Magical things happen to all of us on our way through life without our noticing for a time they have happened. “Surely it has been there all along,” you think. “Surely I have always loved him.” “She has always been mine,” you tell yourself. And of course, being magic, it is all true, even when it is still only becoming so.

And so it was for the pirate and the mermaid who fell in love.

This mermaid of whom I speak was not unlike a certain Wendy of whom I’m sure you all have heard, who always knew just when to sit thoughtfully at a window and when to step to the window’s edge and take flight toward the stars. The pirate was not unlike Peter Pan, who, despite choosing never to grow up, knew all the best pathways through enchanted woods, which only the wisest of adults know. But above all, the mermaid and the pirate were not unlike each other, for while both delighted in the kind of solitary escapades that can only be undertaken in secret, they each separately believed that true adventure, is best when undertaken with a friend; For adventures are always sweetest when you can see in another’s smile, that Yes, this is an unforgettable moment.

Both the pirate and the mermaid were frequenters of a certain lagoon, nestled in a corner of a much-loved island. Though both spent many days and nights and weeks throughout the years enjoying the lagoon, they both thought of it as their own, and rarely, at least in the beginning, noticed that anyone other soul besides themself kept is as a home away from home.

For the mermaid, naturally, lived at the edge of the sea. On evenings when the sunset promised to be dazzling, the young mermaid would climb to a secret spot on the cliff overlooking the ocean to watch the sun settle down to bed in the deeper sea beyond her reach.

To the south, in an isolated patch of woods, the young pirate enjoyed the solitude offered by tall trees and disguised hideouts. Even as a boy, the pirate was a superb swordsman and parried with dazzling rapidity against imaginary foes.

And while the years passed, we would be mistaken if we thought the pirate and mermaid never noticed one another or spoke, for to be sure, it was not a very large lagoon they frequented. But did they recognize each other? Not quite. “How can this be,” you ask, “if they shared a home away from home.”

Some would say it was because the pirate and the mermaid had seen each other so often in their dreams, they did not know the other was real. I’m inclined to agree with those that say so.

And this would explain how one night, when both the pirate and the mermaid were invited to the same banquet, they fell into conversation so easily.

The mermaid thought herself dreaming, though wide awake, when she noticed a rakish-looking man in a well-haberdashered suit and fine boots. The mermaid said to herself, “Here’s a flashy fellow, but not in the artificial way of bobs and bangles. No, his is a flash like sunset beams on the water, natural and luminous.”

The pirate recognized the mermaid from across the room. “I have seen her before” he thought, “ seen her standing on the shore in a bright dress with her hair dancing in the wind, have seen her facing the rain on a hillside, bundled against the storm yet eager for more. Have these things happened already or are they about to?” He wondered.

And it seemed only natural that he should cross the room to her and speak.

“I know you,” he said. “I know who you are.”
“You know me?” said she, “Well, I am not hard to find. Many know my name.”
“But I know who you are. You are a mermaid.”

She was taken aback. For though she had recognized him, she did not expect him to recognize her.
“What you say is true,” said the mermaid. “But how did you know?”
The pirate replied, “There is a certain lagoon I’ve had reason to visit often. I’ve seen you there laughing with your sisters, and teaching the little fishes new games to play.”

“And I recognize you,” admitted the mermaid. “But maybe I mistook you for a fish. I see now I must have been mistaken. You are a pirate, aren’t you?” she said.
He smiled his ‘Yes.’
“Do you pillage and plunder for treasure”
“Certainly not. I design treasures and share them. What treasure do you seek?”
“Well” said the mermaid, “I should like something to keep me warm on my windy walks on the shore.”

And just like that, the mermaid found herself wrapped in the warmth sown by this pirate, her friend.
“You made this just for me?” she inquired.
“Truth be told, I made it for myself, but thought it would suit you better.”
“Then I like it all the more. What else can you do?” asked the mermaid.

The pirate leaned in so that only the mermaid could hear, and said, “I can fill a single day with one thousand adventures. I can make wearing a tie look fun. I can walk in the wind and the rain and snow so long as it’s a new place to go.”

The mermaid smiled, put her hands on her hips and winked up at him. “Well, sir pirate. I shall put you to the test.”

And she did. For if you cannot already tell, both the mermaid and the pirate had lion courage. Neither was tame, but both were good. From that day forward, adventures were of daily occurrence. The difficulty is which one to choose to close our tale. Should we follow them snowshoeing up the frozen volcano? That is a pretty story and shows how brave both can be when the other is there to encourage them. Or we could join them at their favorite talking spot and eavesdrop on their secrets.

But since our time is short, I think the best story would be the adventure of the sunken treasure. For, after years of many mini-adventures, the pirate and mermaid decided that to live together would be an awfully big adventure.

“Now forever more, I will call you ‘my pirate,’” said the mermaid. “What now will you call me?”
Her pirate replied, “I will call you Lucy, for your own name is the sound I like most of all.”

And hearing this, she took him by the hand, leapt into the surf, and led him swimming to a place she’d always wanted to explore, but had not yet had reason to. There, glittering under the water, hidden by undersea caves was a pirate ship, not ravaged by wreck, but in perfect condition, as if its crew decided to put it to there to sleep after a long day afloat. And as the mermaid began to unroll slippery maps on the captain’s table, the pirate waved her over to a small bronze chest whose lock was broken. Eager to see what was inside, the pirate and the mermaid opened the case together and what do you think they found inside, but two golden rings, studded with sapphires.

“They match,” said the mermaid to the pirate once they were back on shore.
“And so do we,” said the pirate.

It will come to no surprise to any of you here to learn that not long after this, the mermaid and the pirate invited all their friends together to a beautiful spot, not far from their lagoon, so they could give these rings to one another.

And if you are a lucky one, on a day such as this, if you happen to wander onto a certain island, you might, just as the sun is setting and the stars are beginning to wake, see a mermaid and a pirate dancing to the rhythm of the sea, as the night sings “This is love, this is love, this is love, that we’re feeling.”

If you see this, you will have no doubt that, Yes, this is an unforgettable moment.

*wedding photos stolen from Facebook friends

“Baudrillard says …”

“according to Thomas Campbell’s hero’s journey…”

“signifier”

“the Walt Disney Corporation”

Also, of note, of all places, Mark Driscoll came up three times. (Is nowhere safe?)

We had a great time, and thanks to the fact that my friend Sarah moved to ABQ last fall, Ian and I actually got to travel beyond the 5 block radius of the Hyatt Regency. We were not forced to eat at Maloney’s three nights in a row. Hallelujah. Here’s the list of panels I attended and some notable papers.

SWTX2012 Panels & Papers of Note

Gender and Sexual identity 1: Queer(ying) American Popular Culture
Young, Out, and Proud: the History, Development, and Impact of Young Homosexual Characters on Television
Robin Haynie, University of Texas at Tyler

Graphic Novels, Comics, and Popular Culture 1: Superheroes
Superinjuns: An examination of Two of Popular Culture’s Native American Stereotypes in Marvel Comics’ X-Men
Kristin Riggs, Texas State University

Religion 3: Interpreting Religion, B
Faith Plus One: Jesus People, Contemporary Christian Music, and the Question of Authenticity, 1970-today
Krystal Humphries, Texas Tech University

Stephen Colbert and Stephen King: Catechists for a Secular World
Kathleen Heininge, George Fox University

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Screening and Sing-along
Joss Whedon’s ‘Dr Horrible’s Sing-a-Long Blog’ and Buffy the Vampire Slayer S6E7 ‘Once More With Feeling’

The Apocalypse in Popular Culture: Literature of the Apocalypse-The Hunger Games
Teenage Love, Dystopia, and The Hunger Games
Heather Braun, Macon State College

Computer Culture 2: Apps, Blogs, and Social Networks
Hipstamatic, an App for Nostalgia of the Recent Past
Maria de Panbehchi, Virginia Commonwealth University

God 2.0: Religious Groups, People of Faith, and Social Media Use
Amanda McClendon, Independent Scholar

Myth and Fairy Tales 1: Disney’s Consumer Culture
Cooking with Class: How Food Represents Status in Ratatouille
Jason Feldstein, New York University

Game Studies 5: Culture, Play, and Practice
Fallout 3 and Yesterday’s World of Tomorrow
Rowan Derrick, University of Wyoming

Religion 5: Women and Religion
Be Quiet, Already: Evangelical Popular Culture’s Misogyny Problem
Melanie Springer Mock, George Fox University

Blogging for God: Women, Christianity Today, Sojourners, and The Christian Century
Kendra Weddle Irons, Texas Wesleyan University

Game Studies 7; Culture, Play, and Practice
The Mouth of the Cave: The Challenges of Player Doubt in Computer Game Narratives
Jennifer DeWinter, Worcester Polytechnic University

Harry Potter Studies 4: Colloportus! Harry Potter and Class
Work in a Magical World: Revisiting the Stratification of Castes in the Harry Potter Series
Lindsay Clifton, Youngstown State University

Harry Potter Studies 5: Protego! The Relationships of Harry Potter
Making Up Wizards: Technologies of the Body in the Magical World
Deana Day, University of Pennsylvania

Expecto Pater: Reading Harry’s Journey of Identity in Prisoner of Azkaban through a Theological/Psychological Lens
*Me! Kj Swanson, The Seattle School of Theology & Psychology

Computer Culture 4: Theory and Vision
From the Page to the Screen: Towards a Model of Interactivity in Reading Practices
Jenna Pack, University of Arizona

The Apocalypse in Popular Culture 4: The Apocalypse as Positive and/or Negative
‘I’d Shake Your Hand But I Don’t Want to Set a Bad Example’: Contagion and the Display of Global Paranoia in Contemporary Epidemic Films
Julia Echevarria-Domingo, University of Zaragoza

‘Not With a Bang But With a Whimper’: Dollhouse’s ‘Thought-pocalypse’ as Cautionary Capitalist Tale
Erin Giannini, Independent Scholar

Food and Culture 11: Alcohol and Nostalgia in American Popular Culture
Don’t Drink the Bath Water: Moonshine and Filth in the Lower Class
Sarah McMahon, University of Colorado Denver

Cosmos, Wine, and Shots of Tequila: The Urban Girl’s Fairytale
Tiffany Fitzgerald, University of Colorado Denver

Science Fiction & Fantasy: Guest Lecture
Thinking Dothraki: An Evening with David J. Peterson, Language Creator for HBO’s Game of Thrones

Film & History 2: Ethnicity, Gender. Politics, and Film History
Dealing in Absolutes: Experiments with Music and Animation in the works of Walt Disney and Oskar Fischinger
Ian Klein, Columbia University (my co-conferencer!)

Double Dutch: Transforming Female Jewish Identity in Verhoeven’s Black Book
Ruuard Dykstra, University of Western Ontario

Film & History 3: Medieval History/Contemporary Film
Crusade, Jihad, Film: The Encryption of Despair
Robin Vose, St. Thomas University


Templars, Witches, and the Holy Wars: Religious Critique in 21st Century Medieval Period Films
Benjamin Villarreal, New Mexico Highlands University

For those expecting “Diaries of a French Burlesque Dancer”, prepare to be disappointed. While one may approach Colette’s behind-the-scenes of a traveling pantomime artist in turn-of-the-century France expecting it to be flavored with salacious frivolity to match Colette’s reputation, what you’ll find is more an existentialist rumination on ambivalence, than story of a passionate life. In fact, if there’s one thing that most defines the divorcee-turned-stage-performer Reneé Neré, it’s her distrust of passion. Colette’s largely-biographical novel tracks the frustrations, distractions and depressions of a woman in her early thirties whom, in the fallout of a disastrous and damaging marriage, chooses a life of solitude on the stage, rather than one of societal rules. But it’s not a story of the gay and free life of an artist. Instead, the monotony and doubt expressed by Reneé are all-too-recognizable for any single woman reader today, particularly if that reader is in-between jobs and still trying to figure out what to do with her life, with men, and with herself. (ahem).

Did I enjoy this book? Not particularly. The protagonist’s reflections on self-doubt and self-denial are disruptive, and even at times, numbing.
Do I respect this book? Absolutely. To read something that speaks so frankly about women’s experience, women’s fears and women’s strength much less about a woman living in her own apartment and making her own living during a time when corsets were still ubiquitous, is both humbling and empowering. But to spend time with Reneé Neré, is to linger in a space of dissociative hesitation and unconscious compulsion. It’s uncomfortable, but truthful.

Read, respect, but do not expect to revel.



**The Dover Edition is terrible. Stanley Applebaum’s introduction is meant to replace what endnotes would be, but this book desperately needs endnotes for the cultural and historical references. Also, Applebaums new “Americanized” translation reads at times like an Archie comic book. The Enid MacLeod translation may be 60 years old and egregiously British, but it’s still better.**



View all my reviews

“for biography, read Johnson’s Lives of the Poets, Boswell’s Life of Johnson, Southey’s Life of Nelson, Lockhart’s Life of Burns, Moore’s Life of Sheridan, Moore’s Life of Byron,”

…and so on. So entering Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is to some extent, an expedition into the world of those leather-bound tomes full of dates, correspondences, and panegyrics from one great author to another. As one who reads 150 year-old fiction on a nonstop basis, this genre still felt quite foreign.

In persevering, though, I found some things well worth the search. I read the Oxford Classics edition and highly recommend it for its notes. The main challenge in reading, is that Gaskell is bound both by Victorian propriety and by perceived obligation to her friend Charlotte, to protect both her privacy and her reputation. Thus, no juicy bits or suppositions about what’s happening in-between the lines of her letters (and life). But the Oxford notes offer great annotations and corrections when possible. That enervating habit of 19th century authors to blank out names of people and places, gets filled in by flipping to the end notes. Hallelujah. (Though this did triple the length of reading time).

I still felt pretty distant from the Charlotte Brontë presented in the pages. The version of her you get is so much Gaskell’s redaction, that despite 70% of the text being letters from Brontë’s own hand, it still feels emotionally and contextually distant, (at least for this modern reader). But that’s likely a genre and context issue. It’s clear that Gaskell wanted Brontë’s critics to know that the author of Jane Eyre, Shirley and Villette was an unassuming and unpretentious woman who lived a quiet life of suffering and struggle, and who shied away from fame. Against Brontë’s detractors who accused her pseudonymous “Currer Bell” of being “course” and “un-Christian,” Gaskell displays the deep moral and spiritual convictions, reservedness and compassion that epitomized this Yorkshire curate’s daughter.

Though Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is perhaps less illuminating of Brontë’s relationships and life choices than is contemporary scholarship, the work is indeed, as Charlotte’s father Rev Patrick Brontë said, “in every way worthy of what one great woman should have written of another.”

What I enjoyed most was the amount of correspondence time Brontë takes in recommending and critiquing literature. Her relationship with her publishers turned into what seemed a perpetual book club of trading books and reviews. And what sticks out so often is that Brontë rarely mentions plot construction, setting or even language. Her responses almost always center on what the author uncovers or expresses of true human nature, or how the heart and mind of the author is revealed in their writing. That’s how I read Brontë’s writing as well. Not surprising then that it was in these passages that I got the clearest sense of who this woman was, and as a result, drew nearer to her.

Gaskell’s Life of Brontë is a must-read for any Brontë devotee, even if only to gain respect and sympathy for the short and impacting friendship shared by two culture-shaping women, who could never have predicted the reach of their legacies. This is Elizabeth mourning the loss of her friend Charlotte, in the kindest way she could think of. It is much appreciated.



View all my reviews

Having come to Les Miserables with only a North American osmosis-knowledge of the musical, memories of the 1998 film, and a lifetime of sermons referencing the encounter between Jean Valjean, the Bishop and the candlesticks, I am surprised by what I actually found here.

Maybe it was all the times I’ve seen high-schoolers perform “Do You Hear the People Sing?”, but somehow I got it in my brain that this was about the French Revolution. Maybe I conflated it with” A Tale of Two Cities” (wouldn’t be hard to do). But instead, we find ourselves in 1830 for the most part, dealing with a France recovering or revolting from the post-Napoleonic return to monarchy. While I know a lot about what was happening in England from 1790-1840, French history of this period is pretty much a blank for me. As a result, every time Hugo spent a couple chapters recreating the battle of Waterloo blow for blow or profiling specific royalist publications vs republican barroom conversations, I couldn’t help but feel a bit lost/bored.

Because here’s the charming/enervating thing about Hugo’s writing. You notice early on that every time a new character is introduced or even a new building entered, you are regaled with 40 pages detailing the history of everything leading up to the moment at hand, or sometimes ending twenty years in the past, with connections to the present only to be made 700 pages later. At first, especially when pertaining to the Bishop and his sister, these pastoral expansions of narrative-background help the reader gain a wide sense of the world inhabited by the characters. But by page 1030 when Hugo decides to spend 6 chapter sections on the history of Parisian sewers and how France would flourish financially if it used human waste to fertilize farmlands, you can’t blame yourself if you decide to skim a bit.

Ultimately, any adaptation of Les Miserables is plot-focused: Jean Valjean’s journey of atonement/rehabilitation or the love story between Cosette and Marius. But when you read the novel, it’s pretty clear that plot was just a means for Hugo to ruminate on a changing France and the forces which altered her. The book is far more history text than novel.

Further, Hugo appears a bit cagey in how he’s actually portraying his protagonists. It’s often difficult to discern when he’s praising their actions or mocking their self-delusions. Most surprising was the narration of the riots and barricade. Unlike the stouthearted portrayals on film and stage, these scenes from Hugo most often read sardonically and mockingly. He seems to treat all the characters with a fair bit of irony and often patronizes their noble intentions and celebrates their ineffectualness. This is not the anthemic battle cry of a Broadway show; it’s a deliberation on mankind’s folly and the ever-eroding nature of time.

Hugo’s ostensibly playful, ironic style also comes through rather delightfully in his obtuse chapter names, such as:

“V. It’s Not Enough To Be A Drunk To Be Immortal,”

“XVI. Where You Will Find The Words Of An English Tune Fashionable In 1832,”

or “IV. Mademoiselle Gillenormand Winds Up Deciding It Is Not Such A Bad Thing That Monsieur Fauchelevent Came With Something Under His Arm.”


Previously, I’ve never understood how people are willing to read an abridged version of a book. With Les Miserables, it makes sense. But then again, that leaves readers with the impression that Hugo only wrote a dramatic plot about identity and escape. If you’re going to tackle this epic, might as well read the one Hugo wanted you to know. Like Moby Dick, though, don’t beat yourself up if you skip 10 pages here and there.



View all my reviews