Batman Begins and East of Eden (Word Dump Four: Timshel and Lessons Learned)
My friends page already reads like a paid endorsement for Batman Begins, and I'm afraid I can but add to the existing hype. I'm prepared to go on record as saying that it's the best movie based on a comic license, and there have been some very solid movies to date, including Burton's original vision of Gotham City and its notorious crimefighter. Christopher Nolan has his own interesting take on the Batman universe, and it's a bit of a slow build, but it really pays off. I've been singing his praises since I first saw Memento in theatres, and it doesn't look like I'll stop anytime soon. My brain made a noise suspiciously like, "Squee!" when the credits started rolling. There are some really delicious performances (my favorites are Morgan Freeman and Michael Caine), the movie moves at a nice crisp pace, and, in places, the dialogue absolutely sparkles.
Okay, so that concludes the pop culture portion of this post. Now I feel that I must balance this out with something thoughtful and meaningful. (Come to Nick's LiveJournal to read things and learn what color his hair is for the month! Leave because it's mostly boring crap!)
When I was seventeen years old and about to graduate from high school, my Mom handed me a copy of John Steinbeck's East of Eden and told me to read it. This was unusual because she traditionally left the intellectual portion of our ("our" being my older brother and me) upbringing to my Dad. Yeah, it's his fault I'm such a snarky pedagogic windbag who uses words like "pedagogic." Sorry.
Now I was already familiar with Steinbeck through The Grapes of Wrath and Travels with Charley, so I wasn't expecting anything particularly revolutionary. I was so incredibly wrong. Steinbeck has a wonderful gift for dialogue and storytelling, and East of Eden recounts a compelling story of a father and his sons, but that's not why the book absolutely floored me. I was a bit too young to fully absorb the impact of what my Mom was trying to teach me by handing me that book, but the lessons were twofold.
First, there's the concept of "timshel." I found a copy of the appropriate passage online here. Go ahead and read it now. I'll wait.
"Timshel" is a powerful idea, and Steinbeck captured it brilliantly. "Thou mayest." That's pretty heavy stuff to be thinking about when you're seventeen years old, but I realized that it was a message from my mother. She was telling me that it was ultimately up to me to determine what happened with the rest of my life. Deep.
The second thing she wanted to show me was the character of Lee, the Trask's housekeeper. Here's this wonderfully developed character, full of vim and vigor, complete with flaws and humanity, some honest-to-goodness gravitas. And get this? He's Chinese! He speaks pidgin and broken English in public to disguise the fact that he's completely fluent, he's confused about his cultural indentity. He's the great unsung hero in the novel, caring for the children like they're his own, and looking after the protagonist. And Steinbeck wrote East of Eden in nineteen-fifty-fucking-two. There hadn't been such a wonderfully real and fleshed-out portrait of a Chinese-American in American literature to date, and I don't think there's been one since in any form of American media (whether it's books, radio, television, or film). Absolutely mind-blowing.
I had forgotten that prior to giving birth to me, my mother had been a teacher. My Dad always had this towering academic and professional reputation that dates back as far as I can remember, it was so easy to completely underestimate this woman, my mother. I feel as if I really should be writing something anecdotal to my father, given that Sunday is Father's Day and all, but I can't help but think of what a rock my Mom has been throughout this personal shitstorm my family has been weathering lately. (Not that either one of them will ever read this.)
I pick up a fresh copy of East of Eden and re-read it every couple of years (I'm due soon). I feel like I get a little more out of it with each reading. I've never even talked to my Mom about it or discussed its contents with her. I never had to. We both knew and understood. Timshel.
Okay, wow, that was far far longer than originally intended. I was just going to post the link to the "timshel" passage and leave it that. In fact, I'm going back and retroactively labeling this as a Word Dump and hiding it behind an lj-cut. Unfortunately, since this was such a spontaneous post, there's no comic to go with it. OH NOES!
Suggested Reading:
Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books. 1952. (Duh.)
Okay, so that concludes the pop culture portion of this post. Now I feel that I must balance this out with something thoughtful and meaningful. (Come to Nick's LiveJournal to read things and learn what color his hair is for the month! Leave because it's mostly boring crap!)
When I was seventeen years old and about to graduate from high school, my Mom handed me a copy of John Steinbeck's East of Eden and told me to read it. This was unusual because she traditionally left the intellectual portion of our ("our" being my older brother and me) upbringing to my Dad. Yeah, it's his fault I'm such a snarky pedagogic windbag who uses words like "pedagogic." Sorry.
Now I was already familiar with Steinbeck through The Grapes of Wrath and Travels with Charley, so I wasn't expecting anything particularly revolutionary. I was so incredibly wrong. Steinbeck has a wonderful gift for dialogue and storytelling, and East of Eden recounts a compelling story of a father and his sons, but that's not why the book absolutely floored me. I was a bit too young to fully absorb the impact of what my Mom was trying to teach me by handing me that book, but the lessons were twofold.
First, there's the concept of "timshel." I found a copy of the appropriate passage online here. Go ahead and read it now. I'll wait.
"Timshel" is a powerful idea, and Steinbeck captured it brilliantly. "Thou mayest." That's pretty heavy stuff to be thinking about when you're seventeen years old, but I realized that it was a message from my mother. She was telling me that it was ultimately up to me to determine what happened with the rest of my life. Deep.
The second thing she wanted to show me was the character of Lee, the Trask's housekeeper. Here's this wonderfully developed character, full of vim and vigor, complete with flaws and humanity, some honest-to-goodness gravitas. And get this? He's Chinese! He speaks pidgin and broken English in public to disguise the fact that he's completely fluent, he's confused about his cultural indentity. He's the great unsung hero in the novel, caring for the children like they're his own, and looking after the protagonist. And Steinbeck wrote East of Eden in nineteen-fifty-fucking-two. There hadn't been such a wonderfully real and fleshed-out portrait of a Chinese-American in American literature to date, and I don't think there's been one since in any form of American media (whether it's books, radio, television, or film). Absolutely mind-blowing.
I had forgotten that prior to giving birth to me, my mother had been a teacher. My Dad always had this towering academic and professional reputation that dates back as far as I can remember, it was so easy to completely underestimate this woman, my mother. I feel as if I really should be writing something anecdotal to my father, given that Sunday is Father's Day and all, but I can't help but think of what a rock my Mom has been throughout this personal shitstorm my family has been weathering lately. (Not that either one of them will ever read this.)
I pick up a fresh copy of East of Eden and re-read it every couple of years (I'm due soon). I feel like I get a little more out of it with each reading. I've never even talked to my Mom about it or discussed its contents with her. I never had to. We both knew and understood. Timshel.
Okay, wow, that was far far longer than originally intended. I was just going to post the link to the "timshel" passage and leave it that. In fact, I'm going back and retroactively labeling this as a Word Dump and hiding it behind an lj-cut. Unfortunately, since this was such a spontaneous post, there's no comic to go with it. OH NOES!
Suggested Reading:
Steinbeck, John. East of Eden. Penguin Books. 1952. (Duh.)