Literary Blasphemy

SPOILERS SPOILERS SPOILERS

I've known for a while that I enjoyed reading Harry Potter more than The Lord of the Rings. Having finally finished the more modern series, I think it's time to explain my preference:

I cannot identify with Hobbits so well as I can with humans. Tolkien's main characters were supposed to be cute... perhaps adorable... though grotesque enough not to be cuddly whereas J.K. Rowling's lead character endures and struggles with all the insecurities that come with being a teenage boy... something I can still remember doing myself once.

Also there is the sinister relationship between Harry and Voldemort. Harry does not remember his parents because Voldemort killed them. You don't have any history like that between Frodo and Sauron. And if you think about it... after reading the LOTR trilogy, you probably have no idea what Sauron looks like. Not a lot of character development going on there for the bad guy.

Also there is the romantic tensions for Harry as you wonder initially if he and Hermione will develop feelings for each other. Later he's utterly infatuated with Cho Chang before finally settling on Ginny Weasley as the love of his life. There is no romance for the Hobbits really. And then the affair with Aragorn is so otherworldly and melodramatic... all life and death and the end of the world and so forth that it lacks anything you can relate to very easily... It lacks the charm of Ginny insisting that someone besides Cho escort Harry to the Hall he needs to go to at the end of The Deathly Hallows.

Finally there is the sophisticated conundrum of Snape. The pervasive question... is he a good guy? Is Dumbledore correct in trusting him? I always believed he would turn out a good guy and I was right, but I did not realize until the end how potent were his feelings for Harry's mother. This was an outstanding component of the series and as well as anything else supports the notion that J.K. Rowlings is a genius.

My Harmless Digression Into Morbidity

I've always known that I would die in the year 2092, Why? For two reasons. One is because the Bible says otherwise. Probably the most mysterious passage of the Bible is found in the sixth chapter of Genesis. Shortly before the flood there is mention of the sons of God making wives of the daughters of men. Some say these sons of God were angels and the children they produced with human women were giants... also known as Nephilim. In the same chapter God is described as repenting for making mankind. There are not many occasions in the Bible where God is represented as having second thoughts, but in this exception he determines that there will be a limit henceforth to the age of a man. Previously the patriarchs such as Adam and Methuselah would live to be more than 900 years old, but in this fascinating chapter God says the age of a man will be 120 years. And you know what? He stuck to his word. Which leads me to my second motivation to live until 2092. If you research the internet for the oldest authenticated age of a man (not to be confused with a woman) what do you think you will find? How about 120 years! If I survive until 2092 I'll break the world record for the oldest man since antediluvian times and I'll prove the Bible should not be taken quite so seriously.

So what are my chances? I've discovered today that there are only 75 people alive that are aged 110 or older. Out of a population of nearly 7 billion people... that's not too encouraging. What's more daunting is that of those 75 only ten are men. Apparently it comes down to three things. Genetics, diet, and low stress. Can't do much about the first one, but lucky for me I've been a vegetarian my whole life... with a brief deviation into the McChicken sandwich subculture from about 2001 to 2007 (I doubt Methuselah could easily have abstained from this version of gluttony had he been tempted with it). And I don't drink often or smoke ever. Now about this stress thing. In some ways I would say I have about the least stressful life of anyone I know. I don't push myself very much to accomplish anything. But oddly enough... this leads to a lack of accomplishment... which can be kind of stressful in a way. So I'll work on that.

Where to Begin?

The kid in me that likes to be told a story is alive and well. I read books and watch movies voraciously and always will. I've noticed there are two different ways to tell a story. You can begin at the beginning and move forward directly to the end. Or you can begin at the end and then go to the beginning and then jump back to the end again and then address the middle of the narrative for a while and then lurch into somewhere undefined that ends up being a dream and then back and forth perpetually until your audience feels cognitively violated.

It's a literary device that probably has a name of which I am ignorant.

Mary Shelley uses it in Frankenstein. It begins with a ship captain who harbors the tortured Victor Frankenstein. The Captain is writing letters to his sister relating the events that Frankenstein is telling him while lying on his deathbed. So the story goes back and forth between the end...on the ship... and the beginning... Frankenstein's life and experiences.

Pulp Fiction does it too... There's a part in the film where John Travolta comes out of the bathroom and Bruce Willis blows him away with a sawed off shotgun. But the film ends with Samuel Jackson and Travolta (alive and well) walking out of a diner after a hold up perpetrated by Tim Roth initiated in the first few moments of the film...

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind may be the most blatant offender. It begins with two people meeting each other, seemingly for the first time. Eventually, if you're really smart, you'll realize that they've met before and had their memories of each other removed from their minds and the movie tells the story about how and why this was done.

I'm kind of linear in my taste for a good story. None of this back and forth for me. Begin at the beginning and tell the story as events unfold. That's how I live my life and so that's how stories will have the best chance of making sense to me.

Where Credit is Due

Every time I shave I remember when I learned to shave. My older brother taught me. And for the next fifteen years I religiously used the micro gillette disposable shavers that he used that day.

And about the same time my stepfather taught me how to tie a tie. And I have never put on a tie since without remembering that first lesson.

And my older brother's first wife taught me how to drive. And I think about that experience almost every time I drive and especially when I'm teaching someone else how to drive.

What's really intriguing is how I learned the word "aversion." I had just moved to Chicago and was working as a bag boy in a grocery store named Dominicks. The nice guy who hired me was transferred and a new store manager took over... a jerk with an attitude. One day he told me to take my lunch break and to clean the bathrooms when I got back. I lived close enough to take my lunch at home, a fourth story apartment in Elmhurst, and took the opportunity to complain to Travis (the same older brother that taught me how to shave). I explained that I didn't think a bag boy should have to clean bathrooms. Evidently Travis believed in the power of a strong vocabulary. He advised me to tell the jerk~store~manager that "I have a personal aversion to cleaning up after other people's digestive waste" and could he please find someone else to do that chore. And it worked. It was almost like magic. The manager basically said "okay." And that was the end of it. Except I can never use the word "aversion" without remembering.