Book: What is the What

What is the What was one of the awesome books I read during the month of April.

It tells the story of Valentino Achak Deng, a Dinka who was one of the Lost Boys of Sudan orphaned in the 2nd Sudanese War. Valentino fled on foot with a group of boys and a teacher after their village was destroyed, and they walked all the way to Ethiopia, where they started new lives in a refugee camp. A few years later they were moved to another refugee camp in Kenya. Eventually, Valentino made it to America, where he has lived ever since.

My mom read this book a few years ago, and when my mom is really into a book she has a habit of updating me on it every day in vivid detail, recounting her favorite parts she has read the previous day. While she was reading this book, she kept saying, "Rachel, you read it and you just can't believe it. You just can't believe it." I specifically remember her telling me the Dinka tale that the book is named after.

A common theme of the book is the need to keep moving into the unknown: first the group is moving away from the Arab militias, then they're moving into Ethiopia (an unknown place to most of them), then Kenya (another unknown place), and finally America (where life turns out to not be so easy as they had hoped.)

The book is not all sad, though. There are a lot of funny parts about adapting to life in the various locations Valentino lived. One of my favorites revolved around a tampon box. Upon their first visit to an American grocery store, some of the Lost Boys were entranced by a tampon box because they thought it was really beautiful. Their host mother explained to them what it was for and that they had no need to buy it, but they bought it anyway and proudly displayed it as a centerpiece on their table at home.

I really enjoyed this book and would recommend it to anyone who enjoys reading for fun. It is a punch to the gut, but a good one.

Book: Going Clear

This may be the creepiest book I have ever read. It is also totally riveting and one of the best books I have read this year.

It covers L. Rob Hubbard's life, how he created Scientology, various scandals related to the church, the rise of current church head David Miscavage, and the relationships of various celebrities with Scientology. Lawrence Wright covers all the angles thoroughly. He conducted interviews with over 200 current and former Scientologists as part of his research, and he focuses heavily on the story of Hollywood screenwriter Paul Haggis' experience in the church. Haggis joined the church as a young man in the 70s and was a devoted member for 35 years before leaving in 2009. Lawrence Wright wrote an article for the New Yorker about Haggis' experience, in which Haggis called the church "a cult," and that article inspired Wright to write a book on the subject.

I saw The Master last year, which was rumored to be kinda/sorta based on L. Ron Hubbard's life, but not officially about Scientology. Now the movie makes a lot more sense because 1. a lot of the stuff in the film very closely mirrors L. Ron Hubbard's life and early events in Scientology history, and 2. I can see why the backers denied it being a film about Scientology, because church members love to harass anyone they deem threatening. I'm sure the principles involved still got their fair share of grief, even though they tried to distance themselves from any connection between the film and Scientology.

Large swaths of the tale told in this book are hard to believe. The extent to which Hubbard could manipulate others defies logic. There are a lot of heartbreaking stories about people who gave up their relationships with their loved ones in exchange, only to be later abused by the church. Hubbard himself alienated many of his close family members.

My dad once (jokingly) told me that "all you have to do to be a teacher is stay just one lesson ahead of your students." L. Ron Hubbard took that farce to the extreme. He had a gift for making up stories on the fly and writing quickly. He spun that into a career for himself and, ultimately, one of the greatest scams in history.

This book is a must read. Not just for the story it tells, but also for Lawrence Wright's journalistic prowess. I've added his earlier book The Looming Tower to my reading list.

Books: Beautiful Boy

I've read a string of really great books in the past few weeks. I finished this one most recently and it was the one that made the most impact on me, because my brother has a history of drug abuse and has been using for most of my life. Until now I have never gone out of my way to try and understand what it all means.

I originally ran across David Sheff's new book Clean while perusing an airport bookstore and put it on my reading list. But in doing some more research, I found that Clean was a follow-up to Sheff's earlier book Beautiful Boy, and I vaguely remembered reading some positive reviews of that book when it came out. I decided to start from the beginning of the story and picked up Beautiful Boy from the library.

I read it over the course of a few days and it got so intense in some parts that I had to stop and take breaks because the story made my eyes well up with tears. It resurrected some memories from my childhood I had not thought about in a long time, but remember vividly. There's a reason I haven't thought about in a while. They are some of the most painful memories I have. It also helped me make sense of a lot of the emotions I remember feeling back then, the helplessness, the hurt, the confusion over why my brother did things that made no sense at all when he seemed like a naturally smart kid.

It's just now hitting me that I really don't know my brother at all and I never have. Maybe I have known this for a while but couldn't verbalize it until now. He started using drugs when I was so young that I have only a few fuzzy memories of him before the drugs. All I know about his early years is borrowed from what my parents have told me. It's like in Blade Runner where the replicant Rachel insists she's a human because she has memories of her childhood and Deckard tells her they are implanted memories, taken from someone else. I'm just now realizing I never refer to my mom and dad as our parents and I don't think of them that way. They're my parents, they have always been there, while he has been in and out and had kind of a phantom presence.

And now I fully understand how much people change when they start using drugs. This is one of the hardest parts of drug addiction for families to cope with. The child they know vanishes and is replaced with a person who lies and steals. My brother became that when I was so young that I've never known what he is really like. We watched an old home video at a relative's house recently, and my cousins and I looked and acted like younger versions of ourselves. Seeing my brother felt like seeing a ghost, and impression of a person.

The timing of my finding this book feels like fate, if you believe in that sort of thing. I'd been wanting to spend time with my parents this summer and talk about certain things; for whatever reason, I feel ready right now to process big stuff like this. They did their best to shield me from what went on with my brother, but 20 years of near-constant worry and stress inevitably took its toll on them and me.

I got into the habit of not talking about my brother a long time ago because it seemed like opening up to people caused them to say things like "well why don't you just send him to rehab?" "Why don't you do [x]?" They made it sound like there was an easy solution to the problem and my family just wasn't trying hard enough. I used to wonder, why doesn't anything work? Why isn't he fixed yet? We did everything we could do. You just can't save a drug addict with love. There are tons of people out there just like us.

Why did I never take the time to learn about my brother's condition until now?? Maybe I just didn't want to think about it, it was too painful. My parents wanted me to be OK and I focused on making it to adulthood and creating a stable environment for myself. Now I'm ready to think about it all.

Moby Dick, the Essex, and Ships on the Silver Screen

Remember a few years ago when Russell Crowe was in Master and Commander, that really awesome movie about a British warship that had an ending that was perfectly poised for a sequel? I'm really disappointed a sequel hasn't happened. I guess it's still possible, though unlikely. Hollywood seems preoccupied with other stuff now.

I got to thinking about it after I read this blog about the sinking of the Essex, which partially inspired Moby Dick and is one of the most amazing survival stories in modern history. I have been fascinated by anything related to Moby Dick and 19th century seafaring ever since I was a kid. My dad knows all about whales; he studied whales in his free time before I was born and I'm convinced that the only person who could tell you more about whales would be an actual marine biologist. Moby Dick loomed large in my house growing up. My dad references it more than any other literary work. You have to know it to keep up with him. In addition to being an amateur cetologist, dad also has encyclopedic knowledge of 19th century whaling and naval warfare. I think he enjoyed the "nuts and bolts" passages in Moby Dick more than anyone else who has ever read it. Let's be honest, most of us skipped over those parts, if we made it through the book at all.

I was really happy to see that blog from the Smithsonian. There are actually two true stories that served as Herman Melville's main inspiration when he was writing Moby Dick. The character of Moby Dick (yep, he's a character) was inspired by a real-life albino whale named Mocha Dick who was famous for his large size and many skirmishes with whaleships. This whale was a legend. When he was finally killed, his body yielded over 100 barrels of oil and there were numerous harpoons stuck in him from previous chase attempts. All of these traits would make their way into Melville's book.

The other true story that inspired Moby Dick was that of the Essex. The Essex was an American whaleship that was rammed and sunk by a sperm whale in 1820. Melville folded the idea of a whale ramming a ship into his book, but he didn't include what happened after, which was even more unbelievable: stranded at just about the most remote possible location on earth (more than 1200 miles from the nearest island), the sailors set out in open whaleboats to find land. Eight of them survived the epic ordeal--3 months on the open sea, starvation, cannibalism, the works--and all of them, yes ALL returned to sea after they got back to New England. Can you believe they recovered and went back to sea? Well, they didn't all totally recover. The captain of the Essex would survive two MORE shipwrecks before backers finally deemed him an unlucky "Jonah" and he was forced to spend the rest of his life on land. The first mate hoarded food in his attic later in life and eventually had to be put in an institution.

Whaleboat like the ones the Essex crew used

There is a fantastic book about the Essex by Nathaniel Philbrick that has all the gory details of what went down. This book is on my short list of "books I read in a single day." I couldn't put it down. It is well worth your time.

I wish Hollywood would make some more good movies about ships. The 1956 version of Moby Dick is really good, although not many people have seen it because it was a commercial flop. Audiences couldn't handle Gregory Peck playing a villain (Captain Ahab). The story of the Essex could make a fantastic movie with the right director attached. And there needs to be a Master and Commander sequel.

If you're in the mood for other movies about ships: Mutiny on the Bounty (1935) is really good, is also based on a true story, and stars Clark Gable and Charles Laughton! I haven't seen the 1962 remake with Marlon Brando, so I can't comment on whether that one is worth your time or not.

Endurance: Shackleton's Incredible Voyage is another great book I couldn't put down that is about a true story of survival.

America's Homegirl: Nora Ephron

I went to Austin, Texas last week for a few days to visit my boyfriend and I bought this book to read on my flights home. I was all prepared to be a literary genius by the time I deplaned. But when I got to the airport, I realized I had left the book on his kitchen table. <sadface> So I high-tailed it to the airport bookstore and luckily they had this book I'd heard really good things about that has been on my reading list for a while, but I never got around to checking out.

I'm glad that it got accidentally got bumped up to the top spot, because it entertained me all the way home. Here are a couple of my favorite quotes.

From her chapter on cooking -

Just before I'd moved to New York, two historic events had occurred: The birth control pill had been invented, and the first Julia Child cookbook was published. As a result, everyone was having sex, and when the sex was over, you cooked something.

On the weird true stories one encounters as a journalist -

I can't get over this aspect of journalism. I can't believe how real life never lets you down. I can't understand why anyone would write fiction when what actually happens is so amazing.

Nora did, of course, get into writing fiction. She wrote my favorite romantic comedy, When Harry Met Sally, and she also directed Sleepless in Seattle, which has one of my favorite scenes in a movie, ever:

I might have to do a little Ephron Fest this weekend and toast to her memory. She seems like one of those great people who was absolutely beloved by everyone who knew her. And she gave some great advice (passed down from her parents) in her book: everything is copy. Everything you see, do, and hear in life can become writing material.

Introverts and Movies

I just finished reading Susan Cain’s book Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a World That Can’t Stop Talking (you have probably seen her TED talk.)

It was less of the self help manual for introverts that I expected and more of a plea to all people to understand that the person who talks the loudest does not always have the best ideas, and introverts shouldn't be pressured to fit into the "extrovert ideal." They contribute unique input and skills just the way they are.

I started wondering: are there certain jobs in the movie business that attract more introverts than other areas? Writing, editing?

Who are some great introverted characters from movies?

The first two that came to mind were Amelie (Amelie) and Andy Dufresne (Shawshank Redemption). They're not your typical heroes. They're quiet and hard to peg, but also sneaky and brilliant in their own ways.

Some of the qualities Susan Cain talks about in regards to introversion are tenacity and focus. These qualities can empower shy, gentle people (Gandhi, Rosa Parks) to oppose great foes. 

You can definitely see that tenacity in Andy Dufresne's character. Part of Shawshank Redemption is taken up by Andy's crusade to get better books for Shawshank Prison's small library. After he gets books, he acquires money to renovate and expand the library. Then he adds a music library, and he gets resources to start a GED program. And on and on. He single-handedly creates this amazing place for his prisonmates to go and stimulate their minds, something no one previously thought possible. Which leads to one of my favorite movie quotes of all time (Morgan Freeman's character speaking): 

"Prison time is slow time, so you do what you can to keep going. Some fellas collect stamps. Others build matchstick houses. Andy built a library." 

Andy finds his greatest foe in Shawshank Prison's Warden Norton. Norton is a cruel and merciless man who loves to hear himself preach. He uses and abuses Andy, but Andy has the last word when he gets revenge in the most fantastic way possible. And it's fantastic because it was a trap he had laid over the course of many years and no one saw it coming. Then you start thinking back over things he said and did throughout the movie that now make more sense. He was always a man with a plan. 

Tenacity and focus.

I've already got a running list of great supporting characters in movies, but now I'm going to start a list of great introverted characters as well. I think people are inspired by the way introverted characters solve unusual problems, because isn't that how we view life sometimes? A series of problems to solve? It takes a lot of creativity to make it through. Sometimes the quietest people have the best ideas for what to do. Active imaginations can do wonders.

Quiet is an interesting book and I recommend reading it. It's got some great food for thought. If you read it too, I'd love to know what you thought. And let me know if you can think of any memorable introverted characters I can add to my list.