Sometimes a Good Notion

Atlas Shrugged –  Ayn Rand : Everyone always told me to read it and in Grad school I found the time to pick up this massive book. I don’t particularly care for the politics and find the logic of Rand’s argument flawed, but the action in this book is exquisite.  The pace is incredibly well timed and it’s a surprising page turner once you get past the repetitious hoo-hah.  It is my lifelong dream to adapt this into a film, and I mean a proper one, with stars and a real budget.

Harry Potter: The Half Blood Prince – J.K. Rowling : My favorite in the series even if someone told me the ending before I had read it.

A Most Wanted Man – John Le Carre:  I’ve read a lot of Le Carre, more of him than any other author,  but there was timeliness to this one that I hadn’t felt before.  It takes place in Hamburg post 9/11 where the CIA, MI6, and the BND have converged around a disillusioned Muslim named Issa.  Le Carre writes smart espionage driven by character and he builds tension by pitting idealism against the practicalities of espionage and mission.  Extraordinary rendition is at the heart of the novel’s tension, and the questions Le Carre poses are worth considering.

Digital Fortress – Dan Brown:  Though not as juicy as say The Davinci Code,  Digital Fortress is non-stop fun.  It’s my favorite Dan Brown book to date.

Cronica de Una Muerte Anunciada – Gabriel Garcia Marquez:  This is a terribly convoluted and wonderful crime story. The idea that the everyone knew that Santiago Nasar was going to be murdered has stuck with me the majority of my life.

Our Man in Havana –  Graham Greene: For me, if it’s not Le Carre it’s Greene. His bumbling fools turned spies are fun and relatable.  His canon has a lot of great books, this is my favorite primarily because of location.

The Great Gatsby – F. Scott Fitzgerald: I just really wanted to go to the parties!

 The Catcher in the Rye – J.D. Salinger: Who doesn’t feel like Holden sometimes?

Beloved – Toni Morrison: This book needs to be read primarily for the brilliance of its structure.

W;t – Margaret Edson: It follows poetry professor Vivian’s last hours of life as she dies from cancer in a hospital. It’s touching, intelligent, and full of humor despite the subject matter.  The contrasts make it rich and wonderful. It can be enjoyed as a play or as an HBO movie starring the terrific Emma Thompson.

If I’ve learned anything from being a Professor the past few years is that preparing a new class is both hard, tedious work and an absolute adventure.  Typing hundreds of pages of lectures is wearisome and sometimes overwhelming. As I’m planning a new course I sometimes feel that I’ll never be finished but the process is also exhilarating.  Each lecture page has to fall into place within the greater narrative of the class and each class must build towards the thesis of a particular course. I try to find ways to communicate with students that are both interesting and challenging to them and to myself.  I want to engage them intellectually at best and keep them awake at worst.  It is work that is never finished. After every term my lectures are filled with notes and adjustments that must be addressed before the start of the next.  The student’s honesty also helps.  Last term one of my screenwriting students told me that I only bored her twice and she reassured me that this was a very good ratio.

Despite the difficulties it’s a process that’s full of discovery.  With every subject I approach I learn something new.  Take for instance my current encounter with some very early Méliès films that I came across as I researched a Film History class I’m teaching this summer.

Méliès, every self-respecting film student, maker, academic, or buff knows as the director of A Trip to the Moon (1902). It is a staple of Film History courses around the world.  I have taken FH courses three times in my academic career and in each the images of Mélièswhacking moon-men with his umbrella have been ingrained in my mind as “important”.   And they are.  Méliès was an early player in the industry and he explored mise-en-scene, montage, and cinematic time before anyone had a name for those things.  Credit must be given and A Trip to The Moon deserves serious discussion.

However, the man made hundreds of films.  What I feel that’s missing in discussions aboutMéliès is the celebration of the pure unadulterated silliness of his films.  The Méliès shorts are cinematic and full of magic.  They, for the most part, don’t have a story or a plot, but not much did at the time.  They present a man, Méliès, more interested in entertaining others than in being remembered for his cinematic contributions.  These short pictures teach us the most important lesson that Méliès had to offer, which is that this is the business we call “show”.

Here are three of my favories: Un Homme de têtes (1898), L’Impressionniste fin de siècle (1899),  Le Diable noir (1905).  Each of these simply for your entertainment.

Un Homme de têtes (1898)