markganek
Input/Output
46 posts
I'm a TV comedy writer. Here's what I've been reading, watching, and listening to, and what I think about it.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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NOVELLA: Binti - Nnedi Okorafor
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In this first novella of an afrofuturist trilogy, a seemingly straightforward Harry Potter-esque gifted-girl-leaves-home narrative mutates into something stranger and deeper. I blazed through this and the next two -- Home and The Night Masquerade -- and I haven’t stopped thinking about them.
A deceptively breezy read with truly tremendous depth, the series has much to admire. But what I found most compelling is how much the story changed as it progressed, never settling on a stable allegory, instead developing and complicating its ideas in sometimes unsettling ways, along with Binti herself.
Even good science fiction that seriously engages with ideas can fall into a Pilgrim’s Progress trap, where trends or concepts are embodied in particular characters, with one person representing Science, or Tradition, or The Programmer. But Binti never rests in a stable frame, and neither do its ideas. Tradition at one point might be a source of strength and identity, or an obstacle to progress, or a font of beauty, or a form of calcified oppression, or all of these simultaneously. 
The character of Binti herself literally embodies these changes, as she finds herself both an agent and a subject of forces, while she negotiates the increasingly complex web of politics, cultures, and alien influence that contest both for and within her body. 
Basically, this is real good and you should read it.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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AUDIOBOOK: Vacationland - John Hodgman
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I felt unfairly targeted by this book. As a member of the community of adults who had bookish, viola-playing childhoods, where they roamed like Stoppard-obsessed ghosts through city arts districts, preparing themselves for lives of seemingly inevitable sexless bachelorhood, this book hit a little too close to home, as I apparently shared a childhood with Hodgman. (Why this weird synchronicity, Mr. Hodgman? Are you trying to retroactively become me? That would be a real step down for you, career-wise.)
Here, Hodgman shifts his focus from the insane fake trivia of The Areas of My Expertise trilogy to thoughts of aging and mortality, and I’m reminded that I find comedians much more insightful about death than gurus or ponderous essayists. The self-serious philosopher spends much of his or her time coming to terms with the monstrously unfair absurdity of death, where the comedian takes it as given, and goes on from there.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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BOOK: The Peregrine - J.A. Baker
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I read this book because Werner Herzog told me to. Not that he told me personally, he just calls it the one book you should read if you want to make films. Werner speaks; I obey. 
So I signed up for a book-length examination of peregrine falcons, written by a man who spent an entire year traipsing through fields looking at them, and experienced one of the key sources of Werner’s style. Seriously, read this in Werner’s voice, and tell me it doesn’t fit: 
I looked into the wood. In a lair of shadow the peregrine was crouching, watching me, gripping the neck of a dead branch. We live, in these days in the open, the same ecstatic fearful life. We shun men. We hate their suddenly uplifted arms, the insanity of their flailing gestures, their erratic scissoring gait, their aimless stumbling ways, the tombstone whiteness of their faces.
Come on, that’s just Grizzly Man with birds.
The book as a whole is a breathtakingly lyrical exploration of the minutiae of one species of bird’s life, with the minor drawback that it is a breathtakingly lyrical exploration about the minutiae of one species of bird’s life. I’d love to be the kind of person who loved it more. Somewhere in space-time, this is alternate-universe Mark’s favorite book, and he is much happier than I, with a much more productive, balanced, and bird-focused life.
Alas, I am stuck with me, and I only intermittently and sporadically loved it.
It was high tide at the estuary. As the land light faded, the sky above would grow bright with the shine of brimming water. The peregrine would fall upon the scattered tribes of sleeping waders. Their wings would rise into the sunset, like smoke above the sacrifice.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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BOOK: What Art Is - Arthur Danto (Part II)
Part I
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In Part I, I claimed that while Arthur Danto’s definition of art, “embodied meaning,” certainly captures something about how we look at art, it doesn’t actually help us in determining whether something is art.
For me, the most illuminating moment in the book is a theoretical example Danto uses. He imagines a museum-goer arriving in a gallery to find a bunch of paint cans, drop-cloths, and brushes. The viewer hesitates, wondering whether she’s looking at conceptual art or at an empty gallery where workers stashed supplies. Danto resolves the dilemma by saying that it could very well be either art or non-art, but if it were art, it would be meaningful because the artist would have designed it to have meaning. And if not, it wouldn’t have meaning. 
The paint can example exposes the circular nature of Danto’s definition. We know something is art because we can extract meaning from it, and we can extract meaning from it because we know it is art. We can’t reliably use this definition to draw a line, even a fuzzy one, between art and non-art, which is pretty much the point of a definition.
It’s not that I think Danto is wrong about “embodied meaning.” Attempting to extract meaning is certainly something we do when encountering art.  It’s just that what he calls a definition of art is actually a method – a method for experiencing and appreciating things we already believe are art.
So what is the definition of art? Is that even the right question? 
Find out in Part III.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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MOVIE: The Last Jedi
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There are good bits and bad bits in both The Force Awakens and The Last Jedi, but here’s my horribly reductive take. You prefer The Last Jedi if you believe in change. You prefer The Force Awakens if you want things to say the same. 
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markganek · 7 years ago
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NOVEL - Patrick Robinson: A Tale of Adventure (Brian Hennigan)
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In my far distant youth, now misty with intervening time, I often started books, then stopped, thinking “I’ll probably appreciate this more when I’m older.” I almost never did. But in this novel I find the converse. I wish I could put it down and pick it up when I was younger.
The narrator, Patrick Robertson, is an utterly cynical alcoholic salesman plying his trade among the nicer hotels of Asia.
I awoke screaming. So at first it was as if nothing had happened; as if this were just another morning in some nice luxury hotel somewhere. Occasionally, after a bout of pre-consciousness screaming, I have bumped into the occupant of the neighboring room. Generally speaking this is a fellow businessman and it is an unwritten code of honor that the appropriate greeting on such occasions as a curt “Good morning.” Life on the road can be tough and all salesman soon grow used to early-morning cries of anguish.
Later, he gets kidnapped by a group of radical environmentalists who are looking for a different Patrick Robertson. In fact, they’ve collected four different (incorrect) Patrick Robertsons and are keeping them hostage in the jungle.
When I was younger, I think I would’ve found the cynicism thrilling. Now it seems a bit old-fashioned. “Ah, I remember believing in nothing that fervently,” I think wistfully. “Now I barely have the energy to believe in half that much nothing.”
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markganek · 7 years ago
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PHOTOGRAPH: The Blue One
I took this and rather liked it.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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ARTICLE: Something Is Wrong On The Internet - James Bridle
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This article made the rounds a few months back and occasioned a fair bit of soul-searching among the technorati in my twitter circle. Bridle details the exceedingly dark, weird world of children’s programming on Youtube, where computer-generated keyword-exploit animation mixes with sinister barely-disguised fetishism. Bridle ultimately concludes:
What concerns me is not just the violence being done to children here, although that concerns me deeply. What concerns me is that this is just one aspect of a kind of infrastructural violence being done to all of us, all of the time, and we’re still struggling to find a way to even talk about it, to describe its mechanisms and its actions and its effects. As I said at the beginning of this essay: this is being done by people and by things and by a combination of things and people. Responsibility for its outcomes is impossible to assign but the damage is very, very real indeed.
The abuses that Bridle found were indeed horrifying, but as the piece got passed around by people I respect, I found myself shocked by their shock that such a thing would be widespread on a major platform.
I think the main difference between the techno-optimists and me is an intuition about values. I believe values are fundamentally difficult: difficult to create, difficult to maintain, difficult to uphold when challenged. Communities can and do police themselves quite well when they think of themselves as communities, but take a massive, random group of people, then add anonymity and a profit motive? An algorithm doesn’t stand a chance.
After Bridle details the widespread abuse on the platform, he decides that “responsibility for [infrastructural violence] is impossible to assign.” Well, you might look to those who set up the infrastructure and haven’t fixed it because they’re making too much money. 
Values are difficult. 
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EDIT: The morning after I wrote this, the Logan Paul thing broke, which makes my whole spiel pretty quaint.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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I don’t want to say too much about this, except that if you can spare 16 minutes, you get a tiny masterpiece that’s funny, heartbreaking, and profound. Watch now! I mean, please. Sorry. That came off a little aggressive. 
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markganek · 7 years ago
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BOOK: What Art Is - Arthur Danto (Part I)
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Arthur Danto (1924-2013) was a philosopher, art critic, Fulbright scholar, Guggenheim fellow, one of the most influential art theoreticians of the 20th/21st century, and incidentally, someone whose writing had a significant impact on me personally. If there’s anyone who can tell you what art is, it’s this guy, and only an arrogant moron would disagree.
I don’t think his definition of art is right.
Just to cut right to it, his definition of art is “embodied meaning,” which mostly works, as far as these things go. However, to your great surprise, I have a few problems with the definition. Like, for instance, doesn’t this give a privileged position to conceptual 20th/21st century art, in which intended meaning is often primary? And doesn’t this give the art critic an outsized role in the determination of what is and isn’t art, which is to say, if an art critic is able to extract meaning from something, it’s art, and if not it isn’t? I mean, sure. But I have a different problem with it...
THE MAIN PROBLEM: The “embodied meaning” definition works if you’re wandering through a museum, looking at art. “Yep, that’s some embodied meaning. Oh look, there’s some more. I sure am looking at a repository of meanings, somehow embodied. I shall now try to extract meaning from these bodies.” But a philosophical definition of art should provide guidance on the difference between art and non-art. What are the edge cases? If I’m looking at something and I’m not sure if it’s art or not, how would I make the call? Does “embodied meaning” help us here? I’m going to say no.
Why? Well, I shall explain. In Part II. (portentously booming) At...some...point.
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At some point is NOW. Part II.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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NOVEL: Sourdough - Robin Sloan
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An engineer moves to San Francisco to take a job at a robotics company and finds herself socially isolated. Only through the intervention of a ragtag dinner take-out service and a mystically imbued sourdough starter can she begin to heal her soul and find a connection to the world.
It’s all a bit magical. A bit coincidental. But that’s the charm. The miraculous sourdough starter is not just dough -- it’s a living microscopic community -- and a starter for Lois’s reattachment to her human community. The book is full of perfectly crafted micro/macro rhymes like that.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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MOVIE: Thor
(mild spoiler below)
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After a few Marvel movies that were starting to get a little same-y, they took the obvious next step...a wacky gladiatorial space opera from a New Zealand comedy director. Bit predictable, honestly.
I like that they’re starting to take a few more risks with these movies, move them in unexpected directions. Each individual scene was funny, cool, weird, or otherwise entertaining, though the story as whole was a bit all over the place. 
My one serious quibble -- apparently the Hulk has just been straight killing fools for like two years. What a lovable goofy green...murderer.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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DREAM: Convenience Store CPR
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In a dingy convenience store, I give CPR to a enormous rattlesnake (no mouth-to-mouth, just chest compressions). Honestly, the surrealism felt a little paint-by-numbers -- Mad Libs zaniness instead of dark subconscious delving. However, the long silence after CPR, followed by a faint, weak rattle -- that was a genuinely dramatic moment, if a bit on the nose.
More affecting was the night walk through the immense, empty parking lot afterward. I was on a road trip, fleeing a disastrous life crack-up that was definitely my fault. I had no specific destination. A beautiful, poignant moment. 
Except, why was I parked so far away? It was the middle of the night. No one else was there.
3 out of 5 stars
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markganek · 7 years ago
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This got me.
Will take you five minutes to read. You should.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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I like that scientists sometimes act like your dumb friends after four drinks.
“We’ve been trying for years, and still we can’t get carbon nanotubes into this spider silk! Our grant’s running out. What are we going to do?”
“I don’t know. Let’s just fucking feed it to them. And then get burritos.”
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markganek · 7 years ago
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NOVEL: Wolf Hall - Hilary Mantel
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I’m calling it, folks. I don’t like historical fiction.
To clarify: I’m fine with fiction that takes place in the past, which as far as I’m concerned is just fiction. I’m talking about fiction that presents the inner life of significant historical figures. (For the record, I feel the same way about biopics, dramatizations, etc.)
I have nothing against Hilary Mantel here. She writes beautifully about Thomas Cromwell and the machinations at court, her psychological profiles are intricate and well-drawn, and her characters act from plausible motives. Maybe that’s the problem. Giving historical figures plausible motives and consistent inner lives might take us further from the truth.
In life, as I see it, nothing makes sense, people are inconsistent and weird, and events happen for dumb reasons, none of which makes for compelling storytelling. Mantel is – very skillfully – rationalizing and organizing some of this chaos to create a retroactive sense, but from a pure story-structure standpoint, she’s fighting a battle can’t win. As is true with most of this genre, the plot is a goddamned mess because life is a goddamned mess. The climax isn’t climactic, because climaxes are a made-up thing, and she’s stuck with historical fact.
To sum up, I have higher standards for fiction than I do for reality. Mixing the two makes me doubly unsatisfied. Either give me a good story, or give me the historical truth. I don’t want half of each. 
So yes, I’m dismissing an entire genre, because I am crotchety. You’ll have to forgive me. My life is a goddamned mess.
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markganek · 7 years ago
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BOOK: The Hatred of Poetry - Ben Lerner
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Lerner’s constant refrain in the book, “I, too, dislike it,” comes from Marianne Moore’s “Poetry,” which reads in its entirety:
I, too, dislike it.
Reading it, however, with a perfect contempt for it, one discovers in
it, after all, a place for the genuine.
Lerner, himself a poet, catalogues the endless critiques of poetry that have dogged the genre since the beginning. According to him, even the poets themselves hate the poetry they write because they must inevitably compare a finished poem to the perfect idea of the poem that first inspired them, an idea they have utterly failed to achieve.
However, he asserts that these minute dissections of poetry’s failings, the outsized expectations of what poetry is supposed to do, hint at the numinous space of which poetry occasionally provides flashes.
Hating on actual poems, then, is often an ironic if sometimes unwitting way of expressing the persistence of the utopian idea of Poetry, and the jeremiads in that regard are defenses, too.
The prose is occasionally self-indulgent, as when Lerner quotes a character from one of his own novels multiple times, but there’s more than enough here to hazard a read. I’ve been meaning to get on a poetry kick, and The Hatred of Poetry seems a good springboard. Looking forward to hating poetry in new and complicated ways.
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