couchedthoughts-blog

[couchedthoughts-blog]

ERASERHEAD

I was a young person when I watched Eraserhead for the first time, and it repulsed me. I felt assaulted by the id of adulthood come to life, all its terrors unleashed. It was too rancid, too grim for me to endure. 

I had recently discovered the Pixies and was making my way through their discography when I listened to a deep-cut called “In Heaven.” It was simple, sweet, off-kilter. The combination of qualities I most admired in their music. I searched for videos on Youtube and came across a disturbing clip of the Lady in the Radiator. Only then did I realize that this was an obscure cover of an obscure song from an obscure film called Eraserhead. 

So, naturally, I watched it. Or tried to. It didn’t take long for me to realize it was far beyond my taste. I wasn’t ready to see it. Because adolescence is filled with idealism, a belief that life is full of romance and hope. And this movie showed me a world that was full of anxiety and oppressive repetition. I believed life was about truly connecting with other people, and this movie showed me a world where language has no meaning. The only source of hope in Eraserhead was a deformed lady trapped inside a radiator. How, when I was so full of youth’s illusions, could I watch those illusions decay on film?

Of course, I didn’t understand its themes back then. But now I can see the core of my revulsion. It was the lack of control the characters had in changing their situation, which never improved. I didn’t enjoy feeling Henry’s fear or Mary’s hopelessness. I didn’t even enjoy the absurdity of it all. When you’re young, you want art to speak to you plainly. You want movies to portray the romance you believe to be real. But there was none of that in Eraserhead. 

It was only after adulthood had dragged me down that I could enjoy—even laugh at—Eraserhead. Only after I had gotten knocked up and sat awkwardly with my boyfriend across a dinner table from my parents. Only after I had a nervous breakdown during a sleepless night with a wailing baby. Only after I had experienced the alienation of parenthood could I find happiness inside that radiator alongside the singing lady. 

Eraserhead no longer scares me, because I’ve lived it and conquered it. My son isn’t a slimy, pimple-covered creature, but I feel the same pang of tenderness for that creature as I did for my son on that sleepless night. Dinner with my parents didn’t involve a chicken carcass spewing blood, but the meal felt just as disturbing and prolonged. Parenthood is absurd, and watching it depicted—not how it appears, but how it feels—IS funny. It’s cathartic to see all my distant anxieties turned into gut-churning body horror. Babies and families and marriage are terrifying, and it feels good to watch a film that acknowledges that actual reality and turns it up to eleven. 

[couchedthoughts-blog]

Book Corner: Suite française

In the summer of 1942, Irène Némirovsky was arrested in a French village for being a “stateless person of Jewish descent.” She was sent to Auschwitz and died four months later of typhus. Born in Kiev to a wealthy banker and his wife, she and her family fled to Paris amid the Russian Revolution. Némirovsky eventually became a writer, married another banker and converted to Roman Catholicism before fleeing yet again, this time from invading Germans. 

Soon after Némirovsky’s death, her husband was also captured and died in the gas chambers. Thankfully, their two daughters avoided the same fate, hidden by their French governess for the remainder of the war. For half a century, they carried around a leather suitcase with papers from their mother and could never find the courage to read what they believed to be her diary. The eldest, Denise, finally examined them after her sister passed away in 2002 and discovered that they were manuscripts for the first two novellas in a planned series of five. Némirovsky was sent to the concentration camp before she was even halfway through, but what she left is considerable nonetheless. 

The first novella, “Storm in June,” follows several unrelated characters as they flee Paris. There are the Péricands, a family of seven burdened with a senile grandfather and valuable, meaningless possessions the matriarch can’t leave behind; the Michauds, an older couple that was promised a seat in their employer’s car but are booted out to make room for his mistress and her dog. And a rich writer with his mistress who complains ad nauseam about leaving his bourgeois nest in Paris. 

The story moves between these characters and a few others, mirroring the fragmented chaos of evacuation. In times like these, people’s worst tendencies flare up and Némirovsky satirizes them with brutal accuracy. The experiences of the very rich and the middle class are not only contrasted, but closely intertwined. This isn’t a story about people of different backgrounds banding together in the face of great adversity; it’s a story about the cowardly self-interest of the wealthy and the advantages they can barely tolerate at the expense of those who have much less. All the more astounding when we consider that the author was one of the elite. 

The second novella, “Dolce,” takes place in a sleepy village upended by the arrival of German troops. Soldiers are assigned living quarters in the villagers’ homes and what ensues is a rather philosophical meditation on what it means to live with the enemy. The townsfolk turn against each other, divided by — you guessed it — class lines. The rich hoard supplies and rations while the poor starve. The only men left are old and injured, and the women use all they’ve got to get what they need from the rosy-cheeked Germans. Neighbors out one another, gossiping to the soldiers in hopes their families will receive special treatment. When resources are scarce, taking others down becomes the most viable way to survive. 

And then there’s the problem of love. What if the barbaric enemy turns out to be a sensitive, sophisticated gentleman? What happens when you connect more profoundly with this stranger than anybody else you’ve ever known? This is Lucille’s predicament. Living with her overbearing mother-in-law, her husband missing in action, Bruno Von Falk takes up residence in the Angellier house, stirring up the dormant tension between the two women. Madame Angellier questions Lucille’s loyalty to her husband and her country every time she’s caught acknowledging the officer’s attention — and she questions it too — but slowly and sweetly the two strike up a bond that’s out of time and out of place. 

What’s truly remarkable and tragically ironic about this second novella is that Némirovsky imbues the German soldiers with such humanity and the Germans end up murdering her mere months after this was written. She certainly wasn’t forgiving of them, but there’s something extraordinary about showing the humanity of people who would (and will) treat her so inhumanely. And perhaps one of the most damning quotes in the book is when Bruno tries to excuse their actions to Lucille by saying they’re just following orders. They behave “properly.” They’re soldiers, simply a part of a whole. It’s a chilling reminder of human weakness. 

“Storm in June” encapsulates the initial shock of war. It’s frantic and disorienting. But “Dolce” picks up as everybody gets used to occupation. It has its tense moments, but the second novella is bucolic and deceptively tranquil. I pine for the other three missing novellas, but even this beginning manages to say more than most wartime novels. Which is astonishing when you remember that Némirovsky was writing this while experiencing it, not with the advantages that come with time and reflection. Suite française stands on its own as a profound fictional account of WWII, but knowing the fate of its author makes it transcend the genre. I highly recommend it for a provoking, surprisingly enjoyable read. 

I also recommend watching the movie adaptation, which is streaming on Netflix. And don’t do that thing where you watch the movie instead of reading the book. Only lazy people who don’t want good things do that. Regardless, I was surprised this movie didn’t even make it to theaters and went straight to Lifetime, of all networks. It’s good. Like really good. It only depicts “Dolce” and they’ve made Bruno a tad more likable than he was in the book, but I suspect that’s a studio change to make his and Lucille’s affair more palatable. But also, Matthias Schoenaerts somehow makes all his characters sympathetic, even the guy who forces his niece into sexual slavery in Red Sparrow. The movie also features two characters who were not in the book: A Jewish woman pretending to be of Aryan descent and her daughter. I assume she’s meant to be an homage to the author, which I thought was a touching addition.

As far as WWII fiction goes, Suite française is probably one of the more nuanced you will read. And like The Diary of Anne Frank, I think it’s a must-read contemporaneous account by someone who lived — and died — during the events. Check it out. I’d love to hear your thoughts. 

[couchedthoughts-blog]

The Raucous, Lovable Babylon Berlin

Buried in your Netflix suggestions is a German television show you are definitely sleeping on: Babylon Berlin. Netflix, bump this baby up to primetime. The people need it. 

Look, I don’t blame you. Nobody is talking about Babylon Berlin. Except for me and my sister. And only because I tricked her into watching it. But if my sister —a person with a natural aversion to subtitles and layered historical plots—can lose her shit over this show, then anybody can. 

The story begins as our protagonist, a detective named Gereon Rath, arrives in Berlin to recover a porn film involving a politician from his hometown of Cologne. He joins the vice squad and pairs up with Inspector Bruno Wolter, a character who manages to be both odious and incessantly likable. The two suspect each other of ulterior motives and their quasi alpha male dance for dominance is hilarious, tense, and totally entertaining. 

Early on, Gereon has a meet-cute-but-mostly-embarrassing with Charlotte Ritter, a part-time secretary/moonlighting prostitute/plucky Girl Friday gunning for a spot on the homicide squad, and the two eventually partner up to solve the show’s central mystery involving a train full of poisonous gas smuggling a carload of Russian gold. 

But to write Babylon Berlin off as a cop show would be to ignore its lack of procedural austerity, its disregard for the gritty antihero and it’s frenetic whimsy. Gereon shows up in Berlin on a mission which resolves itself within the first few episodes but he remains, drunk on the city and caught up in its underground criminal and political activity. The show portrays poverty, corruption and all the nasty stuff you’d expect in post-WWI Germany, but it’s not grim or humorless. These things are just facts of life in the Weimar Republic and they don’t require our protagonists to be long-suffering, insufferable bores. 

Gereon is drowning PTSD in vials of opium, but he’s not your typical Drug-Addled Detective™. He’s addicted but not brooding, handsome but not intimidating, smart but not brilliant. He has a delicate beauty, he smiles, and he loves a good Charleston. Wolter is a bureaucratic goon, but he’s not stupid. He’s antagonistic but not malicious. Hell, some of the most tender moments of Babylon Berlin are between him and his wife. Charlotte is a penniless prostitute, but the word “troubled” isn’t allowed within fifteen feet of her. She’s easily the most optimistic go-getter in the story.

And then there are the more trope-y auxiliary players: the conspiratorial communist, the ruthless mob boss, the mysterious Russian oligarch. When offbeat protagonists enter this familiar world of political intrigue, it suddenly feels novel and puzzling, setting us up perfectly for the storm to come. We feel Hitler’s presence even though he’s absent. We know he’s coming. But when? The writers of Babylon Berlin recognize that his rise wasn’t a foregone conclusion and that Berlin during the days of the Weimar Republic was a disorienting playground for all kinds of political factions. And they manage to obscure our foresight by hitching us to unsuspecting characters who try to navigate this shadowy underbelly. We know where this all ends, but we’re left trying to put the pieces together, just like them. 

This is noir, no doubt. But the show lovingly deconstructs and parodies the gruff masculinity so typical of the genre. Charlotte — for me at least — quickly becomes the gutsy hero of Babylon Berlin. And two women are its most effective antagonists: One committing the coldest betrayal and the other a truly horrific assassination. This is a story about a city in chaos, where women have been backed into corners and are willing to do whatever it takes to dominate their destiny. And men crippled by war, trying desperately to get back to normal. WWII couldn’t have happened without the battered souls of WWI, and Babylon Berlin understands this. But make no mistake — the utter debauchery of the Weimar Republic is on full display in all its fun, fucked-up glory. 

This is a period piece that fails to be stuffy or self-important. It’s designed as beautifully and ostentatiously as any Roaring Twenties set piece should be, but it rejects formality and artifice no matter how gilded the scenery. It’s both glamorous and grimy without indulging the extremes of either. We’ve got dire poverty over here, glittering cabaret over there, drug-fueled murder, political corruption, police corruption, bombings and massacres and yet. Babylon Berlin is a buoyant, exhilarating show that will put a big fat grin on your face, happy tears in your eyes and make you clasp a hand over your mouth every episode. 

It’s got probably the best, most bizarre musical interlude I’ve ever seen in my life. And the most visceral death scene that will reach out and strangle you. It has a drug trip that will make your heart race and your palms sweat. And a random dream sequence that lulls you into the floating serenity of a Fred Astaire routine. The extremes aren’t cheap thrills, but they’re ridiculous in the most sublime ways. 

Babylon Berlin can get away with almost anything, because the writers have created unique, compelling, lovable characters. If I can root for a police thug or feel sorrow for a fascist-funding aristocrat, then this show is doing something very, very right. There’s a lot of praise worth giving, but this is probably the best I can dispense: Babylon Berlin is a show with heart. And that’s hard to find in a landscape overcrowded with moody, manipulative dramas. This is the champagne of television. It’s joyous, it’s bubbly, it’s not really your thing. But then it knocks you flat on your ass before you can say, “I wasn’t expecting that.” 

[couchedthoughts-blog]

Anthony Bourdain and Me

Today I lost somebody. Sure, the world lost a great storyteller, an entity. But I lost somebody. Somebody who was deeply entrenched in my life, on such a molecular level that I've kind of taken his presence for granted. I didn’t really acknowledge all of the ways he’s impacted who I am as a person until today. But Anthony Bourdain, your influence will never leave me, and in that way at least, you’re still alive. 

I can’t quite remember which I came across first: Kitchen Confidential or No Reservations. I want to say Kitchen Confidential. I remember reading it without much awareness of Anthony Bourdain as a personality. Just hearing about it through the grapevine and thinking it sounded good. And damn was it good. Piercing, funny, inspiring. 

During my junior year of college, I became a single mother. I had to leave my university to move back in with my parents for a semester and took classes through the local community college before I returned that fall. Being a new mother is not easy for anybody. It’s a shock to the senses. You’re in a breastfeeding stupor, watching television at three in the morning, no real sense of time or self. And just nine months earlier I had lived an entirely different existence. The shift was tectonic and I was alone. 

One of the precious few things that brought me joy was the Travel Channel. It sounds silly, but put yourselves in my shoes for a minute. I always thought I would be a sort of vagabond, just floating wherever the wind took me. But then I got pregnant and that life suddenly became impossible. So, the Travel Channel was how I lived out that fantasy. First, it started with khaki-shorts-wearing Samantha Brown. I liked her. She was chipper and cheesy and 9 a.m. was my favorite hour of the day. Samantha Brown Hour. 

But then came Anthony Bourdain. At night. In all his gritty, witty glory. Europe wasn’t museums and architecture and outdoor cafes. It was people and oddities and stories told through food. Switzerland was a chocolate-covered, chintzy nightmare and dingy Vietnamese restaurants were the Promised Land. Places to slurp in worship. Is pho such an American staple now because of Anthony Bourdain’s relentless evangelism? I’d argue so. 

Any culture I have I basically owe to Bourdain. In books you can learn history and language and geography. But would I have explored all the places he took me on my own? Would I have detected the complexity of a “regional meal,” the smell of the local market, the sounds of the streets at night, the generational impact of fishing or farming on one family? No. 

Anthony Bourdain taught me to see. To look beyond the idea of a place or people. To be curious and adventurous. I remember watching him in Missouri, in Houston, with Ted Nugent, in Arkansas, in places I’ve never romanticized. In places I’ve derided, In places too close to home to hold any fascination for me. But amazingly, he saw poetry where I saw nothing. He found a compelling story everywhere he went. No place was boring. Even Waffle House had its beauty. 

“What Would Anthony Bourdain See?” By answering this question, I could find something wonderful anywhere I was, even my hometown. What I learned from him was to see, to really see the places I’ve driven by thousands of times. To find adventure, even in the place I’ve lived most of my life. I learned that traveling is something you should do every chance you get, and I do, but it’s also expensive. So, exploring my city like Anthony Bourdain, finding the hidden gems, trying foods I’ve never heard of, these things have helped me be a vagabond in my static, suburban life. 

What I’ve learned from Anthony Bourdain is that traveling isn’t really about where you are. A city is just a city at the end of the day. Traveling is a way of seeing the world. It’s about being a guest wherever you are. See your world with new eyes. Find that meal that shoots you to the moon. 

Speaking of meals that rock my world, I have a digression. For dinner a couple of months ago, I wanted to try a new place that was close to home. Like I mentioned earlier, I’ve lived in the same area almost all my life, so this might have been a fruitless endeavor. But I found this Thai/Laotian restaurant about two miles from my house, in a shopping center sandwiched between a Lifetime Fitness and Lowe’s. It’s a place I had never really noticed. You wouldn’t either. But I took my son there that evening, and I had one of the most life-affirming meals ever. It was like doing peyote or something. Maybe the chili oil went straight to my brain, but I went on a spiritual journey. And if it weren’t for Anthony Bourdain’s voice in my head, I probably would have never had that experience. In the suburbs of boring, soulless Dallas, Texas of all places.

Never stop looking. Good stories and good food and good people are everywhere. Live life like a tourist, because you kind of are. Anthony Bourdain, I’m crushed but I’m endlessly grateful. Thank you for your curiosity, your perceptiveness, and especially your kindness. The world’s a better place (and I’m a better person), because you were here. I wish the world would have given you the same.

[couchedthoughts-blog]

Book Reco: Story of a Secret State

Story of a Secret State: My Report to the World is a memoir by Jan Karski, documenting his time in the Polish Resistance from 1939 to 1944. I finished this about a week ago, and I know it was amazing, because I'm currently feeling unmotivated to start another book. It hurts to say goodbye. 

The story opens and WWII seems to come out of nowhere. Karski, a young Pole, is drafted into the army overnight, sent to the army, where they're abruptly and catastrophically attacked by the Germans during their march, forced to retreat, captured by the Soviets and sent to a work camp, all within three weeks and about two chapters ... Yeah ... Can you imagine what it was like to experience this? One of the most astounding aspects of this book is how quickly the flames of war consumed life and how quickly ordinary people reacted to reduce its casualties. 

By the time Jan escapes the Soviet camp and returns to Warsaw (only a few weeks later), the Nazis are in power and the Polish government is in exile in France with an underground resistance operating at home. A friend quickly recruits him to the Resistance after his arrival, and he's sent on several perilous missions over the next few years, ordered to sabotage and disrupt Nazi operations in every possible way.

Like any good spy thriller, this novel is tense and full of moments that made me gasp aloud. But what I found most compelling was the daily defiance of the Polish people, both poor and rich, young and old. Every time I opened this book, I was moved by their small heroism. Like when a peasant farmer lets Jan lay low in his shed after a nasty injury, or when a single mother and her son knowingly risk their lives by allowing him to board at their home. When you see the bloody consequences of these seemingly inconsequential acts, you realize just how brave ordinary citizens were when it would have been so much safer to accept Nazi rule. 

The way Jan writes is delicately evocative. His language isn't wistful, but he paints a vivid picture of his surroundings and his acquaintances, always giving us a detailed account like any decent spy would. He doesn't just recount what happened, but he thinks deeply about the motivations of the people around him and considers the complexities and ethics of his work. That work allowed him to have only brief acquaintances with other people, all of them finely drawn. Though some characters were only present in one chapter, it felt as if I had known them for years. As you would expect given the circumstances, many of Jan's acquaintances were arrested and/or brutally murdered by the Germans, ripped away as soon as we fall in love with them. Every death absolutely gutted me. In one instance, I was ravaged with grief and had to put down the book to properly mourn. What must it have been like to live through these horrors? What kind of courage must it have taken to simply survive? The current #Resistance looks silly next to the sacrifice and bravery of the Polish people. People should read Karski's memoir to see what real resistance requires. 

I also recommend history teachers assign this book as supplementary reading for students. Nothing brings history to life quite like a well-written memoir, especially one that comes from somebody who was so deeply entrenched in the political and conspiratorial work of the day. And somebody! Please make this into a TV series. It deserves to be brought to life on-screen. What more can I say without giving too much away? An entire country suffers greatly and yet refuses to let go of its identity, no matter the cost. This is a story about people coming together in the worst circumstances to fight back, to win, to survive. Read it. 

[couchedthoughts-blog]

A Song of Ice & Fire: Bran and Tyrion in A Game of Thrones

I finished them six years ago, but I still spend a good chunk of my time thinking about these dumb books. With a podcast on the horizon, I’ve decided I need a place to organize my thoughts before recording each episode. So, I’m creating an ongoing series of A Song of Ice & Fire-related blog posts. This week, I’d like to examine Bran and Tyrion in the first book, A Game of Thrones.

Why these two? Well, when my cohost, Daniel, and I were brainstorming ways to bring the books to life, we decided to pair up characters in each episode. There was no major reason for doing this, but we knew we wanted to examine the books through characters rather than chapters. By pairing characters, we could observe and analyze their stories in refreshing ways. And after way too much of my life devoted to analyzing these books, I’m all about refreshing takes.

For example, if we track Jon and Dany’s arcs side-by-side, we can see them both grappling with power and uncover the complexities of leadership by comparing them to one another. It didn’t take us long to pair off each A Game of Thrones POV character, Jon and Dany being the obvious first pairing. But at the end we were left with two outliers who seemingly had little in common: Tyrion Lannister and Bran Stark. Upon further inspection, however, I found that this “outlier” status is sort of the crux of who each of them is and how they function within the story.

In Bran, we have a younger son of a powerful noble who is paralyzed and bed-ridden for much of the book. He’s quickly abandoned by most of his family, left to figure out what it means to be crippled and dealing with dark prophetic dreams that involve a three-eyed crow. All of this adds up to a plotline that operates very much outside the world of the other POVs.

Tyrion is also the younger son of a powerful noble, a dwarf, and loathed by most of his family. And pretty much everybody else in Westeros, but not us! He’s taken prisoner in the middle of A Game of Thrones and never receives credit for his many talents and successes. These circumstances all but guarantee his operating on the periphery of the other characters, too.

The first and most obvious connection between Bran and Tyrion is that they’re both disabled. We see this connection play out sweetly when Tyrion stops by Winterfell on the way back to King’s Landing to give Bran plans for a saddle that will allow him to ride a horse (despite not having the use of his legs). This encounter brings together a boy at the beginning of his life as a disabled person and a man well-versed in the daily degradations of that kind of life. But it’s a moment of hope shared by two characters who have been sent through the ringer. Although Bran is fresh off the horror of his "accident," he feels true excitement for the first time since it happened. And even though Tyrion generally meets optimism with derision, he takes a real pleasure in providing happiness to somebody in a sad state he’s all too familiar with.

Both characters—at least by the end of the book—are pessimists. And how could they not be? Life has dealt them a cruel hand. But in this moment — and throughout the book, really — we see how desperate for hope they both are. In the beginning of A Game of Thrones, Bran dreams of being a knight and even after those dreams are crushed, he still finds joy in that forest ride and a tingling thrill in the crypts of Winterfell. Bran didn’t fall to his death, he chose to fly. 

And despite Tyrion’s rampant cynicism, the moment he’s thrown in the sky cell, he’s begging for his life. This is a man unhappy with his lot, but also a man who feels that lot is very much worth living. Hope propels Bran and Tyrion throughout the series, though neither of them would acknowledge its presence in their lives.  

I like to think of Tyrion as a roadmap for where Bran’s life could go. Not that I think Bran will end up like Tyrion, but the latter is an example of how cruelty and belittlement manifest in a person for better (and for worse). We can see the sense of abandonment Bran feels and see its effects in Tyrion’s self-sufficiency. We can see the restlessness Bran experiences because of his immobility and see its effects in Tyrion’s intellectual appetite. These conditions will have an impact on who Bran becomes, and we get a sneak peek at that future person by examining Tyrion.

The difference, however, lies in their familial relationships. Where Bran has a loving (though absent) family, Tyrion has only bitter resentment and a valuable name. For this reason, I don’t think Bran will ever travel the path of hatred and vengeance Tyrion is currently on. This is a good thing, knowing where Bran's journey takes him in later books. He has a moral compass in the shape of his father that Tyrion never had, and I think this will keep him on a noble path for the rest of the series. As for Tyrion? Well, we’ll have to see…

Aside from their physical disabilities, there’s another similarity these characters share, which I mentioned briefly: Bran and Tyrion are both second sons. We could talk about the significance of “Second Sons” throughout the series, but I’ll save that for a later discussion. For the purposes of this conversation, however, I’d like to examine its significance for the two characters at hand. The “spare” typically enjoys less pressure from parents and deals with the pros and cons of getting less attention. Both Tyrion and Bran seem to enjoy flying under the radar and both have something of a rebellious streak. Crucially—because the older son’s path is predetermined—the second son has a bit more freedom to create their own path. And we can see this dynamic at work in both their stories. Robb must set out at the head of his father's army, thus Bran is left at Winterfell to find his own path and purpose. And Tyrion, though desperate for the same trust Jaime receives from Tywin, diverges from his family obligations in all sorts of interesting and entertaining ways. They aren't required to risk their lives for duty or inherited power, and that frees them up to risk their lives for something greater.

When I think about Bran and Tyrion, I think of them as The Storyteller and The Reader. Bran is our first POV of the series and he opens the world up to us, like a guide or a narrator. And our first introduction to Tyrion is in the Winterfell library where he’s reading into the early hours of morning. Immediately, we’re meant to identify with him, and we do. Throughout A Game of Thrones, he sees beyond what’s presented to him, "reading between the lines." He notices and enjoys irony. He gathers knowledge, not only from the stories he reads, but also within his own story. We’re always in on the joke with Tyrion, always two steps ahead. And that’s what makes his chapters so compelling. 

Bran operates more like an omniscient narrator. Just look at how his story arc kicks off: He sees something he’s not supposed to see. For most of the book, he can only observe rather than “do.” Most of the in-series legends and fables are told in his chapters. And as we get into the rest of the books, we’ll see his “omniscience” grow stronger and stronger, not to put too fine a point on it. 

When speculating about the conclusion to A Song of Ice and Fire, the first concern fans have is what will happen to our favorite characters. For Bran and Tyrion, in particular, I wonder if their adversity prepared them well for the ravages of ice and fire to come. Or can no amount of physical and emotional endurance prepare a person for the horrors of war (a cataclysmic one, at that)? Maybe Bran and Tyrion are the physical embodiment of the horrors of war, crippled by conflict, abuse and neglect. If so, these scars continue well beyond war, so maybe—just maybe—we’ll see Bran and Tyrion alive at the end, after all.