Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

There is a character in current literature that always haunts me long after the last word is read. He is a small boy, smart beyond smartypants, an outsider, solid within himself but vulnerable to the taunts and torments of other children, he is a brave little soul striving to be his own man in a world that mocks him.

He was the literal, solid, inadvertently hilarious son of a single mom in About a Boy; he was the brave autistic soul trying to figure it all out in The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, and he is Oskar Schell, the absurdly clever and so deeply wounded boy in Extremely Loud.

Oskar loves his dad and his dad loves him. In fact, Oskar is lucky enough to have that parent and friend who truly SEES him and loves him, who knows and applauds his tiny madnesses and quirks. He has, in other words, what we are all led to believe we deserve -- someone who loves him unconditionally. And then something terrible happens.

It can be a cheap trick to use 9/11 as a plot point, and it's become a bit too easy to throw that in to make a book "relevant". But in this book 9/11 or something just like it is imperative. In fact, the author makes us think about the effect of the devastation in a slightly new way -- one of the hardest parts of the tragedy is Oskar doesn't really know what happened to his dad, how exactly he lost his life and this seems like a hole that can't be filled, as the coffin can't be filled. There was a dad and then there was .... nothing. And, Oskar was sent home from school on that terrible morning, and got home in time to hear the many, many messages his dad left for him. Why didn't his dad say "I love you"? Why didn't Oskar pick up the phone? There is a truth to the human condition when facing what must not be real, and that truth could not be told otherwise.

Oskar's brave struggle to heal his broken heart broke mine. Such a smart little boy, and one trying so hard -- often things that happen in his day give him "heavy boots" but sometimes, luckily, he feels like "one hundred dollars." He has a grandmother who loves him utterly, and a mom who protects him like a guardian angel, silently and unseen; he lives in a cocoon of caring but it doesn't matter. See, his heart is broken and he needs to walk through that country until he finds a new state of being.

I don't know why this sort of boy means so much to me. I remember once having lunch at school in the very small and harsh town we lived in briefly. Among us that day were a few of the rawboned, extra-large farm boys who were probably a bit too old to be in Grade 8, which I was at the time, and one in particular was singled out for ridicule. He was a boy who didn't say much and why would he, and he ate his lunch silently ignoring the rest of us including the other boys who were teasing and throwing things and being obnoxious as boys are bound to be at that age and always....he opened his thermos and poured out a cup of chocolate milk. It was not fancy store-bought chocolate milk but something homemade and kind of grainy looking, and this made the other boys howl with laughter. They made such fun of him and his poverty, and he resolutely turned deaf. I couldn't bear it then and remember the scene with pain often -- someone loved him and wanted to soften his day a little, and that small gesture turned into yet another means to hurt him. Oskar's little quirks so lauded by his dad -- maybe his inventions or jewellery or the business card he made for himself -- made him the object of fun among those who loved him not at all. Never think childhood is innocent. Its casual cruelty would kill us all, which is why we become adults.

What We Talked About

I have just spent a few meaningful hours in the company of Anthony Robbins -- there were a few hundred (thousand?) others but he was talking to me, me, me.

Oh my god I love this man. First of all, he is HUGE in every respect -- huge personality, huge head, teeth, hands like plates. But mostly, he is a huge presence and you could call him god-like except for his profane and totally guy-next-door way of speaking. It's great, really -- god made man.

What's brilliant about Tony, and I feel I can call him that, is that he was SO far ahead of the curve, a huge wave currently flowing through psychology, books, self-help. First of all, he was the original coach, back when we didn't have coaches for everything from potty training to career building, when coaches were the gruff guys on the field. Now it's an industry and an industry created by my good friend Tony.

But more than that, he was onto something WAY before even the shrinkiest shrinks cottoned on. He recognized that if you start to think differently, you THINK DIFFERENTLY -- that changing your mind changes your mind. Oh I know this sounds like one of those zen riddles that mean nothing (what animal walks on four legs then two then three etc etc) but it is true. There is a movement today in plasticity, psychiatrists and neurologists coming together to really understand that the brain and the mind are one, and that changes in thinking can change the chemistry and the physical nature of the brain itself. Which in turn changes psychology. And so on and so on. Tony caught on to that idea early. He also recognized that we are physical beings, and that our physiology - the very way we move - changes the way we see the world.

Tons of books have been spawned via his thinking. The Success Principles by that chicken soup guy Jack Canfield or Canned Field. The Brain That Changes Itself by Norman Doidge. O Magazine. Tons of stuff.

Oh my, I do love my Tony.

He is so right. Stand up, jump, shout YES! and then how do you feel? My heavens, you FEEL BETTER!

But there is more. He stands for the proposition that you live your life, it doesn't live you; that you have the power to change, that pain is a sign of a misalignment between what your blueprint of life is and your actual life, or a misalignment between your STATE of mind, or your STATE as Tony calls it, and where you need to be.

He has some good mantras but that's not all he's about -- though lots of pretenders to his throne might be only mantrasities. For example, in life "I hope this works out" is not a decision. It's a preference. So, not powerful enough to qualify for what you need to do to live the best life you can. Or, how's this one: "Your STATE of mind when you learn affects what you learn." Think about that for a moment. Or this: When in pain, you have three choices (and only three): Blame. Change your life conditions. Or, change the blueprint of what you wanted out of life.

It is utterly simple. It is utterly human. It is utterly correct. It only looks simple and obvious because he's been able to articulate it so clearly.

My Tony has changed my life. Watch me go.

A Fatal Inversion - more

Guilt is an insidious, corrosive thing. I once knew a therapist who had two mantras: suffering is optional and guilt is unnecessary. Except it isn't, most of the time -- guilt and the desire not to feel it is what keeps most of us more or less moral. In other words, it is what passes for conscience.

Donna Tartt's wonderful The Secret History looked at what happens to people when they do in fact get away with murder. The result isn't pretty -- each of the students of the swish college who was part of the killing of Bunny went awry in some way. It is a kind of judeo-christian view of things, isn't it? Because what the theme suggests is that we know when we've done wrong, we expect to be punished for it and sliding by upsets the natural order of things.

Interestingly, A Fatal Inversion by Barbara Vine (aka Ruth Rendell) has a similar theme. In her version, though, it's not so much getting away with murder that's the problem, it's not knowing how long you are going to get away with it, and that's the trick when doing bad things. It's a ticking time bomb and sooner or later, someone's going to blow it for you.

The characters in Inversion are all thieves -- one steals the mansion from his father when he could as easily share it; another steals for the sake of it; a third steals the oxygen out of the room through her utter dullness, yet another steals whatever he can, be it a heart or a soul or his wife's time. At one point a baby is stolen, and dies and then murder is committed to cover up this sorry fact. The only one who seems to get away with it in any real sense is the most mad of the characters, who somehow seems to come into her own after the deed is done.

But for the nutter, the fragile psyche who stole a baby out of some post-partum fit of madness, each of the characters then goes on to live an abbreviated life, a quashed life. The energy it takes to keep the lid on things, to prevent any loved one from opening it, to stay hidden, ultimately kills the soul in all of them. So, no one actually gets away with murder. Not the dead, and not the living. To paraphrase a well-known convict, in murder "everybody dies." And in keeping secrets, partaking in the shimmy-shamy, the flim-flam, the cover up, the endless compromises of keeping lies hidden, in living the half-life of feeling guilty -- well, in that case, everybody dies as well.

A Fatal Inversion

Does anyone do "creepy" as well as British writers? They invented the murder mystery, right? Even tea-sipping spinsters are in on it. In fact, when you think about it, doesn't "Creepy Macabre" sound like someone you wouldn't want to meet at boarding school?

Am knee deep in A Fatal Inversion by Ruth Rendell posing as Barbara Vine (creepily enough, she dedicates this book "with love from Barbara" -- as though this Barbara person were, like, real) and thus far we know a woman and a baby are dead, we know that some sexually active but not perhaps active enough (we have the requisite Rendell inhibited character here, too) young people are spending stolen time in a glorious country house one of them has inherited but can't afford to keep, and we have a sort of Secret History knowledge that yes, the group knows and must keep secret that something sinister and bad (well, murder) occured in the house for some reason yet to be revealed.

There is a beautiful tension to all this, as we wait with bated breath to learn who this poor dead woman is and why she came to such a fate. We know that the inheritor of the country house went on to good things, and the most overtly sexual of the houseguests is a doctor who has taken his interest to the specialty level, being an ob-gyn who is deciding if it is time to move to Highgate from Hamstead. References also to Muswell Hill and other places that are for me shots to the heart which is why we SWORE, vainly, not to read any books set in London or England or the UK.

Be that as it may. Vine/Rendell is wonderful at depicting the shallow soul, propelled by a deviant self-interest, moving inexorably toward a final act of departure, such as murder. Which of these idle young people ends up dead and who the killer? So far any of them could go without much of a loss to humanity; we know the boys are safe from the dead part, though the baby may implicate one in the death.

Cannot wait for nightfall and another dose of Sinister Macabre.

More Cruelty TV

It is entirely possible, and I'm given to believe it is, that Gordon Ramsay is a great chef. Having just watched a jag of Kitchen Nightmares I can hardly believe such a beast was ever called to a nurturing profession. What is more giving than the desire to offer people good food? And who is more bloody-minded and cruel than our Gord?

I watched a segment of a show where our Gord goes into a fairly run of the mill restaurant and orders lunch. He finds the crabcakes, as billed, perfectly good and finds everything else overwrought. No shallots in the shallot-infused sauce over the apparently dry Atlantic salmon, too much garlic in the green beans, a pasty zucchini pancake. A lovely-seeming gentle manager who was THRILLED to have our Gord enter his establishment was eviscerated, the chef and owner called mediocre despite the crabcake, the chef/owner and his wife/partner asked if maybe they shouldn't just shutter the place.

Easy pickin's Gord. Truly.

Not only that, as a study in character, doesn't it take a particular and not necessarily honorable personality to be able to so easily be cruel to people who are inclined to admire and respect you? Did they ask to be COMPARED to you? only in the most oblique way. And yet our Gord tears a strip off them for not being .... more Gord.

It is interesting to me that some professions are called to answer for their sins right off the bat and others can slide along merrily, mailing in mediocrity whenever they want, and they seem to want to a lot. But a restaurant is reviewed, criticized, judged in its first week and as per biblical prophecy, so it shall be written, so it shall be done. Nail it and you're great, miss and you're dead no matter what. Lawyers can win or lose and that's expected, they aren't actually publicly judged for their prowess with the point; teachers can slide for years and still deserve a huge pension; even reporters who are ostensibly judged by their word every day can last a long time before someone says hey, you missed every scoop ever offered by a dumptruck.

Now, to be honest, I feel it is better value to eat a vastly expensive but amazing meal than to consume calories at a fraction of the price. Most days I'd rather go hungry than eat something poor. But a restaurant is merely a business like any other and each finds its level -- there are a lot of people who think Buffalo wings are the height of great cuisine. Frankly, some days, in some conditions, so do I. For many people food is food.

So why is it interesting to us that a horrible man but great chef should find a modest restaurant modest? The poor bastards didn't claim to be more. Is "constructive criticism" ever constructive? and to what psychopath? I cannot bear TV's current interest in showing the falling face, the brave front, the batted-back tears. Fine if it's about exposing the church to its sins or a government agency to its failings. But these are honest people trying to earn an honest buck. If Gord could find similar fault at a peer's restaurant, go for it. But this exercise in nastiness seems utterly gratuitous. And, I don't think there's a higher purpose such as teaching America to eat better. America, for the most part, and willingly, merely wants to eat.

No, this is "great television" and it sucks.