from me to all the world

Defenceless under the night
Our world in stupor lies;
Yet, dotted everywhere,
Ironic points of light
Flash out wherever the Just
Exchange their messages:
May I, composed like them
Of Eros and of dust,
Beleaguered by the same
Negation and despair,
Show an affirming flame.

--- W.H. Auden

...and a Happy New Year. 

territoriality: a discussion

It's high time I did some more sententious vaunting. This here's one of my rare opinion posts. Let's begin with a definition:

territoriality

ter·ri·to·ri·al·i·ty [ter-i-tawr-ee-al-i-tee, -tohr-]

noun

1. territorial quality, condition, or status.

2. the behavior of an animal in defining and defending its territory.

3. attachment to or protection of a territory or domain.

And let's follow that up with a basic truth: the concept of territoriality applies to human interaction as well. We build fences around our houses, put up NO TRESPASSING signs, and feel more at home in our native towns, counties, states, provinces, and (naturally) territories than anywhere else.

It's that specific aspect of territoriality I want to discuss, actually.

Traveling and living in foreign countries is a growing experience. It's a baptism by fire, a crash course in open-mindedness, cultural exposure, language barriers, communication disasters, culinary misadventures and homesickness. You feel it the moment you step off the plane. Everything's new, and it's scary. People are talking in tongues you can't understand. The signs are unreadable. Often the people themselves look completely alien to you, and it's a lead-pipe cinch that they'll think and act in different ways. This makes travelers apprehensive and twitchy and throws us all off our chumps. Eventually, with successive jaunts and expeditions, we get used to the otherness and can relax and enjoy our trips with relative ease.

But one fear never goes away.

In addition to the surface nervousness that traveling engenders within us, there is also something more primordial: a creeping, furtive sort of nervousness, an ever-present low-key fear. It's not just the unfamiliarity of our surroundings. It's the simple fact that we're off our home range. We're on someone else's turf, so to speak. We're in a foreign land, with different laws, mindsets, philosophies, mores, and etiquette. We're in someone else's backyard, and they know it like the back of their hand, and we don't. We, the interlopers, won't be torn limb from limb if discovered by the natives, as happens to wild animals who stray too far from their territory. But the inchoate threat of such still lingers in the reptilian parts of the human brain, and we feel that fear whenever a foreign shore heaves into sight on the  distant horizon.

Even after living in South Korea for something like three nonconsecutive years, I still get the willies on occasion. If I could speak the language better, I wouldn't have 'em so often. But even if I was a whiz at Hangul, that primordial fear would still be there. I'm in Asia, where the rules of the game are elementally different from what I know. The sun still rises and sets, and the tides go in and out, but those are the only similarities. The Koreans have their own ideas about commerce, social relations, gratitude, etiquette, politeness, interpersonal nuance, humor, entertainment, morality, fine dining, hard work and whatnot. Furthermore, the Korean civilization is thousands of years old, far outstripping my own country's paltry history. The enormity of those ages weighs upon my shoulders like a millstone at times.

I feel the opposite effect whenever I return home to the States. I exhale literally and metaphorically. Everything makes sense again, imperfect as it may be. The signs are legible. People's slang terms are comforting. That sense of oneness with my surroundings comes flooding back to me. I feel ready to turn and do battle with whatever extraterritorial threats hounded me home. Your turn, you bastards. You're on my block now.

And you know what? I think that's a good thing.

Culture shock, homesickness, and otherness are shoots which spring from the same seed: territoriality. The feelings of attachment or protectiveness we harbor for the land of our birth. It exerts a powerful, formative influence upon us, and rightly so. The stark reality of it is impossible to deny, deeply biological as it is. Americans have their territory, Koreans have theirs. I'm intruding, plain and simple. Never mind that the immigration office stamps my passport and lets me live and work here for a year at a time. I'm an alien freak. I have the children's stares to prove it.

Of course, there are other, darker shoots of that same territorial seed. Things like bigotry, prejudice, and racism are also tendrils of territoriality. But there are positive effects as well: patriotism and nationalism, for example.

Many will disagree with me on this. Some of you may be shaking your heads right now. In your minds, the argument is coalescing: "Some of the most horrendous atrocities have been committed in the names of patriotism and nationalism!"

They have, no doubt. But I still say that devotion to, fondness for and belief in one's country and culture are healthy things for an upstanding, free-minded individual to have. I think that notion of otherness isn't a stumbling block, but rather a step stool. It's a platform with a telescope, a hill to climb, steep and rocky perhaps but a great place to pause and peruse the sunlit uplands beyond.

I believe (especially as an American) that we're sort of shamed into forsaking our nationalities when we're out on the road. We're encouraged to forget who we are and where we came from, and be totally open-minded as we view other countries, cultures and customs. Viewing anything through the lens of the culture we were born into is frowned upon. Bigotry, it's called. Prejudice. Willful ignorance.

I disagree.

I think you have to judge the entire world from the perspective of your own tiny slice of it, because you'd have to be a robot to do otherwise. Only a mindless automaton is capable of ignoring its own heritage and upbringing and judge something with perfect objectivity. As G.K. Chesterton warned, "Do not be so open-minded that your brains fall out." Stay judgmental. Be biased. Cultivate prejudice. You need a basis, a foundation upon which to judge what you see, and your background is well-suited to it. As long as you're a righteous human being (and I already know that you are), then you won't fall into the bottomless pits of prejudice or racism or ethnocentrism. You'll be fine. Rock on. You need that cultural context of yours to form sound opinions of what you see and hear abroad.

D'you see what I'm saying, here?

I'm starting to think I'm the last person on the planet who feels that way. The paradigm is shifting. The world shrinks, technology advances, airplanes and boats and cars and trains move faster and with less energy, and the information superhighway reaches ever deeper into our lives. As the lines between cultures and continents begin to blur, the zeitgeist has changed. In talks with many of my more liberal friends, they have expressed nothing but disdain for the concepts of patriotism and nationalism. They shake their heads and say things like, "Murrica! F*** yeah!" in satirical tones. Some of the more extreme among them have expressed outright approval for a sort of "world culture," in which national boundaries are swept aside, the myriad cultures of the globes are integrated and amalgamated, and a sort of homogeneous global culture ensues, freeing humanity forever from the damnable vices of bigotry and racism.

Phooey to that, I say.

I don't know about you, but the whole notion of a "world culture," gives me the heebie-jeebies. You should take pride in your homeland. You should have some prejudice in its favor. You should be leery of the way other people do things. You should believe your country's the best in the world simply because you were born in it, as George Bernard Shaw once so scathingly wrote.

"Why?" I hear you ask. "Aren't you being an arrogant, ethnocentric pig? Won't people hate you for thinking that way? Aren't you being close-minded? Shouldn't you travel with an open mind?"

To which my answers are: No, yes, no, and yes.

Being territorial—feeling uncomfortable in another country and safe and secure in your own, cleaving to an intrinsic, instinctive, subconscious kind of nationalism—isn't arrogance. It's only natural to believe that your country's the best. You did grow up in it, after all. But it's not just natural—it's evolutionary. This is your territory. It's your home, and it's a part of you, from the tip of your hairs to the marrow of your bones. You were fed on it, suckled by it,  knocked about by it in your youth. You've breathed it, swam in it, tasted it and slept in it your whole life. It knows you and you know it, and you have each other's backs. You should love it to death. Stepping out of your territory is frightening, strange and potentially life-threatening. That makes the challenge—and rewards—all the greater.

People will hate you for feeling that way. They'll call you a racist pig, a jingoistic idiot, an ignorant, short-sighted, narrow-minded fool. Don't listen to 'em. You know in your heart that you're not a racist. You know people are people, no matter where they're from. You know the difference between right and wrong, good and evil, and you don't attribute either of those things to a human individual just 'cause they're from a particular place. And as long as you know it, no one can touch you or make you feel like you're a bad person.

You're not being close-minded. You're open to new experiences. In fact, that is the whole point of traveling: to get out of your comfort zone. To leave your territory, those familiar shores and welcoming skyline, and venture into the unknown. There's the rub. Be territorial. Love your homeland, be wary or even leery of other people's, but don't let that stop you from going. Go there and find out how it really is. Then you can decide whether or not your preconceptions were accurate. What you're doing, if you're doing it right, is giving other people's cultures and societies the respect they deserve without fawning over them, worshiping them, or paying them lip service for political correctness's sake. By the Great Green Arkleseizure, folks, you're allowed to have an opinion. Just make sure it's founded on your own experience and a thorough knowledge of circumstance, not sweeping generalizations or assumptions. Just look at Paul Theroux. That's precisely how he writes his travel books. He's judgmental as hell. He'll lampoon anybody, be they an individual or a government, foreign or American. The point is to go and see, and then judge harshly...based on what you know is right.

That, my dears, is how you travel with an open mind. You have a context to work with: your culture. Hold that culture close to yourself, cherish it, be proud of it, but keep your heart and mind open. Let the ambient weirdness trickle in. You'll learn some startling things. Some of them will be as stupid or wrong or yucky as you always suspected. Many of them, however, won't be as bad as you thought—and more than a few will be the exact opposite. You'll see sights you never dreamed existed, taste the milk of human kindness, add more capital to the bank of experience than you ever thought possible. But don't forget where you started. Don't lord it over anybody, don't put anyone else down, but for Pete's sake, don't be afraid to flaunt it. You are who you are. Be proud. Don't skulk about. Tell people. Everyone's just as curious about you as you are about them, or ought to be. They're all nationalists at heart, too. They may dislike you just because of the color of your passport. But you can forgive them for that, 'cause deep down you're judging the hell out of their clothes, their dirty fingernails and their country's cockeyed ways, and you can laugh inside at the crazy two-way nature of the universe. 

But how would this priceless sensation, this ability to learn about others, to understand how things are done on the far side of the world, down in the dust or up in the snow, on top of the mountains and in the deepest valleys and over the silvery lakes—how would it be possible if we had one world culture? Where would your identity come from? What would you take pride in? How would you build that base, that context, from which to travel and peer into other people's lives? How could you judge their shortcomings—and their wonders? What use would travel be if everyone else thought and slept and breathed and loved the same way that you do? 

It wouldn't, and that's the truth. It wouldn't be any use at all.  

I don't want a world that's all the same. I don't want a world where I never feel ill at ease or out of place. I want a world full of mystery and weirdness and otherness to explore. And I want a patch of dirt that I can come back to and feel at home in, unconditionally—but with a host of foreign friends and experiences rattling around in my head, heart and soul. I think it's grand that we're all different from each other, and that we have a little fear and perhaps aversion to one another (and our respective nations). Just because we travel and learn about the world doesn't mean we should lose faith in who we are and where we came from, or our belief in our own greatness. I think that sort of national pride fosters healthy competition, self-confidence, cultural self-esteem, and most importantly, our curiosity about each other. It makes the sun brighter, the water clearer, the air fresher and our friendships warmer. 

But maybe that's just me.

Patriotic enough for ya?

foundation, inspiration

Cover art from Isaac Asimov's Foundation series. Hence the title.

Basically, the situation is this. Rather than sit around and watch video game walk-throughs on YouTube all day (damn you, Shadow of the Colossus), I decided to update this here blog. Since I have no worthwhile news to relate (well, I do, but that will come later), I'll bring you up to speed on some novel-ish things. This originates from my recent decision to whip my novel into working order and publish it for the Kindle™ before the year is out.

First, however, I'm making some changes to my manuscript. There's a major overhaul underway. (Yes, I paired those two words intentionally.) I'm incorporating elements of my second, third, fourth and fifth novels into the first one, to add more characters and spice up the plot. In addition to this, there are several minor changes I'm making, some of which have only occurred to me in the last few days.

I'd like to sit down with you and dissect every little change I'm making, and elicit an editorial, literary and thought-provoking critique from you. But that's not going to work. For starters, I'm paranoid about revealing any details about my baby on this Internet thingy. Some scurvy rotter might come along and steal my idea, and I'd have to commit suicide (after decorating my apartment with the miscreant's entrails). Second, you'd be bored to tears. This is a rather nonsensical, esoteric novel I'm working on: social commentary wrapped in epic adventure-filled action-packed speculative fiction, with a few metaphysical touches thrown in for good measure. It's kind of like a hot dog buried under layers of onion, tomatoes, sweet relish, cheese, chili, and all the other crap that Cthulhu knows should never be put on a hot dog.

Eldritch analogies aside, however, you wouldn't like hearing about what exactly I'm writing. It'd spoil the surprise, anyway. You can read it for yourselves when I publish this beast. What I'd like to talk to you about today, because it has special bearing on my writing (and rewriting), are the foundations for this work.

To put it bluntly, I'm mad as hell. And I'm not going to take it anymore.

I'm about to get political/pseudo-philosophical, so all of you intolerant or opinionated types (or just those who don't want their impressions of me ruined) should get the heck out of Dodge, right now.

The world is sick.

It's backed itself into a corner, run itself up a blind alley. And now it's got nothing to do, nowhere to go, and it's eating itself.

Like Cyrus says in The Warriors: "Now look what we have here before us." Look at the world today. Overpopulation. Cramped, smoky, grimy cities, soaked in sin and desperation. World trade, economies, businesses, the very definition of success—all built upon cramming people into stuffy cubicles in monstrous floodlit buildings, where they slave their lives away for peanuts, pushing papers and dozing through meetings.

It's a horrendous job, and somebody—a million somebodies—has to do it. I'm aware of that. I'm not castigating the white-collar worker. All of them, men and women alike, have my respect. They've built something amazing. Human civilization as we know it depends upon them.

No, my beef is with human civilization itself.

I'm not pleased with how it turned out. I don't like that our society depends on things like corporations, Wi-Fi networks, stocks, bonds, markets, trades, mergers, industry, commercialism, business, economy, commodities, digital technology, and all those other intangible things built on numbers and figures and data. I resent that Western civilization revolves around forcing its youngsters to educate themselves in the purgatory of public school and the political chop-shop of college, so they can graduate with a pile of debt and a host of half-formed ideas and forgotten facts, and thence obtain a soul-crushing, unfulfilling job in the private sector and work until they die.

I like things...simpler. Freer.

(I realize, as I sit here and rail against the modern age, that I am typing on my laptop computer and sitting in my ninth-floor apartment with Owl City playing in the background and an electric fan preventing me from succumbing to the sticky Korean heat. I am the world's biggest hypocrite; I admit it. I don't give a pair of dingo's kidneys. I am spreading the word, my fauxslophic ideas, with the only viable weapon at hand. Indulge me.)

I'll be the first to tell you that I was born in the wrong century. I often find myself wishing that I could have taken part in the great explorations of the past five centuries. Ah, those were the days. There wasn't a single piece of plastic anywhere in the world. Everything was made from romantic materials like wood, metal, and canvas. The map hadn't been completely filled in yet. Anything—literally anything—could happen. Anything was possible. The sky was the limit. No, there were no limits. Even the sky was up for grabs.

I want to tag along with the famous explorers—Marco Polo, Francisco de Orellana, David Livingstone, Sir Francis Drake, Lewis and Clarke...even the doomed ones like Captain Cook, Burke and Wills, Mungo Park, Robert Falcon Scott, and Roald Amundsen. Heaven only knows what these guys really saw, and what they felt as they did. It seems like there's no room for expeditions like theirs anymore. Today's intrepid souls (Sir Ranulph Fiennes, Mark Jenkins, and others) know what's waiting for them at the end of the trail. I long for the days of romance and mystery.

I guess I don't really hate human civilization as we know it. I just said that out of spite. I don't even hate technology. Technology saves lives, eases burdens, facilitates communication, bridges gaps, expands minds. And it lets Adam Young make music. I dislike the mindset behind technology on occasion. Progress for progress's sake, and whatnot. And I wish e-readers wouldn't replace my trusty paperbacks. That's all.

But most of all, I wish the world wasn't so small. My most cherished dreams are those in which the world has become vast, unexplored, and dangerous once again, and it's up to me and a few other intrepid souls to plumb its mysteries.

So that's what my book's about. The decks have been cleared. Human civilization as we know it is kaputt. Earth's surface has been rearranged, altered unrecognizably. It's awash in eldritch abominations, mysterious monuments, savage beasts, colossal monsters, alien technology, sentient inhuman races, ferocious weather patterns, cosmic anomalies, laboratory experiments, fractured space-time, a hodgepodge of familiar cities and nations...and, of course, the terrified and scanty remnants of humanity. Into this mess are thrust my two protagonists, office drones from the Earth we know, refugees from the chaotic, hopeless, stifling present day. It's the end of the world as they know it, and they feel fine. They were actually sort of waiting for it to happen. So they jump at the call. Off they boldly go, throwing away their old lives and seeking their fortunes in this new and barbaric world. "Going for howling adventures over in the territory," as Mark Twain put it. Fighting, exploring, befriending, rescuing, and just generally being heroic and badass.

That's something I think every human being should have the chance to do.

But the world is sick, remember? First, we're poisoning the crystal waters of pure human existence with the drug of digital immersion, an ersatz life lived in the virtual world. (When was the last time you had a conversation where somebody didn't quote a movie, mention a video game, reference a website, or whip out a cell phone? I catch myself doing this distressingly often, and feel like running up to my apartment and hurling my computer and my smartphone out of the window.) But second, our worldview as a species seems to be shifting. This is particularly notable in the United States, but it manifested first in Europe and other notable civilized nations.

I'm speaking of the distressing trend of liberalism.

lib·er·al·ism [lib-er-uh-liz-uhm, lib-ruh-]

noun

1. the quality or state of being liberal, as in behavior or attitude.
2. a political or social philosophy advocating the freedom of the individual, parliamentary systems of government, nonviolent modification of political, social, or economic institutions to assure unrestricted development in all spheres of human endeavor, and governmental guarantees of individual rights and civil liberties.
3. (sometimes initial capital letter) the principles and practices of a liberal party in politics.
4. a movement in modern Protestantism that emphasizes freedom from tradition and authority, the adjustment of religious beliefs to scientific conceptions, and the development of spiritual capacities.

I've already talked your ear off about the state of human civilization, so I'll be brief. I disagree wholeheartedly with the liberal mindset. As innocuous as it sounds on paper, liberalism is a destructive cancer, a pernicious gangrene corrupting the world. I define myself (categorize myself, Smithy) as a conservative atheist. This means I have the advantage of looking at the world through the practical, no-nonsense lens of your garden-variety conservative, yet I don't have the obfuscating religious hangups that fundamentalist Christians do. I have a clearer view than most anybody.

I have observed, by monitoring the major news networks (most of them) and the general trend of American politics, that the liberals are taking over. Conservatism is passé. It's discredited as a system of thought. People (liberals) believe that conservatives are barbaric, violent, hidebound, intolerant, insensitive, cruel, racist, corrupt, money-grubbing Neanderthals. We're an unpopular lot right now, and I don't see that changing anytime soon.

The popular consensus seems to be that we are moving toward a state of world peace. A utopia. Everybody gets along, the state oversees every aspect of the citizens' welfare (that's what they mean by "the government guarantees individual rights and civil liberties"), people pay sky-high taxes to support the bloated and all-powerful government, but don't mind because they're off their chumps on sex and drugs and other hallmarks of an indolent, cared-for lifestyle.

Hogwash, I say. That's not what humans were meant for. Humans strive. Humans overcome. Humans pioneer. Humans explore. Humans hunt. Humans kill.

[grunt, snort]

Sorry. As I was saying, humans don't fit the mold which the liberals seek to jam us into. We weren't mean for a utopia. We weren't mean for a civilized, caring society. I think pastoralism and minarchy are the ideal fit for humanity. Anything more threatens us with a total stagnation of the human condition, a decadent travesty of civilization, a sparkly balloon easily punctured by external or internal pressures. (If you think I'm wrong, ask Thomas Cole.)

I wondered why, as a boy, I loved watching movies and cartoons where governments and bureaucratic order had been overthrown, and the world had descended into lawless chaos. (Mad Max and Thundarr the Barbarian come to mind). There was no law to tell you what you could or couldn't do; you had to decide for yourself. You could be bad or good. I loved the idea, without really knowing why.

As I got older (and politically aware), I figured it out. We've got too much government right now. So much that it's stifling our very nature as living, breathing, entropic beings.

To be properly free, we need a minimum of government, a government which fulfills no further function than that of a night watchman. The government doesn't try to control the administration of things like health care and welfare and job creation and other social programs; those things aren't rights, they're privileges. They aren't guaranteed, they're earned. The people are on their own for those things. The government should merely ensure that the people's basic rights—speech, press, arms-bearing, assembly—are guaranteed. Then it can back the hell off.

So, naturally, in my novel, all the world's governments and governing bodies—particularly the United States—vanish in an instant. The world is now leaderless, anarchic. And of course, a host of baddies rise up to fill the void and impose their will upon a helpless population. Enter our two heroes. They save the day, move on, do it again. Live life as they want. Oppose oppression. Exercise independence, common sense, human decency. Explore, strive, create, inspire. If those aren't true American values, then I'm more idealistic than I dared to admit.

And then...well, I don't want to spoil the plot-lines of future works, but I will say this much. My two heroes, after kicking around for a while and saving the day here and there, decide to found a country of their own in the midst of this bellowing wilderness. It's a free country, a good country, a large and powerful country. It's filled with hardworking souls who don't feel entitled to anything, who know that the government isn't there to support them or care for them, but simply to protect their rights. It's a country where moral goodness and common sense are valued above political correctness, affirmative action, reparations and the crippling overabundance of tolerance. And it's a country unafraid to defend itself or its allies from threats. Actions, not words. Guns, not sanctions. Confrontation, not appeasement. That's the American way. 

Long story short...I'm writing a novel which is essentially American in its character, in which I create the ideal world as I see it. One that makes sense to me. One that feels right. A world where our fates aren't decided before we're born; where we're not dependent on technology or successful careers or upward mobility; where we decide who and what we want to be, every minute of every day; and we have the freedom to follow whatever path we choose. And those who challenge our way of life, those who seek to dominate or terrorize us, are dealt with, swiftly and permanently, at the point a sword blade or a six-shooter.

I hope this makes you want to read it.

And now kindly listen to this, a paean to unexplored worlds. This technology is allowed:

Dostoevsky revisited

As none of you are currently aware, I just finished rereading Fyodor Dostoevsky's Notes from Underground. It is and shall remain one of my favorite books of any genre. For the longest time I was never able to say exactly why. It resonated with me, certainly; I could relate to the corrosive, self-deprecating tailspin of insecurity and the crippling, isolating lack of self-confidence. (It was the hallmark of my school years—where, like Dostoevsky's unnamed protagonist, I looked upon my ant-brained classmates and their crude ambitions with disgust.) But thanks to Dostoevsky's evocative style, and the quality translation which preserved it, Notes from Underground interested me—compelled me—far more than any other work I read in school. The exact reason eluded me.

Then, on this third reading, more than six years after I first laid eyes on the novel, it hit me.

Dostoevsky hit the nail on the head.

He exposed a universal but uncomfortable truth.

With the jolting truthfulness which no other work has achieved so bluntly and plainly, Notes from Underground lays bare a portion of the human psyche which absolutely rules human interaction and individual ego. And yet, it is the most secretive, skulking, shameful part of us. It imparts a need unto our consciousness which we staunchly deny in public, but furtively—even subconsciously—seek to assuage.

And that need is, simply, the need to be recognized as a worthwhile human being. No, not even recognized—simply acknowledged. 

This is not the weirdest thing I want to tell you about tonight, though. It does have something to do with acknowledgement, rest assured. Listen to this:

I have not yet met the director of the academy where I work.

Weird, right? I've been there four months and I've only seen the guy in the corridors, or ensconced in his office. Mr. Rah is his name. At my first hagwon, the director, Mr. Hwang, met me at the airport, introduced himself, and did everything in his power to make my stay more comfortable. In the present day, Mr. Rah can't even be bothered to introduce himself or ask me how I'm doing. It makes a person feel mighty insignificant, let me tell you. I mean, I realize I'm not much more than chattel as far as he's concerned. I'm a warm body. A brain that know English. A mouth that can teach Korean children. A foreign name Mr. Rah can slap on a newsletter and send to potential customers.

Still, being reminded of that fact is unpleasant. Nay, cankerous.

Two weeks ago at work, Mr. Rah and I had...an encounter. You can't really label it as anything else. It was not a conversation, or even an exchange. The bell had rung for third period. I got up from my desk, grabbed my teaching materials, and sauntered into the hallway. Approaching me down this hallway was Mr. Rah himself, strolling along as though he owned the place. His mouth was set in a firm line. His thick body dominated the narrow space. His idle gaze swept the corridor. Our eyes met. There was no one behind me. We were alone in that passageway. The squeals of bleating children, the thunderous beat of their sneakers and sandals as they charged in through the main entrance, submerged into a pool of silence. The moment stretched into infinity.

With an internal monologue that would've made Notes from Underground's protagonist proud, I wondered what to do. I had been told that it was respectful to bow to Mr. Rah (in the Korean fashion, with a swift jerk of the head) upon seeing him. He was the Great and Beneficent Director and all. My mind and spirit rebelled against the idea. Why should I pay him his due as my employer, when he had done nothing to formally accept me as his employee? What did I owe him? "One good turn deserves another," they'd readily cry at me, but what if the inception of that goodwill is lacking altogether?

And, of course, I decided to comply. I lowered my head to him. I gave an almost spastic yank of my neck. My reluctance must have been painfully obvious. But I did it. Why not? After all, it couldn't hurt. It would force him to acknowledge me. He'd see my show of respect, the extension of goodwill, a selfless act of international cooperation. He'd be compelled—no, forced—to reciprocate. I knew the Koreans by now. They were bound by such laws as these. A cockroach living in Mr. Rah's pantry, eating his rice, could've jerked its head at him, and he would have been forced to bow back, just to calcify the relationship between benefactor and beneficiary. To have left such a gesture unanswered would have been unthinkable, anathema, contrary to millennia of cultural norms.

He didn't bow back.

Far from it. When my head came back up, his eyes had slid away from me, and were pointing purposefully down the hall, already forgetful of my presence. I might have been a dust mote wafting through the air. I was reminded, jarringly, of Aesop's story of the gnat and the bull. But then came the crowning humiliation. Without once looking over at me, Mr. Rah lifted his index finger and made a sort of twirling, hurry-up motion with it, indicating that I was loitering in the hallways and needed to get to class. The bell had rung mere seconds before. I was in the hallway, in the very act of stepping toward Room 203, materials in hand. And yet I received the "get to class, thou sluggard" treatment.  

I stood there for perhaps 5-10 seconds, stunned beyond belief. My mind had caved in. I could not conceive of it. The nerve! The impoliteness! The callousness! How rude! How crass! How impolitic!

And here is where I really channeled Dostoevsky's underground man again. Outwardly, I remained calm. Inwardly, I gnashed my teeth, foaming at the mouth in fury. I squirmed like a worm stuck with a pin. It was too much to bear. I hadn't been insulted; I had been ignored, which was a million times worse. If he'd stuck out his tongue at me as he'd passed, I'd have branded him a loony and contentedly passed the remainder of the day. But being ignored was indigestible, insoluble. I felt like hurling my books at him. Mentally, I stuck out my foot and tripped him as he walked past. I spat on him, hurled invectives at him, plotted the sweetest and vilest of revenges. I even went so far as to ask my coworkers in the staffroom whether intensive courses were voluntary or not. (Intensives, which will take place in August, mean an extra round of morning classes for us, as we metamorphose for a time into a full-blown cram school.) Upon learning that they were, I thought "Hang them! And hang Mr. Rah! I'll take a vacation that week!"

Later, over beers with my friends that night (again channeling the underground man) I calmed down. I mellowed out. In fact, I felt as though I had overreacted (and later regretted feeling this way, and gnashed my teeth again). I was persuaded to believe that Mr. Rah was an odd duck, who took funny turns, and liked to twirl his hands and snap his fingers when the mood took him. Perhaps he was strolling the halls with a sort of restrained but barely-containable jollity about him. I must have tweaked his sensibilities, triggered a reaction, loosened a brick in the emotive dike, and coaxed some strange gesture of gaiety from him. Later, when the beer had worn off, I saw that this was hogwash. One doesn't twirl his fingers with a deadpan expression on his face. Innocuous his gesture may have been, but it made me mad. It wasn't just a personal slight. I sensed some monstrous injustice in his actions, a base incorrectness, a gross discrepancy between zeitgeist and reality. With a wave of his hand, the director had epitomized the callous Korean (nay, Asian) corporate mindset, which holds that people on the lowest rung are mere bugs compared with the executives. They can be bullied, coerced, taken advantage of, and ignored in equal measure.

Miss H and I took a night cruise along the Han River last evening. As the ferryboat slid under bridges and past the twinkling lights of Seoul (one of the most intentional cities on Earth, as Dostoevsky might have written), we had occasion to meet an American couple. I'll call them Betty and George. They lived in Daegu, and taught at the U.S. military base. Betty had run a half-marathon in Seoul that morning, and George was part of a jazz ensemble, and played concerts and gigs around Korea. Still stung from my encounter with Mr. Rah, I asked George for his opinion of his employers and managers. Did they treat him like a commodity, or like a person? His answer gave me food for thought. He said that the greatest obstacle to proper business relations was the language barrier. The more English the Korean speaks—or the more Korean the foreigner speaks—the more human the relationship. Frostiness becomes friendliness, impersonality fades away, familiarity breeds cooperation and harmony and companionship. Learning the languages, he said, did wonders to improve the interrelation between employer and employee.

To that end, I have resolved to learn Korean to the very best of my ability. I'll lay in wait. I'll let Mr. Rah cruise along, master of his domain, comfortable in his position and his superiority. Then I'll rattle his cage. I'll knock the foundations out from under his castle. I'll be Dostoevsky's underground man, dressed in his finest clothing, going to slap Zverkov and challenge him to a duel. I'll invite myself into Mr. Rah's office, plonk myself down in a chair (maybe even his chair) and say, in flawless Korean, "Howdy boss-man, what's the good word today? You don't know me, because you've never bothered to meet me, but I'm one of your employees. Don't you think it's about time we had a confab and got to know each other?"

And, just like the underground man, I will probably never do it.

That's why I like Notes from Underground.

let the countdown begin!

Technically it's already begun—you've probably noticed that cute little widget over on the right. However, the gears have finally meshed. Two days ago I received my passport back from the Korean Consulate General in Los Angeles, stamped with a shiny new E-2 work visa classifying me as a "foreign instructor," and guaranteeing me a one-year sojourn. This was the last piece of paperwork that I needed. I can flash this little honey in the faces of the Korean immigration officials, waltz through customs, and enter South Korea as a legal immigrant. All of my ducks are in a row. I could leave tomorrow if they wanted me.

But they want me on February 7. After a little jockeying, some back-and-forth nonsense, a glut of vacillation and a smidgen of misinformation, the date of my departure was finalized. I am, needless to say, tremendously excited. The contents of my room (stuffed into way too many heavy cardboard boxes) are safely tucked away in a storage unit in town. My suitcases are half-packed, and all the equipment I'm bringing with me has been inventoried and set aside. Decks of cards (three normal decks and a pinochle set); my grooming kit; shoeshine supplies; hat brushes; journals and notebooks; battery chargers; plug adapters; packs of gum; medicines and taco seasoning; and, perhaps most important of all, books. I've got all my cocktail recipe books with me, and some stuff about card games, and my Worst Case Scenario: Travel guide.

And then are the works of fiction I've selected. Sapsucker that I am, I neglected to choose these volumes before packing up my personal library, so I had to go back through the boxes and mine these buggers out of the tenebrous depths.

They are:

• The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson
• Frankenstein by Mary Shelley
• Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad
• Robinson Crusoe by Daniel Defoe
• Skeletons on the Zahara by Dean King, which I'm reading now.

I've read Heart of Darkness before, but that was years ago, in school, and I didn't pay it much attention because I was too busy trying to avoid having my upper body dunked into a trash can. Like Moby-Dick, I have attempted to read Frankenstein repeatedly, but always petered out near the end of the first chapter. The Great Shark Hunt (also known as The Gonzo Papers, Volume One) is Thompson's true account of his adventures as a drug-addled gonzo journalist in a country turned upside-down by chemicals, counterculture, rock 'n' roll, political corruption, and war. (The Sixties, in other words.) Skeletons on the Zahara is likewise nonfiction: a tale of woe, desperation, suffering and privation regarding the crew of the American brig Commerce, shipwrecked off the coast of West Africa in 1814 and sold into slavery by Saharan nomads.  It's pretty good so far. Should be a good read on the plane, if I don't finish it before that.

Speaking of books, I am so far behind on my book reviews that it ain't even funny. Okay, maybe it is a bit funny. But that's beside the point. I'll spare you a long, dull, wordy series of reviews that you undoubtedly wouldn't have the patience to read. Instead, I'll review each book in one sentence:

• Starship Troopers by Robert A. Heinlein: A breathlessly suspenseful epic and yet also a sinewy and hard-lined analysis of patriotism, military service, war, and human conflict, in the guise of a rollicking good science fiction tale about well-trained space soldiers in powered armor battling hideous alien bugs. 9/10
• Into the Wild by Jon Krakauer: Journalist and inveterate traveler Krakauer details and examines the life, motivations, adventures and ultimate downfall of the ill-fated super-tramp Christopher McCandless. 9/10
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas by Hunter S. Thompson: An excoriating satire of drug culture, chemically-enhanced ramblings, and late 20th-century vice in the world's most sinful city—sportswriter Raoul Duke and his Samoan lawyer, Dr. Gonzo, speed off to Las Vegas in a giant red convertible and a trunk full of drugs to cover a motorcycle race. 8/10
• Black Like Me by John Howard Griffin: A powerful, gut-wrenching, no-holds-barred peek into the lives of black folks in the American South in 1959...seen through the eyes of white novelist Griffin himself, who darkened his skin artificially and set off to the South to find out the truth about the "Negro Problem." The truth is viscerally shocking. 7/10

There. Now you know what I've been reading. Incidentally, I've never read any of these books before. I don't know what took me so long to get around to Starship Troopers. Perhaps it was the awful movie adaptation. Thankfully I set my prejudice aside and read the book, which, as I understand, is required reading at West Point, and a great favorite among the 75th Ranger Battalion (the guys who fought through hell in Mogadishu in 1993). Now if only Barack Obama and the Democratic Party would read it...[sigh]...

And finally, since I will become an immigrant (emigrant?) in ten days, I'll leave you with a little song. Yes, yes, I know. I should be using "The Final Countdown" or something, but I hate that song. So take it away, Zep.

let's say "plans" instead of "resolutions"

...and while we're at it, let's call them "premeditated" instead of "late."

I was never one to go spouting my petty New Year's Resolutions to everybody within earshot, but listing them here would keep you from being caught unawares later on. And calling them "resolutions" would seem to invite them to be unequivocally broken in short order. So here you go, my plans for 2012 (to be immediately rendered null and void if the Aztecs decide to let the world end):

Number One: Ascend to my rightful place as a writer (i.e., have more confidence, dammit).

I'm through with the crippling lack of confidence and dithering indecision which plague me whenever I try to gauge markets, write relevant stories and articles, look up potential publishers, and submit works. Hunter S. Thompson never bothered with any of that crap. He just went out, did what he had to do to get a story, looked around and submitted it somewhere. That's what I'm going to do from this moment forward. I'm looking up markets for creative nonfiction as we speak. Who says I need only do travel articles and short sci-fi stories? I'm sure I've got lots to say on other subjects...and can tease it out of my brain without the aid of chemicals. So, to that end, I intend to become a more prolific writer this year...and a more assiduous salesman.

P.S. This may or may not include publishing that damn novel. We'll see how it goes. I don't know how easy it is to publish a novel from a foreign country, and I don't have Ernest Hemingway here to tell me. Maybe that magic Internet thingy will come to the rescue! TA-DA!!

Number Two: Go back to Korea (i.e., drink a lot of soju, meet crazy foreigners, do the cool stuff I didn't get to do before, pig out on bulgogi, and all that rot).

Well, shoot. That's taken care of. Helen the Eminent Recruiter tells me that my paperwork is where it needs to be and my E-2 visa is expected any day now. My room is still in rampant disarray, but order is precipitating out of the chaos. My desk is cleaned out, my closet has been divested of all garments which shall not be accompanying me on my Asian odyssey, and that big pile of stuff in the armchair is looking less like a war correspondent's personal effects and more like a roving journalist's kit bag. I should be ready to go in—criminy, twenty-eight days!

Number Three: Give Hulk Hogan a wedgie (i.e., sneak up behind him on the set of his reality TV show and yank his Fruit-of-the-Looms up over his cute little head).

Just checking to see if you're still awake.

Number Four: Live for others...a little bit (i.e., get involved in some charity work).

The only things I've ever donated to others are a few hours at an old folks' home in East Tennessee (which nearly scarred me for life; cue the old lady in the wheelchair screaming for her dead husband) and a few fistfuls of change for the Salvation Army. I aim to change that this year, and put some real charitable man-hours under my belt. Some of my foreign friends in K-Land have gotten involved with organizations which donate food and clothing to North Koreans in need, which interests me something fierce. I never did a flipping thing to help the poor NoKos the last time I was there, and the thought wracks me with guilt to this very day. Once I get back to the States I intend to put my time in planting trees and passing out soup at homeless shelters, too, but that's a story for 2014.

There's more to my list, but these snippets are all I can think of for now. I need to read more books this year (and write a few, too). I recently rediscovered reading for pleasure, and since then a whole host of worthy volumes has passed under my eyes. I'm way behind on reviewing 'em, too...especially since I decided to review only one book at a time on this here blog. I'm five chapters into Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas and am enjoying the living daylights out of it. But more about that later.

Cheerio, people. Send me some heroic resolve...

writing updates, 3/31/2011

It never ceases to amaze me how magazine editors always seem to know exactly what I'm thinking.

Seriously, they've got me pegged. It happens every time. I'll wonder aloud in an offhand way "How easy would it be to transition from a fixed-wing aircraft to flying a helicopter?"

And lo and behold, the April issue of AOPA Pilot magazine runs an article (part of their Pilot Challenges series) about a lifelong airplane pilot trying her hand at helicopters for the first time.

Shazam! My question's answered. This isn't the first time the AOPA has done this to me, either. A while back I wondered what it might be like to fly VLJs (very light jets) solo from the left seat, and they up and came out with an article about a fellow who owns his own Cessna Citation Mustang and does just that. And as if that wasn't amazing enough, the man's a published novelist as well!

Or take the April editions of Science Illustrated and Popular Science. I picked 'em up on a whim at Barnes & Noble a few weeks back. One of three scenarios in corporate publishing politics is playing itself out here. Either (a) these competing magazines monitor each other's work like a bug under a microscope, and arrange matters so that articles with extremely similar subject material are published simultaneously, or (b) both publications maintain research teams comprised of assiduous, straight-shooting go-getters whom of their own accord, respectively, come up with timely stories which just happen to cover the same topic; or (c) the editors-in-chief of both publications have a direct line to my brain via crystal ball or magic mirror, see what I'm mulling over in preparation for my next crack at being a science fiction writer, and delegate their writers accordingly:

"Quick, Hawkins! He's wondering about humanity, the future, and the possible mass-migration of civilization to new stars and new worlds aboard massive space-worthy floating arks!"

"Get moving, Jansen, Sadie, Leroy. He needs more info on giant starships, interstellar travel, space station environments, self-contained ecosystems and possible planetary destinations. Like, yesterday. Scram!"

My money's on option (c). 

Who'd a' thunk it? This month both magazines featured front-page articles pertaining to interstellar travel. And I mean real interstellar travel, not glitzy Hollywood Battlestar Galactica interstellar travel. Feasible, like. None of this high-flown hyperspace crap. Just the nitty-gritty: ships powered by black holes. A solar sail miles wide, capable of propelling a spacecraft at a fraction of the speed of light. A cone-shaped vehicle, which gathers and manufactures its own fuel from stardust as it zooms through the void. Star cruisers the size of continents, designed to hold a million human beings, and enough livestock, greenhouses, water recycling plants, air scrubbers, public parks, recreation halls, virtual-reality discotheques and whatnot to keep all of us from going hungry, thirsty, or batshit crazy. Lasers. Antimatter. Nuclear warheads. Hell, one article even talked about how our physical bodies might not even need to make the trip; eventually we might develop the capability to simply send our consciousness across billions of light-years instantaneously, downloading it into another body upon arrival.

Sounds amazing, doesn't it? And disturbingly god-like. Speaking for myself, I think it's a neat idea. But I kind of like to keep my body with me wherever I travel. I might need bits of it once I reach my destination, if you know what I mean. This whole sending-your-mind-into-space idea reminds me of a couple of rather unsettling stories by H.P. Lovecraft ("The Whisperer in Darkness" and "The Shadow Out of Time"; both involve aliens hijacking people's minds and transporting them across the space-time continuum).

(Ahem) Anyway, to cut a long story short, all of this stuff really helped me out with my writing.

I, ladies and gents, have completed my first science fiction novella.

If, going by the Science Fiction and Fantasy Writers of America standard, a novella is indeed between 17,500 and 40,000 words in length (less being a novelette and more a full-bore novel)...

Then I have written a novella.

That story I've been slaving away at, off-and-on, for something like four months—"Aptitude" I think I called it—is finally finished. I've got to edit it and clean it up some, of course, but the draft is complete. Rough tally is 21,300 words.

Ain't that the cat's pajamas?

I mean, yeah, okay, sure. I wrote a novel before this. It's about 51,000 words. A short novel, yes, but a novel. ("Only one, but a lion," as Aesop wrote.) I'd hesitate to call it a novel, though. It sucks canal water. I've been informed by semi-competent authorities that my characters lack depth, the first act is flat and dry and dull, and my description could use stand a lot more pizazz. (Huzzah, I finally get to use the word "pizazz" in a blog post...about dang time!) 

Something just feels right about this story. It has a plot. It's dynamic. It flows. The characters sparkle and sizzle and flash. The dialog is punchy. The setting is described in intimate detail. The conflict is multifarious and mind-bending. All of it just sort of weaves together. "Aptitude" is an amalgamation of coming-of-age story and high-speed mystery thriller (set in outer space). And unlike this damn novel, I like the way this story turned out. It feels whole. Complete. Well-rounded. Unpolished, but fully shaped. It has that "I'm-done-all-you-need-to-do-is-take-off-the-rough-edges-and-BOOM-I'll-be-a-twenty-carat-diamond" feel to it.

So I'm immensely encouraged and excited by the vibe I'm getting off this story, both during and after its creation. I'll keep you posted on how the submission process goes. In the meantime, it's time for me to polish up some other stories I've got waiting on hold, both on paper and in my brain. I'll keep you posted on that, too. I might even get back into editing the novel sometime soon. I'm confident that I'll fix it eventually. If I have enough whiskey on hand, that is.

And as for my stated goal of publishing three nonfiction travel articles by July? Nuh-uh. Not going to happen. I'm going to try, but I might have to push the deadline back a bit. Then again, word's come down from the higher-ups that we might have the entire month of April off from work. With all that downtime something's sure to happen on the writing front. I should hope I could be productive if I'm grounded for four weeks. 

Stay tuned...

P.S. Here's the link to the PopSci feature on how we might depart our planet. (I don't like the tone of this article too much; it accuses the human race of being a "risk to the planet." Nonetheless it's entertaining and mind-blowing enough to hold my interest.) I tried to get a link for the Science Illustrated article, too, but it seems they are rather like yours truly: too old-fashioned and stubborn to put their stuff up online. You can only find it in print. Check your local bookstore. Oh, and if you're curious about the artwork, that's a computer-generated image from the well-known and celebrated sci-fi novel The War of the Worlds by H.G. Wells, obtained from Wallpaperbase.com. It depicts a highly underrated scene that, to my knowledge, has never made it into a cinematic adaptation of the book: the ironclad torpedo ram Thunder Child, under full steam, attacks three Martian tripods to cover the escape of another vessel laden with English refugees, off the mouth of the River Blackwater in Essex. Though heavily damaged by the Martians' Heat-Ray, she successfully rams one tripod and destroys it. The Thunder Child then turns toward a second tripod. Burning from stem to stern and close to sinking, the valiant ship charges the enemy with all flags flying and guns blazing. The second tripod's Heat-Ray obliterates the torpedo ram, detonating her boilers and ammunition magazines, but the flaming wreckage plows onward and crushes the Martian. The civilians aboard the paddle-wheel steamer are able to escape unharmed.

This is the first time in The War of the Worlds that a human artifact is able to compete with the Martians and come anywhere close to victory. Despite the loss of the ship and all hands aboard, the Thunder Child's sacrifice proves a tremendous boost to human morale, which the Martians have nearly stamped out of existence.

Now tell me that ain't good science fiction. Just try.

recommended reading

This is going to be a long one. To save you time and money, I've installed the first-ever table of contents in this blog post. See below.

I. A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess
II. Moby-Dick by Herman Melville
III. current reading list, including such gems as The Idiot by Fyodor Dostoevsky (historical fiction), The Old Patagonian Express by Paul Theroux (nonfiction, travel), Transgalactic by A.E. Van Vogt (science fiction), and The Great Shark Hunt by Hunter S. Thompson (????) 

PART I : A CLOCKWORK ORANGE
I'm finished with Anthony Burgess's masterwork of dystopia and ultra-violence. And whew, what a ride it was. I'd heard some disturbing things about A Clockwork Orange before I even picked it up. The work has a rap sheet a mile long; street cred similar to Jack the Ripper's. The only visual clue I'd gotten regarding its subject matter was a random glimpse of a movie poster, which showed some young, pale, dapper delinquent with a bowler, eye makeup, and a disquieting smile on his face.

The copy I picked up at the used bookshop bore this review from Time magazine on the back cover:

"Anthony Burgess has written what looks like a nasty little shocker, but is really that rare thing in English letters: a philosophical novel."

Well, huh. What am I to think?

So I read it. Ostensibly the novella concerns a gang of young punks with too much time on their hands, high on drugs, who rob, punch and rape their way through the streets of a futuristic English city on a nightly basis. But A Clockwork Orange turned out to be much more than that. It was as the reviewer suggested: on the surface the book was a gut-wrenching investigation of the depths of depravity (and downright evil). The protagonist, "Alex," (our first-person narrator) and his three "droogs" venture forth from their homes, drink drug-laced milk, and beat up whatever hapless victim they come across. Occasionally they'll steal a car, drive into the countryside, break into someone's home and have their way with its tenants. They destroy, steal, smash, and desecrate, all for the sake of the act itself: a pastime Alex calls "ultra-violence."

That's only the first part of the book, though. After a home invasion goes terribly wrong, Alex is arrested and imprisoned for murder. This is all very shocking for a young man, not even fifteen, living with his parents and with a peculiar liking for Beethoven and other classical composers. The worst is yet to come. Alex's less-than-model behavior in prison lands him a job—as the first test subject for a brutal new rehabilitation method, the Ludovico Technique. Alex, injected with nausea-inducing drugs, strapped to a chair, head and limbs restrained, eyeballs pried open, is forced to watch graphically violent films for hours on end, without interruption or respite. As much as he formerly enjoyed viewing and engaging in acts of sadism and brutality, the drugs eventually condition him to feel sick at the mere thought. During a public exhibition just prior to his release, Alex is goaded by a belligerent man and tempted by a femme fatale, both of which reduce him to a quivering, groveling, nauseous heap on the floor.

And so the novella's title is thus vindicated. "Clockwork orange" is a term which author Burgess explained thus:

"...an organic entity, full of juice and sweetness and agreeable odour, being turned into an automaton."

Not a pleasant prospect, is it?
I won't spoil the rest. Needless to say, Alex's troubles are far from over. But this is no tale of triumph and redemption, nor a cold, impartial philippic of social justice; suffice it to say that though Alex is not out of the woods (not one malenky bit, my droogs), his fate is not beyond hope.

The point, as far as I can see, is best framed by the question which the prison chaplain, who attempts to mentor young Alex shortly before the latter's Ludovico baptism, contemplates aloud:

Is forced goodness truly superior to chosen evil?

Which is better: a life lived poorly but freely, marked by willful corruption? Or a life spent in preconditioned sanctity, involuntary virtue, unadulterated moral slavery, as it were? The life of a clockwork orange?

Burgess reports, you decide.

A Clockwork Orange is a disturbing and yet wickedly fun read, made all the more so by Burgess's experimental use of a fictitious dialect, Nadsat. Described in the book as an amalgamation of gypsy talk, Cockney rhyming slang, and Slavic lexicon (ostensibly gleaned from Soviet propaganda), Nadsat is a herky-jerky, nigh-incomprehensible mélange of anglicized Russian and teenage argot. It's tricky to get into at first, but if you stick with it and pay close attention to context, you'll puzzle it out. It took me a while to understand "gulliver" (head), but I got "litso" (face), "malenky" (little), "rooker" (hand), "viddy," (see), and "droog" (friend) reasonably soon. The more esoteric terms like "cutter" (money) Burgess allows Alex to explain to his audience. My personal favorites were "chelloveck" (man), "govoreet" (talk), "groodies" (the part of the female anatomy below the neck and above the stomach), and "horrorshow" (a sort of catch-all term meaning "good" or "awesome").

In summary, I've never read anything quite like A Clockwork Orange. It's graphic, violent, dark, and ominous; but Alex's brash, sardonic narrative and the aural hilarity of Nadsat temper this darkness effectively. The book is not without its judgment or morals, but it passes them along barehanded and unvarnished, without allowing itself to become preachy or pretentious; and the ending (make sure you get the version with the long-lost 21st chapter) lifts the book out of shocker status and propels it into the realm of speculative fiction and psychosocial analysis. It's deeper than it appears to be. Keep that in mind, droogies.

And now for the big one:

PART II : MOBY-DICK
It ain't just about a whale.

That much has become apparent, now that I'm halfway through this tome. (I'm up to Chapter 77 or something.) This is much farther in than I've ever penetrated into Melville's opus before.
The action's shaping up well. There've been a few tantalizing tales of the white whale bandied among the whale-ships sailing off the Cape; Ahab's clumping about and muttering darkly; Stubb is eating whale-steak, ordering the cook to proselytize to the sharks; Ishmael is on lookout duty, basking in tropical sunshine and musing on the wider issues of life; at least two self-styled prophets have laid odds against the Pequod; and Gregory Peck still can't even begin to portray just how determined, ominous, and downright crazy Ahab is.

I'm not into sinister books with sinister characters, honestly. It strikes me that I went from one book with a scary anti-hero to another, even longer book with a scary anti-hero. Coincidence, I assure you.
What I've noticed so far is this: Melville, perhaps in keeping with other 19th-century authors like Jules Verne, likes to digress. Scientifically digress, mind. The Pequod will be sailing along, Ahab will be angrily pacing the deck, Ishmael will be in the crow's nest or the poop deck or the scuppers or whatever, and all of a sudden, WHAM! Didactic interlude. Take five, guys, let's break for Whaling 101. Melville, through his mouthpiece Ishmael, will go off on a tangent: factoids about the whaling industry, mostly. The percentage of the GNP based on whale-oil; that the corsets of queens and the lamp-light of civilization have been wrought from whale-bone and spermaceti; the demographics of your typical whaling crew; and zoological points of interest, like what whales eat, what eats whales, which parts of the whale are good for eating, which parts of the whale will kill you, and so on and so on and so on. You can tell that, if Melville were alive today, he'd be working with the guys at The Guinness Book of World Records. He loves to wow his audience. It's his privilege as well as his prerogative; most of the American public was (and undoubtedly still is) horrifically ignorant about sailing, whaling, and cetology in general. Melville knew it. And in Moby-Dick, he took it upon himself to throw off the veil, dismantle the rumors and half-truths and display his subject in its truest form. Therefore, he is constantly breaking off from the plot to discourse about the differences between sperm whales and right whales; the complete form and function of a whale-boat, including all the ropes, oars, harpoons and fitments found on board; and a few choice matters applying to krill, baleen, and giant squid. I'm impressed with the amount of knowledge Melville exhibits regarding cetology, a primitive science in those days. Many of the theories he puts forth on the behavior, morphology and habits of whales are dead-on. Melville confirms what marine biologists would discover centuries later. Sperm whales are bad-ass. They do, in fact, dive insanely deep, battle it out with giant squid, use their heads like battering-rams, employ spermaceti like a fish's dive-bladder, keep warm with blubber, and travel vast distances in short spans of time.

Now on the one hand, these diversions do round out the picture. They give the novel a grandiose sort of air, a subtle majesty, realism and truthfulness both refreshing and satisfying. Whaling is an arcane sort of business, and a lot of the jargon and technical whiz-bang has to be set aside and explained at length. I get that. But on the other hand, these digressions do the same thing to Melville's epic that they do to Verne's science fiction: they break up the story. They interrupt the action. They take what would otherwise be a fast-moving adventure (with metaphysical and philosophical implications) and turn it into an awkward, choppy hunk of academia.

To lecture, or not to lecture? That is the question.

The other thing I've noticed is that I like this book. I do. Honestly. I hated it the first few times I tried it. Found it as dry as a piece of ship's hardtack biscuit. This time around I'm truly engaged. I know next to nothing about whaling, so Melville's frequent lessons are informative and pleasant. As for the action, it's suitably intense, well-paced (considering), and told in an erudite yet passionate style, which (now that I'm old enough to understand what all the big words mean) I appreciate both for the fun of reading it and the obvious challenge. I'm having a grand time. Nearly 80 chapters in and still going strong. I'll have no trouble finishing, unless I hit a chapter that's 50 pages long or something. (Unlikely; most of 'em haven't even been two pages.) In fact, I think I'm still on schedule. I started January 5, and by that measure I should have precisely 77 chapters read by today. How about them apples?

PART III : READING LIST
Well, I could tell you what my reading list consists of, but (a) that would be rather ostentatious, (b) I've already mentioned the pertinent components in the table of contents, and (c) I added a reading list to the bottom right-hand side of this blog's home page last night. So go there if you want to see what I'll be reading next. Otherwise, you'll just have to stand the suspense. This post has gone on long enough.

Peace.

micro-level prerequisites for world peace

The question is often asked: "Why can't we all just get along?"

I've bloviated elsewhere about the answer to this trite-yet-apt query. I believe the problem to be due, simply, to a lack of perspective. Unable to sympathize with others or step into their shoes, some folk are thereby unable to compromise or maintain a peaceful demeanor, resulting in disagreements and even wars. (Not that I don't believe there's such a thing as righteous war; ho yes, it exists.)

Beyond perspective (or lack thereof) there might also be some more minor, superficial problems which form the roots of this planet's deplorable lack of peacefulness. Hot-headedness and over-aggressiveness might be one such problem. Some folks are just wound up tight. And what are people when they aren't relaxed? That's right, tense. Disagreeable. Surly. Sullen. Perhaps even bellicose and belligerent.

Another difficulty is ignorance. Humanity has always feared and mistrusted what it doesn't know and understand. Increased global knowledge and "worldliness" might indeed be the key to creating more international and interpersonal harmony and minimizing discord. The phrase "know your enemy" takes on a whole new meaning here; it might herald a peaceful end to conflict.

So, to that end, I have conceived a plan for instigating world peace on a micro-level...that is, on an individual basis. If everybody on the planet (or a vast majority) would just shut up and DO these three things, then we might all soon be leaving in a happier, quieter, more sane world.

Number 1 : Take some time every day to kick back, relax, and listen to some beautiful music. This is the simplest one of the bunch. It can be any kind of music, so long as it's laid-back, slow, and most importantly, melodic. It doesn't even have to be John Lennon (although that does help; that man made some of the most lovely music in the history of the world, not even including lyrics). It can be classical (Strauss or Mozart or even some Beethoven works well, but the real masters here are Tchaikovsky and Rossini, I think), contemporary (take your pick, there's plenty of artists out there who make some of the most awe-inspiring, mellifluous rhythms and harmonies you could wish for), or whatever. Heck, listen to the sound of rainfall or beaches if that's what cools you down. Everybody just needs some time to stretch out prone, immerse themselves in the divine art of sound, and introspect for a spell. If nothing else, it's marvelous stress relief. It can be used as a preventative measure (say, before going to work) or in a remedial capacity (say, AFTER work). Any way you like, you can listen, that's the best thing.

Number 2 : Go up in the SR-71 Blackbird or the space shuttle and experience the Overview Effect. "The Overview Effect" is the term (coined by Frank White in his book The Overview Effect) for the feeling of anthropic admiration, love, peacefulness and unity that almost never fails to impinge itself upon the consciousness of human beings who have ascended far enough above the Earth's surface to see it in all its glory...and smallness in comparison with the rest of the Universe. As far as I know, it's never failed: once astronauts go up in space, or some TV documentary host hitches a ride on a high-flying airplane, and these tiny, fragile human beings catch a glimpse of our planet stretched out in all its majesty and uniqueness and beauty, an ineffable sense of awe comes over them. Things given such importance and precedence on the ground (political standpoint, nationality, religious differences, what have you) drop away with the atmosphere and leave the viewer humbled, wiser, perhaps slightly ashamed of his or her own prejudices. Perhaps most tellingly, however, all of these people who have gone up and experienced the Overview Effect come back with a more profound concern for human cooperation ("world peace," if you want to call it that). Now, it seems, in full knowledge of the scope of human existence and achievement after their heavens-scraping ride, these fortunate humans have realized how insignificant most people's disputes, problems and disagreements are. It's impossible to do this in front of your TV set, however. You have to physically be up there and experience it. If everybody in the world had the chance to do this—to go upstairs and get a look at Starship Earth—maybe we'd all bit a little more eager to quit squabbling, get along, and accomplish something great.

Number 3 : Hit the books. I'm no political scientist, historian, anthropologist, or economist, but I would venture to suggest that half this world's problems are caused by ignorance. Ignorance of a thing is bad enough; ignorance of each other is unforgivable. If people would stop focusing on themselves, their culture, or their own traditions so much and took the time to learn about others', I don't think I'm far off the mark by saying (as so many others before me have said) that the world would be a better place. If those damn Muslim extremists weren't so brainwashed from birth with the Koran and Mohammed and Allah, and they took a time-out to actually get to know a few Jews in the corner bar over a few drinks, I highly doubt that even a spirited religious debate could get in the way of friendships being made. There's a reason they call it a "heart-to-heart." You open up to people on a deeply fundamental level that transcends beliefs and perceptions, and truly communicate. When that happens, people connect. And those connections can't be forgotten or severed or withered. And those connections are worth more to this world than all the gold that's buried in it, or all the kingdoms and empires that have passed upon it. Even if you just open up a book about the other side and read about what they do, it can only help you to learn more and understand (and perhaps stop disliking). Going over there and visiting is even better.

I knew nothing about Korea before I went there, except the name of the capital and the fact that the U.S. had had a war there. I actually kind of disliked Korea; I wasn't sure if the name sounded right rolling off the tongue. Boy, was I mistaken about it. I loved the place and still do. Its government is democratic, its outlook is conservative but fun-loving, the food is healthy AND delicious, and the people...well, most of the people there are worth their weight in gold. I met many dear friends, and I'll never forget the friendships and camaraderie I forged with the children (some of whom learned a thing or two about Westerners while I was around, too!). When I got there I was awkward, nervous, suspicious, scared; so were the children. But we opened up to each other. Classes went from silent to boisterous. I went from having kids veer out of my way to having them clamber all over me when I walked in the door. Even now I'm misting up thinking about it.

I'm not sure why I wrote this. Maybe it's because I'm listening to Coldplay right now (speaking of beautiful music). Maybe it's because I'm reading all this stuff on FoxNews.com about women having their babies cut out of them, and suicide bombings in the Middle East, and harsh words being exchanged between North Korea and the U.S.A., and I'm sick to death of it all (it doesn't have to be like this, folks; it might've been different). Maybe it's because I love flying and I've experienced a tiny bit of that Overview Effect myself, and firmly believe in its sociopolitical healing powers. Maybe I'm just a sentimental fool who's preaching too loudly to no one. All I ask, as always, is that you consider it. I wouldn't mind if the world considered it, either.