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The
Maplewoods Mirror #30 - October 2008
Welcome to my monthly newsletter on life and
writing. If you want to see my website for past issues and other
news, please visit www.chrismeeks.com. I also have a new
author site
(click here)
To see a three-minute video about my newly
published book, click here.
In This Issue
UPCOMING
I will be reading my short story “Dracula
Slinks Into the Night” from Months and Seasons on Halloween night at
Skylight Books in Los Feliz. I will be joined by a handful of fine writers
from the Master of Professional Writing Program at USC, who will be
offering their Halloween-themed short stories, too. It’s free and open to
the public. I’ll even sign books. The bookstore is located at 1818 N.
Vermont Avenue. October 31, 7:30 p.m.
My UCLA Extension fiction classes, which used
to be on the Occidental College campus, will be at UCLA Extension’s new
location in downtown Los Angeles in 2009. The address is: Figueroa
Courtyard, 261 S. Figueroa Street, Suite 100 West. I’ll be teaching
“Essential Beginnings” in the winter quarter, and “Writers’ Workout” in the
spring quarter. “Essential Beginnings,” a ten-week class, starts Tuesday, January
13, 7 p.m.
My newest short story "The Natant
Poet" is available on better newsstands in the Gander Press
Review, Fall 2008. You can also read the story by clicking here.
I just finished rewriting my novel, The
Brightest Moon of the Century. The book will be
published next year.
SANTANA, SOBOBA, AND TIME
Thomas Wolfe may have said you can’t go home
again, but it sure seemed like one could with colored lights and Carlos
Santana and band wailing though the percussive and guitar-screaming “Soul
Sacrifice” in an outdoor grandstand at, of all places, the Sobaba Casino in
an Indian reservation near Hemet, California. Who said that a farmer’s
field near Woodstock, New York, was any more of a logical place for magic
to happen? Lightning struck twice 39 years apart.
The grandstand at the Soboba
Casino
My sister Laura had called me up with two
front-row seats to this event, which meant driving two hours, first toward
Palm Springs, then diving south through the San Jacinto mountains to the
flats of Hemet. Tucked up against the bare mountainside, the casino is
nothing more than a Reno Walmart of slot machines, cigarette smoke, and a
steak house not much more glorious than Norm’s. The only thing I noticed
that differed from my gas stops in Nevada in my twenties was that the slot
machines no longer spit out quarters or anything metallic. You slip in a
magnetic card or dollar bills. If you win, the machine sings out recorded
coins dropping and stamps a receipt for redemption --or for insertion in
another machine.
The real music, though, emanated outside in
what looked like a grandstand made for rodeo shows, with bench-style
seating around the perimeter. We sat on folding chairs up front and on the
left side of the stage. Once we were seated, I heard one security guard on
the other side of the rail from us tell another, “Six minutes.” That guard
then said into his headset, “Six minutes.”
And in six minutes Carlos Santana, 61, wearing
a ski cap, sunglasses, and a white printed t-shirt strode out to applause.
He didn’t look like my memory of him at Woodstock.
When I saw the movie Woodstock at the
Hopkins Theatre with my high school buddies in 1970, the film took me out
of what then felt like dull raspberry-growing taconite-tailing Minnesota
and into the center of a cultural wave. These were my people, and Santana,
a young 22, thin and muscled, had fingers like rockets. Some notes that he
held made his mouth tighten as if he were pushing them out, chords from his
heart. Who was this Santana guy? I hadn’t heard of him until then, but he
made me and the whole theatre-full of youth shout out to the screen.
Carlos
Santana at Woodstock, 1969
As I looked at my fellow concertgoers on
Sunday, September 28 at Soboba, a hell of a lot of thin-haired and rotund
people smiled back. Some people probably shouldn’t wear tube tops or
t-shirts anymore, but others were trim in well-pressed shirts. The smell of
pot was noticeably absent. Sober and unstoned, the Woodstock nation had
aged. So had Carlos Santana, yet his guitar didn’t notice the difference.
Satana’s fingers remained rockets. And know what? The audience fell right
in.
Once he started up, we were young again. People
danced. Two young women to the right of me danced so hard, their long hair
obscured their faces. That incredible beat that three-sets of percussion
can bring --drums with Dennis Chambers, timbales with Karl Perazzo, and
congas with Raul Rekow --made our bodies move. As I photographed Laura, a
young woman nearby leaped in to dance for the photos, too. Everyone here
became friends.
I flashed on the one other time I’d seen
Santana live: in 1976 at Arizona State University at noon under the hot sun
with 50,000 other fans. Peter Frampton was the headliner, and Barbra
Streisand was also filming a scene with Kris Kristofferson for the film A
Star is Born. I’d been on Spring break (March 20, to be exact; to see a
poster and ticket stub, click here).
Then, tickets were only $3.50, not $150.00, but
a friend and I arrived late, so we sat far back, the distant stage the size
of my outstretched hand. Sitting up front is better. My son Zach, now 21,
thin and muscled, now goes to ASU. Life is indeed circular.
As with lead-guitarist compadres Eric Clapton,
BB King, and even Jimmy Hendrix (whom Santana riffed for a short time), the
man’s guitar was not a mere instrument but an extension of the man’s soul.
Santana has dubbed this summer’s performances the Live Your Light Tour.
Percussionist
Karl Perazzo
“We believe in the concept of live your light,”
he said at the microphone between songs, and he went onto talk about the
magic of God. “Even athiests who are here have to admit that when you’re
making love and you’re feeling fine, you don’t blurt out, ‘Oh, me,’ or ‘Oh,
you,’ but you say ‘Oh, God’. God is in church and between the sheets. He is
everywhere.”
He also added that everyone is part of a “beam
of light that comes from the mind of God.” I can’t say it came off
eloquently, but he certainly believes what he says, finding that his
spirituality transforms into music.
At times, I’ve found a spiritual component when
I write. I won’t call it God, but I like what playwright Jerome Lawrence
called it: divine happenstance. While music remains a mysterious art for
me, I can fall right into it--as I did at this concert.
Highlights of the night were jazz pieces that I
didn’t recognize, a country-western song that he wrote, and a few classics:
“Black Magic Woman,” “Oye Coma Va,” “No One to Depend On,” “Smooth,” and
“Maria Maria.”
Keyboardist
Chester Thompson
I’d only sat up front at a concert once in my
life: Yes with Rick Wakeman in Denver. What I’d forgotten about up front
was that’s where all the speakers were, and they faced us like a thousand
Roman archers. When Santana took the stage, those suckers felt like hands
slapping my chest. The benefit of being slightly to one side was that the
wall of tweeters weren’t biting my eardrums. When I walked down the aisle,
though, I could actually feel a breeze coming at me and the high-end sound
felt like nails.
When the band plunged into “Soul Sacrifice” for
its encore, clips of Santana playing at Woodstock came onscreen. It
reminded everyone how we’ve all aged --and so what? We can still dance,
live, and laugh, and for nearly three hours, we were worry-free.
Vocalist
Andy Vargas
If you want to still catch his tour, he’s
coming to Los Angeles October 3 and 4, Las Vegas on October 4, and Santa
Barbara on October 6.
To get a taste of the Carlos Santana, try one
of the following videos by clicking on any of the three links below. The
videos have had millions of hits, so they are amazingly popular.
“Smooth”
“Maria, Maria”
“Soul Sacrifice” at
Woodstock 1969
THE COEN BROTHERS--BURN
AFTER READING AND OTHER THOUGHTS ON HUMOR
It was my birthday, so my wife let me choose
the movie. She hadn’t quite forgiven me from last year when I convinced her
and my cousin Elisabeth to rush to No Country For Old Men. Not
knowing anything about the movie at the time, I found the title funny, and
I said, “You want to laugh, don’t you? You’ll love the Coen Brothers and
this movie.”
When they were both bent over cringing and
shielding their eyes from the ruthless killer Chigurh killing yet another
person with a bulky cattle gun, my wife gasped, “So when’s the funny part?”
Ethan
and Joel Coen
Last week I might have been pushing it when I
said let’s see Burn After Reading--but it was my birthday. My wife
said okay, though, and smiled. It’s a small moment that made me cheer.
Perhaps because I grew up in Minnesota like the
Coens, and our mutually shared cultural background included grazing at the
local Swedish Smorgasbord, I get their humor. I’m happy to report my wife
laughed in Burn After Reading--outright sustained laughter. It’s a
comedy, and a brilliant, controlled one at that. Time magazine’s
movie critic Richard Corliss, however, says, “If there's a knock on Joel
and Ethan Coen, the writer-director brothers who otherwise have enjoyed a
quarter-century of critical acclaim, it's that they betray a condescension,
almost a contempt, for the people they've created.” Corliss basically feels
the movie is about stupid people doing stupid things.
I can agree that the characters portrayed by
George Clooney, Frances McDormand, Brad Pit and others do stupid things,
and that they are also not necessarily imbued with a lot of gray matter,
but the Coens and the actors love these people --and those people are us.
We do stupid things.
And isn’t that what comedy is--real life amped
up by hyperbole? I recently saw again Some Like It Hot, which had
Tony Curtis and Jack Lemon dressed up as women to play in an all-girl band
with Marilyn Monroe. Was what they did rationale? No, it was stupid--and
funny.
In Raising Arizona, another Coen
comedy, Nicholas Cage’s character, Hi, may as well be a comedic Willy
Loman. He’s trying to get by in this world as we all are. A trip to the
convenience store to get diapers is pushed beyond belief and includes an
amazing car chase, yet the pathos beneath it all is believable.
What about the humor in The Incredibles?
That family is our family. Did you see Superbad? It’s stupid
people doing stupid things, and I can’t help but love McLovin and the
others. Those teenagers are funny to me--and beneath it all, real.
In fact, great humor reveals truths. In Burn
After Reading, Frances McDormand’s character tries calling her HMO to
speak with an agent about why she was denied coverage for cosmetic surgery.
The automated phone system drives her nuts--and who hasn’t felt that? In
fact, it’s the small moments these characters have that make me nod in
agreement: this is life. It’s an absurd one. It’s one I can wrap my arms
around, just as I do my wife.
If you don’t laugh at the movie’s
end--well,then, I guess you don’t get it. Corliss doesn’t.
REVIEWER ON REVIEWING
Part of my past includes stints as a book
reviewer, first at the Los Angeles Daily News, then for the
now-defunct Herald-Examiner. After that, I reviewed theatre for
eight years with Daily Variety. I never saw reviewing as a sport. I
wasn’t out to “get” anyone or to have fun at his or her expense. What I did
was more than a report. After hooking the reader with a fact or observation,
I wrote part news, part reaction, and at times part history or
insight. I learned things along the way.
I also saw a well-written review as starting a
dialogue. For instance, I witnessed the world premiere of Margaret Edson’s
play Wit, and I was awed. I had to shout out that people had to see
this play and why. Other reviewers seeing it at the same time joined in,
and audiences found the play. It won the Pulitzer Prize eventually.
That’s a rare case. Most things I saw were not
terrible or fabulous but mixed. It’s hard to write a mixed review because I
wanted to encourage more and better books and plays, not less. If a
particular piece didn’t reach its intentions, I often wanted to encourage
the writer nonetheless, celebrating what had worked and pointing out areas
of concern.
My first work where I received reviews rather
than give them was eye opening. I had been anxious in waiting for the
reviews. Would people understand my piece? Would they laugh and yet see my
serious points? Or would I be excoriated in front of the public?
My piece wasn’t fiction but a full-length play,
1993’s Suburban Anger, directed well by Jon Lawrence Rivera. I’d
been reviewing theatre for a few years at that point, but I’d never
analyzed the state of theatre criticism in L.A. For my play, most reviewers
loved it or hated it. There were no mixed reviews. One called it a serious
attempt to explore white suburban guilt, post-Los Angeles riots. Another
reviewer suggested I should be fired from CalArts.
In those days, I was also interviewing a lot,
and I had the pleasure to interview theatre and opera director Peter
Sellars, who premiered Nixon in China and The Death of
Klinghoffer. He told me that as long as the reviews are
passionate, even if in disgust, it shows you touched a nerve. Sellars said
he worried about mild reviews --then he wasn’t doing something right. So I
guess I was doing something right.
Then again, I’ve written thousands of pages
since then, and I’ve poured out hundreds of articles and reviews on
deadline, which has probably made me a better writer. I’m not sure I’d
review my first play well at this point. Still, it was a good place to
start.
The reviewers who’ve approached my two books of
fiction have started a dialogue, and I like that. I feel part of a bigger
community. The first review of Months and Seasons came from Marc
Schuster on the website Small Press Reviews, where Schuster reviewed
it early because “I couldn’t take my eyes off the cover.” The whole piece
is well written, and he gave the memorable line, perfect for quoting: “The
stories in Months and Seasons are like potato chips: you can’t read
just one.” (Click
here for the whole review.)
Grady Harp, a top-ten reviewer on Amazon.com as
well as for other places, has written one of the longest and most thorough
on the book. In his review, he quotes from a number of the collection’s
stories, then writes, “In excerpting little passages from this book this
reader hopes to convey the spectrum of experience gained from reading
Christopher Meeks. He writes with a blend of hilarious humor, significant
angst, philosophical bents in the manner many people inhabit ‘beliefs’ to
continue their lives in this somewhat discombobulated world, and offers us
fresh views of ordinary people whose lives for even a few moments become
extraordinary.” (Click
here for the whole review.)
Considering the number of reviews Harp has
written--3,895 reviews so far--I was impressed at the depth of his writing.
I learned in an article about him
that he’s a poet and retired surgeon. That shows one aspect of today’s
Internet. If you want to be a reviewer, you can be. No one stands in your
way.
While column inches of book reviews are
disappearing in newspapers --witness what’s happened at the Los Angeles
Times--the Internet is providing not just inches but feet.
The two reviews above and others that followed
led me to reading a number of other book reviews and other reviewers. I’m
seeing two types of review: critical examinations and book reports. The
former takes more work. The latter provides reaction and approval or
disapproval. I’m most fascinated by the why of something--what makes
it great or not?--which is why I like the longer reviews. My own reviewing
led me to ask why often and helped make me a better playwright and
fiction writer.
Considering that many website reviewers are
reading so much--a book every four days or more--a critical look may be
something they have no time for. Other reviewers, new to the business, may
not know what to add beyond reactions.
Because I reviewed for newspapers, I have my
own thoughts for those who might take up blogging about books or theatre
and want to be the best at it. For those of you who aim to be a critical
reviewer and may even want to eventually get paid for it, here are some
suggestions:
-- A great review is an essay. Your first draft
might jump from point to point, but in the end, consider having a thesis
statement. Each paragraph should be tied to that thesis.
-- As in all good essays, each paragraph offers
a main point, and you can support some points by quoting from the text. God
is in the specifics. If you’re reviewing theatre, take notes during the
play. In particular, write down the first and last lines of dialogue. If
you’re reviewing books, mark them up. Highlight passages that may be
significant. That way, too, you can find quotes and important points more
easily.
-- If the book is funny, then quote something
funny. If you adore the style, quote a bit to reflect the style.
Give
flowers when you can
-- Think about the content to arrive at an
appropriate theme for the work. Can the work be compared to any other
contemporary writers? Can it connect to any cultural or literary trend?
-- If the book is nonfiction, you might
research and find out relevant facts that support or disagree with the book
you’ve read. For both fiction or nonfiction, it’s worth researching the
author. Does his or her past work connect to the present work? Are there
common themes that poke through?
-- When I reviewed plays that had had other
productions, I’d often find reviews of previous productions, especially
original productions. My local library had bound copies of New York
Times theatre reviews from the last century --very handy. After all, I
needed to be an expert on the play at hand. Now with databases on the
Internet, reviews from any important newspaper or journal can be found for
a price. If you want to save yourself cost, use a public library’s
computer. Libraries often subscribe to Proquest, Nexis-Lexus, and other
expensive and thorough databases.
-- For plays, comment when you can on what the
director may have done to help or hinder the playwright. How did the actors
and designers (set, costume, lighting, sound) add to the whole?
-- Ideally, conclude your review with a fresh
point, one that the whole review has driven toward. Sometimes it’s to
affirm whether it’s worth the reader’s time or money. Other times, it’s a
restatement of the thesis or a conclusion beyond the thesis.
-- Print out your review and proofread it on
paper. Grammar and spelling count. It’s so hard to miss mistakes onscreen,
and you don’t want to look silly. I’ve seen titles of books and authors
misspelled. Also, see if you can simplify some of your sentences if you
write long ones.
-- As you’re reading your review, ask yourself,
“What will make a reader of this review want to read the whole way
through?” Cut anything unnecessary.
-- Love what you do. Have fun. There’s no point
in reviewing things that you know in advance you’ll hate. It’s fine,
though, to try something that you’re not an expert in. Some reviewers have
tackled my short stories, not really understanding short stories, but then
they did a little research and learned. You will learn things and be better
for it.
One book that dives into this whole subject in
more depth is The
Slippery Art of Book Reviewing by Mayra Calvani and Anne K.
Edwards.
I’m a believer in learn-by-doing, so go ahead
and start your website or blog and review. You’ll be better for it.
LINKS TO PAST ISSUES
If you missed the past issue or didn't see it
with photos, you can go to www.chrismeeks.com.
Scroll down to get the issue of the Maplewoods Mirror that you want.
The photos add a lot.
See you next time,
--Chris
For reviews or more
information on my books below, click on the cover.
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