Unwritten by Mike Carey; Let it Be Revisited
likeadeuce pointed me towards Mike Carey's The Unwritten; I've now read issues 1 - 16 and am certainly impressed, if occasionally nitpicking. (Not just in the issue where Mike Carey commits the arch fanfiction mistake of using bablefish for dialogue in another language, to wit, German. This is awfully distracting to a native speaker who has to puzzle out the meaning; in some cases, an English version comes later, which leads to sad sighs of "no, Mike, that's not what the German says, dear, how difficult would it ihave been to find someone who actually speaks the language to deliver those sentences anyway?") It's meta fiction, which not every write can pull off but Carey can, with creat commentary (and spoofs) of various great works of fiction. And how could I not love a story where the ultimate fiendish plan to be defeated is a horrible crap sequel to a much loved classic, which the bastards intended to publish under the name of the original author, no less, thus poisoning the love for his fiction? I hear you, Carey, I hear you. Never mind massacres, that's one of my nightmares.
There's also great black humour, as when, mid-arc, we find out what became of a minor villain: trapped in the body of a rabbit in the fluffiest fictional realm of talking animals imaginable (though not without its traps, ahem). Now that is how you deal with the opposition. :) At the same time, the villains are responsible for some truly horrible acts, and Carey doesn't pull any punches, nor does he make those deaths harmless. As for the various uses of real life writers and works, praise and complaints ensue:
Mary Shelley's Frankenstein (and, as the text often points out, Milton's Paradise Lost, with its connection to the same place of origin - the Villa Diodati at Lake Geneva): an unreserved yay. Central to the Unwritten's premise, with a resonance to two of the central character's origin, and I do love that when the Creature later shows up, it is indeed Mary Shelley's (very eloquent) Creature, not (impressive as it could be) the zombie-like version from various films. (BTW, Tom's "but you have a damaged brain! That's canon!" was hilarious.)
Rudyard Kipling: mostly yay. That chapter does some interesting things with various aspects of Kipling (poet of Empire, voice of Common Man, shock of son's fate with said fate literaly conjured up by him in now more than one way), and captures his diction very well, but early on when young Rudyard comes from India to England and is annoyed and jealous at the pre-eminence of Oscar Wilde there my suspension of disbelief suffered an unfortunate break because of the DATE. In 1905, Oscar Wilde was already five years dead, and the year where he went from adored playwright to prisoner was 1895, ten years earlier. And let's not go into more trivial details as his chatting with Whistler when the Wilde/Whistler friendship belonged in the 1880s and was long gone. Also, methinks our dastardly villains would be more likely gunning for writers actually advocating big social changes, like Wells or Shaw, instead of Wilde; he was evidently picked for the contrast with Kipling, but even so.
Jud Süß the film (directed by Veit Harlan, who doesn't get mentioned here, comissioned and supervised by Goebbels) and Jud Süß the novel (by Lion Feuchtwanger, who doesn't get mentioned by name but is refered to as a "Jewish dissident writer"): more yay than nay, but lots of nitpicking. To start with the obvious: bad German is no one's friend. If you want to add German sentences for atmosphere, then consult a native speaker. Or stick with English dialogue and put asteriks around it to indicate when the characters are speaking in German. Secondly, I do love the basic idea of that chapter, and yes, Jud Süß is an excellent example of fiction used as propaganda, a story tortured into its opposite, but: the film isn't actually based on Feuchtwanger's novel. Not even in a twisted way. It couldn't be because Feuchtwanger's novel (along with Feuchtwanger's other works), which had been one of the big bestsellers of the 1920s, making its author internationally famous, was put on the index of forbidden books and burned in 1933 immediately. (Having written the first fictional satiric portrait of Hitler in 1930 in another novel, Erfolg, will do that.) Now of course Goebbels didn't use the same title for the film by accident (he could count on people vaguely remembering that there had been this bestseller more than a decade ago...), but Feuchtwanger hadn't invented it, either. There was a novella Jud Süß by Wilhelm Hauff in the 1870s, and before that various fictional treatises, dramas, pamphlets, about the fate of Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (who had existed, after all) using this title. What the Nazi film and Feuchtwanger's novel have in common is that they are based on the same historic person, but that's where it ends; none of the plot lines of the novel shows up in the film, not even in a distorted way. (Sidenote: which is not to say that Carey didn't do his research. The brief summary Goebbels gives of the novel in the comic is pretty accurate. Iin an interview at the end of the issue in question, Carey and illustrator Peter Gross declare that when actually watching the film they were struck by how well made in terms of craft it was, that they could see why it was so effective given that, and that if they had agreed with the ideology they'd have loved it which shocked them. Having seen Jud Süß as part of a seminar on propaganda movies, I know what they mean. It's a highly polished, well-paced melodram - Harlan was one of the best directors of the genre in his time - starring some of the best actors available in Germany, Werner Krauss, Heinrich George, Ferdinand Marian. As opposed to earlier propaganda efforts like Hitlerjunge Quex where the propaganda is served so openly and so ineffectively that it was an audience flop, here you get the vilest antisemitic clichés possible served with the plot mostly ripped off from Tosca and in appealing aesthetics, and people ate it up with a spoon. Michelangelo Antonioni - yes, the Antonioni - loved it and wrote an ode of praise when it was shown at the Venice Film Festival, which is something not mentioned in most summaries of Antonioni's life. ) One of the most chillling examples of a lot of people using a lot of artistic talent to create something in the service of a murderous ideology, which is why I understand why Carey picked it to begin with. As I understand why he picked Goebbels to appear as a character, as an example of someone telling a story to destroy, the murderous liar par excellence. Still couldn't help thinking "the art could actually look a bit more like him, it's not like Goebbels had one of the most unmistakable profiles ever, and also, uniform? In connection with Jud Süß? He usually was in normal civilian clothes when being the minister of propaganda and playing film mogul. Goering was the one with the uniform fetish." Lastly, the conclusion was a welcome surprise because all that talk of a "mercy killing" (of the novel, because it was so distorted) had my inner Feuchtwangerian protesting (it's a good novel, you know), so Tom liberating and restoring it to its true self instead was great.
Unwritten revisits some old stomping ground in that Lucifer, Carey's magnum opus, had the daddy issues written large when dad is actually the creator and you can't not be the creation unless you can leave said creation as a central premise. The leading man, Tom Taylor, who might nor might not be his father's fictional character Tommy Taylor (think Harry Potter as well as dozens of earlier boy heroes) grown up into reality feels accordingly generic, but then again, in a way, he's supposed to be. (In issue #1, the obvious comparison to Christopher Robin of the Winnie the Pooh fame gets made, but I'm surprised so far nobody brought up James Barrie and the really depressing real life fates of the children who inspired Peter Pan and the Darling siblings.) Lizzie who might or might not also be a fictional character come to life, by contrast, gets more and more profile, and Ron Savoy makes for an entertainingly snarky sidekick with a secret or two. There is no character I dislike when I'm not meant to, and I certainly will keep reading. Especially since more revelations about Lizzie and, hopefully, Sue are in the offering.
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Something else I did today during many hours in the train was to listen to a CD that came with the latest Mojo issue - Let it Be Revisited. (The articles in the magazine that go with it contain nothing not found in a dozen biographies about the depressing last year of the Beatles and the recording of the last but one to be made but last to be released record. Other than claiming it's underestimated by fans claiming that Abbey Road should be regarded as the true swan song. Huh? Abbey Road WAS the swan song - the belated release of Let it Be didn't change the order of production.) Let It Be Revisited boasts of a good variety of cover artists, though, and is well worth listening to.
Two of Us: sung by John Grant, slowly and warmly. A version that brings out the tenderness of the song. My inner fan still insists this particular song needs to be sung as a duet, but John Grant harmonizes with himself, so there's that, and it's great to listen to.
Dig a Pony: sung by Dennis Locorriere. Good with the longing of the song.
Across the Universe: sung by Phosphorescent. The Beatles didn't actually play this during the Get Back/Let it Be sessions. They intended to, but John couldn't remember the lyrics anymore, neither could Paul who usually came through with these things, and when they finally were brought by a flunky, they had moved on to other things. So Spector later took the recording made for the single and remixed it for the record. The Phosphorescent version is excellent.
I Me Mine/ Dig It: sung by Beth Orton who sounds as angry as George must have felt. I actually like this better by a female singer, I think.
Let it Be: sung by the Amorphous Androgynous, who apparantly wanted to do Hey Jude one better and made this last for ten minutes, courtesy of bringing in Across the Universe at the end and going for the Great Goddess approach we go from Mary interpreted as the Madonna to Artemis and Athena and a lot of other goddesses of various pantheons evoked verbally at the end. ( Back in the day, the lines And in my hour of darkness, Mother Mary comes to me, whispers words of wisdom, let it be were interpreted as meaning everything from the virgin Mary to marijuana, and amazingly nobody seemed to have thought of the glaringly obvious, i.e. that Paul McCartney's dead mother was called Mary and that he was in a rather depressed state of mind when composing this.) It's a bit doo much for me; despite its hymn-like quality, I maintain Let it Be works best when played simply, one voice and the piano (or another instrument, but just one) ideally.
Maggie Mae: sung by C.W. Stoneking. This wasn't a song by the Beatles but an old Liverpool tune which was part of the back-to-the-roots attempt they were first going for, and Stoneking sings it in a 1920s vein which is very charming.
I've got a Feeling: sung by the Besnard Lakes. Liked it, but had a pang of missing the original voices here which I hadn't in the other cases except for Two of Us.
One After 909: sung by James Apollo. This one really surprised me. The One After 909 is a very early Lennon/McCartney composition (and when I say early, I mean they were teenagers trying impress each other in the first year after their meeting with sounding like the Americans they idolized; unearthing this one for the Get Back sessions was yet another McCartney attempt to lure John back), and instead of the fast Chuck-Berry-like pace of the original James Apollo sings it as a slow Blues song. Pretty amazing.
The Long and Winding Road: sung by Judy Collins, blessedly free of the Spector-ization that famously became one of the reasons named in Paul's lawsuit. Excellent vocal performance.
For You Blue: sung by Pete Molinari, more country than George's original, likeably so.
Get Back: sung by the Jim Jones Revue as a really hardcore rock song. That was a bit of a shocker at first, though in a good way - I mean, obviously it's a rocker in the original version as well, but this one sounds as the band might have at the end of a long Hamburg night. Definitely memorable.
Bonus track: One After 909 sung by Wilko Johnson, the pace more like the fast original but still very individualistic. Who'd have thought that teenage enterprise can be milked in so different ways?
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