There's something about dystopian stories that tickles the mind. The best ones floor me with intricate and gorgeously-realized detail. They seem to speak to a part of me that's curious to know what the world would be like if some apocalyptic force leveled society, stripped it bare of any semblance of the old civility it had known prior. What would this new world look, feel, sound, taste, and smell like? And how would we behave in this freshly charred landscape? What would we keep from the old as we forged our way through the new? And how would we come to see one another there?
Dystopias reign in each fictionalized universe of the following tales. Some things look familiar, remembrances of the way society used to function and people used to act still linger in characters' minds. But a new order has taken hold in each, civilization has become a stranger, darker beast than before whatever, named or unnamed, event forever altered the cultural landscape. And every story is ultimately unique in vision and force, causing audiences to view their current existences with a tinge of newly heightened inquisitiveness. Then they beg the question, 'What would I do in such a world? Who would I become?'
1. Cat's Cradle written by Kurt Vonnegut
In this, arguably his best, novel Mr. Vonnegut once again conspires to end the world as we know it - with a little help from modern religion and technology. Cat's Cradle was written during the time of the Cuban missile crisis and conjures an existence in which a veritable smorgasbord of unique characters seems to have either the best or worst of possible intentions at just the wrong stroke of the clock. Hysterically rollicking and also chillingly terrifying, the story is nothing short of an epic masterpiece of dystopian fiction that punches a little too close to the heart for comfort.
2. Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury
Guy Montag is a fireman whose job is not to put out fires but, rather, to start them. In a bleak future in which books are an outlawed commodity, Guy is an agent of the government charged with burning any books discovered hiding in the secret rooms and shelves of those who defy society's rules. The penalty for possessing such items is sure death. But when Guy meets a strange new neighbor, he begins to question everything that has been ingrained into his being. Author Ray Bradbury penned this seminal dystopian vision with a plentitude of wit, intrigue, and action that is sure to capture any reader's mind - sending it reeling into a deep forest of queries and imaginings.
3. The Handmaid's Tale written by Margaret Atwood
"Set within a bleak dystopian future where the ability to reproduce has been sharply curbed by the effects of world pollution and gross misuse of genetic science, those few woman of childbearing age and potential are kept as broodmares for the rich and powerful. Or, as they are more politely called, handmaidens. This fictional mono-theocratic society no longer allows these women to obtain education or read, work jobs, or have their own families. They have been reduced to their most base function - as viable wombs - not the dynamic, feeling, loving human beings of infinite potentials that they may have been in a different time and place...Despite the bleak and horrific premise, it is at times a startlingly gorgeous narrative, consummated through Atwood’s stark yet sensual language." (Excerpt from my previous review.)
4. Mad Max: Fury Road directed by George Miller
Kick-ass feminist uprisings in a misogynistic, patriarchal dystopia? Yes, please! You had me at the start of this thriller that puts women in the driver's seat towards their own salvation. Max can barely hold on at first through the fiery carnage and roaring high-speed turmoil. But he gets his bearings in this female-led actioner, and he's all the better for it, too.
5. De-loused in the Comatorium recorded by The Mars Volta
Yeah, I know. It's a bit of a stretch. But just let me have this one. A prog rock concept album that imagines the fevered dreamings of a comatose drug-addled psyche, The Mars Volta nails a dystopian sonic landscape. The lyrics might not make a lot of sense on their own, but, when paired with the psychedelia of the music layered all beneath and around, they help carry this album to epic heights of pure stylistic euphoria.
6. The Road written by Cormac McCarthy
So devastatingly bleak and also so evocative and gorgeously-rendered, Cormac McCarthy's The Road plows through the field of dystopian tales with its singular staggering force. I cannot speak adequately to the power of its narrative of a father and young son traveling a dusty road through a world ravaged of nearly all other life. There are great losses and terrors and, yet, still great sacrificing love present all throughout. And the ending packs a wallop that is sure to linger long in a reader's mind, waxing and waning in intensity within the infinite ocean of the imagination.
Deserted islands have always seized my imagination in a manner that enthralls and delights my whole being. It is something about the fantasy of such a place that sends my mind wheeling into a hazy dreamland of jade palm trees and sapphire ocean waves lining the beaches of desolate solitude. Their siren song beckons, especially within a culture such as ours where we are so constantly plugged in and purposed in all our actions.
To me, a deserted island would truly be an isolated respite from the myriad of responsibilities and pulls inherent in modern life. Sure, the island lifestyle and daily survival endeavors appear tricky and quite rooted in a multitude of dangers in all the following yarns, but it sure beats 40+ hours a week and the monthly bills that just keep slipping through the cracks. Deserted islands defy convention and the ordinary semblance of civility that clings to us like a second skin. The fantasy allows some to shed that skin and weave daydreams out of what life could be like far and away from anything we have ever known before.
1. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
The gold standard of deserted island tales, William Golding's classic sure makes island life look a bit apocalyptic. A group of young, ordinary-enough English schoolboys becomes stranded and, at first, the fact that there is not an adult anywhere in sight makes this look like a fun adventure. But fun, rules, and the flimsy semblance of civility quickly erode as violence and panic rear their terrible heads. This is a chilling novel that makes a reader ask herself how fast her own hold on propriety and order might slip were she ever treading similar waters.
2. Robinson by Muriel Spark
Part deserted island tale, part murder mystery, Muriel Spark's novel snares attention immediately with a frank and unsentimental heroine journaling her new life as a plane-wreck survivor. Through this lens, we are introduced to the isolated and mysterious Robinson Island where cats play ping pong, strange mists slink through the trees, hidden tunnels are plentiful, the occult might be real, blackmail is afoot, and ants have a habit of flying. Robinson is a captivatingly quick read that proves, once again, that Ms. Spark is the master of any genre, including the island castaway tale.
3. The Black Stallion film
The first half of this film plays out like a dream as a young boy and a mysterious black horse are suddenly shipwrecked and marooned together in the middle of the ocean. On an uninhabited island the two slowly suss each other out and find that their survival depends on their cooperation. The quality of the rest of the movie is debatable, but the beginning island scenes are breathtaking and sumptuous in both sight and sound as the boy eventually sits astride a galloping stallion, leaving long, wild tracks in the starkly white sands hemmed in by an infinitesimal blue.
4. Foe by J. M. Coetzee
This novel is at once a reinvention of the tale of Robinson Crusoe and also a reworking of the basics of story-telling itself. The island is always there as are Crusoe and his silent companion Friday. But there is also one more, a woman, and she proves to be more than a mere secondary character to the men in her world. A puzzling and enigmatic novel that takes a new view on the story the world thinks it knows so well, that forever alters that island and its infamous inhabitants into something much more treacherous, electric, and mesmerizing.
5. I Was Amelia Earhart by Jane Mendelsohn
"Banking into a cover of clouds off the New Guinea coastline on July 2nd, 1937, Amelia Earhart vanished forever. That day she disappeared from an intensely public and infamous life within the silver body of her beloved Lockheed Electra aircraft. In writer Jane Mendelsohn's novel, the imagined life that came after that red letter day vibrates and sounds itself into an existence just as enticing as that which has been so renowned and retold. The words of this story flash forward and backward through Amelia's true and fictional history, from the greatest altitudes of flight to the depths of what an individual can endure and yet still remain herself. A novel of one famed and long lost heroine finally found." (My previous review.)
6. John Dollar by Marianne Wiggins
This novel has been called a "female Lord of the Flies" and serves to bookend this list well with the more
infamous novel that gave way to such a description. John Dollar finds itself dripping in sumptuous detail among the colonial Burmese nation just after the finish of the first world war. There a newly widowed British schoolteacher meets the charming eponymous sailor who becomes her passionate lover. When a startling earthquake and subsequent tidal wave washes the two and eight young schoolgirls from their ship, they find their destinies inextricably linked on a small deserted island far from help or civilization. The shocking lengths that are taken for the sake of survival raise the hackles of readers and prove once again that the island life is no joke under any circumstances.
It's spring cleaning time again, and that means I'm thinning my personal library, packing up and donating those books that I just don't forsee reading again. This is a tough process. Books are such wonderful things in an infinite number of ways. They hold the promise of worlds beyond our own realities. And the stories within form bridges between those worlds and our own inner lives so that they are forever connected. Giving certain books away feels like severing connections, making the notion so difficult.
So, these 5 books are more of those that I'd never put on the chopping block. I'd add them to my deserted island collection and be forever happy paging through each as the soothing sound of the ocean waves on the shore accompanies some great uninterrupted reading.
In no particular order:
1. ...And The Earth Did Not Devour Him by Tomas Rivera
A fictional account of Mexican-American migrant workers in the '40s and '50s, this book hums with stunning realism. I've often heard it said that there is more truth in fiction than facts, and this perfect blend of precise poetry and lyrical prose makes that case ever stronger.
2. The Subsequent Blues by Gary Copeland Lilley
"...Lilley's verse weaves stark realism with the spiritual, crafting myths of honest witness to the good, the bad, and all the shades of in between coloring this earth. Quietly lovely and then brazen and arresting in the exhilaration emitted. Drugs and booze, love and hate, life and death all sing inside the covers of this collection. And, after putting it down, one is left sensing a renewed and refreshed contact with the world." - Excerpt from my 06/16/14 review of the collection.
3. Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza by Gloria Anzaldua
A powerful collection of essays and poems by a Chicana Texas-borderland native, this book draws together the personal and political into something extraordinary and unique. Anzaldua explores complex issues of identity - including race, gender, sexual orientation, heritage, and family - through a skilled weaving of language that is sure to leave readers with a heightened sensitivity to the great and varied diversity present throughout the human race.
4. Moon Tiger by Penelope Lively
"Moon Tiger is a gorgeous, sprawling novel about one woman who never hesitated to write her own way through history. Claudia's life has taken her from the English seaside, the Egyptian deserts of World War II, the Central American jungles to the cusp of death. This final place is the setting for her journey through that past and that of the entire known world..." - Excerpt from my 4/6/14 review of the novel.
5. The Martian Chronicles by Ray Bradbury
Such a strange book. So hallucinatory and mirage-like. Bradbury penned the dreamscape of Mars with such precision and frightening beauty. The stories within chronicle the many attempts of the human race as men return again and again to colonize this red planet that neighbors our own, always beckoning with possibilities and mystery. What they find there serves only to deepen and expand that mystery, all beneath the glow of long-extinguished stars and galaxies, spreading out to the limits of infinity.
Films are simply astonishing creations. And some much more than others, quite obviously. The work that goes into a great movie is beyond comprehension - the vision, the labor, the creative input and output of those involved. It's an accomplishment in the grandest sense.
These five films are getting on in age but still demand space in the cultural canon of great stories told. Each one holds rapt my attention every time I sit down to watch. I am continually floored by the viewing experience. And I would put these in my hypothetical life raft as I set sail towards the shimmering mirage of that deserted island in my dreams - where solitude and sand are plentiful, and, somehow, someway, there's a working DVD player sitting among the palm trees and the coconuts that litter the beach at their roots.
In no particular order:
1. Notorious directed by Alfred Hitchcock
The master of suspense does his thing just right. Ingrid Bergman and Cary Grant smolder in this tense tale involving Nazis, spies, and serious mommy issues. The movement of the story from beginning to end simmers and then crackles, expertly building in pressure, until the final reveals hit you with an emotional, gut-smacking wallop.
2. The Grapes of Wrath directed by John Ford
"I'll be all around in the dark - I'll be everywhere. Wherever you can look - wherever there's a fight, so hungry people can eat, I'll be there. Wherever there's a cop beatin' up a guy, I'll be there. I'll be in the way guys yell when they're mad. I'll be in the way kids laugh when they're hungry and they know supper's ready, and when the people are eatin' the stuff they raise and livin' in the houses they build - I'll be there, too" (dialogue from the story).
Oh, Tom Joad. The film version of Steinbeck's Great Depression-era mega-classic The Grapes of Wrath may have cut the story by half, but director John Ford and cinematographer Gregg Toland knock that half out of the park. They found the perfect embodiment of the tale's protagonist Tom in Henry Fonda and his unique ability to truly inhabit the world of any story he inserted himself into. A searingly political and personal tale of the have-nots struggling to gain something, just enough, to live and die with anything like dignity.
3. Cleo from 5 to 7 directed by Agnes Varda
In traditional French culture, the early evening hours of 5 to 7 are those in which lovers meet. This story involves a young woman and her lover meeting and loving, but it is also so much more deeply about her internal world. Cleo is waiting in these few precious hours, and what she is waiting for will impact the rest of her life in ways she can only currently imagine. She is living and waiting, and the ecstasy and agony of both ripple across her expressive face in director Agnes Varda's beautiful ode to human existence.
4. Dr. Strangelove directed by Stanley Kubrick
Arguably the best political satire ever put to film. I can watch this one over and over, as it relinquishes new details with each viewing. A film about the possible end of the human race that roars with comedy and seers with something so very close to a terrifyingly realistic vision of the future.
5. Do The Right Thing directed by Spike Lee
So this one might not be quite as elderly as the others listed on here - only 26 years old - but it is one that I'd certainly place within my classic collection. It's a movie about race but one that doesn't choose sides. It's also such an artistic statement by a 32 years old director in love with the power of his craft. I've always loved Lee for his style with visuals, especially colors. And this film sings with colors of all sorts and descriptions. What those colors say to each of us is completely up to one's own imagination and worldview.
The problem with a list like this is that it forces decisions. No flexibility, no bargaining, no changing once the post has been published to the web. I'm not all that good at making snap decisions, or even ones that I've had plenty of time to fret and fuss over. I have to say that I like pondering uncertainties, playing with possibilities, flexing the balance of my stance on some things. So it was a difficult undertaking to actually write this entry in the Deserted Island List Mania. I had to nail it down, no wiggling. Even the knowledge that this is a truly hypothetical list didn't help all that much.
But I did it anyway. These are the five music albums that always strike me - be it immediately or with the settling of several listens - in ways I can't begin to adequately describe. I would be able to play these again and again and remain satisfied. They are albums that do not flit in and out of my playing rotation; they are not fads or trendy ditties, at least not to me. I could listen to these five on repeat for all time.
In no particular order:
1. Still Bill - Bill Withers
By declaring that this is a great pick-me-up album, I feel I might be down-playing the overall musician and craftsmanship of these songs. Bill sang about what he felt strongly for - moments of beauty mixed with truly experienced emotions. In his own words, "I write and sing about whatever I am able to understand and feel. I feel that it is healthier to look out at the world through a window than through a mirror. Otherwise, all you see is yourself and whatever is behind you."
2. Band of Gypsys Live - Jimi Hendrix, Billy Cox, & Buddy Miles
After the dissolution of the Jimi Hendrix Experience, Jimi formed this group and the trio made their live debut at the Fillmore East on the eve of 1970. Jimi died only six months later, making this the last album he officially authorized. The original vinyl release features all new songs for the time played in front of an appreciative and excited audience. This is the one of the ultimate albums for funky, psychedelic guitar riffs. It also features a greatly talented rhythm section just trying to keep up with Jimi's free-wheeling genius. No one could do the soul like Jimi.
3. Stories From The City, Stories From The Sea - P.J. Harvey
This album is atmospheric and ethereal while showcasing some major lyric writing and musicianship chops. P. J., with her singular voice and sound, created an album of great cohesiveness and story. Plus its got some crunchy guitar riffs. Just awesome.
4. Songs For The Deaf - Queens of The Stone Age
A perfect storm of heavy stoner rock mixed with catchy hooks and brilliant production, Songs For The Deaf features this band at its absolute peak. And Dave Grohl is behind the drums, where he belongs.
5. The Low End Theory - A Tribe Called Quest
Simply awesome and accessible hip hop. This is one of the only cassettes that the tape deck in my '97 Corolla will still play, so let's just say I have intimate knowledge of the ins and outs of this impressive album.
Cheater Bonus Album: De-Loused In The Comatorium - The Mars Volta
Prog rock. Yes, I dabble in a love for some prog rock. A true concept album, De-Loused is the debut full-length of this energetic and talented band that, at times, tests patience yet rewards with epic highs filled with storms of rhythm and riffs that culminate in a singular experience of sound. It's totally nerdy, but also totally worth it.
Super Duper Cheater Bonus Album That I Simply Could Not Live Without And Can't Believe I Nearly Forgot: Passover - The Black Angels
Austin psych band The Black Angels' first studio full-length album. If you're in the mood for dark and atmospheric rock songs with rhythmic drone, kick-ass bass and drum lines, along with those inventive psychedelic guitar riffs that I so adore, then this is the album for you. I have to admit that I listen to this one at least once a week. I need my dose.
I am (quite obviously) in love with movies. I enjoy watching, talking about and writing about them. Realizing that, by definition, deserted islands do not have electricity to power non-existent DVD players nor does Netflix reach everywhere, specifically tiny islands without internet access, and that my copies would be useless would not stop me. I'd bring them anyway, just because I cannot see myself without their presence.
These are the five films that I could stand to watch over and over again. They continuously surprise me. And every time I watch I find myself bowled over by images of echoing and transcendent beauty, humor, and/or profundity. Each one has the ability to alter my mood, living inside my head for days to come. These are movies that I will never forget, be it for the story, the characters, the worlds that are created or the experiences they afford me.
In no particular order:
1. Walkabout directed by Nicholas Roeg
"Australia has a dirty history, much like every country on this earth, but it is just as true and filthy as those. The clean and beautiful lines of the buildings and roadways that snake around the perimeter of that island continent were not always present; their history is new and built on the soil of an older culture. Move inland from these glittering cities on the cusp of the sea and one will find traces of that older culture—one of the oldest on the planet. One sees the outback, an immense stretch of landscape that has shaped that culture and will continue to shape it beyond the time that those gleaming structures of the cities possess. Director Nicholas Roeg places us in this landscape, along with its sordid history, as simply as opening a beautiful picture book." - Excerpt from my 01/27/11 review of the film.
2. The Big Lebowski directed by the Coen Brothers
It's difficult to choose one movie from the Coen Brothers' impressive filmography, but, then again, this particular selection seems like a no-brainer. Tied to some really memorable moments in my life, this genius comedy slash mystery is just as memorable. I can't begin to explain the ins and outs of the plot and characters in a concise manner, so just watch it and enjoy.
3. Winter's Bone directed by Debra Granik
"A rural sheriff arrives. He explains the situation slowly and does not elaborate. A 17 year old girl listens; she already knows what she has to do. Behind her is the backwoods cabin she lives in with her two younger siblings and catatonic mother. She takes care of them, makes sure they are provided for and healthy, and the weight of that responsibility leans on her shoulders as she faces the sheriff. “I’ll find him,” she says in a quiet but certain manner." - Excerpt from my 01/28/11 review of the film.
4. Pan's Labyrinth directed by Guillermo del Toro
A gorgeous and inventive fable of a film. Set during the Spanish Civil War, the fairy-tale story balances del Toro's intricately-detailed magical realism with the everyday nature of the thin line running between the political and the personal. The images within are evocative and dream-like, yet always grounded in realism. This movie makes me swoon a little bit every time.
5. Spirited Away directed by Hayao Miyazaki
"It is the wonder of Miyazaki's films that so many of his young protagonists find the best of themselves when thrust into unexpected and testing circumstances. It may be that Miyazaki is simmering the notion that there is often more to each of us than our current easy situations are pushing us to confront and realize." - Excerpt from my 05/11/14 review of the film.
Cheater Bonus Film: Children of Men directed by Alfonso Cuaron
This is definitely one of the only times I will admit that a film adaptation surpasses the power of the book on which it is based. The impact of the scenes that Cuaron hits the viewer with are astounding in their intricate weaving of issues of class and race, character development and change, and pure, visceral emotion. It's a color-soaked portrait of humans clinging to the end of civilization. A film that posits the notion that the end of days may bring about the worst in most but can also inspire the good in a few.
Super Cheater Bonus - TV Series: The Simpsons. Duh.
I don't believe I need to go into any explanation for this particular pick.
I was recently discussing with a friend the topic of personal libraries. We agreed that there are certain books that we simply could never get rid of, no matter how much shelf space it'd free up. We both felt that these collections were signifiers of our personalities. If we didn't have these specific individual libraries, then a causal onlooker would not be able to discern who we had been, who we are now, and who we want to be in the future.
A few weeks ago I did some spring cleaning, including a thinning of my book library. There were about 20 that I easily singled out for donation, while about 10 that were somewhat difficult to give up. After the assessment, approximately 50 books - mostly novels, poetry collections, social science texts, and a handful of biographies - remained and will do so into the foreseeable future.
Running with this train of thought, I have created a deserted island list. These are the 5 books that I could never ever be without. They are those texts that I could read over and over again and never be bored. They surprise me every time with something emotionally striking and/or new. I wouldn't be satisfied to have these volumes on Kindle, Ipad, or any other digital reader. I need to own the actual book and be able to hold it in my hands, turning real pages and cracking real spines. These books say something profound, at least to me, about who I am.
In no particular order:
1. The Blind Assassin by Margaret Atwood
"Ten days after the war ended, my sister Laura drove a car off a bridge." If you can come up with a more gripping first sentence, tell me, because I can't find one. I am quite biased, true, since I know the rest of the tale. I don't care; it's a stellar beginning to a book I could just sit with all day and flip through, marveling in the dazzling strands of story/web that Atwood spins so skillfully.
2. One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez
The allegorical town of Macondo is rendered unforgettable as told through the history of the BuendÃa family, both imaginings of Marquez's passionate prose. This novel swings between passages of lulling calm and those of thundering violence, gorgeous and sprawling landscapes and claustrophobic moments of terror. Beautiful and epic in scope, a veritable myth of a book.
3. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
The decision between this Vonnegut masterpiece and that of Cat's Cradle was one I wrestled with, and perhaps still will do so into the future. But something in my mind/heart(?) tells me that Slaughterhouse-Five would be the one of the two I would grab from my shelf if a fire were cutting through my home and I had only seconds to escape. Billy Pilgrim is a name I will never forget, and his journey as he becomes unstuck in time is that of a hilarious romp combined with an exploding, shrapnel-filled morality tale.
4. The Country Between Us by Carolyn Forche
"Gathering this world together without seam, The Country Between Us reflects back to us that which is most difficult to view - the mire and complexity of our society - and alters it into that which cannot be turned away from. The sensual language on display in these poems never oversteps the dramatic narratives unfolding from real experiences and remembrances. The resulting realization that everything within happened - the causal and cruel violent acts, the striking injustices, the moments of pure and transcendent glory - does not soon abate." - Excerpt from my 04/21/14 review of the collection.
5. In The Skin Of A Lion by Michael Ondaatje
"...the quiet yet clear sensation of a true epic masterpiece unfolding among the scenes and chapters of In The Skin Of A Lion is sincerely swoon-worthy. I have read and re-read nearly all of Michael Ondaatje's works, but this is the one that rises highest among them for me. Certain turns of phrase and specific revelations have the ability to make my hair stand on end in pleasure." - Excerpt from my 04/27/14 review of the novel.
Cheater Bonus Book - Memoir: The Woman Warrior by Maxine Hong Kingston
The book might confuse some looking for a linear narrative of a life story. But this particular memoir edges between fiction and fact, elemental and original. Hong Kingston uses her fierce clarity of words to blend her own tale with that of becoming the "female avenger" of her dreams. At times dizzying in scope but always rooted in the profoundly personal.
Super Cheater Bonus Book - Non Fiction: If I could take a huge, heavy volume, it'd have to be the illustrated and annotated edition of Sigmund Freud's Interpretation of Dreams compiled by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson. That's a BIG book!
Even if you vehemently disagree with things that Freud proclaimed true, you have to admit he started the conversation, as well as the fact that he was a talented and evocative writer. And this annotated edition of his greatest work brings the other voices of the discussions and arguments that it sparked into the fold. The book that makes my head spin with free-wheeling imaginings and swirling notions of thought.
2. Fahrenheit 451 written by Ray Bradbury
3. The Handmaid's Tale written by Margaret Atwood
4. Mad Max: Fury Road directed by George Miller
5. De-loused in the Comatorium recorded by The Mars Volta
1. Cat's Cradle written by Kurt Vonnegut
6. The Road written by Cormac McCarthy
