An American Language

Yesterday, my wife used the word "humble" to me. She pronounced it "umble." Bill Day, the pulpit minister at my church, also pronounces the word this way. It occurs to me how much I HATE the word when it is pronounced that way. The pronounciation seems to be a very um-humble way to pronounce it. A very British way to pronounce it.

And that's why I hate it, not that I have any problems with the British per se. I just don't want to be them. In fact, I lectured my wife about using the pronounciation telling her, "you are not British, you are an American. Talk like an American." (Notice I didn't say "speak like an American.")

You see, it's time for us to be as proud of our unique language as we are patriotic about our unique history. I heard an interview with Don DeLillo on the radio program "Bookworm" in which he expressed his surprise and delight when he recieved a manuscript of the French translation of his novel "Underworld." He noticed that the copywrite page contained the line, "translated from the American." He noted "Not 'from the English' but 'from the American'," I thought to myself, yes, why shouldn't an American novel be translated from American? Why shouldn't the American language get credit for Hemingway, Steinbeck, Vonnegut, Faulkner, Chabon, Russo, Eugenides, and DeLillo?

Our's in an AMERICAN language, rich in its own idioms and culturally enriched paranomasia. Our language has its own grammar, it's own spelling. It's own use of the sacred and the profane. It's "color" not "colour." Not "bloody" but "goddamn." (For you folks that do your British impressions by using the word "bloody" contantly, take note of the American transliteration and think about what you're saying.)

And remember history. After being conquered by French Normans, the kings in England spoke only French for 300 years. The language survived only because the commoners refused to speak French. They wanted their own language... because it was their own national identity. It was Shakespeare and Chaucer. Our identity is Tennesse Williams and John Updike.

We are an American nation. Celebrate your American language. (Note: It isn't "One should celebrate one's language.)

These Might Explain Me

I have found two really cool sites about the two playwrites that have probably influenced my own writing the most. So, for those of you who've read my stuff and said, "where does he get this crap?" check out these guys. Actual genuises, unlike me.

Eugene Ionesco, writer of "The Bald Soprano" and "Rhinoceros" and this site on Samuel Beckett. The Beckett site is especially great, containing clips of his radio plays and photos of performances. Both sites have book shops for those of you who read.

Buddhists...God Love 'Em

Today is Christmas. The day when dozens of people celebrate the birth of Christ and Millions celebrate Turkey Dinners and the diurnal urge to kill one's family. Every year, I get totally sick of eating dishes invented by pilgrims, so this year I decided to eat something invented in Los Angelos in the 1840's. Chinese food!

I love that every Christmas, it's the one place open. the chinese joint doesn't have to worry about scheduling days off for all the little Christian kids out of town with mom and dad. They don't have to worry that Jesus might return on his 2011th birthday.

So, in honor of Christmas and in honor of the Chinese, I will write a very short play. I know that by the time both of you (that is, both my readers) reae this, Christmas will likely be over so I apologize for making you see one more holiday play...even if only in your minds eye. I shall title it "Jesus Died for Buddhists"

The Scene: A Chinese restaraunt late Christmas night. The restaraunt is moderately busy because it's the only place open. A man and his wife wait near the counter.

Chinese lady: Oh-kaey. Youh Ohda es Wehdy. (I apologize for the stereotyped way I present the accent. Imagine the very suble pronounciation of the "R," pronounced strongly enough that it deserves mention as a phoneme but not so strongly that it earns the Alpha character, or the written letter itself).
(The man and woman approach. The woman takes the bag of takeout from the Chinese lady)
Wife: Oh, thank you.
Chinese Lady: Yoe Wehcome.
Wife: And Merry Christmas (The Chinese Woman walks back into the kitchen.)
Husband: You can't say Merry Christmas to her!
Wife: Why not?
Husband: She's Bhuddist.
Wife: So?
Husband: So, Buddhists don't celebrate Christmas!
Wife: Why shouldn't they?
Husband: Because they are not Christians.
(The wife rolls her eyes dismisively and turns toward husband)
Wife: Well, if Atheists can celebrate the birth of our Lord and Savior, than surely Buddhists can. If for nothing else, than for the presents...

I know it doesn't have a plot and it isn't funny, but it popped into my head. A conversation that a real-life man might have with a slightly dumb wife. I know enough slightly dumb wives (mine happens to be quite intelligent) that would probably say "Merry Christmas" to lots of Chinese and never stop to think that she might be making them feel akward.

Merry Christmas to all, if that's your persuasion.

Who Likes to Laugh at Nerds?

Here are a couple of really great clips I found. This one which is also just artsy enough to be cool while also being funny. I found it through fishkite.

And of coarse my favorite... a perenial favorite for us all is star wars kid. Poor, poor Star Wars Kid! I have to wonder if something's wrong with him. But since I'm a cynical jerk, I might as well laugh at him either way.

Anyway, these help break up all the Updike I'm reading right now. (Almost halfway through the second Rabbit novel "Rabbit Redux" Makes a novel and a half in about 5 days.)

Rabbit Returneth to His Own Vomit

I finally got around to reading John Updike's 1960 novel "Rabbit, Run." It is one of those ones that all the smart kids read in college and I knew I would like if I just got around to it. Well I got around to it.

For those who don't know the book, it is the story of Harry "Rabbit" Angstrom, a 26 year old with a wife a kid and another on the way. Rabbit, out of the blue, decides to run off. He ends up living for four months with a prostitute in another town until his wife has the new baby, when he comes home.

Shortly after the birth of his new daughter, he and Janice (his wife) argue and he runs off again. In shame and dismay, his wife becomes very drunk and accidentally drowns the baby in the bathtub. This brings Rabbit home yet again.

The funeral proves to be more than Rabbit can handle...so, you guessed it, he runs away again. Thus ending the first of four Rabbit novels with the line, "...he runs. Ah: runs. Runs."

The very well written book makes one great statement about mankind. It is but this: we are idiots and we are not worth saving! Rabbit runs away when he realizes that his adult life is not what it might have been. He looks back on his glory days when he was a rising high school basketball star and he refuses to see that he is no longer that kid. He cannot see that being the most important thing in high school doesn't make him the most important thing in the new world. So he runs. He runs back to those days.

When he realizes that he has sinned against his wife and against his family, he returns. But he stays only until he does not get what he wants (in this case, sex... actually Rabbit's internal drive throughout the novel centers on a constant need for sex). Then, he is gone again. And the cycle repeats itself yet a third time before the book is over, when he finds out that his girlfriend in the other town is also pregnant.

Rabbit runs all over Pennsylvania trying to satisfy his own desires and, as do the rest of us, he leaves misery in his wake. Rabbit's life in an extreme example, but an example none the less, of what we all do all the time. We make ourselves all important. We become the only human with rights and we do whatever we must to make ourselves comfortable. Nina Baym was correct to include this novel in a list of book about the myth that is the American dream (in her essay "Melodramas of Beset Manhood"). We do desire the dream of being able to run from whatever holds us back in our own minds. This is what it means to be American. I may do whatever I wish, regardless of the cost incurred on those I love.

Baym calls Rabbit's actions (or perhaps Updike's telling of them) an "evocation of flight for it's own sake." I disagree. It is not for it's own sake. Rabbit does not fly simply because he can or to celebrate his freedom to fly. It is flight born out of his own selfishness. Flight because my comfort is more important that the lives of my children. As long as I don't hold the baby's head under water, I'm not guilty. As Rabbit says to his wife at the funeral, "What are you looking at me for? I didn't kill her."

God is Great and so is Audrey Tautou

"God is Great and I'm Not" (2001)

This film starring Audrey Tautou and Edouar Baer furthur proves what I have always suspected to be true. Audrey Tautou is the only thing that doesn't suck about France.

Michele (Tautou) is on a quest to find spirituality. She tries Catholicism and Buddhism and all the other "isms" when, behold, the falls in love...with a Jew. She decides that she is Jewish and becomes a better Jew than her lover or even his Israeli parents.

This movie is wonderfully funny and heart-warming and everything you want in a cold weather movie. Audrey Tautou is perfect as usual in her subtlety and delivery (though it's in French, with a little Hebrew and English sprinkled in). Edouard Baer is also adept in his performance as Francious, her lover. And he reminds me of somebody but I can't place who...

If you're not too illiterate or too American to enjoy French film, I recommend this one highly.

Wonder Who I'll Meet in Heaven

I need to slow down! I'm typing out book reviews more often than both of you check this blog!

Anyway, here is the latest: "The Five People You Meet in Heaven," by Mick Albom. My in-laws gave this book to my wife but she never read it, so I did.

It's pretty good... I like the idea that all of our lives are connected whether we have ever met or not. It's not a new theme by any means but a profound one none the less, especially in our modern culture of "I'm okay, you're okay" morality.

Oh, the sense of awesome responsibilty we have and don't know it! If we only knew that our smallest action can mean the life or death of another human being.

Anyway, if you have a spare day to read and nothing else to read, it's a good one. If you have lots of other books on the backburner, read them. This one is so-so. Good lesson though. I can go into furthur detail for anyone who desires. Just e-mail.

We are Part of an "Epic"

I have just read the small book "Epic" by John Eldredge. Eldredge is the aothor of the best selling "Wild at Heart" which has been one of the life changing books in my life, partially responsible for giving me the courage to become a police officer.

In "Epic," Eldredge compares out literary archetypes to the story which God is unravelling in creation. He makes the point that out literature is a direct parallel to the history of God and man. The story of our existence contains good vs. Evil, love and betrayal, heroes fighting against insurmountable odds, and finally redemption, good winning over evil and lovers living happily ever after...together.

It's an interesting thesis. It is one that I think might be dead on accurate. We strive to tell and retell our own stories. Or, at least, to see ourselves in the stories we love. We attempt to learn something about humanity, about life through the art that moves us.

Eldredge quotes Simone Weil, or paraphrases, in "he [God] haunts us with the memory of Eden, and he speaks through every story we've ever loved." More than once, Eldredge qoutes from Ecclesiastes, "God had put eternity in the hearts of man."

You see, we write what we write and love the stories we love because we know that they relate to the story we want to be in ourselves. We admire the hero. We feel for the lover. We root for the good guy, because we want to be in the story. Because we want to see ourselves in the characters and we see the characters in ourselves.

Because we see what we were and what we could be. Deep down, we mourn what was lost in Eden, when man was everything he could be. At the same time, we look ahead to final victory of good vs evil. To the day when we finally get to live "happily ever after" and are forever restored to our first love.

We long for the day when, finally, we will be the heroes in the greatest story ever told . When God will say "well done my good and faithful servant."

Resisting Arrest

Okay, got rant political a little. Making news right now is an Atlanta Police Officer's use of "excessive force" when arresting a violator at the Airport.

The incident began when the officer approached the car to tell the driver that she couldn't park where she was parked. The woman then backed up, striking the officer with the mirror of her car. At that time he extracted her from the car and stabalized her on the ground. She resists and it take seven officers to finally restrain her.

Lawyer claims excessive force used, because that's what lawyers do. Resisting arrest charges get dropped against the woman amid much media scrutiny. Saying that "refusal to obey an order doesn't resort to felony resisting."

Folks, that's exactly what resisting means! Granted, she wasn't physically combative at the onset, so use the city charge for resisting! (Course Atlanta may not have one)

The officer did exactly as officers are trained to do with a passive resistor by taking physical control of her. And, frankly, the only reason this is even a story is because she is a rich white woman with a high priced lawyer. If this had been a young black man in the ghetto, "excessive force" would have never been considered. Infact it would have been applauded by millions of families watching cops on Saturday 8:00, 7:00 central. I ought to know, I use this method of extraction often. God, postpone the day I have to slam a rich white person who thinks she pays my salary.