ingredients” like ethyl butyrate and gamma dodecalactone or whatever.

As I ate I watched a worker slicing endless potatoes one after another. Wow, they are fresh, not frozen like McDonald’s, so why am I complaining? Then I noticed my cheeseburger wrapper and read their freshness claims: fresh beef that’s never frozen, buns without preservatives, hand-leafed lettuce, and fries peeled and sliced daily and cooked in 100% cholesterol free oil.

Fresh, not manufactured. I guess I shouldn’t complain.

But In-N-Out Burger did have one surprise for me just as I was about to dump my trash.

I noticed tucked down on the corner of the cheeseburger wrapper in small caps the notation, “REVELATION 3:20.”

It couldn’t be, I thought. So when I got home, I looked it up in the Bible and read, “Behold, I stand at the door, and knock: if any man hear my voice, and open the door, I will come in to him, and will dine with him, and he with me.”

Subtle, you have to give them that.

And as an exercise for the reader, and fast food diner, you can search for JOHN 3:16, PROVERBS 3:5, and NAHUM 1:7 (“Nahum?”--I had to confirm that one.) on other In-N-Out Burger packaging.

Would you like fries with that?

Ignorance, they say, is bliss. So I have studiously avoided reading Eric Schlosser’s “Fast Food Nation” for several years now despite the pressure of several close friends. I know I eat too much fast food and that the truth about the fast food industry, ingredients, processes, and practices would shock, even disgust me. So I have chosen to remain in the dark and have continued conveniently patronizing McDonald’s, Taco Bell, KFC, and others, returning most often to McDonald’s when the boys insist upon the latest Happy Meal give-away (which multiplied by three boys and five or more pieces per promotion makes for bushels of disposable tchotchkes getting under foot).

Recently though, I picked up “The Best American Non-Required Reading 2002” volume edited by Dave “A-Heartbreaking-Work-of-Staggering-Genius” Eggers. One entry is an excerpt from Schlosser’s book and is titled, “Why McDonald’s Fries Taste So Good.” Sigh. OK, I’m not sure total ignorance is bliss, so I read it.

That night at dinner with the boys we discussed what I had read. I asked them why they thought McDonald’s french fries tasted so good. They had many great theories including the potato, the cooking oil, salt, and how the fries are cooked. All great answers, but none of those actually explain why McDonald’s fries taste the way they do.

McDonald’s buys, slices, cooks and freezes millions of pounds of potatoes daily. Americans live on processed food, but unfortunately the freezing, dehydrating, and packaging techniques destroy most of the food’s flavors. So what is McDonald’s secret?

Enter IFF--International Flavors and Fragrances--the world’s largest manufacturer of natural and artificial flavors. It is a multi-billion dollar a year industry shrouded in secrecy with few of us knowing the names of any of the leading companies. Sure, we know the fragrances: Estee Lauder, Clinique, Lancome, Calvin Klein, but we don’t know who creates them or how they are developed. And we eat the flavored foods, but IFF and others have no interest in revealing their clients because it is important to their success, to the success of the fast food industry, as well as the success of the manufacturers of 90% of the products sitting in our cupboards, that we believe the tastes come from the cooking process and ingredients, not a laboratory in New Jersey.

According to Schlosser, “Distinctions between artificial and natural flavors can be arbitrary and somewhat absurd, based more on how the flavor has been made than on what it actually contains…Natural flavors and artificial flavors sometimes contain exactly the same chemicals, produced through different methods.” Schlosser reveals that the wizards at IFF can manufacture the taste of popcorn (by adding methyl-2-pyridyl ketone), marshmallow (ethyl-3-hydroxy butanoate), even, if they chose, the aromas of freshly cut grass (hexanal) or body odor (3-methyl butanoic acid). Makes you wonder why so many processed foods taste so bad, doesn’t it?

Want to know how Burger King creates the taste of its strawberry milk shake? I read the ingredient list to the boys, first challenging them to try to memorize it, and then quoting:

amyl acetate, amyl butyrate, amyl valerate, anethol, anisyl formate, benzyl acetate, benzyl isobutyrate, butyric acid, cinnamyl isobutyrate, cinnamyl valerate, cognac essential oil, diacetyl, dipropyl ketone, ethyl acetate, ethyl amyl ketone, ethyl butyrate, ethyl cinnamate, ethyl heptanoate, ethyl heptylate, ethyl lactate, ethyl methylphenylglycidate, ethyl nitrate, ethyl propionate, ethyl valerate, heliotropin, hydroxyphenyl-2-butanone (10 percent solution in alcohol), α-ionone, isobutyl anthranilate, isobutyl butyrate, lemon essential oil, maltol, 4-methylacetophenone, methyl anthranilate, methyl benzoate, methyl cinnamate, methyl heptine carbonate, methyl naphthyl ketone, methyl salicylate, mint essential oil, neroli essential oil, nerolin, neryl isobutyrate, orris butter, phenethyl alcohol, rose, rum ether, γ-undecalactone, vanillin, and solvent.

When I finished the list, Andrew let his jaw drop in mock surprise and said, “Daddy, I am just dumbstruck.”

After reading the article, and discussing artificial and natural flavors with the boys (wouldn’t it be funny, we thought, if the french fry and hamburger flavors got mixed up?—when in fact, McDonald’s fries are designed to taste like the beef tallow they were once cooked in), I went to IFF’s web site. It’s all there. The products, the ingredients, the chemical formulas, the industry overview, the annual report. Not the names of specific food industry clients, of course. But confirmation of much of what Schlosser reported and overwhelming evidence that the flavors and aromas of most of the foods I enjoy daily are carefully manufactured by chemists.

Like Andrew, I am dumbstruck.

Last Line Quiz

[Spoiler warning: last lines of several novels are revealed in this posting.]

Several weeks ago I posted a First Line Quiz. I thought it might be interesting to see how easy it would be to now match the last lines from those same 20 selections with the authors and titles.

I'm not sure whether anyone actually collects last lines. I don't. They may contain spoilers, for one reason. But there are many novels and stories that end with a satisfying closing sentence or two. I'm sure we've all read a great story and come to the final few words, read them, sighed in appreciation, and closed the book with a sense of satisfaction, even regret at the journey's end.

In this case, several of these lines similarly impressed me; all were fun to rediscover. And one or two of them have an interesting story behind them.

So here are the twenty last lines in decreasing word count:

1. I enjoy the movement of life—kids falling in love, performing birds (there was an article on Aderyn the Blind Bird Queen in a popular periodical just after she died), new gelato flavors, ceremonies, anthills, poetry, loins, lions, the music of the eight tuned Chinese pipes suspended from an economically carved and highly stylized owl head at our window facing the lake maddened into the sweetest cacophony by a tramontana that will not abate in its passion, the woman below calling her son in (his name is Orlando and she says his father will be furioso), the ombrellone on our roof terrace blown out of its metal plinth, the spitted faraone for dinner tonight with a bottle of Menicocci, anything in fact that’s unincestuous.
   
   
2. Before reaching the final line, however, he had already understood that he would never leave that room, for it was foreseen that the city of mirrors (or mirages) would be wiped out by the wind and exiled from the memory of men at the precise moment when Aureliano Babilonia would finish deciphering the parchments, and that everything written on them was unrepeatable since time immemorial and forever more, because races condemned to one hundred years of solitude did not have a second opportunity on earth.
   
   
3. For all to be accomplished, for me to feel less lonely, all that remained to hope was that on the day of my execution there should be a huge crowd of spectators and that they should greet me with howls of execration.
   
   
4. Now small fowls flew screaming over the yet yawning gulf; a sullen white surf beat against its steep sides; then all collapsed, and the great shroud of the sea rolled on as it rolled five thousand years ago.
   
   
5. He thrilled as each cage door opened and the wild sables made their leap and broke for the snow—black on white, black on white, black on white, and then gone.
   
   
6. I felt like a monster reincarnation of Horatio Alger…a Man on the Move, and just sick enough to be totally confident.
   
   
7. A present for my friends, he thought, and looked forward inside his mind, where no one could see, to Thanksgiving.
   
   
8. My earrings turned back to water and trickled down my shoulders; I shrugged the drops off my beautiful fur.
   
   
9. If cuckolds catch a second wind, I am eagerly waiting for mine.
   
   
10. The knife came down, missing him by inches, and he took off.
    
    
11. “Thank goodness!” said Bilbo laughing, and handed him the tobacco-jar.
    
    
12. It’s just fairer than death, that’s all.
    
    
13. One bird said to Billy Pilgrim, “Poo-tee-weet?”
    
    
14. I been away a long time.
    
    
15. The Ramans do everything in threes.
    
    
16. He never saw Molly again.
    
    
17. I was cured all right.
    
    
18. “So may you all.”
    
    
19. “Terminal.”
    
    
20. Yes?

Now, here are the sources of the twenty lines, as previously published in the answers to the first quiz:

      --John Barth, The End of the Road
      --Anthony Burgess, A Clockwork Orange
      --Anthony Burgess, M/F
      --Albert Camus, The Stranger
      --Angela Carter, The Tiger Bride

      --Arthur C. Clarke, Rendezvous With Rama
      --Philip K. Dick, A Scanner Darkly
      --John Gardner, Grendel
      --William Gibson, Neuromancer
      --William Goldman, The Princess Bride

      --Joseph Heller, Catch 22
      --John Irving, The 158-Pound Marriage
      --Ken Kesey, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
      --Gabriel Garcia Marquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude
      --Herman Melville, Moby Dick

      --Philip Roth, Portnoy's Complaint
      --Martin Cruz Smith, Gorky Park
      --Hunter S. Thompson, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas
      --J. R. R. Tolkien, The Hobbit
      --Kurt Vonnegut, Slaughter-House Five

Good luck matching the lines with their sources. Through careful reading and a process of elimination it shouldn't be difficult to get a half dozen correct; readers who share my taste in fiction should score over half right. Any score above 12 is excellent in my opinion.