The Casual Vacancy [minor spoilers below]

I received J.K. Rowling's first "novel for grown-ups," The Casual Vacancy, for Christmas.  Last night, I finished it after deliberately spreading it out over several weeks.  This is, after all, J.K. Rowling, so sitting down to read one chapter inevitably turned into sitting down to read several.  But several was always enough, and I often let days go by before I picked the book up again.  I even made sure never to read before bed because I was scared of what my subconscious would do with the story while I slept.

It is impossible to write a book review about Rowling without mentioning the Harry Potter series, and yet it seemed to be her ambition in writing The Casual Vacancy to make any comparisons as difficult as humanly possible.  This new book is set in a drab, lifeless English town, which is filled with dark and selfish people, not a one of whom is particularly likable. 

The story opens with the death of a local councilman, Barry Fairbrother, and unfolds around the hole he left in the community - both the literal hole he left in local government and the figurative one he left in the lives of the story's many characters.  Through flashbacks, he is shown as perhaps the most respectable and earnest of the town's citizens, but he was hated as often as he was loved, and chaos descends without him.  (I've read several reviews of this book and haven't yet found any other mention of the coincidence of Rowling writing a story in which a [semi-]heroic figure named "Barry" encounters tragedy and subsequently serves as the focal point around which a war is fought, but surely I can't be the only reader who noticed...)

But Barry is merely a shadowy background character to the larger issues of the book.  The story is about those still alive - parents who put their own needs above their children's, children who torment their parents and each other, people with gross habits, obscene vocabularies, violent tendencies, and, above all, an endless obsession with the self that causes each and every one of them to harm themselves as well as those in their immediate (and not-so-immediate) vicinity.  There are graphic descriptions of abuse, of sex, of drug use, of rape, of self-harm, of self-loathing, and of death.  It is, in short, not a fun group of people to read about.

Well-written, difficult to read, I can't imagine any story that could more clearly separate Rowling from the Harry Potter world, and I feel this was probably something she needed to write for herself as an antithesis to all she had previously created.

As a fan of hers, though, it is my hope that she's gotten all of that out of her system now, and that the next book she writes offers a gentler and more hopeful view of human condition.

They Say It's Your Birthday

Yesterday was the second anniversary of my twenty-ninth birthday, so hooray!  (Now I can shut up talking all the time about how I'm 30 and instead spend the next few years never not mentioning how I'm "in my early thirties.") 

I celebrated last night by going to a track workout.  Everyone was like, "Becky!  Who in their right goddamned mind goes to a track workout in 35-degree weather on their birthday?"  To which I could only respond, "You do know me, right?"  The truth is, little makes a person feel more alive than running to the point of feeling like death, and it is with utmost sincerity that I say that I went to the workout last night because I could think of few more life-affirming things I could do for myself on my birthday...

January 22 hasn't always been kind to me.  Just two years ago, in this blog's second post, I wrote about how I wound up as the designated driver for a group of smokers for my 29th, languishing in bar-purgatory when all I wanted to do was go home...and the entire reason I wrote that entry was because it was actually one of the better birthdays...  That same scene would play out very differently were it to happen now.  You can no longer smoke at the bar we were at, and, more importantly, I no longer allow men who are using me as a chauffeur to dictate when I get to go home. 

There's a line at the end of that entry where I say (quite truthfully), "...there isn't a single person in the city of Memphis anymore who would call me up and say, 'Hey, let's go celebrate.'"

And that's another way things are different.

A lifelong introvert, I used to think that the ultimate in social success was having a gang of friends at your disposal telling you what you wanted to do for fun. 

But now that I have grown terribly old and wise, I see that that isn't true.  I have so many wonderful people in my life who contacted me yesterday, in a variety of mediums, and I could have easily found a group to go stir up trouble with.  But what did I wind up doing? 

I bundled up, and I went to the track workout. 

"Fun," like most everything else, is ultimately sourced from within, and though I'm still a little disbelieving that I'm now (gulp) 31 years old, it's a gotta be worth the upward-ticking numbers to get a little hard-won self-confidence.  I may not be where I thought I would be at this age, but hell, I'm better off than I was at every age before this one, and so I've gotta be doing alright.

Happy birthday to me. :)

Facebook Introduces "Graph Search," and Let's Talk About That.

[Before we get started...  "Graph Search"?  That was really the best idea that was floated their way in terms of naming this thing?  Graph Search?]

In case you haven’t heard (and it’s been hard to hear much of anything lately over the din of Lance Armstrong and Oprah Winfrey dominating the airwaves like it’s freaking 2006), Facebook has a new search feature.  It’s (regrettably) called “Graph Search.”

You, dear reader, are almost assuredly not among the tiny group of beta testers who have been selected to try this new tool.  You do, however, have the option of being put on a “waiting list” if you’d like to get access earlier than the general public.

Let’s set aside for a moment the fact that we, as a species, have now reached such a stage of technological saturation that we go on waiting lists for Facebook features (and every ounce of my disdain there I’m directing toward myself, because I signed up to be waitlisted yesterday like the lemming that I am), and move directly into an exploration of what this feature is, how Facebook is marketing it, and how the media is touting its potential.

WHAT IT IS

Graph Search is an expansion of the search feature that already exists on the site.  Currently, when you start to type into the search box at the top of the page, you are given a list of people, pages, and groups as Facebook attempts to anticipate who/what you’re searching for (much like Google’s “predictive” search feature).  The results are not alphabetical, but based on an algorithm derived primarily, though not exclusively, from whom you interact with or search for the most.  It’s a system that’s about par for the course when it comes to Facebook:  overly complicated and the subject of countless conspiracy theories.

Graph Search is set to change all that by offering results that are easier to scan (bigger pictures, more at-a-glance biographical information, etc.) and by allowing searches based on multiple parameters. Right now, the only time I use the search function is when I want to look up a specific friend or page. But Facebook is placing a bet that if I had the option, I’d do a different kind of search and I’d search more often.  Graph Search will allow me to search for things like “friends I went to high school with,” or “friends who like the Beatles,” or even “poorly-rated pizza establishments in Memphis,” pulling the results from the information my friends, and friends of friends, have already generously donated to Facebook via their “likes” and comments.

HOW FACEBOOK IS SELLING THIS

Zuck, through a flashy “unveil” page and video-with-gradually-crescendoing-music, wants me to think that this is an amazing new thing, this ability to search based on pretty much anything anyone's ever put on their profile, ever.  But Zuck has forgotten that I knew him long before he had a symbol on the New York Stock Exchange.

Back in the day, finding “friends I went to high school with” was as easy as clicking my graduation year on my profile.  In doing so, a list would appear with every person on Facebook who listed themselves as a graduate of Bartlett High School in the year 2000.  (Clicking the name of my high school, similarly, brought up a comprehensive list of everyone on Facebook who had gone, or was going to, Bartlett High.)

Zuckerberg.  We meet again...

Same with Beatles fans; prior to the onslaught of official “pages” (which brought with it the death of describing one’s interests in one’s own words), every “interest” that I listed in my profile was hyperlinked, and a simple click pulled up a list of anyone else on the site who had listed the same interest, with those I was friends with or who shared another similarity with me (like living in the same city) being ranked higher on the list than other complete strangers.

I realize that times have changed and there are now more sophisticated ways of organizing data than hyperlinking everything, but for the sake of argument, I can’t resist pointing out that hello, it was Facebook who took away the option of searching by category in the first place, so let’s not act like it’s some huge concession on their part to let us do it again.

And as for searches like “poorly-ranked pizza establishments in Memphis,” well, I was never going to search for that anyway.

And if I was, I’d just go to Google.

HOW THE MEDIA IS RUNNING WITH THIS

The same Google, that is, that the media is now telling me Facebook is in direct competition with.  Because of Graph Search, Facebook and Google are being billed as potential equals.

Okay…where do I even start with this…

a) Let’s not make the assumption that the bulk of my internet searches are reflective of a personal failing on my part to gather basic biographical data (that I’m apparently very curious about) from people face-to-face.  (Put another way, I never before searched for "friends who live in Memphis" not because Google couldn't answer that question, but because I would never search for that because I don't care.)

b) Also, let’s not assume that I trust my friends, or my friends’ friends, above all else as sources of information.  (OF COURSE I DON’T.  Not now, after I’ve seen all the dumb shit they post on Facebook…)

c) For every time that Graph Search will legitimately come in handy - in helping to find a good vet or in finding a deserving home for an extra concert ticket - every goddamn last one of us is going to waste days of our lives reading through the results of searches for things like “people who have written the word ‘fuck’ in a status update” or “friends who gave birth in their teenage years” or any other myriad of mind-numbing bullshit that we’ll come up with to search for.  Google is many things, but it has so far generally steered me away from getting too terribly personal with the lives of private citizens.

And yet, as is always the case, it's the bigger picture here that I am rebelling against more so than the specifics.  I don't have Graph Search (still waitlisted, it seems), but when I get it, I will probably secretly have some tiny amount of fun with it.  And that's my problem. 

When did it happen that "fun" became "sitting alone at a computer and sifting through other people's personal information"?  

Graph Search will likely be successful for Facebook (whose aim, after all, is simple and direct:  to get you to spend more time on Facebook).  But why is it that all of us are apparently leading such boring and empty lives that there was ever a market for this sort of thing to begin with?

Stalkers Anonymous

One of the things I remember most vividly about finishing up my first book was how “old” I felt at the end of it.  Seriously, I walked around like I’d just survived a tour of duty in a war-ravaged country.

What I’d really survived, of course, was spending the bulk of my mid- and late-twenties working hard and not having anyone pat me on the head and tell me I was a good girl at the end of it.  In layman’s terms, I believe we call that experience “growing up,” but for a while there, I was pretty convinced that I’d gone through some kind of unprecedented trauma.

Earlier today, I ran across an e-mail exchange between Sam and me from 2010, right after she’d finished reading I’m Stalking Jake!, and our conversation should probably be printed off and stuck in a psychology textbook somewhere.  Sam’s questions and assessments were completely normal (and wonderfully heartfelt); mine oscillated between fury directed at various characters in the book and a pitifully sad desperation regarding the ruins of my parasitic interest in Jake.

I remember having a meltdown – full on hysteria – about a week after the book came out; a week was all it took for me to realize that it wasn’t going to be an instant ticket to success.  And I did a Grade A job of feeling sorry for myself over it.  I mean here I was, I’d poured every ounce of myself into something from ages 24 to 28, and seven days after revealing the ultimate result of my toils, it seemed like no one cared. Certainly the guy at the center didn’t care, and my forceful confession to Sam that I still harbored an interest in finding a way to look Jake Gyllenhaal in the eye and ask him what the hell he was doing with his life (because he clearly wasn’t happy!) is perhaps the most obvious example of transference that I’ve ever seen in print.

I like to think that I've come a long way since then...

But then a few weeks ago, I got a call from the publisher asking me if I'd ever thought about trying to market my book online.  (Let that one sink in for a minute...)  After assuring the caller that what I was about to say was not directed at him personally, I allowed rage to take over and told him exactly how I felt about his phone call and then hung up on him.

So something tells me I might have a few issues that I still need to work through. :)

All Things Must Pass

Throughout my teens and twenties it was him, only him.

I thought it was forever.  Why wouldn’t it be?  He was always there for me.  The cute one.  Eager to please.  Quick with a grin.  Secretly avant-garde (not over-the-top, mind you, but just enough to be interesting should you want to know…and of course I wanted to know).

My loyalty was such that I never contemplated the possibility that the way I felt would change.  Since age 11, he had been mine.  Mine, mine, mine...or at least as much as he could be. (Which was more than you might think.  Until you choose one and really dedicate yourself, it’s hard to know how much one of them can give you.)

We were a good ten years in when I had my first stray thought.  I pushed it aside; we all have stray thoughts from time to time, don’t we?  Uncertainty is completely natural, healthy even (I was in college, after all). It was a solo album from one of the others that made me waver and perhaps it was the shock of wavering as much as anything else that caused me to dig my heels in.  I knew where I stood – in this for the long haul.  

And so we continued as we had, doggedly plowing ahead…  

Years passed.  I got older.  One version of him did, too.

The other version didn't.

There wasn't any one single turning point.  There wasn't a moment when I went from devotion to full-on doubt.  It was gradual, the way life is, and in the end, what I was looking for had changed.  Less and less was he answering the questions I was asking.

It was one of the other three who told me it was okay to let go.  The same one whose album had reached through to me all those years ago.  I started to see things that I hadn't noticed before.  For the first time in ages, there was wonderful, beautiful new life in an worn-out story...

And I knew.

It’s a big step for me, a huge change.  One made after much soul-searching and contemplation.  It's amicable, completely, and I will always love him.  Paul McCartney will always be a part of my life, and after twenty happy years, he has a part of me that I will never be able to give to anyone else.   

But it's time.  To move forward.  To see where this is going.  I'm ready.  So here it is.  I'm announcing it to you, right here, right now, for the first time in writing (bear with me; it's still all so new!):

George Harrison is my favorite Beatle.

Meet Matthew Crawley (Warning: Downton Abbey Season 3 Premiere Spoilers Below)

This is Matthew Crawley.

Matthew lives in England in the early twentieth century.

For a living, he inadvertently inherits other people’s obscenely large fortunes…

…and then nobly does everything in his power to refuse the money.

His love interest is the lovely Lady Mary.

Their relationship has been on again…

…off again…

…on again…

…off again…

…and on again…

(though not before a hint of being off again).

Matthew Crawley is played by someone who is a real person, who lives in the twenty-first century.

He has a real name, and a real wife, and a real child.

But I don’t need to know about any of that.

All I need of Matthew Crawley is Matthew Crawley.

In all his devilish handsomeness.

And horrifically proper sense of morality.

And miraculous ability to heal himself from devastating, war-inflicted paralyzation.

Matthew stands to inherit Downton Abbey.

And it will be the most delicious of slow burns to watch over the next few weeks to see if he actually does.

(Season 3 of Downton Abbey premiered here in the U.S. last night, so no spoilers, please, if the whole season has already aired in your country!)

(That said, in finding the pictures for this post, I accidentally ran into two spoilers that I'm incredibly upset to learn about before seeing on TV.  Dammit, dammit, dammit...)

(P.S.  I think Thomas needs a love interest this season, am I right?)

Becky's Unsolicited Movie Reviews: Argo (Spoiler Free, and I Know - I Can't Believe It's Still in Theaters, Either!)

In eleventh grade, I took Advanced Placement U.S. History, and there was a point, roughly mid-year, when our class was temporarily taken over by a student teacher.  I don't remember his name.  I do remember that he wore glasses and, perhaps in an attempt to appear "hip" in front of a sea of seventeen-year-olds, he left the top couple of buttons undone on his shirt every day, revealing what was universally regarded as an indecent amount of chest hair.

He was also the first person I ever remember hearing praise Ronald Reagan.

I went to a public school.  In Tennessee.  Politics had run rampant in my science classrooms for as far back as I could recall, but it had remained strangely absent from history and social studies classes.  Then again, politics was a slightly different game in the pre-internet world.  As late as 1992, when I was in fifth grade, we hadn't yet decided which of our parties was the "blue" one and which was "red."  (I remember this vividly because my homework the night that Bill Clinton was first elected was to color in an electoral map; I messed mine up when the news station we were watching and our local paper utilized opposing color schemes to represent the parties.)

My political viewpoint, then, prior to eleventh grade, had come from three sources:  my parents, NBC Nightly News (which we watched religiously as a family), and Newsweek (which I started flipping through as soon as I was old enough to read).  None of these sources had given me any reason to suspect that Ronald Reagan, president for the first six years of my life, was anything other than an average Republican who had done a bunch of stuff my parents didn't agree with.  I was ignorant of the fact that there even was another viewpoint until, in an unapologetically biased way, our student teacher decided to spend half of his alloted time with our class talking about how "great" he was.

But even more shocking to me than his hard-on for Reagan was his (gasp) utter disdain for President Jimmy Carter.  I didn't know much about Jimmy Carter's time in office (which was before I was born), but I did know that he was a good man who built houses for people and who sent us a Christmas card every year.  Chest Hair up there wasn't showing him the proper level of respect.

Taking aside for a moment the complete inappropriateness of a public school (student!) teacher imposing his political views on his students (not to mention the absurdity of our regular teacher, who sat through every class he taught, apparently not caring enough to say anything to him about it), Chest Hair proved to be a harbinger for future mentions of Jimmy Carter that I found myself privy to.  That damn Iranian Hostage Crisis...it cost Carter reelection in 1980 and it made him a target for every generation of Republican that came after him. 

Illustration stolen from The New Yorker.

Let's just say that when it comes to movies set in the Carter administration, even the famously liberal Hollywood hadn't come up with much to spin the era in Jimmy's favor.

Enter Ben Affleck.

Argo is not a propaganda piece.  It's not even all that political.  What it is is a damn entertaining film about a mostly forgotten chapter in a much screamed about era in American politics.

Does it rewrite the late '70s in Carter's favor?  No.  What it does do is offer a more accessible (and undoubtedly more accurate) account of history than I got in high school.

It's a good movie, regardless of your politics.  But just the same, I hope Chest Hair, wherever he is now, took the time to see it.