The Konkans

When Ultrabrown posted about Tony D'Souza's new book The Konkans, and mentioned it was the story of a family created when a white woman who believed India to be her spiritual home married (as D'Souza puts it) "the one living-and-breathing souvenir of that place who could also get a job in America," I knew I had to schedule a block of time to visit Borders and read this book.

It is a lot like The Namesake, in that D'Souza and Lahiri both focus on squeezing about forty years of events into 150 pages, and thus the stories of the families themselves seem a bit surface-level; timeline rather than narrative. This happened, then this, then this. Unlike Lahiri, D'Souza presumes omniscience and tells the history not through the viewpoint of himself as his parents' son (this isn't a second-gen coming of age story; in fact, D'Souza's role in his own family narrative is tangential), but as a sort of floating narrator who attempts to portray everyone's motives and flaws honestly and equally.

The result is a depiction of characters both sympathetic and slightly repelling. Without giving too much away, it becomes clear that this unhappy family is unhappy in its own way because at the very start, the union of husband and wife was built on a double bait-and-switch; Denise, the white woman who travels to India via the Peace Corps to escape a childhood of poverty and abuse, and who wants more than anything to stay in the country where she first achieves a sense of agency and purpose, marries Lawrence assuming he is her ticket to an Indian passport; while Lawrence, who knows full well that he is using Denise to get to America (he and his parents conspire to make her life in India so miserable that she will begin to yearn for the comforts of the US), moves them both to Chicago only to find that Denise comes from a family of white trash and that he has, without knowing it, "married below his caste."

And then there's Lawrence's brother Samuel, whose visa Denise sponsors and who becomes the only person in her life to appreciate her for who she is. This kind of story is guaranteed a happy ending.

The characters in The Konkans are all searching for identities, and it is telling that the character who is most comfortable with his identity is neither the American wife wanting to raise an Indian family nor the Indian husband wanting to raise an American family, but Sam, the brother, who attempts -- and achieves -- a hybrid of both worlds. (That is, until Sam's father sends a letter telling Sam that a bride is waiting for him back in India.) We don't know enough about D'Souza's character to know where he fit into this family story (he ends his family narrative while his character is still a child), or how he built his own identity between the warring impulses of his parents, but -- as Ultrabrown notes -- he has already written about this subject in other novels and articles.

So. Would I recommend? I suppose my initial response is "sure, why not," but at the same time... well... let's put it this way. There are much better books out there, and better memoirs, and better discussions of cultural identity; but no other book with this particular combination of characters. That's the reason to pick it up and give it a try.

Live-Blogging His Dark Materials, Part IV: Lyra's Oxford

Last night I read Lyra's Oxford, the short sequel to His Dark Materials and the prequel to The Book of Dust.

Pullman describes it as a story that, while it was being written, collected to it scraps of paper which "might be connected with the story, or they might not; they might be connected to stories that haven’t appeared yet." He states that these papers floated through doors from world to world, blown by winds, until they collected here, in his book.

I suppose these papers did their floatings before the doors between the worlds were closed.

The story itself is short and not particularly memorable; it's kind of like a MOTW where Lyra is chased by a witch who is trying to kill her (because the witch's son died fighting for Lord Asriel and we know that witches kinda get venegancy when people they love disappear), and meets an alchemist who isn't actually an alchemist -- he's using it as a cover so that people will think he's crazy and ignore the actual scientific work he's doing in his basement. We don't find out what that work is, although my money's on "meth lab." *__^

One of the most interesting things in the book, however, comes in one of Pullman's "scraps of paper" (these are actual pieces of paper kept separately within the book's pages, Jolly Postman-style). It's a list of books written by Jordan Scholars, one of which is titled With Gun and Rod in the Hindu Bush, by Captain R. T. G. Collins.

So. Let's theorize here. Was the Authority also the Hindu Authority? (And would that be Vishnu, Brahma, or Shiva?) If the Authority wasn't the Hindu Authority, then did their faith remain unchanged? Do the Angels hang around the Hindu Bush, or do they leave those crazy people alone? Do they try to convert them?

I guess I was assuming that Lyra's world was an entirely Christian world, as that was what Pullman had set up for us previously. Even Will, who comes from our world, doesn't mention anything about people from other religions. It would have been interesting if he had said something to Lyra along the lines of "in my world, not everyone believes in Adam and Eve and the Church's God." But... Pullman seemed to want to limit his book to a critique on the Christian church only.

So, to my readers: does knowing that Lyra's world contains people who don't belong to the Church or the Authority change Pullman's atheist message and philosophies? If so, how?

Live-Blogging His Dark Materials, Part III

I finished The Amber Spyglass two days ago, but didn't blog it yesterday because I was busy watching the politics.

It was the sort of book where the impact of the ending took over and made me forget the details of the earlier parts; so I need to read it again. (I'll have plenty of opportunity, as this foot cast is going to stay on for another two months.)

Here are some thoughts, as they cross my mind.

* Metatron. I know Metatron is part of the Judeo-Christian mythology, but I couldn't look at the name without imagining Godzilla Vs. in front of it.

* You can see how the technological differences between 1995 (when The Golden Compass was published) and 2000 (when The Amber Spyglass was published) filtered through into Pullman's text. He gives us, in Amber Spyglass, an internet, courtesy of the Gallivespians and their lodestones. Even in a parallel universe, Pullman can't imagine a world without email.

* The serpent, in the form of Mary Malone, offering Lyra and Will the gift of knowledge. Which isn't "what is the nature of G-d," because they've already learned, Wizard of Oz-style, that God is just an old man hiding behind a curtain; nor is this knowledge the meaning of life and death, since Lyra and Will have already traveled through the land of the dead and discovered what we are meant to do after we die. What Mary Malone gives Lyra and Will is the knowledge of the flesh. In short, she teaches them about sex.

* Which they promptly have. Lyra is 12 and Will is 13. This was the only part of the book that disturbed me a little. Lyra, after all, hasn't even started menstruating yet. Yes, Pullman is pretty vague about what happens in that forest, and doesn't give us any paragraphs about "throbbing manhoods" or anything like that (thank goodness), but they lose some kind of virginity in that forest, and even my liberal heart says that's at least three years too young.

* Pan becomes a marten, eh? I hope I wasn't the only reader who had to look that one up.

* There's something very satisfying about Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter sacrificing themselves by pushing Megatron into the infinite abyss. The thought of them falling, down and down, for the rest of eternity is a little chilling, however. I hope Pullman realized that he wrote them a way out: when the angels go to close the doors between the worlds, they say they will close up the abyss as well. Surely, while they're there, one of them could dip inside and bring Lord Asriel and Mrs. Coulter back to the surface.

* There's something much less satisfying about the "we have to close all of the doors so you and Will can never see each other again" business. Sure, the idea that Lyra and Will would have to separate was kind of a given; but the reasoning behind it seems a little contrived. The doors create Specters? The most idiotic villains in the book? Oh, and Dust is leaking out of them?

This also doesn't bode well for philosophies on international or intercultural relationships. Lyra and Will come from "different worlds," so they can never be together because "neither of them can survive in the other's world." It makes me start humming West Side Story's "Stick to your own kind/stick to your own kind..."

On the other hand, Adam and Eve were banished from paradise. But they were banished together.

* Pullman did write a note at the end of this edition; a series of what he called "Lantern Slides" distilling images of what happened to certain characters after the trilogy's conclusion; he included a scene which implies that Lyra and Will do talk, across space and time, at the wood bench in Oxford. Assumedly this works because Mary planted those magic seeds there, which grew up into a lovely tree.

* Which brings me to: people who cross into other worlds die, but seeds grow? And don't tell me it has to do with humans having Dust, because those seeds Mary planted were the very essence of Dust itself.

* So. The central philosophy. The innocence of childhood can reveal things us adults can't understand; then the kids are supposed to grow up and have sex, whereupon they have to spend the rest of their lives re-learning what came to them naturally before their sexual awakening.

* I hated that the alethiometer just "clicked off" in Lyra's hands. That was unfair. And she suddenly couldn't remember what the symbols meant? That didn't make sense either. It would have been better if she could remember the symbols, but couldn't control the hands, or something like that.

* And yeah, cried at the end. Poor Lyra and Will.

There is a short "sequel" titled Lyra's Oxford, which Pullman evidently means as a short prequel to his next book, The Story of Dust (in progress). This I look forward to reading, if only to find out how much Pullman lets Lyra and Will communicate, or if he introduces a new love interest for either of them. ^__^

His Dark Materials: A Note On Names

A brief note before I launch into The Amber Spyglass:

Given what we know about Pullman's naming predilections, we can assume that the metaphors of the last book will have something to do with Lies and Free Will defeating the Angel of Death and the Sexy Spokeswoman for the Republican Party. ^__^

Oh, and Serafina turns out to be an Angel. Somehow.

To be nitpicky for a moment: since Lord Asriel is currently building an army to attack God, he's not actually the Angel of Death, and his name should be something like Lord Lucius. On the other hand, since Will and Lyra already figured out that certain things "switch names" in various worlds (e.g. electrons and amber), perhaps in Lyra's world Asriel was Lucifer, and vice versa.

(I posted on Ultrabrown that I wanted a professional job as a fact-checker someday. I get a kick at poking around details.)

Catch y'all later -- is there some game or something going on this afternoon?

Live-Blogging His Dark Materials

When my poor foot went under the knife, a friend loaned me the Philip Pullman His Dark Materials trilogy, as a recuperation present. 900 pages guaranteed to keep me off my feet, as it were.

For whatever reason, I missed Dark Materials the first time the books were published (1995-2000), which puzzles me. I can only assume that it was because this "atheist fantasy trilogy" never made it to my Midwestern hometown school library. Certainly I read every fantasy book on the local shelves, including The Prydain Chronicles (loved), The Dark is Rising (hated), and the Enchanted Forest books (the first in the series is possibly the best fantasy parody ever).

Anyway. I just finished Golden Compass (in one long stretch) and am going to drop a few responses. Here be spoilers, obviously.

* I can't take Lord Asriel seriously because of his name. Poor guy. Yes, he was originally named after the Angel of Death (and the name also shows up in Madeline L'Engle's Many Waters as one of the seraphim), but whenever I hear the name I am prompted, however unfortunately, to think of Lord Asriel Abyss.

* What prompted Roger to accompany Lyra in the last chapters? Pullman never says. Chapter 20 ends with Lyra telling Iorek that she is going to find Lord Asriel, and Chapter 21 begins with Roger riding along beside her. Because of the plot twist at the ending, I feel like we missed a scene where Lyra invites Roger, or Lyra decides she needs Roger with her, or Roger begs to come and Lyra finally relents.

* The story contains a lot of familiar tropes (Lyra's an orphan who turns out to be of noble blood, etc.), but what makes it stand out are the philosophies woven through the book. I think I'm probably the fifteen-gazillionth reviewer to make that comment. I'm very interested to see where Pullman goes with this Dust idea, particularly as I already know (thank you, Salon) that the series ends with... well, I won't be like Salon's movie review and spoil it for you.

* I can't help reading the fixing of the daemon in adulthood as a metaphor for "the end of possibility." Thank you, quarterlife crisis.

* On that matter, although I know from another movie review (which I'm not going to take the time to look up) that Pullman, unlike C. S. Lewis, is pro-maturity and pro-sex, I find it a little troubling that all of the adults presented in Golden Compass are tragically flawed. Grow up, kids. Embrace the Dust. So you can turn into... an unctuous Scholar? a crabby Gyptian? Mrs. Coulter?

* Had to laugh that the biggest villain in the book (so far) is called Mrs. Coulter.

* Loved the chapters where the bears wanted daemons. I think by the time I finish this trilogy I'm going to want a daemon.

* After finishing the book and then going to YouTube to watch the movie trailer, I was surprised (and disappointed) to hear Lyra's name pronounced "Lyra" instead of "Lira." Since Lyra spends most of the book lying her way out of things, this suggests that Pullman's naming creativity is on par with J. K. Rowling's (who named a future werewolf "Remus Lupin," and then expected us to be surprised when he started baying at the moon). It also suggests that Lord Asriel will probably turn out to be the Angel of Death, after all.

* I was also surprised to see the daemons presented as solid creatures. I had imagined them to be slightly transparent, airy, ethereal. Having the soul of a cat running alongside you is not the same as having an actual cat, after all.

* And on that note, what a great book to read while snuggled next to a kitty. Every time Pantalaimon got some cuddling, Miri did too. ^__^

* Oh, and if this is one of those books where, at the end, Pantalaimon turns into his final form but the narrator coyly doesn't tell us what it is, I'm going to throw all 900 pages across the room.

On to The Subtle Knife!

Juno: A Story of Dreams and Loss (Plus Jokes!)

Before we get started, I have a confession to make. Those of you following the blog know that I am absolutely strapped-for-cash. (It's the last semester of my graduate program and the savings are... run out.)

Thus, I should be following all prudent financial advice and trimming the fat from my budget; no new clothes, no dinners out, no lattes, and no films.

The first three are fine. I've got enough clothes for now, I like cooking, and I've never cared for lattes.

But I have one vice, and that is cinema. Movie-theater cinema. I like seeing things on gigantic screens.

If it makes me seem any more financially prudent, I have "carbon-offset" my cinema habit by cutting back in other areas. (Thank goodness I learned how to use a lota in India.)

But anyway. Now that you know I have in fact been to the movies twice in the past two weeks (the last one was Sweeney Todd), on to the review!

Manish's review was a little ambivalent, as were most of the online ones I read, which all seemed to focus on the oddity of a sixteen-year-old referencing Soupy Sales. (Note to reviewers: It's not that weird. When I was sixteen I was referencing Steve and Eydie and Robot Carnival.)

But what struck me the most about this film was the way each of the characters dealt with the way life tends to threaten individual dreams. Nearly all of the primary characters in Juno have a secret dream; Bren wants a dog, Mark wants to be a rock star, Vanessa wants to be a mother.

The dreams of the adolescent characters are less well-defined (Paulie wants... to get the band back together?), which I thought was strange until I realized that these characters are still too young to need to cling to dreams. Juno, in a very savvy example of understanding that she has her whole life ahead of her, calculates that a pregnancy is only a 40-week physical inconvenience. Once it's done, she can go back to conquering the world in the way that only a sixteen-year-old can.

Then something happens to one of the adult characters' dreams (I won't give it away), and Juno's idealistic world begins to crack a little. We see her do her best to patch up the lives of the people around her, in the hope that things can still turn out well.

The heartbreak comes at the very end, when we find out what Juno's dream was, and the way in which she realizes it may never come true.

And so -- in a theater full of teenagers laughing at "the funniest movie since Superbad," I was the one sitting with the tissues.

Still, I think you should go. It's a good film. And you learn who Soupy Sales is, which I never knew before.

Eat Pray Love: A Journey of Extraordinary Privilege

I got a copy of Eat Pray Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia for Christmas, for obvious reasons. It's a very.... tricky book. On the one hand, it's not at all bad. Sure, it's written in the easy-on-the-eyes, slangy chick-lit style; there are a few awkward, presumptive statements about groups of people (e.g. "The staff is Balinese, which means they automatically start adoring you and complimenting you on your beauty as soon as you walk in"); but it's never boring. For what it's worth, Eat Pray Love is quick-paced and quick-witted.

The trouble comes in what author Elizabeth Gilbert leaves out of her narrative. Most of the leaving-out comes in the early part of the book, in which she describes her life before she jets off on this intense journey of "finding herself."

Gilbert writes, early on, a description of herself as "the primary breadwinner and the housekeeper and the social coordinator and the dog-walker and the wife and the soon-to-be mother, and -- somewhere in my stolen moments -- a writer."

A description of Everywoman, right? How many people do you suppose cooed with identification at that particular paragraph, and then sighed with envy a few pages later when we learn that Gilbert's bright idea to write a book about traveling netted her enough advance money to finance her entire trip?

Except... it's not like that. Elizabeth Gilbert is not an "in my stolen moments" kind of writer. She's a professional one, with a list of magazine publications as long as my arm and four successful previous books.

One publication in particular you might recognize, though you're probably unaware of its source. Elizabeth Gilbert wrote the autobiographical piece that later became the film Coyote Ugly.*

So, right from the beginning, we're not dealing with Everywoman. We're dealing with a woman who has already been played on-screen by Piper Perabo, and who will soon be played again by Julia Roberts.

There must be a Guinness World Record for that.

Likewise, when Gilbert makes references to her sister, Catherine, she never mentions she's talking about Catherine Gilbert Murdock, author of Dairy Queen, The Off Season, and Princess Ben. (The two of them recently collaborated on an editorial for the New York Times on how wonderful it is to be sisters, and writers.)

There are little things, little unmentioned things sprinkled throughout the novel that grate against the skin -- things like Gilbert in Italy receiving continual visits from friends who have flown across the Atlantic Ocean for the express purpose of seeing her. A coterie of the well-heeled, as it were, who have the capacity for such travel.

Gilbert even admits, on her website, that she was only able to do what she did because of a past history of accomplishment and privilege. That's straightforward, and I appreciate it. I wish there were a bit more of it in her book. (I'm not putting the link to Elizabeth Gilbert's website because the last thing I want to do is encourage animosity, should she read this. You can find the site on your own. Once you're there, read the FAQ.)

And yet I found myself liking this book. In some sections, really liking it. I know why, though. It's because Gilbert promises hope. Someday, she writes, if you meditate, you too will see the mind of God. Someday, you too may be wooed by a charming man who offers you the world and then delivers. Someday, you too will find this kind of peace.

Can it happen if you aren't already successful and/or privileged? I hope so.

*But wait, you'll say. Wasn't Jersey in Coyote Ugly poor? Non-privileged? That's where the book differed from its source material, and for good reason. Gilbert took the Coyote Ugly job to earn quick cash and bank enough for a trip around the world (it's all explained on her website). Her parents were not working-class; they owned a Christmas tree farm in Connecticut, and Gilbert herself was never in danger of poverty or homelessness.

Other reviews of Eat Pray Love are here, here, here, and of course, Niranjana's.

BBC Ballet Shoes: Exactly Like The Pictures

Thanks to the magic of the internet, I was able to watch the BBC Ballet Shoes movie in its entirety, only one day after the Brits did. (Which is good, because how could I position myself as the #1 Resource for BBC Ballet Shoes Information otherwise?)

The YouTube version was a little fuzzy, and some lines were difficult to distinguish, despite the par-excellent RP.

So I want to watch it again.

But my initial response is that's one of the more faithful adaptations of a book I've ever seen.

There were a few things that were a little off. The Mr. Simpson/Sylvia romance, as mentioned earlier (and though the Kuala Lumpur thing was barely mentioned, it was, as predicted, a "strange native disease" which killed off the other Simpsons).

The choice to make Winifred an even bigger snob than Pauline. This one came out of nowhere. Winifred exists, as a character, to remind us (and the three sisters) that there are people even worse off than the Fossil family. She is supposed to be poorer, shabbier, hungrier, and uglier than Pauline -- not to mention a better dancer and actor, though she is never noticed by producers. I'm not sure why the character was given such a different role in the story, since the change made her just another ambitious child star and no longer set her as a foil for the three sisters.

The absence of the scene where Pauline apologizes to Mr. French (after behaving like an unendurable spoiled child and getting sacked) and is given back the part of Alice. The way the film plays it, there's no apology and we never know what happens after the row in the theatre. Are we supposed to believe that Pauline never plays Alice again?

But aside from these hiccups in the story, it was extremely straightforward, true to the book, and charming. The visuals almost looked as if they had been lifted from the Diane Goode illustrations: Pauline and Petrova rehearsing the flying sequence in Midsummer, Petrova wrapped in a blanket with her hair braided down her back, the sisters sitting on the staircase waiting to hear about their futures.

(Interestingly, the representation of the two doctors seemed to have been inspired by Ruth Jervais' drawings -- yes, I have a labyrinth of information in my head about the various illustrators who have drawn Ballet Shoes and the different styles they used.)

Oh, and Marc Warren is so gorgeous. That fact alone will make me want to watch the film again.

Other thoughts?

Sweeney Todd: Sondheim With Its Throat Slit

Sweeney Todd is a movie musical which, I fear, will please nobody.

It won't please the nerdcore crowd looking for Tim Burton awesomeness along the lines of The Nightmare Before Christmas or Edward Scissorhands.

It won't please the kajillion tween girls who came just to see Johnny Depp (and there were plenty of them at tonight's showing, in gaggles of twelve with a lone harried mother attached as chaperone).

And it certainly won't please the Sondheim fans.

Strangely enough, it will fail to please each of these groups for exactly the same reason:

They stop the action to sing.

It's "talk talk talk talk action action action STOP LET'S HAVE A SONG."

And that's wrong.

It's wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong-wrong.

Sure, the songs are shot beautifully. Great camera angles. Lush, saturated colors.

And the music sounds lovely. Johnny's a crooner, and Helena's a surprising soprano.

But they stop for the songs. They don't treat the songs as if they had anything to do with advancing the story.

Let's take "A Little Priest." Burton shoots it with Sweeney and Mrs. Lovett staring through a greasy window, musing on the potential tastiness of the people walking around outside. Just to make sure the audience makes the connection, Burton even shows us the individual people; we see a friar, and then we hear Mrs. Lovett sing "try the friar!"

But that's not what the song's about. It's not a song about the people outside. It's a song about Mrs. Lovett trying to make Sweeney fall in love with her by proving she's as clever as he is. And how can she do that? Through idea and wordplay. So she spends the entire song wracking her mind to impress him; to make him pay attention to her.

(This is made most obvious in the bridge section, which Burton cut.)

But this film makes it a song about musing. A song about staring. A song about friggin' boring.

And all of the songs are like that. It's like no one ever considered why these characters are singing. "My Friends" is not a song about how beautiful razors are. It's a song in which Sweeney puts together a plan. We don't see him make that plan; we only see the beautiful razor.

As noted in Slate, the Johanna/Anthony story is truncated to its barest element. Boy meets girl, and... well, that's about it. All of the action-based songs (like "Kiss Me") are gone, and we get a rendition of "Green Finch and Linnet Bird" which is an almost continual shot of Johanna sitting at a window. But Johanna is trying to get free from Judge Turpin. Even while she sings, she is trying to get free. The song is antic, frantic, distressed. It's not sitting. Burton gave us sitting.

And that's why the audience -- a packed house -- began to squirm in its own seats.

Editor's Note: Please scroll down for video clips featuring the difference between an active performance of "A Little Priest" and Tim Burton's version.

Sweeney Todd: "A Little Priest," Stage Version

Here's a performance of "A Little Priest" that's action-based, rather than... um... "mood"-based.

The thing to watch with this performance is the way Mrs. Lovett reacts to Sweeney. You can see what she wants, when she gets it, when it is taken from her, and what she does to get it back.

Sweeney Todd: "A Little Priest," Burton Version

Here's a clip from Tim Burton's version. Note the window. This window-staring business goes on for the rest of the song.

I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What Was Holding Me Back

First of all, a disclaimer.

I blog to get free stuff.

Absolutely.

So, when -- after reading my recent post on how I felt like I had every single possible career trajectory leering in front of me and I didn't know which one to pursue -- a friend gave me a copy of a book with the very title I Could Do Anything If I Only Knew What It Was, I was delighted.

And then depressed.

And then still delighted, but a little confused.

The premise behind I Could Do Anything is that people who aren't doing the "anything" that they want to do are stuck where they are because of psychological factors from their past.

For example: a person stuck in a low-level office job who wants to go back to grad school and pursue a career in journalism might be putting off grad school apps because his teacher/father/former girlfriend told him he was stupid, and so he's afraid he's too stupid for grad school and avoids applying.

The book falls victim to the general flaw of "improve your life and finances" books, which is that it states that everyone can achieve their dreams and that no one has to get stuck doing mindless grunt work... and then completely skips over the niggling issue of "but if everyone is following their dream, who's left to do the grunt work?"

Besides that, however, it's fairly provocative and led me to make a significant realization.

As blogged here, there, and everywhere, I grew up in a tiny Midwestern town and attended an underfunded "rural route" school. A school where the high school science teacher taught the food chain, and gave the example "sun, weeds, rat, cow." (When a classmate and I protested that rats don't eat weeds, never mind about the cow, we were told that the individual elements didn't matter; the state tests were only looking for us to understand the "idea" behind a food chain.)

I was bored silly. I sat at a desk all day and didn't have a lot of friends, particularly as I got older and started doing incredibly dorky things like memorizing passages from Shakespeare and writing them down in my notebook instead of copying whatever was on the overhead. (I also wore pink suspenders to class, which probably contributed.)

And there's a chapter in I Could Do Anything specifically for the young job-seeker right about to leave a university program; a chapter which asks "Why are you not applying to all of the fantastic jobs out there? What are you afraid they will be like?"

My mind went "I'm afraid they'll be like the office work I've done thus far. Sitting at a desk all day, doing the same repetitive thing over and over, the only possibility of advancement being moving on to other repetitive things."

Then the book asked "where were you in your life when you first experienced the thing you're afraid of?"

And my mind went "OMGWTF SCHOOL! It's exactly like grade school and high school, and people kept promising that there would be something better for me, and the people in high school said it would come in undergrad, and the people in undergrad said it would come in grad school, and no wonder I'm so afraid of real jobs because all they seem to be are more of this sitting-and-waiting business!"

Then the book tells me to forgive my childhood for not giving the child Blue what she needed. I'm not sure my childhood needs to be "forgiven," because I kind of like the adult Blue, and I know that she was shaped by her childhood.

Most importantly, the book gave me some ideas about where to look for entry-level jobs that weren't all this "sitting-and-waiting business," this office work that does in fact remind me of those long classroom hours of copying notes from the overhead.

But I hate writing about my dreams while they are still so new. So... watch this space, and when things begin to transpire, I'll tell you.

Editor's Note: In case you were curious, free stuff Blue has received via blogging has thus far included grocery money (from this post), an invitation to visit Bangalore (see this post, and then click on the "Bangalore" tag to read the rest), an offer to write travel columns for an Indian magazine (from this post, and yes, she took it up), and a burgeoning social network which has led to dinner invitations, theatre tickets, etc. For which she says, to everyone: THANK YOU.

Tested: Teaching Teachers to Teach Students to Take Tests

Today I read a book called Tested: One American School Struggles to Make the Grade, by Linda Perlstein.

I read it because of my continuing fascination with all things "educational theory;" I am a person who, after all, reads the Chronicle of Higher Education first thing every morning, even before glancing at the NYT.

It's about a Title I school in Maryland (Title I referring to the act which granted public schools extra funding if over 40% of their students came from low-income households), and its struggle to pass the standardized testing required by No Child Left Behind. Actually, the trouble isn't that the school couldn't pass. It's that NCLB requires successively higher scores every year. (NCLB's plan is that every student in every classroom will achieve "proficient" scores -- the highest possible rating -- by the year 2014. I am not making this up.)

The school, then, spends its entire year trying to cram test-taking skills into its elementary students' heads; skills for tests so subjective that a kindergartener asked "which picture starts with a B?" and points to the picture of a bear will be scored as answering wrong, because the bear picture is actually a "cub" and is reserved for the question about the "C" sound.

Anyway. What struck me about this article was how familiar many of the teaching methods were. I don't think I went to a Title I school when I was growing up, and the standardized testing movement was just beginning to get its feet off the ground in the early 1990s, but I recognized all too well the techniques these teachers were using.

(Interestingly, Perlstein notes that these techniques are not developed by the teachers themselves, but instead sold to the school by a corporation in the name of teaching teachers how to teach kids to take tests. The teachers, in turn, are required by administration to follow the techniques to the letter, even to the point of being given scripts to memorize before the school day begins.)

Let's take, for example, the "how to write a complete sentence" technique. On a standardized writing exam, answers must be in complete sentences to receive full points. Instead of teaching fifth and sixth graders about subjects and verbs and direct objects, the corporate technique is to require a student to rewrite the entire question and then add his/her answer at the end.

As Perlstein notes: If the question is Brer Rabbit is a tricky fellow. Give examples from the play that prove this., then a student must begin his/her answer with "Brer Rabbit is a tricky fellow because...." A student who begins her answer with "Brer Rabbit tricked," even though this too will lead to a complete sentence, is told to rewrite.

That was my sixth grade year. I figured out pretty quickly what was going on, and adjusted my sentences accordingly, but it drove me crazy.

As did the "objectives," another corporate technique, which suggests that teachers write out objectives, business-style, on the chalkboards every morning and the students copy them down into notebooks (copying being a memorization tool, after all). But the objectives can't be any old "to-do list." Perlman cites examples of objective lists which include The student will use the comprehension strategies of monitoring and clarifying, making connections, and visualizing during the first read. This was on the chalkboard in a fifth-grade classroom.

Truth be told, the real reason I hated the objectives was because they took so long to copy down; time that I could have spent free reading at my desk (I think I viewed most of school as an obstacle that kept me from reading). Likewise, I found "the comprehension strategies of monitoring and clarifying" repugnant. I preferred Roald Dahl's advice to let long passages of books "wash over you, like music." There was, after all, always the dictionary, if you really didn't know what was going on.

The last chapter of the book notes that during the final month of classes, after the standardized tests are over and the teachers given permission to teach outside of the corporate box, the students not only seem to learn more, but also stop fighting with one another.

Anyway. Part of the reason I posted this is because I was chatting with a friend about our respective educational experiences, and my friend could not believe the stories I was telling about my underfunded rural school. (For example: in high school "calculus," the math teacher -- who was also the girls' basketball coach -- told us that every time the girls won a game, we wouldn't have to have homework or a lesson that day. We could sit in class and play cards and listen to the radio, which we did nearly every day that semester, since our girls were the strongest team in the district.)

So now I'm curious. Is it just Title I schools and Rural Route schools who use the corporate method of education? Or did we all have objectives on the blackboard every morning, and learning that forming a complete sentence required copying down the question?

I Saw Saawariya!

I saw Saawariya.

Not on YouTube.

Not in blurry ten-minute chunks.

In a for-real movie theater.

In the heart of the rural midwest.

The sign had been up on the marquee for three days by the time my friends and I were able to go. We bought our tickets, went into the theater, and found... no one else was there. Not even the projectionist. Not even those stupid trivia questions they show before the previews.

So we went back and asked the guy behind the popcorn counter why they weren't preparing to start the movie.

"Because no one has bought any tickets for Saawariya this entire week," he said. "Not until you all showed up."

I copped a winking-miffed attitude and said "but how could anyone miss seeing Bollywood's first collaboration with Sony Pictures, featuring Ranbir Kapoor in a towel?"

So my friends and I had the theater to ourselves. This turned out to be beneficial, because we were able to talk back to the movie screen and sing along to the songs (botching all the words, of course).

Best line of the evening? When a friend who had not seen Bollywood before got her first glimpse of Mr. Kapoor and his transluscent towel.

She turned to me and asked what seemed like an obvious question, based on the visual evidence.

"Wait. Do Indian men not have any body hair?"