Favorite Fiction

I promised my sister Jen that I would make a book list to match my movie list of a few weeks back. While that list covered only the previous decade, I decided not to limit this one, and it includes all my favorites. I realize it is heavily slanted to the nineteenth century, but this is unapologetically a list of my favorites and not intended to represent any kind of impartial judgment.

10. Crime and Punishment, by Feodor Dostoevsky. Dark—overwhelmingly dark, a book that can get you inside the mind of a cold-blooded murderer and make his act seem not only possible, but disturbingly familiar: reading it was like living through a nightmare where you find yourself committing an unthinkable act. One of many nineteenth century novels where the main male character is haunted by the legacy of Napoleon.

9. Wives and Daughters, by Elizabeth Gaskell. The plot and characters echo Austen: marriageable daughters, an extraordinarily self-centered step-mother, local gossip threatening to turn a respectable girl's innocent act into a scandal; cads, fools, and disapproving parents muck up chances for the couple you know should be together. But where Austen holds up a mirror to society and invites her reader to laugh, Gaskell illicits sympathy, repeatedly asking “what if?”: What if a man had recognized how silly and shallow a woman was before marrying her as a replacement mother for his child, what if a woman reacted to her own daughter with more maternal instincts and less selfishness and jealousy, what if a man realized the pain and distress he caused his wife by erupting into bursts of temper before her untimely death? There is no going back in such cases, but the tragedy of poor choices is apparent.

8. The Name of the Rose, by Umberto Eco. A twisting plot, misleading certainty, and an ending both satisfying and fraught with ambiguity characterize this thinking person’s Da Vinci Code. The story opens as a mystery—monks are dying in morbid fashion—with “William of Baskerville” and his Watson-like apprentice, Adso, being brought in to solve the mystery. Weird, surprising, and filled with literary in-jokes (there is a character modeled and even named after Jorge de Borges, author of Labyrinths, listed below).

7. East of Eden, by John Steinbeck. As a general rule, I am not such a fan of Steinbeck. The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, and Tortilla Flat though beautiful, sometimes funny, and powerful, I found too bleak to be riveting. East of Eden has its flaws, but it is such a rich tale and so simlutaneously compassionate and unflinching in its portrayal of humankind—but infused with great love and hope—that I felt a huge sadness when I finished reading it. Recommended to me by my mother, I read this book my freshman year in high school, making it the first book I completed on this list. As such, it holds special emotional value.

6. Labyrinths, by Jorge Luis Borges. This is not actually a novel but a collection of short stories and essays. Weird, science-fiction-esque, and so utterly imaginative and unexpected that reading it was thrilling and exciting; its intelligence also made it satisfying. I have never read anything quite like it, and it was extraordinarily fun.

5. Portrait of a Lady, by Henry James. Bravo to Henry James for the construction of one of the most interesting women in fiction, Isabel Archer. She is beautiful, intelligent, and fascinating. She acts from a desire for freedom and independence, and one senses a desire not to be pigeon-holed, or passive in the course of her life, only to end up married to a man who wants to keep her and control her as if she were a painting in his collection. Social mores limit her freedom to escape, but she likewise refuses to reject society and accept another suitor’s offer of scandalous escape—what would that be, after all, except another sort of prison and dependence?

4. Smilla’s Sense of Snow, by Peter Hoeg. What exactly is this book? Conspiracy thriller? Mystery? Science fiction? The title character is bluntly rude and direct to the point of being anti-social, and she is fantastic. She routinely shocks with her brutality, both in cutting through the niceties to expose hidden agendas, and in her unexpected physical capabilities. No one in the book is quite who they seem, everyone has a hidden agenda, and Smilla herself has a history that makes her both complicit with and sharply antagonistic to the establishment.

3. Middlemarch, by George Eliot. In terms of sheer emotional connection, this is probably my favorite book. The title refers to an entire village and follows the lives of many of the villagers, so like East of Eden it is grand in scope. While I love the character of Dorothy, the closest the book comes to a central heroine, I am equally fascinated by Doctor Lydgate, a brilliant and well-intentioned local doctor who finds his ambitions cut short by his marriage to a beautiful, charming, and utterly vapid and self-centered woman. This is the nineteenth century before divorce was considered a viable option, and it is never even really implied that he has ceased to love her: it is more that his professional and personal ideals are irreconcilable with what attracts him in women.

2. Persuasion, by Jane Austen. I am annoyed by how Austen has been appropriated by the chick lit crowd. If people like her stuff, why should I care what their reason is? Those who crave Austen only for the romance only are missing what makes her so brilliant: her sharp wit and good-natured eye for what makes people universally ridiculous. Her observations, while very centered in the world of the early 19^th century British upper classes, are completely hilarious for how timeless they are. My copy of Persuasion is currently lent out, but I can drop in a favorite excerpt from Emma: “One accompaniment to her song took her agreeably by surprize (sic) –a second, slightly but correctly taken by Frank Churchill. Her pardon was duly begged at the close of the song, and every thing usual followed. He was accused of having a delightful voice, and perfect knowledge of music; which was properly denied; and that he nothing of the matter, and had no voice at all, roundly asserted.” Besides the social commentary, her prose is brilliant: rhythmical, and somehow both acerbic and gentle. No one but Austen would write a line like that.

1. Anna Karenina, by Leo Tolstoy. As in the likewise brilliant but often rambling War and Peace, Tolstoy succeeds in creating scenes and characters that are not only realistic but true. There are passages, dialogues, and even internal monologues that so perfectly capture what it is to be human that I am in awe of Tolstoy’s powers. How can a man possibly portray a young woman in her late teens with such astonishing accuracy? And then he depicts interactions between people in a manner so painfully convincing that, were it not that the sheer number of such events in his books makes it unlikely, the only explanation seems to be that he must have lived through many similar moments himself. A book enjoyable, moving, and wonderfully executed.

Things to do during a snow day . . . make that a snow week!

1. Read

2. Play online boggle

3. Catch up on lesson plans

4. Taxes

5. Clean out the refrigerator (only--rats!--they aren't picking up trash because there's no curb anymore!)

6. Play online boggle

7. Call your sister

8. Check your email obsessively

9. Play online boggle

10. Check netflix in the vain hopes that an excellent looking movie will be on the "watch instantly" feature

11. Try youtube for movies you have an inkling to watch that aren't on netflix "watch instantly"

12. Eat your neighbors' baked goods

13. Shovel. And then shovel again!

14. Play online boggle

15. Kitchen dance parties

16. Write the mundane details of your boring life on your blog

17. Play online boggle

Plot Structure and Teaching

There is a linguistics professor at Georgetown who specializes in the way that people unconsciously convert their lives into narratives. As we relate important events, over time what we tell begins to have a more and more story-like structure with the typical plot elements of rising action, climax, and resolution. We may even add in devices like foreshadowing for effect. It's not that we're lying, but we're trying to see the sense in our lives, and telling stories is the ways that humans construct pattern and meaning.

We're fixated on traditional plots, in fact. Maybe this is why every romantic comedy is staler and more clichéd than the last. It's become so bad that I only saw the poster for the latest Amy Adams movie and I could summarize the entire plot. And then when you do finally get a movie with a more innovative story, which maybe defies a convention or two, you get people complaining, "this movie has no plot!"

I do think our lives have meaning, or at least that they can be meaningful if we choose to live deliberately. But I also think that real life doesn't fit well into the traditional plot structure boxes, and maybe this is why so many movies on subjects I know and understand very well play a little false. Take "Stand and Deliver"--a great film, based on the very real and very inspirational teaching career of Jaime Escalante. Watching it again as a new teacher, I couldn't help but feel very discouraged: I had challenging students and background deficits to overcome, just as he did, but I never reached the triumphant turning point where the troubled student became inspired, cooperative, and suddenly blossomed into a star.

I had the same experience with "Freedom Writers." The opening scenes where she feels overwhelmed and discouraged are familiar; likewise I can absolutely relate to her determination and the way she is touched by her students’ daunting struggles. Again, though, I have never had a breakthrough with the toughest kid in the way the movie portrayed, and while I feel that students have learned well and been successful, I’ve never achieved anything approaching the soaring triumph of so many traditionally low-achieving students. What I have seen is the student who was failing come to a realization of his potential and convert F’s into C’s, or a child who claimed to hate reading realize that maybe reading could be okay if she could just find the right book.

Teaching, much like I imagine parenting, is powerful, but you cannot work all miracles. Reading up about “Stand and Deliver,” I learned that Jaime Escalante pointed out the discrepancies between the film and reality: the years that passed between beginning his teaching career and offering the advanced mathematics courses, and more notably the fact that students in remedial math could never have taken advanced calculus and been successful on the AP exam, particularly in the passage of one year. I am glad that the screenwriters and directors of these films chose to convey a positive message, but I can’t help thinking that the message could still be inspiring if it admitted the occasional failure, the outlier to the traditional plot. I recently saw “The Class”, a French film based on the memoirs of a middle school teacher working in a troubled, low-income school. There is a moment towards the beginning of the film where he has a bit of a breakthrough with one of his most reluctant students. You see the student beaming and can sense the teacher’s thrill. And then later, the same student has a violent outburst in class, at least partially caused by the teacher’s thoughtless and offensive comment regarding another student; the student is later expelled, and you hear no more about him. The moment is heartbreaking, depressing, but ultimately truthful.

I do believe there is purpose behind my work, and that keeps me motivated. But I also have a string of "stories" with no resolution--their names are Rosbin, Helton, Danny, Huma, Suju, Elber, Nelson. Perhaps a stronger teacher could have found a way to help these students succeed. Or perhaps their stories more accurately represent the truth of my profession—the kids whose unresolved failures fit so poorly into a traditional plot.

Movies From Childhood: Xanadu

Thanks to a series of youtube posts from my little sister on facebook, I've been on an '80's kick lately. Allow me to share one of my favorite childhood memories: "Xanadu."

The nine muses of Greek mythology make an appearance in Venice, California in order to inspire a lackluster artist and a washed up clarinetist to create an oeuvre only conceivable in the early '80's: a roller disco with a touch of '40's class. Yep, I've seen this again recently and it is utterly terrible: incoherent concept, laughable screenplay, and the worst acting imaginable. The costuming, art direction, and dancing, however, are pretty interesting (kind of like an extended music video), and I'm sure this is why my sister Jen and I loved this so much. The fact that we revered this movie so much goes a long way towards explaining the crazy dance-aholics we are!

Good Teacher

When I got back to school after winter break, the first words out of one of my student's mouths were, "Ay Miss! I don't remember nothing!" Of course I laughed--great teaching, right?

This reminded me of a recent conversation I had when I was recently talking to a dear friend who I taught with in Prague. She reminded me of one of my favorite Prague memories. Rod, one of our colleagues, had finished the year teaching his students: they had had 3 hours of English a day for five days a week, September -June. On the second to the last day of class, the students and staff went on their annual year-end picnic. One girl gave Rod a note that read: "Thank you, Rod. I learned many. See you yesterday!"

Classic!

Great job on being rich!

My school district's website is celebrating 36 schools in our system that were received the Governor's Award for Educational Excellence. There were four high schools listed out of my district's 25, and I immediately noticed that they looked like the "rich schools": Langley High School, Madison High School, McLean High School, Oakton High School. So I read the criteria for the Governor's Award, which the district website lists:

"Schools must meet all state and federal benchmarks for at least two consecutive years and achieve goals for elementary reading, enrollment in Algebra 1 by grade 8, enrollment in college-level courses, high school graduation, attainment of advanced diplomas, increased attainment of career and industry certifications, and participation in the Virginia Preschool Initiatives" (http://commweb.fcps.edu/newsreleases/newsrelease.cfm?newsid=1335, accessed 1/20).

I decided to test my theory to see if these were indeed the richest schools in Fairfax County. The same helpful fcps.edu website lists profiles for all schools that include demographics, so I looked at the percentage of students on free and reduced lunch. Here's what I found: of the 25 high schools in Fairfax County, the only schools that have less than 10% of the student body receiving free and reduced lunch are:

1. Langley High School (1.46%)

2. Thomas Jefferson High School (1.73%--I can only assume this school wasn't eligible, as this is Fairfax County's vaunted magnet school, listed for many years by U.S. News and World Report as the top public school in the nation. Trust me, if reaching benchmarks, taking college level classes, graduating, and obtaining advanced diplomas are your benchmarks, this would be out of the park.)

3. Madison High School (6.72%)

4. Woodson High School (7.22%)

5. McLean High School (7.79%)

6. Oakton High School (8.97%)

First thoughts? What happened to you, Woodson? No seriously, it just made me think a lot about what we choose to celebrate in education. What is there to praise here? These schools teach the population of students most likely to be from wealthy, stable families. It's not so much that they did something great as that they did not screw up their head start. Our society wants to believe that good schools, good teachers, make a huge impact on the educational outcomes of our students. I am a teacher, work hard, and believe in what I do, so I want to believe this, too. And those things certainly matter and can make a significant impact. The ugly truth, and the reason why I decided to look up the statistics on free and reduced lunch in the first place, is that income remains the largest predictor of all.

Most Enjoyed Movies of the Decade

I've been enjoying reading various lists commemorating the end of the year and the decade: best movies of the decade, worst political flubs, what's in, what's out, etc. So I thought I'd make a list of my own, but seeing as this blog exists for my own entertainment and I therefore do not need to feign the discipline or impartiality of professional writers, I thought I'd dispense with that whole idea of "best" and just call my list "most enjoyed." I'm sure there was better cinema out there than some of my choices, but I either didn't see it because I wasn't interested, or I did see it, recognized it as good stuff, but for whatever reason didn't enjoy it as much as the movies listed below.

10. "Mad Hot Ballroom." This film was certainly flawed and even emotionally manipulative at times. What earns this a place on my list is not brilliance of film-making, but the subject matter itself: public school kids, many disadvantaged, learning to love ballroom dancing. It was a combination of two of my passions, what can I say?

9. "Zoolander." There are parts of this movie that make me laugh harder with each viewing: the entire WHAM! music/video sequence with male models culminating in a gas station explosion, the very idea of Owen Wilson and Ben Stiller as male models, the "MerMAN! MerMAN!" advertisement playing inopportunely in the mining town bar. . . . hilarious, for all its flaws.

8. "Oh Brother, Where Art Thou?" George Clooney plays a hair-obsessed redneck on the run in the depression era south in a remake of the Odyssey. What's not to love?

7. "Spirited Away." Too often, filmmakers seem to forget what a visual medium they are working with. Not so with the animated "Spirited Away, " which was utterly bizarre and original. Most certainly NOT predictable, and most definitely beautiful.

6. "The Incredibles." This one was sheer enjoyment from start to finish. I loved the mysterious island with its super high-tech gadgetry, the interaction with Bob and his family and boss, but mostly how fun and imaginative it all was. My favorite moment occurs when Dash, the little boy with super-human speed, discovers that he can actually run across the water as he is being pursued by dangerous bad guys trying to kill him. The surprised delight on his face is priceless.

Dash Running

5. "Dark Knight." So I confess that I didn't totally enjoy this the first time I watched it--I was so tense, so terrified of the unpredictable horrors . The story-telling was so effective that even knowing that it was only a movie, I almost couldn't bear the suspense. And then the moral message was beautifully complex: does no a no-compromises approach always result in an escalation? Do the ends justify the means? How do good people become corrupt? Riveting, beautifully written, refreshingly unpredictable. And then there's the added bonus that Maggie Gyllenhall brought intelligence and believability to a role that Katie Holmes botched so severely in the first one.

4. "Up." Like "The Incredibles", had moments that were pure delight: Dug's collar vocalizing his thoughts, including the random interjection of "squirrel!", Kevin's uncanny imitation of crotchety Karl, Russell's lovable clumsiness. But then there was also the way it so tastefully and subtly treated topics as serious as childlessness, death, and divorce, somehow managing to be both real and retain its lightness.

3. "The Lord of the Rings" Trilogy. Super-long, virtually unwatchable in its stretched-out DVD format, nerdy to the extreme, but nevertheless a superhuman feat of film-making. Scene after scene I was gasping at the precision of detail not only in special effects and costuming, but even in atmosphere. Watching it made me think of the movie you'd dream of making as a ten-year old kid, before reality and cynicism had caught up with you: you'd want tens of thousands of disgustingly ugly villains engaging in elaborate battle sequences, mythical flying monsters, gigantic elephants, extended battle scenes of astounding athleticism, epic music, sweeping landscapes, and a beautiful cast. Somehow, Peter Jackson achieved the unimaginable and accomplished everything the ten year-old could dream.

2. "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon": again, a visual feast! I saw this movie when it first reached the mainstream theater without really knowing what to expect, and I still remember the audience's collective gasp of disbelief the first time Michelle Yeoh and Zhang Ziyi skimmed across the roofs. Aside from the compelling story-telling and the ground-breaking martial-arts sequences, there were breathtaking shots of the Gobi desert and Beijing's Forbidden City, and I reveled in the way the two female characters defied every stereotype while maintaining their very potent femininity. One of my favorite movies from any decade.

1. "Whale Rider": I loved this movie. Besides being visually breath-taking, it managed to walk the tight-rope between extremes: heart-wrenching without being sentimental or manipulative, questioning of tribal traditions while still holding them in profound respect, and mystical and even supernatural without being cartoonish. The scene towards the end of the movie when Pai actually RIDES A WHALE was one of the most delightful and moving surprises a movie has given me.