Intermezzo

Housekeeping

Ends up that running a weekly feature takes time and effort. It’s well worth it, of course, but I need a break — and help. From you. The search for insight and understanding in unlikely places takes the most time. So if you know anyone, including yourself, who is passionate about books and eager to celebrate sentences, characters, novels, authors, and literary experience in general, tell them, urge them, command them to contact me at jkneilson@yahoo.com. We’re all evangelists in a worthy cause. Speak up, for crying out loud. Thank you, and long live Sancho Panza!

Home, a book recommendation

By Pulitzer Prize-winning author Marilynne Robinson, Home is a story about Jack Boughton’s return to Gilead, Iowa after a 20-year absence. His father Robert Boughton is a dying widower who is cared for by Jack’s 38-year old sister Glory Boughton. Through her eyes, through her hopes, sorrows, and disappointments, the story of Jack’s homecoming is told. A lost and scoundrel soul, Jack returns to Gilead with a carefully guarded plan to set his life aright. His stay is fraught with anxiety and tenderness, vulnerability and hope — always hope, especially by those who love him most and can be profoundly hurt by him. Countless scenes are so deeply moving that one stops in sheer amazement, as when Robert Boughton, eager to spend time with Glory, falls asleep at the table with his fork in hand, or when Jack gracefully plays the piano for his father’s enjoyment. Robinson is a master at evoking the reader’s deepest layers of experience, as well as making the presence of the past (excuse the expression) palpable in such everyday objects as shirts and lampshades. Home is a marvel, a gorgeous achievement, and is well worth your time. Savor Gilead first, otherwise a rich dimension of meaning will be lost, or as Robinson unforgettably writes in Gilead, you will miss “the great taut skeins of light suspended between them.”

Did you know?

Friends and family celebrating a fine achievement

Between the Lines averages about 350 visits per week. While this is nothing to sniff at, your kindly host is greedy as Gekko and wants more, a lot more, so please share the blog with anyone and everyone. Even better, list me on your blogroll (Mark Sarvas, chop, chop!), and who knows, I just might return the favor.

WordPress site metrics allows me to track search terms used by incoming traffic. Little did I know that when I captioned an image thusly, “Zaniest threesome ever,” I unwittingly spun a web to snag this tasty little morsel, “how to prepare wife for a threesome,” which is funny because it’s funny but vexing, too, because it’s hardly the kind of traffic I so richly deserve. Or is it?

Joyce Carol Oates and Harold Bloom politely declined to go Between the Lines. Don DeLillo, not so much. But in his defense, I did mis-spell his name with a lowercase “l.” Accidents happen.

Spooning the City electorate

San Francisco mayor Gavin Newsom still hasn’t responded to me. Which is commendable in a way, because he’s got more important things to do than to discuss ideas.

On the Horizon

Next feature will cross Monday, November 16.

David Mitchell’s feature will go live on Monday, December 14 at 12:01 a.m. To prepare, read Cloud Atlas, a wonderfully inventive novel, which was shortlisted for the 2004 Booker Prize. If you fear it’s too large an undertaking, shame on you, but somewhat pardonable, so read Black Swan Green instead.

Bait Spot Interview: Jeffrey

CP: Hey Jeff. Thanks so much for following Bait an Oscar on Twitter. Have you been using your account and why do you think so many people are addicted to this thing?

JEFF: Hey Chris! Well, I pretty much made my account in an effort to support the contest and I never had intentions of using it for any purpose other than just following it. I played around with Twitter a bit and I’m not even sure why it’s become so addictive, but then again I don’t use MySpace or Facebook either sooo perhaps I’m just the perplexing one.

CP: You’ve written some very good baits in the past, “Owner of a Lonely Heart” is probably the one that stands out the most to me. Since the contest has been basically put on hiatus for the longest time now, do you think your writing style has improved or changed completely?

JEFF: It definitely has changed, I’ll say that much. I had an English teacher last year who pretty much flat-out told me my writing sucked and I ended up despising her for a long time. Well needless to say, I did get a perfect score on the writing section of the SAT and a 5 on the AP exam correlating to the particular course she taught, so I shouldn’t care what she thinks BUT, my writing did sort of morph into a style that was more appealing to her simply so I could do well in the class. And I ended up thinking it was a bit more mature and original, so I’ve stuck with it since. It’s still not too concise (which has been a constant piece of constructive criticism I’ve tended to ignore), but I think it’s easier to trademark my writing as a result.

CP: This may sound pretty silly but did it ever bother you when people would wonder why most of your baits had a lot of Asian influence? Do you think in a way you were representing a group that usually never get to be involved in high-profile films unless it’s a martial arts movie or something like “Memoirs of a Geisha”?

JEFF: It was a bit bothersome, firstly because I had gone from being praised for publishing baits that kind of transcended the “safe” and “predictable” boundaries of the contest to being criticised for being one note and, ironically, predictable. Secondly, it’s particularly frustrating when some people even tried to argue that each bait was too similar to the last. Even though one was set in 1990s North Korea (quite mysterious in its own right), another in war-torn Vietnam (with a majority of the cast being white), another in feudal Japan, and then the last I attempted was modern-day Hokkaido. All of these places have very distinct cultural nuances but I think it might have been simply lost on a few because I realise that not everyone is as interested I am in Asia. It’s not a coincidence that after getting panned for “Hokkaido” I went a little more mainstream. I think eventually with a new contest I might surprise people with a bit of Asian flair though. I will get an Asian woman a BAO trophy, I promise you that.

CP: Whenever you’re writing baits, what kind of inspiration do you use to help push your work? I know for me, music is probably what gives me a vision of what I want to write about. Is there a particular thing that you use as a muse for your writing?

JEFF: One of the reasons I’ve had my periods of inconsistencies is because I really don’t have an inspiration or a muse. A lot of the times I’ve written baits just as vehicles, but I’ve also written baits because in the spur of the moment, the idea came to me and I just NEEDED to at least try it (baits like Revenant Dreams, Chasing the Storm, and Big Brother fall into this category). In some rare occasions I choose to adapt something I’ve read or seen on stage (this is not my strong suit), but usually I’ll read a story online that I get really interested in and feel the urge to try it out as a bait, often changing it to my liking so that it’s more cinematic (Owner of a Lonely Hearts and The Shadows in the Night are two examples). Well… the five I named are my most successful, so I hopefully will keep drawing ideas like that.

CP: What ideas are you currently working on at the moment. Is it hard to think of stuff when people aren’t posting posters and plot outlines that pretty much give you an idea of what the  competition may be. Do you even care about the competition or is it all in good fun?

JEFF: Honestly, I love that the competition is silent. I feel like a lot of the time, people might decide that they love a bait by the poster or the hype and it becomes hard to beat on that principle alone. Likewise, some people hype up their baits a little TOO much and it fails, hard. This evens the playing field a bit. I don’t want to say that I don’t “care” about the competition, since I’m competitive by nature and still would like some wins and bragging rights, but pre-BAO apocalypse I did win both Bait of the Month and Best Author, so I will no longer feel like a failure every time I lose. A new contest will likely invoke new goals, though . I’ve been working on two baits, one a dark (and stylistic) bait about an extradition gone wrong and the other a comedy that I’m probably not going to finish. I really like the idea that I have for the comedy, though. My comedies have been relatively successful in the previous contest so I’m using that as my motivation.

CP: For years we’ve seen baits continuously use Jake Gyllenhaal, Ryan Gosling, and Natalie Portman. Which actors do you believe should be the new breed of BAO staples. Is there a particular actor/actress you’d love to see when an Oscar this year or maybe in the future?

JEFF: I can’t wait for Carey Mulligan to win Best Actress. I’m so confident that she can do it, and I am fully anticipating every British teenager/young woman in a bait to be played by her. Just like every obese African-American will be played by Gabourey Sidibe. Both kind of fall nicely into the niches I’ve mentioned. I think we can also look forward to the use of Christoph Waltz, who has gone from unknown to immensely popular. So long as people use these three uniquely, I won’t have a problem with it.

CP: Final question…IMO 2009 has been a very very VERY weak year for movies. I mean c’mon. Which films are you predicting to score much acclaim come nomination time and which others do you believe will underwhelm most people?

JEFF: It’s hard to say which will underwhelm. I know I am not lining up to see movies like A Single Man or Up in the Air, though the latter might have to do with my George Clooney indifference. Once Precious, Invictus, and The Last Station come out, I think we’ll have ourselves a real race. The one movie I think people are underestimating is definitely The Last Station. If it makes a big enough splash, I think it’ll evolve into a tsunami.

James Somerton Interview Coming Next…