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A Request to Imagine is the Monday Meme


I was reading a review of a book written by a book critic on the art of writing.* The reviewer pulled a sentence from the book where the critic, James Woods, takes to task the idea that many writers apparently hold quite dear in that realistic fiction is too conventional. He says,

“Fiction does not ask us to believe things (in the philosophical sense) but to imagine them (in the artistic sense).”

I love that last part about asking the reader to imagine. Such a simple and yet daunting task.

There is so little imagination in day to day living.

How can we combat this? Comment or link back, s’il vous plait.

*That’s mainly what I do with highbrow “how to write” books. I read the reviews. When I buy them, they sit on the self. When I check them out of the library, I return them skimmed at best. Perhaps I need to pencil in a few weeks of reading about the art of writing? But I am booked through January with writing projects already.

The Godsend that is Google


All my life I have been plagued with a compulsion to know more. Television shows, movies, newspaper or magazine articles and books sent me running to the library to find more information on whatever, or whoever, struck my odd fancy.

I remember one blissful summer during university when I lived right across the street from the public library.

Right across the street!

The hours I whiled away in the non-fiction stacks, thumbing through tomes on subjects so trivial I might as well have been aspiring to a career on Jeopardy. But it was heavenly.

While I still love researching “by hand”, I am more likely to google something today than not.

“Google it.”

Bestowing action on a noun. Did that become commonplace with the rise of the search engine? Or have we always been inclined to morphing words?

My latest search topic is Edward R. Murrow and McCarthyism.

I don’t recall spending a lot of time on Sen. McCarthy in school. Most of what I know about the blacklisting and persecution of that time, I learned through the movies and reading about the entertainment industry. For example my googling today is a result of watching Good Night, Good Luck last evening. Well, watching half of it anyway. It’s not riveting but so much of history – the really important stuff – falls into this category it seems.

The movie, and the era it chronicles, has modern day implications.

Instead of a black list, we have a no fly and watch lists.

Instead of the media calling American’s attention to the misuse of power and pointing out how easily it could happen to anyone, our media distracts – when it doesn’t aid and abet.

The movie is drier than dust and unless you know that time period, and the industry, it’s hard to figure out who the players are aside from Murrow, Fred Friendly and William Paley. However, the irony of the fact that it was the media using McCarthy’s own words to bring him down, and the fact that this first use of “sound-bites” is what is now killing democracy in the U.S. by inches and yards, makes it worth slogging through.

The movie starts with a 1958 speech Murrow gave that all but ended his career at CBS. My research indicates he was not unaware of the effect he’d had on the television news industry and was uncomfortable even with the tools he helped pioneer. The speech reflects this when he accuses television, in so many words, of being an opiate of the masses* when it should be a tool of enlightenment for them.

A good movie for election year viewing and a not uninteresting mini-research sojourn either.

*A little irony in my choice of phrases as Karl Marx first used it to describe religion which I guess you could say television replaced.

Dan in Real Life: Our Friday Night Movie Pick


As many of you know, Rob and I frequently cuddle up in bed with his laptop and a DVD from our public library. The library has quite an impressive collection. We have seldom been unable to find a film that strikes our fancy and often we choose movies from the sneak peaks that are provided on the DVD’s we have seen.

Dan in Real Life though was something I read about on MSN. We are Steve Carell fans and investigate his movies even if we don’t end up checking them out of the library.

I warned Rob upfront that it was a chick flick and he lamented the fact that all the really funny actors eventually succumb to the dreaded genre. It wasn’t until he was firing up the computer and inserting the disc that I mentioned the storyline was that of a widower falling in love again.

“Just had to keep the streak alive, didn’t you?” was his arched eyebrow comment*.

The main character Dan, played by Carell, is an advice columnist on the verge of syndication and raising his three daughters somewhere in Jersey. During a trip to his family’s summer home for their annual get together, he meets a woman by chance in a bookstore and they click. However the woman turns out to be his brother’s new girlfriend. Romantic comedy ensues.

The supporting cast is great**. The subplots are humorous but realistic. Dan’s widowhood is central to the story, not in a “in your face way”, but merely as just another circumstance of his life that makes him who he is and explains the way he deals with many of the issues that come up.

And it made us laugh. Both of us. Despite the mediocre reviews the film got when it came out, it is worth a viewing in the privacy of one’s living room, den or bedroom – as is our wont mostly because of the lack of living room furniture thing.

Being widowed, I was especially touched by the tiny details. For example, the opening scene is early in the morning with the alarm going off. Dan reaches out to the empty side of the bed and you can see he is clearly lonely. The camera pulls back to reveal that his late wife’s side of the bed is made and covered with papers and books and whatnot. Another scene at his parent’s home finds Dan being set up for the stay in the laundry room. Rob thought that was funny until I pointed out that naturally he wouldn’t get a real bedroom like his married siblings. It’s not as if he had a wife to consider. And of course there is the constant but well-meaning advice of his parents and siblings to “get back out there already”***.

Of course movie nights mean being tired the next day. We always end up staying up way too late regardless of how early we get started. Isn’t that the way of “dates”?

Dan in Real Life is a good flick. You should give it a look if the opportunity presents.

*Anyone who has been reading here a while knows that Rob and I have a habit of picking/watching movies with death and widowhood themes even when we try not to pick them out.

**The brother is played by Dane Cook who is a comedian Rob often hears on XM and had been on that very day with a bit about his first blow-job and and car door handles. It’s here on YouTube.

***There is a great subplot with one of his teen daughters falling in love that is the perfect metaphor for the newly minted adult single back “out there”. The compare/contrast is great.