Media notes
Robert Charles Wilson is probably the best, most boring science fiction writer you've never heard of. I started reading his books about 12 years ago, when I was searching the public library for stuff by Robert Anton Wilson, author of The Illuminatus trilogy. But, instead of pages and pages of conspiracy rantings laced with sex, drugs, and ultra-libertarian politics that make you wince in remembrance decades later (kinda like the 60's themselves!) I got a quiet, well-crafted novel about an alien invasion called The Divide. I never could finish the damn Illuminatus, but I started reading a lot of RCW's earlier work: Gypsies, A Hidden Place, and A Bridge of Years.
The thing is, none of these stories were all that exceptional by the standards applied to most science fiction: Wilson, at least in the early days, didn't grab you by the brain and forcibly attempt to expand your mind with wild stories about trans-dimensional exploration, cranial jacks and insane futuristic dystopias. His plots were downright pedestrian by comparison: people quietly crossing into alternate realities, or finding time machines in their back yards, or wandering around a deserted America after 99% of the population had transcended into a higher intelligence. But what he did have was solid, understated writing: not the kind of literary fireworks you expect from a Thomas Pynchon or David Foster Wallace, but a definite mastery of craft that leaves you with believable, fully-realized (if outwardly unexceptional) characters. In short, Wilson produced books that were good in the same way a well-cooked burger and fries is good - not something you can easily get other people excited about, but very satisfying in their own way.
Admittedly, Wilson has expanded his horizons a bit since then: I don't know that he's ever really gonna get away from his perennial themes of dogmatic authoritarian bad guys, isolated and uncertain good guys, and understanding of a higher plane of existence being the key to saving the day, but I think it's safe to say that he's having some success exploring various permutations of otherwise well-tread ideas: Darwinia was a pretty good book on Creationism and alternate realities, while The Chronoliths is a tight little book about the havoc merely sending information back in time can cause... and The Persieds, which is probably my favorite thing he's done so far, is a lovely short story collection about loneliness and alienation. And through it all, it's Wilson's rock-solid writing and attention to common, everyday human relationships that makes it really worthwhile.
All that said, I feel there's not much that needs explaining about Wilson's latest, Blind Lake: it's basically the "isolated town in peril" plot from Mysterium mixed with distant, incomprehensible aliens, close-by, incomprehensible computers, and some stock characters borrowed from various stories in The Persieds. If you've never read an RCW novel before, you'll find it a pleasant, not-terribly challenging read that's still worth your time in the end, and if you have read some of RCW's books before... well, you'll still find it a pleasant, not-terribly challenging read that's still worth your time in the end.
Because it's nice to have a good burger and fries, from time to time.
Michael Moore's saving grace, from my perspective, is that while I disagree with his methods and find his politics somewhat simplistic, I honestly believe that he's doing his damnedest to fight for a good, honorable, and decent vision of the United States of America. That's what's gets me to see his movies rather than blowing them off entirely; that's what's getting me to give a grudging thumbs-up to his work rather than siding with the not-entirely-inaccurate criticism.
Matt Yglesias recently made some excellent points about the film that I won't belabor: suffice to say Yglesias is dead on when he points out that Moore uses individually true facts to paint a misleading picture, he's dead on when he points out that Bush did the exact same thing in the run-up to the war, and he's dead on when he points out that Michael Moore is a somewhat famous movie-maker and George W. Bush is the President of the United States, which makes the sins of the latter several orders of magnitude more serious.
But what got me angry about the film more than anything is that Fahrenheit 9/11 is, thus far, just about the only pop culture work that's even tried to talk about 9/11 and the Iraq war in a straightforward way. We've gotten to a point where virtually any kind of criticism or questioning of the war is attacked by someone, somewhere as being disloyal - where merely listing the names of the US soldiers killed is denounced as a partisan, political act, as Doonesbury and Nightline have found out.
Moore shows a lot of fairly gruesome footage of the carnage done to the Iraqis and equally gruesome footage of injured US soldiers back home... probably the first time 99% of the audience has ever seen shots like this when it comes to Iraq. (I include myself in that 99%.) And that's what pisses me off - that Bush's administration has done its best to dodge this stuff. It's NOT that these images should automatically cause the US populace to abandon the war, as Moore seems to imply - if Iraq is a just war, as Bush has stated, he should have the courage to look head-on at the carnage he's caused and say to the American people: "This was worth it. People on both sides were maimed, and died, and people continue to be hurt and killed even today. All this is worth it in the long-term pursuit of peace and freedom, and I tell you this in full candor, with you, the American people, in full possession of the facts on the good and bad coming out of this war."
But we never had that debate: we never had it in the run-up to the war, when debate was about containing Iraqi WMDs, and we're not having it now, where Bush tells us it's all worth it in the name of peace and freedom but won't show photos of returning military coffins, or go to the funeral of a fallen serviceman. And forget about any official tally of Iraqi dead.
Admittedly, Moore sidesteps this debate as well: there's a scene towards the end where a grieving mother of a dead soldier is visiting the White House and gets into a confrontation with another woman. As the mother leaves, the other woman calls out, "Blame Al-Qeada!" We then follow the mother as she laments the ignorance of anybody who'd say such a thing.
But I wanted Moore to follow the thread that starts at "Blame Al-Qeada". I wanted the mother to question why a major terrorist act perpetrated by Saudi-funded terrorists operating in Afghanistan should necessitate a huge military campaign to overthrow Saddam Hussein, when no evidence yet unveiled really suggests any serious connection between the two. I wanted the Al-Qeada woman to explain the idea of a generational war that I've seen some war blogs talking about: the idea that it's Iraq today, Syria tomorrow, and no stopping until the entire Middle East becomes, if not Westernized, then at least advanced enough in political freedom and economic power that millions of people having nothing better to wish for than to see the US dead. I wanted the mother to ask why GW didn't sell people on that war, instead of a war against the threat of Iraq's WMDs. And so on.
But again, the very fact that Moore made a successful, mainstream movie that had me asking these questions means he's done something just about nobody else has. And for that, I thank him.
Beyond that, not much to say. Starting Saturday the wife and I are on a big circle road trip through the central US: Santa Fe, Durango, Salt Lake City, Chicago, Milwaukee, and D/FW will all be on our itinerary. We'll probably end up seeing a few of you en route; if anybody else is interested in meeting up for lunch or something, drop us a line and maybe we can work something out. As for everybody else, take it easy and see you later.