Why are people so nice?

There are some programmes broadcast by the venerable Beeb that, to use those well-worn words, justify in themselves the existence of the licence fee. One such is In Our Time, a BBC Radio Four series that investigates the history of ideas using a format in which national treasure Lord Bragg of Wigton quizes three academics on seemingly random subjects of erudition, from Carl Jung to negative numbers to Goethe.

Yesterday, the show centred on altruism. The studio panel included Professor Richard Dawkins, whose book The Selfish Gene (1974) is perhaps one of the most influential single volumes in recent years, particularly within my own specialty of psychology. The idea behind the selfish gene was not new in 1974, and I doubt that genes-obsessed biologists were stirred much by its appearance, but the idea that a fundamental moral value - that of doing good unto others, particularly at a cost - might have its origin in the replication of essentially 'selfish' genes was an irony so delicious that it helped cement the position of the genetic basis of behaviour within psychology (and, en passant, delivered a final bitch slap to behaviourism). Since then, no psychology undergraduate has emerged from their studies without passing through the 'Dawkins sheep dip'.

Anyway, lots of people find the idea to swallow. Some think that Darwinian evolution (the evolution of speciation on the basis of non-random selection of randomly mutating organisms) is too reductionist to be useful. Reductionism, by the way, is technically defined as taking the fun out of bullshit discussions conducted by people who want it to be complexity all the way down. Others think that selection does not operate at the level of the gene, but at the group, or society. Others still hold for Lamarckian evolution (where, for example, a mother who happens to be a boxer will give birth to a girl with a mean left hook). It's very interesting stuff, and on this podcast you can hear Dawkins having a bit of a ding-dong with a philosophy professor who, I'm slightly embarrassed to say, comes from my alma mater, the University of Exeter.

I'll leave you with this thought: we share half our DNA with bananas.

Carry on.

Technorati Tags:
Darwin, evolution, natural selection, Dawkins, altruism, In Our Time, BBC

Bont. Jamesh Bont.

To the cinematorium, yesterday, the better to watch Daniel Craig's Bond debut in Casino Royale. I have some thoughts on the matter - naturally - but, first, a few Bond factoids. Casino Royale was the name of the first Bond novel, penned by Ian Fleming back in 1953. I haven't read that book, but rumour has it that the film is quite faithful in tone and style. Craig is the first under-forty Bond since George Lazenby (who starred in one of my favourite Bond outings, On Her Majesty's Secret Service). Craig is also the first Bond to have his testicles thumped with a length of rope. To be sure, this is a story that chimes with the observation of Alistair MacLean, who suggested that Fleming's novels were based on 'sex, snobbery and sadism'.

I don't want to review the film explicitly here, because this has been done elsewhere, yonder and roundabout. However, I'd like to articulate the reasons for my growing sadness as I watched.

What's wrong with this picture?

There were some great moments and well-worked set pieces. The tensile strength of the upper lip was maintained despite an excruciating on a rickety chair - and that was before the film started.

Oh, behave, Ian. Behave.

An immortal hero

OK, so the audience knows that - for the soundest of financial reasons - the hero cannot die. What does the storyteller of a thriller do in this circumstance? You've got to provide a proxy; something must be at stake that the hero values as much as, or more than, his life. In Casino Royale, we have the love interest Vesper Lynd, played by French actress Eva Green. I think that Daniel Craig - a terrific actor - manages to 'sell' the connection between himself and Vesper Lynd, but this doesn't really bite until two-thirds through the film. By this point, we've sat through several action set pieces where there is really no jeopardy whatsoever. We have to be entertained by our anticipation of 'how Bond will get out of this one'. That's not really sufficient.

Kinematics

That's right. With a K. Consider the movies The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy, and I would wager that you'll not see two finer films for sheer hooplah, mojo and welly. What's more, they have a depth that, sadly, Casino Royale can only sniff at. But in terms of kinematics: A good director will get competent people to arrange the stunts and their effect will be equally competent...but there will be constant niggles like trucks skidding in an unnatural way, explosions that should kill people but don't, and, crucially: the action set pieces only develop the story at their completion, not during the piece itself. Into this category falls Martin Campbell (cf. his Goldeneye, which suffers from the same problem; mind you, Campbell directed the pretty good The Mask of Zorro). A great director gets the kinetics right; keeps it real. Into this category falls Spielberg (pick any Indiana Jones set-piece), James Cameron (Terminator franchise, ALIENS), and Paul Greengrass (director of The Bourne Supremacy; just watch the final car chase and check your pants afterwards).

Gods from various machines

I'm sorry, but even Bond-James-Bond lacks the psychic power to predict the future. Why, then, does he have gadgets that are so specific they can only be useful in improbable situations - which duly come to pass? In another film, this would be labelled sloppiness. In a Bond film, it's laughed off; but I think a certain uneasiness underlies that laughter. Let's show the scriptwriters the V: verisimilitude. And, by the way, a defibrillator in a glove box? What-now?

Verisimilitude

Not to bang the Bourne drum too often, but why is a spy thriller like The Bourne Supremacy head and shoulders above Casino Royale? One of the key reasons lies in verisimilitude: keeping it real, man. Keep it real. Bourne works within a reality very close to ours - when he goes on a car chase, he needs to look at a map; his advantage in competitive situations comes from cleverness and preparation and tradecraft. Bond works in a rarified reality: when he goes on a car chase, he knows exactly where he's going; he's got the best kit; he's always luckier than his opponent. The pre-title (or was it post title?) sequence when Bond chases the parkour guy over a construction site filled me with dread. Those feats were superhuman. Bond has not been rendered 'gritty' and 'realistic' in this movie; he's the same comic book hero he always was. Why can't be occasionally screw up, like Bourne? OK, so Bond does not violate the verisimilitude of the Bond universe, but in that universe Bond is God, and is there anything more boring than seeing a flawless hero strut his stuff in very tight bathing trunks? I know; depends on the trunks.

Structure

The ending was quite abrupt, and did not sail to the heights of myth intended by the creators. As I heard that final line (which I won't repeat here), I thought, Wow, that must have looked fantastic in the script. But, overall, it didn't work. The ending lacked closure and its abruptness had not been foreshadowed well.

Final word

I liked this film. I had a good time. Some of the stunts were fun and laughed like a donkey at the testicular torture seen (trust me, it is indeed funny). Any given scene was reasonably well constructed, and Daniel Craig's performance was superb. But, seeing this film, I have the feeling that we're in the last few films of the franchise. I just don't think you can maintain a franchise on pyrotechnics and catchphrases alone. You need to tell a compelling story. This ain't it.

Postscript

Oh, can we please grow up and stop using disfigurement as a shorthand for villainy? 'Crikey, that guy has got a massive scar running through his eye! Must have 'evil' runnin' through him like a stick of rock!' Ugly/disfigured = bad. Handsome = good. Jaysus. (Let's not forget that Fleming described Bond as having a conspicuous facial scar.)

Technorati Tags:
James Bond, Ian Fleming, Daniel Craig, Casino Royale, review

An Audience with the King

On Tuesday evening, my girlfriend and I burst into an auditorium stuffed with fans of Stephen King and tried to not to vomit our respective portions of a recent tandoori dinner. Our heaving breaths and panicked arrival were soon forgotten, however, as Stephen King took to the stage. He's a lanky, stooped guy with black hair that curls at the neck. T-shirt: blood red. Boots: Standard issue desert infantry (in support of American soldiers serving in the Middle Eastern Theatre). Sense of humour: bone dry. He speaks in a flattish accent and you could drive a coach and horses through the gaps between his words.

The venue was huge. The crowd huger. Two grand? Three? Low-flying aircraft rattled our dentistry; King quipped that each aircraft was a great mangle of steel and gasoline, and it would not be impossible for one to drop from the sky and plummet through the heart of Battersea. "You all should think about that." Nervous laughter.

King spoke to the (also nervous) interviewer about his writing career; his alcoholism; the bout of pneumonia that brought on Lisey's Story, his latest book; the relationship between the real world and its fictional counterpart; and, to finish, he read some unremarkable sections of his new book. Half the audience had got to their feet before he finished answering his last question - they were busting to join the queue for signing. It looked about two hours long, so my girlfriend and I went to the pub.

On my interpretation, Stephen King sees the Critic as the Devil on his shoulder that just won't shoo. Time and again, his poor critical reception provided a subtext to answers; otherwise his references to the critics were overt. It's easy to see his point. King has received few literary honours in his long and prodigious career. His Distinguished Contribution to American Letters is the exception that proves the rule. Why? Difficult to say. His work is visceral - but that's cool, because books are emotional journeys. His prose is easy on the eye - no problem, Hemingway got there first and bought the T-shirt. I think that his poor critical reception stems from a combination of factors: the horror genre; the popular success; the lack of substantive depth (how much extra would you get from a King novel on second reading?); the faith in narrative clarity; certainly the prose style with its seemingly-effortless appropriation of popular culture and its free use of cliche.

Let me place my cards on the table. I think Stephen King is nothing less than one of the greatest writers of the twentieth century. He does suffer from Beatles's White Album syndrome, where he could be more picky about what he chooses to publish, but...this is the guy who wrote The Stand; The Dead Zone; The Shining; Dolores Claiborne; Rita Hayworth and the Shawshank Redemption. These aren't great literary works, but I regard them as great books (or novellas).

So should his latest, Lisey's Story, be left on the cutting floor or stacked in the window of your local Waterstone's? Well, I'm half way through. The prose style is cliche-ridden; the story straightforward (I can guess the rest of the book and don't expect to be too wrong). Overall, it just about hangs together. I'd put it in the same category as Rose Madder, Insomnia, and The Tommyknockers. It's no classic.

Overall, an interesting occasion. It was staged like a rock concert but, in the end, it's a bloke reading. Special, though. One doesn't get to see Stephen King in person too often (in the UK). Yeah, I'd go again.

Thanks to Watersone's and The Times for organising it. Next time, some proper signs so us country bumpkins, who like to walk, can actually find the venue in time.

There's a podcast of the evening.

Technorati Tags Start

Technorati Tags:
Stephen King, Lisey's Story, interview

Technorati Tags End

The Big 30

Today, alarmingly enough, I entered my fourth decade. This means I'll need to get rid of 'young writer' from the description of this blog. But what will I replace it with? Thirtysomething? I hate that word. Besides, I'm not thirtysomething, dammit, I'm thirty - big difference.

I think I need to eat another piece of birthday cake.

(American) National Novel Writing Month or 'Exploding in a Shower of Blood'

Or NaNoWriMo to its friends. Or 'disrepectful' shenanigans to its detractors. (Thanks to Eric von Rothkirch over at Quantum Storytelling for that link.)

What's NaNoWriMo? Well, for the month of November, would-be writers around the globe - though mostly those charming colonials - will sit down at their computers and write about 1500 words each day. At the end, they'll have 50,000 words of fiction.

First off, 50 grand of wordage gets you a novella, not a novel. Second, why the hell shouldn't this be a great idea? Would-be writers can get together and moan and cajole each other until the word count is reached. Seems like normal writing behaviour to me.

Over at MetaxuCafe, one guy (Mark Leahy) is unhappy at the thought of all these amateurs peeing on his territory. OK; that might be an unkind summary of his post. I suggest you read it and come back.

Done that? Leahy makes a the point that most people would be aghast if doctors approached heart surgery the way writers approach writing (through trial and error. This is not a good argument for several reasons, and here is the first: (1) Books don't explode in a shower of blood if you fuck them up; (2) The heart is a physical system whose properties can be investigated through analytic processes, and these properties can be learned over a number of years' directed study; (3) The properties of a book cannot be objectified in the same way, therefore cannot be learned through directed study, and therefore must be learned through trial and error - in other words, until you've fiddled with your fiction and had it explode in a shower of blood a couple of times, you probably won't know what you're doing. Good luck to the heart surgeon in Leahy's story; he'll need it.

And as for your NaNoWriMo lingonauts - take an umbrella, and God speed.

Technorati Tags:
NaNoWriMo