Category Archives: literature

The People’s Library of Occupy Wall Street

It’s day 24 of Occupy Wall Street 1 and the thousands of protesters there have been organizing themselves into pseudo governments and various working groups. 2 The place is turning into a petri-dish kind of accelerated model of semi-anarchic social planning. The coolest aspect of the new microsociety, however long it’s going to last, is the The People’s Library of #OccupyWallStreet.

source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/listentomyvoice/6215907949/in/pool-1820877@N22
The OWSL was started by an NYU library studies student setting out a pile of books – other protesters started adding books, found protection for the books from the weather, and (now) have made a catalogue of the books and are collecting donations. On the library’s blog, OWSL announced that a criminal justice attorney for a New York nonprofit offered her legal services to the library as it deals with the semi-sketch logistics of being an uncovered library located in a public park. The library has about 15 volunteers (described as “a mix of librarians and library enthusiasts”) and a barcode scanner.

According to their catalogue, the library has about 400 books, with about 50 donations per day coming for the last few days. OWSL’s catalogue includes kind of what is to be expected in the library of a strange semianarchy made up of people with too much time, from Reading Lolita in Tehran to The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism. Volunteers say that they’re having constant requests for copies of A People’s History of the United States by Howard Zinn. There are a few less expected titles in the catalogue, though, too, like Quiverfull: Inside the Christian Patriarchy Movement3 and Cloudy with a chance of meatballs.

OWSL volunteers say that they do not discriminate when it comes to which books they put out – by nature of those donating, they have mostly liberal political and philosophical theory. But, one of the volunteers said, “if someone came with a truckload of Rush Limbaugh’s books, we’d put them out. We’re not opposed to having a dissenting voice.”4

One volunteer was asked to describe the library’s purpose: “People want to know, ‘What’s your agenda?’” he said. “Well, the status quo doesn’t have an agenda. Everyone here, in the aggregate, are people who feel disenfranchised and powerless. It’s perfectly legitimate to be frustrated. I don’t have a solution. I’m not an anarchist. I’m here because I love books.”

I'm not an anarchist. I'm here because I love books.

This attitude is what gives a sense of legitimacy to OWSL: its dedication to the availability of information in general, not just the forward movement of the protesters’ varying agendas. It’s admittedly heartening to see that one of the first things that develops in a group of people staying still for a while is a library. The agendas and decisions of the protest aside, let’s hope that the spirit of the indiscriminate availability of information and discourse remains in at least this aspect of the movement.

1 If you’re not terribly aware of what’s going on in NYC, and are interested in politics or social media or culture or anthropology or basically anything, read up on the Wiki page – for more laughs, read the .
2 For example: Sanitation, Food and Kitchen, Arts & Culture, Public Relations, Direct Action, Media Spokesperson Relations, Internet, Information, and “Peacemakers” [Security]. source: http://www.examiner.com/populist-in-long-island/night-and-day-life-at-occupy-wall-street
3 For substantial feelings of anger, horror, and loss of hope, Google the Quiverfull movement.
4 source:
http://newsfeed.time.com/2011/10/10/occupy-wall-street-their-own-mini-government-complete-with-library/#ixzz1aOZwBPAe

Decemberists, Infinite Jest, and Michael Schur Unite (and there was much rejoicing)

The Decemberist’s latest music video (for Calamity Song, from their most recent album The King is Dead) portrayed a scene from David Foster Wallace’s mammoth novel Infinite Jest, and the probability that somewhere within 100 yards of you a humanities major is freaking out increased by about 600%.

And this is awesome not only because 1) The Decemberists are awesome and 2) Infinite Jest is awesome, both of which reasons would be plenty justification for awesomeness, but it’s awesome because Infinite Jest is so huge and complicated and a-linear and full of bizarre details that it seems only slightly short of a miracle than anyone would even be able to succesfully portray in film just one scene from the novel, and yet Michael Schur (known for writing for SNL, The Office, and Parks and Recreation) managed to have the scene play out almost exactly as I imagined it – which I understand is a hideously biased judgement but I really only have my own imagination to go by, and perhaps the fact that film adaptations of writing almost never do that for me bolster the impressiveness of my statement.

The scene fromt the book, by the way, was brilliantly and kind of impressively chosen too – it shows the students at a tennis academy playing Eschaton, which is a ludicrously complicated game involving a mentally-projected map of the world on a tennis court, socks and tshirts representing different strategic targets, tennis balls (lobbed by each country) representing nuclear bombs, and insane algorithms (that David Foster Wallace all but teaches you in the book) to determine the damage and population loss of each hit. Colin Meloy sitting in the place of Michael Pemulis, one of the main characters of the book, with his characteristic sailor’s hat, is weirdly perfect. Schur’s attention to details from the novel made the video, I think, bringing yelps of excitement from readers of the book seeing a scene from possibly the most bizarre and un-movie-able piece of fiction they’ve read portrayed (almost) perfectly on film, but also allowing people who haven’t read the book to still understand what’s going on.

So, in summary, props to The Decemberists for being awesome, postmortem props to David Foster Wallace for being brilliant, and mad props to Michael Schur for creating a visual reality out of a piece of something as abstract and wonderful as Infinite Jest.

World War Z Minus the History

In 2006 Max Brooks’ novel World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War hit bookshelves across North America. As a sequel to his previous book, The Zombie Survival Guide, it was guaranteed to acquire cult status, with zombie-lovers all over the world treating its predecessor as a bible for the imminent undead apocalypse. Fans were thrilled when it was announced just the following year that the rights to the film adaptation had been bought by Plan B Entertainment, Brad Pitt’s film production company.¹

Although the film struggled early on financially2, filming finally went underway this summer. It wasn’t until just three days ago, however, that Paramount released their official synopsis for the film, which goes as follows:3

“The story revolves around United Nations employee Gerry Lane (Pitt), who traverses the world in a race against time to stop the Zombie pandemic that is toppling armies and governments and threatening to decimate humanity itself.  Enos plays Gerry’s wife Karen Lane; Kertesz is his comrade in arms, Segen.”

Cue instant uproar from the entire internet.

To be fair, film adaptations of books have often changed substantial plot points to the benefit of the film’s reception, et cetera. Stuart Little was a hit with children because it didn’t feature what is essentially a mouse who acts like a little man who was born of a human womb. Teenagers enjoyed A Walk to Remember because it was set in the 90s and not in the mid-1950s.World War Z, however, is not a novel that required such significant changes.

In reference to the latter part of the title, An Oral History of the Zombie War, the novel consists of a number of interviews conducted just ten years after the last country was officially deemed victorious over the undead hordes. What makes the scope of the novel so grand is who is being interviewed.

Beginning with Chinese doctor Kwang Jingshu and the minor outbreak in New Dachang and reaching as far as Xolelwa Azania of South Africa, reading through World War Z is a global experience. Tying the novel together are several interviews with Todd Wainio, a former U.S. Army infantryman who had taken part in the greatest military defeat of the Zombie Wars.

Pitt’s adaptation with himself as a modern-day Cassandrais not the story that needs to be told. By omitting the latter part of the title the film will ultimately fail to capture what made the novel stand out among the rest: an almost uncomfortable sense of peace after a decade at war and one man questioning why exactly it all happened.

The film will be watched by many because even those who haven’t read the book have heard the title World War Z. They were probably raved to about the novel and how it captured the horrors of a zombie pandemic in a way that was both realistic and emotional. It’s too bad that they won’t realize the film is just another fast-paced action thriller with a bit of zombie thrown in until they’re sitting in their seats.

1. Plan B Entertainment was originally founded by Brad Pitt, Jennifer Aniston, and some other dude. Which had to have been awkward, especially for the other guy.

2. It’s hard to believe the amount of fun these newswriters must be having coming up with these titles. Source: http://nymag.com/daily/entertainment/2011/03/world_war_z_brad_pitt.html

3. From the reliably titled site, Movies.com: http://www.movies.com/movie-news/world-war-z-movie/3869

4. As well as significant deviations from the plot as well as Shane West as a rebellious badboy, etc etc.

5. King Priam’s daughter, soothsayer of Troy. Warned her countrymen the danger that was the Trojan Horse, to no avail. Just in case you were wondering.

Guilt in The Congo and the Koprulu Sector

Fairly spoilery.
                                                                                                                                                                      

No matter the medium, there have always been dominant themes in literature. Whether it be the theme of adulthood in About a Boy or the exploration of childhood in Calvin and Hobbes, writers have long voiced their opinions in their work, stating their viewpoints on universal experience. This can clearly be seen in the real time strategy game StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and the novel The Poisonwood Bible. Though [literally] worlds apart in format and subject matter,  the two are bound together beneath the overarching theme of guilt.

Wings of Liberty‘s Jim Raynor is a man haunted by the ghosts of his past. The sector’s current tyrant, Emperor Mengsk, rules with an iron fist and sits proudly upon his throne due to the former-marshal’s aid in the first war. This despot betrayed Raynor’s love, Sarah Kerrigan, by ordering her to place a device on the capital planet which would lure in the voracious Zerg like moths to a flame, and then abandoning her to them. The Zerg would later transform Kerrigan into a creature known far and wide as the Queen of Blades, a malicious killing machine who would later terrorize the sector and kill Raynor’s closest Protoss ally and friend.

Four years later Raynor is taking steps to topple the government he helped establish. His band of rebels is working to right the wrong that is the Terran Dominion, but even in spite of this the loss of Kerrigan and his guilt over her abandonment remain. These feelings are exacerbated when his old friend Tychus Findlay walks back into his life. Years earlier Tychus took the blame for both of them and was incarcerated for nine years. His reappearance in Raynor’s life brings back countless memories of the good ol’ days, and Raynor is forced to constantly defend his friend against the suspicions and accusations of his crew.

As victories accumulate an opportunity arises, a chance to reclaim the Queen of Blades and restore Sarah Kerrigan to her former self arises. However, the source of the offer is Mengsk’s son, bringing him dangerously close to the man he wants dead. The gripping conclusion of the first chapter of the StarCraft II trilogy involves Raynor having to choose between two regrets, two immense sources of guilt, and his decision holds the fate of their world in its hands.

The Poisonwood Bible is the story of the Prices, a Baptist family who moves from Georgia to the unfamiliar wilds of the Congo. Narrated by the five women of the family, the tale is seen and told through the eyes of Orleanna, wife of preacher Nathan Price, and their daughters, Rachel, the eldest, Leah and Adah, the diametric twins, and Ruth May, the youngest. Originally planning on only staying for a year, their missionary tenure in the village of Kilanga is set awry by political upsets, many of which are caused by their own government.

The Prices do not adjust well to life in Africa, and the strain of life in an unfamiliar land is evident in their interactions with one another. While guilt is not present in their lives from the get-go, things take a sharp downhill turn once Nathan Price begins to force Christianity upon the villagers in a manner which borders on antagonistic. Their lives are placed in danger when political unrest begins to encroach on the borders of their existence in Kilanga and natural disasters such as a drought and the resulting famine cause many of them to wish they had never travelled to the Congo in the first place. Guilt’s immense weight finally falls, however, at the death of one of the Price daughters. None of the narrators are exempt from this event, and all are bowed beneath its burden as they move on with their lives, never quite leaving the past behind them.

The second wave of guilt is felt only by some, and it directly involves the once-hopeful nation of the Congo. America’s desire for cheap diamonds and cobalt leads to a scheme that will put the leader they want in charge of the country, a plan which will overthrow the newly-elected Patrice Lumumba, voice of the Congolese. Western guilt lies leaden on the shoulders of most (but not all) of the Price women, the actions of the Belgians in the colonial era and the actions of their own American countrymen in the post-colonial. Lives and hopes lost at the hands of their Western brethren force them to reconsider who they are as people, and to try their best to come to some sort of reconciliation.

Jim Raynor and Orleanna Price both have lines which, while appearing simple on the surface, speak volumes about who they are and what they’ve done with their lives. Facing his final decision Raynor says, “We are who we choose to be,” a line almost stupidly simple at first glance. In it, however, these seven words manage to encompass his decision to turn away from a life of crime to become a marshal, and then a rebel freedom fighter, a path Tychus looks upon scornfully. These words contain within them his choice to set aside revenge for closure, to save lives instead of sit back, and, finally, his decision to choose between what appears just and what could be redemption.

Orleanna, in the first few pages of the book, tells the reader, “One has only a life of one’s own.” This straightforward statement means more and more as the narrative progresses, yet from the beginning it reveals that she does not really feel needed or loved, and thus has only herself as company. As the novel goes on Orleanna makes her own pivotal decision, one that directly affects her remaining daughters and their lives to come. Opting to set aside her weak-willed self and to put on strength and intensity, she becomes a woman motivated by the eventual safety of what family she has left.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty and The Poisonwood Bible both feature protagonists who are riddled with guilt and yet seek freedom from it, who are forced to face it and move on, and who make their largest decisions in the midst of disaster, panic, and betrayal. Both have lived lives full of regrets, yet firmly choose to make one less mistake, for the sake of others and not for themselves.

Kingsolver, Barbara. The Poisonwood Bible. New York: Harper Flamingo, 1998. Print.

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty. V 1.0.1.16195. 31 July 2010. Blizzard Entertainment. 31 July 2010.