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The Drunken Odyssey

~ A Podcast About the Writing Life

The Drunken Odyssey

Monthly Archives: January 2020

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #53: The End of the End of the World

15 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #53 by Drew Barth

The End of the End of the World

It’s 2020. The end of the world feels like it’s breathing down our necks. Let’s assuage those feelings by talking about a different end of the world: East of West. I’ve talked about the series early last year. Begun in 2013 by Jonathan Hickman and Nick Dragotta, East of West was one of those staple Image series. From its impeccable world-building of an America ruled by an apocalypse cult to its characters built so well they could each head their own solo series, East of West was one of the best series Hickman released in the last decade.

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How do you talk about the end of a series that has been building toward the end of the world?

In Hickman and Dragotta’s world, the Four Horsemen walk among the people and one of them has a kid. This creates the main driving force at the core of East of West—three of those horsemen will drag the world, kicking and screaming, into the apocalypse while one wishes to prevent it. Ironically, that horseman is Death. And Death is our main focus throughout the series. The close of the story comes with the death of Death and the end of the apocalypse.

 

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What makes Hickman and Dragotta’s apocalypse story so unique is the lack of the apocalypse. Nigh every leader in this America has been chosen by the Message—a series of texts that prophesied the end of the world—to deliver the apocalypse to their world. But in their efforts to do so, these characters only bring about an end to themselves. The Message is like a textual cancer—infecting, spreading, and decimating everything in its path. But the Message is indiscriminate in its destruction as everything dies around it. Until it is stopped. And it is stopped simply by not following it. Veering from the road map to the end times means that end never comes.

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An apocalypse built on the backs of hope is what East of West delivers in its final moments. And its hope is not something brought about by some grand power, but by the people who would have to live out the end times if they had truly arrived. As an ending, it feels especially poignant walking into this new decade, but that feels like what we need from the end of the world—hope. Thousands die over the course of East of West and the world is basically teetering on the brink of complete oblivion, but the idea that it can be brought back, that the teetering doesn’t have to tip over the edge, means they didn’t die for the apocalypse. That idea of hope and change and turning the world around through the efforts of people is what is going to make Hickman and Dragotta’s story so poignant well into the future.

Get excited. Stop the end.


drew-barth-mbfi

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Episode 401: Steve Almond and Carolyn Forché!

11 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Creative Nonfiction, Episode, Memoir

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Episode 401 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

This week, I offer another round of conversations from Miami Book Fair International, in which I talk to Steve Almond about his favorite novel, Stoner by John Williams,

Steve Almond

plus I speak with poet Carolyn Forché about her memoir, All You Have Heard is True.

Carolyn_Forché_NBCC_2011_Shankbone.jpg

TEXTS DICSUSSED

Stoner

What You Have Heard is True

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Please help decide TDO’s future by filling out this 3-minute survey.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Episode 401 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

The Curator of Schlock #305: It’s Alive

10 Friday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Film, Horror, The Curator of Schlock

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The Curator of Schlock #305 by Jeff Shuster

It’s Alive

There’s only one thing wrong with the Davis baby: it’s alive. 

How ‘bout that Babu Frik? Okay. I’ve got nothing to talk about. It’s a new year and a new decade and why do I get the feeling that this decade will not be as much fun as the Roaring Twenties? Certainly, this year’s offerings from Hollywood don’t exactly pique my interest. Untitled Universal Event Film? What is that? Was Cats the Untitled Universal Event Film of 2019? Oh, I will be covering that at some point, but I will not be paying money for that nonsense. In the meantime, let’s ignore our current era and look to the past for cinematic goodness.

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Tonight’s movie is 1974’s It’s Alive from director Larry Cohen. The movie centers on the Davis family and the troubles that result from the little bundle of joy they are expecting. Frank Davis (John P. Ryan) and his wife, Lenore (Sharon Ferrell), drop their son, Chris (Daniel Holzman), off with a family friend because Lenore is about to have a baby. At the hospital, Frank hangs out in the waiting room for a few hours while his wife and the doctors contend with the fact that she’s about to give birth to a mutant.

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Seriously, the baby has claws and fangs and manages to tear apart half of the hospital staff before going into hiding. Naturally, Mr. Davis is none too pleased that the hospital staff lost his newborn son, but maybe that had something to do with them bleeding out.

The news media leaks that it was the Davis family that brought a killer, mutant baby into the world. Frank works as a publicist for an advertising film, but they’re hoping he’ll take his vacation days during this difficult time for all concerned. By taking his vacation, they really mean that he’s fired. Clients don’t want the father of the killer mutant baby in charge of their publicity. They can be touchy that way. Frank doesn’t let his son, Chris, back home. He tells him the baby is sick. Fortunately, Chris didn’t hear the news about the killer, mutant baby.

I think it’s alluded to that a pharmaceutical company may be responsible for the mutated pregnancy. And some scientists offer to pay one hundred thousand dollars to the Davis family for the rights to experiment on their killer mutant baby. Frank Davis accepts their offer. Can you blame him?

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I know many of you out there would love your baby boy no matter how many people he killed and ate.

Yes, I think this kid is taking chunks out of his victims.

Waste not, want not.

Frank begins noticing some unusual behavior from his wife, Lenore. Seems she’s having the milkman drop off a few extra bottles of milk than usual. And the fridge is stuffed with lots meat she must have picked up from the butcher shop. I bet she’s planning a barbeque for the neighborhood. I guess all that milk is for some homemade ice cream she’s going to make. It couldn’t possible mean that the killer mutant baby is inside their house and she’s feeding the damned thing.

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It’s Alive will end in tears (as if it could end any other way). But it’s got a killer mutant baby in it. That’s well worth your time.

So how ‘bout that Zorii Bliss?


Jeffrey Shuster 3

Photo by Leslie Salas.

Jeff Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, episode 131, and episode 284) is an MFA graduate from the University of Central Florida.

Aesthetic Drift #24: On Steven Moffat’s Dracula

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift, Horror, Television

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Tags

Dracula, Netflix, Proverbs from Hell, Steven Moffat

Aesthetic Drift #24 by Michael W. Merriam

On Steven Moffat’s Dracula

I often resent television. I feel better compensated for my time when I listen to audio drama or read books. When I saw there was a new Dracula series on Netflix, I knew I’d only want to see it if somehow Steven Moffat had written it.

 

In Dracula, Bram Stoker gave the world a complex and cryptic masterpiece. The book is epistolary, a trunk full of letters and clues, and it’s only because it’s famous that we know it will amount to more than the sum of its parts. Though it has some clear plot points, many of its ideas are hard to detect, and much of what passes for its story are assumptions. The “story” inside it is something the reader must make up for himself. To read it is to re-invent it, on the fly.

Dracula

Steven Moffat’s stock in trade is re-invention. His genius is in not in stories, but in his take on them. The first scene of his Dracula re-writes the novel in a weirdly faithful way: the wooden stakes we see in Sister Agatha’s bag before she starts her interview,  her hilarious false-interest in Dracula’s sex life, and her rant about God (similar to one given by a sister in Don DeLilo’s White Noise) make the script literate without being literary. This marks the divergence between the subversive and the simply dumb.

dracula netflix review

Moffat rarely settles for a cheap surprise, always holding out for true subversion that makes story twists satisfying. The subversions of this Dracula are so deft and pleasantly startling, the script feels like a promising early work, one left sitting in Moffat’s desk since before his exhaustion at the hands of Doctor Who. Even so, this new Dracula (while very good) is not quite intricate enough to demand a re-watch. As the novel was a bit of a puzzle, I found that disappointing.

The show’s only bad moments involve the villain’s wise-cracks, marred with anachronistic turns of phrase.  It’s tempting to blame Gatiss’s writing, but the same dialogue-landmines were everywhere in Moffat’s Jekyll, so he must shares the blame. Quipping villains (traditionally) help us sympathize with the devil, and at their best they’re like one of William Blake’s Proverbs From Hell: “Excess of sorrow laughs, excess of joy weeps.” Maybe a dim memory of that explains why critics still consider sympathetic villains a sign of excellent writing. That and some nostalgia for Byronic darkness might be why otherwise good writers cram wit into their villains’ mouths. Stoker would not have approved, since his novel’s theme was that mankind is already, by its nature, sympathetic to evil; Stoker’s art shows us why we shouldn’t be. This show abandons that theme, which is why it sometimes lacks daring.

Bram_Stoker_1906

Bram Stoker in 1906.

Bram Stoker’s Dracula was written just as the first rays of 20th century prose threatened the deathless clichés of the 19th. In Dracula, handwritten letters are full of misunderstandings and pompous mistakes, while practical, typewritten ones actually help the good guys win. It’s a book about how an ancient monster was ultimately no match for incredible new wonders of the age, like telephones, and women who can type. When the good guys win, it’s less like David killing Goliath and more like War of the Worlds, where ultimately, the germs of our planet took the alien invaders down. Dracula was not a story of heroic victory, until the reader accepted that true heroism lay in careful, sharp perception. That insight drives the humor, horror, and surprises in the Gatiss / Moffat adaptation. It is absent from all others I’ve seen.

dracula Netflix

Deep faithfulness aside, the show betrays the book in exactly the right way, too: the show’s writing isn’t cryptic—it’s just clever in its exploration the original text.  Together, these episodes provide a grandly entertaining vision of the novel. If nothing else, their Dracula is a good way to enjoy the depth and suggestiveness of the old story.

If you feel you’d rather watch something else on Netflix, let me remind you: there’s a library near your house, and you should go there instead.


Michael Merriam

Michael Merriam is a writer and game designer based in Orlando, Florida. His work has been featured in the LA Review of Books, Time Out, The New Yorker, and World Literature Today, among other publications. He is the co-founder of Partly Wicked, a blog that explores escape rooms and other cryptic immersive media, and he teaches Writing for Games at Full Sail University.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #52: Tokyo Roommates

08 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart, manga

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Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #52 by Drew Barth

Tokyo Roommates

The slice-of-life genre has become a staple of manga for decades now. Small stories on the incongruities and oddities of everyday living coupled with a hint of comedic absurdity has turned a genre that focuses on quieter moments into one of the most popular genres being published today. Take Hikaru Nakamura’s Saint Young Menas a staple of the genre. Begun in 2008 and available for the first time in English just this past December, Saint Young Men focuses on two friends leaving their homes to take a gap year in Tokyo. They celebrate Christmas, they struggle to pay rent, they visit amusement parks, and typically live an ordinary life in a small apartment together. And those two friends are Buddha and Jesus Christ.

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It isn’t simply the divine cast that has made Saint Young Men such a popular series among fans, but rather the simple humanity of the series as well as Nakamura’s picturesque approach to storytelling and comedy. Many of the stories in this first volume deal with the mundane: having enough rent money after an extravagant purchase, beginning a new hobby, or visiting the local community swimming pool. Nakamura is the kind of artist that is able to dive deep into those simple moments and extract something essentially human about Buddha and Jesus having a small argument over how much money they’ve been spending. More than anything, these are two friends living together—they have their inconsiderate moments and they are able to work through their issues together as well.

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Much of the comedy in the series as well stems from the clashing of these friend’s two personalities. Jesus is the impulsive one who will spend most of their money at the end of the month with rent coming due, while Buddha is much more level-headed, but still has his own moments of indignation. As the series progresses, a rapport between Jesus and Buddha develops and we see aspects of their personalities beginning to influence the other. Nakamura continually strikes a wonderful balance in the characters here: they maintain themselves as serialized comedic characters—never lapsing into easy tropes—but still showing aspects of growth throughout. Maintaining these characters over the years has been one of the main reasons why Saint Young Men has persisted as a favorite across the internet despite its limited availability.

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Saint Young Men now joins a pantheon of manga that, after over a decade of publication, is finally available for western readers to read legally. Coupled with the recent translations of Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure: Diamond is Unbreakable, many fan favorite series are finally seeing official releases from publishers like Viz Media and Kodansha USA and this can only be a good thing as the decade continues. There are still dozens of series that have yet to receive official, published releases, but hopefully Saint Young Men is only the beginning to more fantastic manga into eager reader’s hands.

Get excited. Pick up something fun.


drew-barth-mbfi

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

Method to Madness

07 Tuesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Blog Post

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Check out this wonderful writing space.

The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler #1

05 Sunday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Sozzled Scribbler

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The Anonymous Diaries of a Sozzled Scribbler

As transcribed by DMETRI KAKMI

January 2020

Now that Prince Andrew has stepped down from Official Duties he has time to see me more often.

As it happens we were taking lunch at the Savage Club, an exclusive gentlemen’s retreat in the heart of Melbourne, when a gruff man by the name of Camilla Parker Bowles joined us and apropos of nothing announced that from now on he is non-binary and wishes to be addressed as They or Them, a grammatical anomaly which would make Doctor Johnson’s head spin like Linda Blair’s in The Exorcist.

Knowing his Royal Highness as I do, I could see his interest was piqued. After all it is not every day one encounters ones brother’s second wife in a newly reconstituted masculine state, though it must be said Camilla always had more testicular frontage than anyone at the Palace, except perhaps for the Queen Mother.

Prince Andrew allowed Camilla to go on.

‘I don’t want to be associated with toxic masculinity anymore,’ They quoth, as though a William Peter Blatty-esque Legion spoke through Them in a polyphonous cacophony. ‘From now on I’m non-binary, of no ethnicity, and of no color whatsoever. My new name is Quanella Kendis. If you don’t acknowledge me as such you are adding to my already oppressed oppression.’

Silence emanated like incense from His Royal Highness. Only the sound of knifes and forks on fine bone china dominated the lofty room.

‘You know of course,’ said I, looking up from a rather dry baked potato, ‘that Them is a horror movie, as indeed is They. Are you a giant radioactive ant perhaps? Or maybe you only come out after dark to frighten people?’

Quanella was not amused.

‘Why don’t you call yourself It instead?’ added I and instantly thought better of it. ‘But then that too is a horror movie. And of course there’s the hirsute Cousin It in the Addams Family. Oh, dear, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. All the Its are taken. Maybe you can be a tit?’

Quanella glared at me with such rancid hatred that I feared my repast would be ruined by an attack on my person. In any case, before things got too ugly, They were forcibly ejected by security because They contravened the club’s sacred stratagem by not being a man.

Out They went, declaring that They will vilify us online and destroy our respective careers via the power of the Tweet. For surely there sat white privilege, Quanella screamed, amid the spoils of imperialist colonialism.

When They were well and truly vamoose, Prince Andrew gazed up from a sirloin steak and asked Ranjeet, the Indian waiter, to peel him an alfalfa sprout, and I asked Wayan, the Balinese boy, to fan me with a palm frond.

‘Imperialist colonialism indeed!’ said the Prince.

‘What piffle,’ echoed I.

Duties performed, the staff made themselves invisible. And that is precisely the moment Prince Andrew looked at me with a spark in his eye.

‘So,’ said he. ‘Camilla is a three in one.’

‘Indeed,’ I chortled, cutting into my chicken.

‘My good friend Epstein would know how to put all of Their personas to good use, what?’

‘Epstein is not supposed to be your friend any more, your Royal Highness,’ I reminded him sotto voce.

‘Oh yes,’ quoth he unabashed. ‘I say, I hear he is doing rather well here in Australia.’

‘He’s supposed to be dead,’ I hedged ever so gently.

‘Hiding out in Canberra and being called Clancy Lachlan for the rest of your life is a kind of death.’

How we laughed.

At that moment, an elderly man in a showy Italian suit was escorted to a nearby table.

‘Who’s that?’ asked the His Royal Highness, quaffing a Chateau Margaux 1787.

‘Keating,’ I said.

‘Who?’ the Prince said rather too loudly.

‘Ex prime minister, the father of the millionaires who doesn’t know how she ended up in a photo with Epstein.’

Further merriment ensued.

‘Ah, the good old days,’ said Prince Andrew, ‘when men were nary bi let alone non-bi-nary and women kept their mouths shut for a healthy sum.’

‘Indeed,’ I added. ‘Nowadays they take the moolah and talk to Oprah. They sell their story to the tabloids and play the victim, when they knew what they were getting into all along. Sly devils!’

‘I blame feminism and money.’

And because I know the prankish play of the Prince’s mind so well, I added: ‘The former pulled the Persian rug out from under our feet and the latter taught the masses that any travail can be borne so long as it is crowned with monetary compensation.’

‘Prostitution by another name,’ Prince Andrew finished.

We drank to a Great Truth.

‘Shall we depart?’ said the Prince, rising to his well-shod feet.

‘By all means, Your Royal Highness.’

I also rose from the table, even though I had barely eaten. That awful Quanella person had caused the acid to rise in my stomach.

‘You don’t mind paying,’ said the Prince, striding out with the half empty bottle of Chateau Margaux. ‘My cards appear to be elsewhere.’

‘Of course, Your Royal Highness.’

Even as I dug deep into my pockets, Prince Andrew stepped into the waiting Daimler and glided out to Collins Street, leaving me to navigate my way home on a tram. A fine fellow if ever there was one to round off a perfectly marvelous day.

Until next we meet. Cheerio!


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The Sozzled Scribbler was born in the shadow of the Erechtheion in Athens, Greece, to an Egyptian street walker and a Greek bear wrestler. Of no fixed abode, he has subsisted in Istanbul, Rome, London, New Orleans and is currently hiding out in Melbourne. He partakes of four bottles of Bombay gin and four packets of Dunhill cigarettes a day.

His mortified amanuensis, Dmetri Kakmi, is a writer and editor. The fictionalised memoir Mother Land was shortlisted for the New South Wales Premier’s Literary Awards in Australia. He edited the children’s anthology When We Were Young. His new book The Door and other Uncanny Tales will be released in May 2020.

Episode 400: Nathan Englander!

04 Saturday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode

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Episode 400 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

This week, I talk to fiction writer Nathan Englander about the pressurized form of fictional worlds, giving the reader something worth their time and money, getting to the pain as soon as possible, continuing to learn about one’s craft deep into one’s career, Judaism in literature, and the wisdom of our friend Darin Strauss.

Nathan Englander

Nathan Englander and your humble host in The Confucius Institute at Miami Dade College.

Books Discussed

Kaddish dot comWhat We Talk About When We Talk About Anne FrankFor the Relief of Unbearable Urges

NOTES

This episode is sponsored by the excellent people at Scribophile.

Scribophile

TDO Listeners can get 20% of a premium subscription to Scribophile. After using the above link to register for a basic account, go here while still logged in to upgrade the account with the discount.

Please help decide TDO’s future by filling out this 3-minute survey.

Check out my literary adventure novel, Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame.

Guy Psycho and the Ziggurat of Shame Cover

Episode 400 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on Apple podcasts, stitcher, spotify, or click here to stream (right click to download, if that’s your thing.)

Aesthetic Drift #23: On Finally Reading The Outsiders

02 Thursday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Aesthetic Drift, Blog Post, Young Adult

≈ 1 Comment

Aesthetic Drift #23 by Stephen McClurg

On Finally Reading The Outsiders

One way I disappointed my high school students was by not reading one of their favorites: S. E. Hinton’s The Outsiders. One particular student, Caroline, frequently reminded me how guilty I should feel for not reading the book she loved. 

I promised her some thoughts when I got around to it, which only took about a decade. 

Hinton wrote The Outsiders when she was fifteen, and it’s quite an achievement considering the depth of characterization. Despite the characters’ flaws, I care about them. Overall, I think I would have liked the novel more when I was younger, but I was reading Stephen King or Clive Barker, and missed many of the books we’re supposed to read when we’re young, like this one, or Catcher in the Rye. Though I hazily remember the movie for The Outsiders, I was too busy watching stuff like ET or The Thing. Plus, the movie characters looked like the kids who wore cut-off jean jackets, sang John Cougar Mellencamp’s “Hurt So Good” on the bus, and smoked on the walk home—a walk that might or might not involve punching a nerd like me. 

Caroline says she understands what I mean, and explains who she was when The Outsiders crossed her path: “I was in seventh grade, and it was just a huge part of those formative years that bridged over into early adulthood. It was a time when reality seemed more avoidable and that my dreams could still be unrealistic and easily obtained.”

While The Outsiders reminds me of neighborhood bullies, for Caroline the book is bound with her own youthful dreams, one of the topics of the novel itself, which the reader mostly experiences through the protagonist, Ponyboy. He says, “It seems like there’s gotta be someplace without greasers or Socs, with just people. Plain ordinary people.” He’s one of the greasers, who live on the East Sideof a mid-size city in Oklahoma, a blue collar part of town. The Socs live on the West Side and are upper-middle class. 

For Ponyboy, I think the “plain ordinary people” relate to having his family back together out in a house in the country. His dreams–with the exception of wanting to bring his parents back to life—are quintessential American pastoral, with farms and horses, cakes and cattle:

“I wanted to be out of towns and away from excitement. I only wanted to lie on my back under a tree and read a book or draw a picture, and not worry about being jumped or carrying a blade or ending up married to some scatterbrained broad with no sense. The country would be like that, I thought dreamily. I would have a yellow cur dog, like I used to, and Sodapop could get Mickey Mouse back and ride in all the rodeos he wanted to, and Darry would lose that cold, hard look and be like he used to be, eight months ago, before Mom and Dad were killed. Since I was dreaming I brought Mom and Dad back to life…Mom could bake some more chocolate cakes and Dad would drive the pickup out early to feed the cattle. […] My mother was golden and beautiful” (48).

Ponyboy’s grief over the loss of his mother is central to the novel. In the previous passage, Ponyboy calls her “golden”—a descriptor in the book associated with Frost’s poem “Nothing Gold Can Stay” and related to innocence and idealism in the novel. His mother is like Eve in an Eden that never existed, this dream garden of a farm and a family made whole again. Throughout the novel, Ponyboy attempts to shore up his adopted family of brothers and similarly troubled friends, the same way people today are likely to build a family or peer group through fandom. 

Ultimately, I find the absence of women and the feminine frustrating, but one that makes sense in the novel. 

But femininity doesn’t belong with the greasers social codes or either notion of being tough as described by Ponyboy. Tough has traditional masculine connotations: strength, courage, stoicism, etc. Tuff is something aesthetically pleasing or cool, like a Firebird Trans Am or a kickass jam. Given this, I wanted more scenes with Cherry Valance, a spirited girl and potential love interest for Ponyboy. Her appearance is all too brief, but she is more sophisticated, smarter, and quite possibly tougher than a few of the outsiders themselves. 

Caroline had a different reaction when she first read the book: “Personally, I loved the lack of female characters because I was a melodramatic teenager and couldn’t stand the possibility of even fictional characters somehow taking away from my own feelings. When I found out Hinton was female, though, and that the characters were semi-autobiographical, I related to it even more. I, too, was drawn to misunderstood rebellious guys with shit tons of issues for me to capitalize on and solve. My dad was extremely strict, and I couldn’t hang out with a lot of my friends. So naturally, I rebelled more and eventually grew into quite a bad influence myself. ”

There’s a moment with these misunderstood rebellious guys that I find revealing and tender and is an example of Ponyboy’s concealed sensitivity. Ponyboy, while looking at one of his brothers says, “Asleep, he looked a lot younger than going-on-seventeen, but I had noticed that Johnny looked younger when he was asleep, too, so I figured everyone did. Maybe people are younger when they are asleep” (104). Most parents can probably relate to Ponyboy’s idea and I think it plays into these boys having to nurture each other. Small moments like this show that the guys are more than troublemakers.

I remember holding my children until they fell asleep and then watching them in their cribs. I still look at them in bed at night and in the morning. It’s hard not to see them younger, even as babies when they sleep. The outsider kids try to nurture each other in ways acceptable to their codes, while showing how they are still children fending for themselves in difficult situations. Caroline says, “It was invigorating to vicariously experience those emotions with the characters. That’s always been my favorite thing about literature and I’m relieved that’s remained the same since having to grow up.”As different readers, Caroline and I read that vulnerability in different ways, which is one of my favorite things about literature. 

There’s another scene that shows the kids taking care of themselves like adults, but with the tastes of children. It’s funny and bittersweet. Ponyboy says, “All three of us like chocolate cake for breakfast. Mom had never allowed it with ham and eggs, but Darry let Soda and me talk him into it. We really didn’t have to twist his arm; Darry loves chocolate cake as much as we do. Sodapop always makes sure there’s some in the icebox every night and if there isn’t he cooks up one real quick. I like Darry’s cakes better; Sodapop always puts too much sugar in the icing. I don’t see how he stands jelly and eggs and chocolate cake all at once, but he seems to like it. Darry drinks black coffee, and Sodapop and I drink chocolate milk. We could have coffee if we wanted it, but we like chocolate milk. All three of us like chocolate stuff. Soda says if they ever make a chocolate cigarette I’ll have it made” (104-5). I can’t help thinking Ponyboy would have it made today with the vaping craze, but I like how it’s a scene of making breakfast and coffee, but everything gets infused with chocolate and sweets. My kids have badgered me daily for pancakes, sometimes even for dinner, knowing that we will likely have them on the weekend.       

While I was reading, I kept pondering whether or not younger readers would identify with these characters. I approached the book considering it for classroom use, the old habit of a teacher. A prejudice towards YA books I have is thinking they are for someone else, not me. (What YA means as a genre or marketing tool is for another time.) I should just be asking if I felt something while reading the book. Was I moved? Did it make me think? Did I enjoy it? Yes. Yes. Kind of.

Caroline says she was invigorated by experiencing the lives of these characters; maybe I let too much of my own baggage get in the way. She also says, “I was still an oblivious kid when I read it, and I still had a lot of dreams and plans for my life. My priorities were having friends, looking cool, putting minimal effort into class, smoking cigarettes and getting the hell out of school. Unfortunately, life finally happened and my dreams currently are not being late on rent and my car insurance, finding a new apartment/moving when my lease ends in less than a month and to eventually finish school. Meanwhile, I’m a waitress and hooked on the cigarettes that I started smoking to look cool. My American Dream is holding on to the dreams I used to have and wishing I never had to grow up.” 

What she says does sound like experiences in the book. We have dreams and goals and we would like them validated. We want family and friends, to be close to others, feel loved, feel appreciated. Ponyboy might give us a model for holding onto dreams and goals while making a life of what one has and the people around us, even if that life does not immediately—and may never—look like what we have imagined.

Maybe this ambivalent equilibrium is what Hinton achieves. If she leans too far into dreams and fantasy, the book becomes YA pulp and pap. Easy to eat, but no sustenance like the chocolate cigarettes Sodapop jokes about. If she leans too far the other way, past reality, the book becomes as monstrous as those little boys stranded on an island, who not only kill their only true, wise friend, but also kill what’s true and wise within themselves. The Outsidersis a very American novel and Ponyboy negotiates with the idea of the American Dream and the difficulties of being poor in an America full of dreaming. Ponyboy has to be tough, but he also chooses to be kind. Much like the American cognitive dissonance of dreams and disparities, he knows that nothing gold can stay, but fights to stay gold.


Stephen McClurg (Episode 24) writes and teaches in Birmingham, Alabama. He co-hosts The Outrider Podcast, writes at Eunoia Solstice, and infrequently blogs. He has contributed music as a solo artist and with the group Necronomikids to past episodes of The Drunken Odyssey.

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #51: Another New Year.

01 Wednesday Jan 2020

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Comic Books, Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart

≈ 4 Comments

Comics Are Trying to Break Your Heart #51 by Drew Barth

Another New Year.

It is another new year. Oh god, it is a new decade. And, as always, there’s new comics to get excited about and a new decade of comics to see come into existence. The comics releasing this year are the ones that might establish just how interesting this new comic decade will become. Is all of this positivity about upcoming books a coping mechanism for the rest of the year? Yes.

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Umma’s Table by Yeon-sik Hong—The next graphic novel from the author of Uncomfortably, Happily is a meditation on family and food. After moving to the countryside and learning of his parent’s situation—living in a basement apartment, suffering from illness and alcoholism—Madang’s life is split in half. Pulled between his new life and worrying for his parent’s, Madang frequently remembers the meals of his childhood, notably his mother’s kimchi. Told in a black and white, anthropomorphized style, Hong’s newest story is something that promises a story of heartbreak and home that will resonate well into the next decade.

The Sky is Blue with a Single Cloud by Kuniko Tsurita—After over fifty years, the short work of Kuniko Tsurita is finally going to be made available in English. As a collection of short works throughout her life, The Sky is Blue is essential reading that spotlights a creator often overlooked in literary manga circles of the time. Showcasing her work chronologically, readers will be able to see the development and shifts of Tsurita’s work throughout her lifetime.

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An Embarrassment of Witches by Sophie Goldstein and Jenn Jordan—A fantasy Bildungsroman that feels hauntingly familiar in its examination of the magical and mundane. Centered around two friends, Rory and Angela, as they navigate the rest of their lives. Goldstein and Jordan craft a fantastic world filled to bursting with color and character that parallels the real world in all its everyday annoyances and anxieties. An Embarrassment of Witches looks like it is going to be one of the most fun books of the next year.

Rascal by Jean-Luc Deglin—We can all enjoy an adorable cat and that is what Rascal promises us. A collection of the original Crapule comics in Spirou magazine, Rascal is naps, scratches, and everything a cat promises in-between. Told in a two-tone style, Deglin is able to capture all of the odd frustrations of cat ownership and the love cat owners still extend to their pets even after all of the bites and blood.

November, Vol. II by Matt Fraction and Elsa Charretier—The second volume of Fraction and Charretier’s graphic novel trilogy, this volume promises a continuation of the mysterious crime story we had talked about previously. Anticipation for this particular graphic novel is high as the first volume set the bar so high, so to see what Fraction and Charretier can accomplish here is already getting me excited to get more of their story.

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Tartarus by Johnnie Christmas and Jack T. Cole—From the writer of Excellence and the artist of The Unsoundis a new space epic from Image. Centered on Tilde and her framing as a war criminal due to her mother’s warlord past, this new series is one of the most interesting coming out next year. With a fascinating aesthetic and a plot that draws a reader in just from the synopsis alone, Christmas and Cole have created a new series to really look forward to.

Pulp by Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips—How much do I have to say here? It’s Brubaker and Phillips! The team returns with a new graphic novel, this time delving deeper into the past after their previous work on The Fade Out, Pulp centers on a pulp writer in the 30s and the stories he has become drawn into. Anticipation is high, but the quality always matches what Brubaker and Phillips bring us.

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The Flapper Queens: Women Cartoonists of the Jazz Age edited by Trina Robbins—There is always an era of comics we are missing, artists unknown to us, and stories that we simply don’t see. Thanks to Trina Robbins, the stories told by the women cartoonists of the 20s are finally available in one, full-color volume for readers to enjoy. From Ethel Hays to Nell Brinkley to Eleanor Schorer, this volume is expansive in its scope and complete in its content. As far as historical compilations go, The Flapper Queens already promises to be one of the best of the year already.

Ghost Writer by Rayco Pulido—Available in English for the first time, Pulido’s noir dark comedy already looks like one of the most interesting, and stylish, graphic novels to release this year. Set in 40s Barcelona, the story revolves around Laia, her husband’s disappearance, and the hypnosis she undergoes to deal with her life suddenly shattering. Pulido’s linework is one of the most immediate things to jump out just from looking at the cover, the cross-hatched shadows especially give off a menacing aura, and only heightens the anticipation for this superb graphic novel.

Cowboy by Rikke Villadsen—The best westerns always have that tinge of the surreal to them, and with Rikke Villadsen’s Cowboy, that surreality goes further than ever before. From flight to fading from reality, Villadsen’s western pays tribute to the spaghetti westerns of old while examining the masculinity that has come to define them. Releasing this March from Fantagraphics, it already looks like it is going to be a full-color splendor that will resonate well into the decade.

Get excited. We’re in the future.


drew-barth-mbfi

Drew Barth (Episode 331) is a writer residing in Winter Park, FL. He received his MFA from the University of Central Florida. Right now, he’s worrying about his cat.

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