Monday, June 29, 2009

Summer Reading, Part 2

Finished "I, the Divine" by Rabih Alameddine last weekend . An aborted fictional memoir, written entirely in half-finished first chapters, "I, the Divine" is an impressive a technical feat. Some immediate thoughts: It works. Kinda. The novel is less like a traditional linear novel (duh), and more like a series of vingettes, of little windows into the narrator's life. As a character examination, it works fantastically. I really came to know the protagonist, Sarah Nour El-Din, inside and out; her ticks, her habits, her values. And by sharing all of Sarah's attempts at writing, you get a great sense of her personal voice and, just as importantly, her writing voice. She experiments with tone, with voice, with POV over the course of three hundred pages. She contradicts her facts from one chapter to the next -- some not important, some quite important -- and in doing so, reveals how truth-bending writing, even in memoirs, must and can be to best serve a story. And certainly, what may be true in one window -- Sarah's utter disdain for her stepmother as a child -- may be fanciful, even false in another, when Sarah's relationship with her stepmother as an adult looking back on her youthful ways can be best described as warm, even loving. The truth, as it is in writing, is never just one thing, and constantly it shifts and moves throughout "I, the Divine."

While the varying perspectives, voices, and small views into the life of Sarah Nour El-Din is its greatest strength, it is also its greatest weakness. Like I briefly mentioned in my last post, "I, the Divine" reads less like a novel and more like a collection of non-linear, but connected short stories. The problem with this? The stories, while individually wonderful, and occasionally beautiful, lack the same tension and emotional punch that you'd get from reading the end of "Catcher in the Rye" or "The Road." That's not to say that nothing happens, quite the contrary, there are probably more unique things that occur in this novel than most -- we learn so much about Sarah and her father, her mother, her stepmother, her son, her two ex-husbands, and all her sisters in an incredibly short amount of time. The problem is, at least to me, is that the information, while plentiful, doesn't build the same way a linear novel would, doesn't layer its scenes on top of another with increasing emotional stakes. Instead, the reader gets one chapter with Sarah as a young girl in Lebanon, fighting her stepmother, and in the next chapter, Sarah as an adult in San Francisco sleeping with a new lover. At its best, this kind of skipping narrative is fascinating, but at its weakest, it's unfortunately jarring.

Next on my reading list is a little bit of "me" time. I'm going to re-read "Dune," one of my all time favorite science fiction books of my youth. Will it hold up? Approximately twenty pages in, I can already say both yes and no. Yes, because I'm already reinfatuated (is that even a word?) with the book. It really brings back so many memories of what I used to viscerally love about science fiction: ideas, technology, and an wonderfully richly crafted universe. Plus, things happen and things blow up! On the other hand, reading it as an adult and not a teenager, I can already see some of the "flaws" so stereotypically associated with genre fiction. Flat, utilitarian writing and an omniscient voice that occasionally verves into the obvious. Not necessarily poor writing, but certainly not the crackling, tight voices and narratives that I've become so accustomed to over the past few years. In short, it is writing that takes a back seat to story, and not the other way around.

Thursday, June 18, 2009

Work, etc.

The thing about work is that it sucks. Having to spend eight hours a day (plus one hour for lunch, one to two hours for commute) is a huge time drain, and typically only leaves me four-five hours of "free" time outside of work. This is a problem, a problem that is exacerbated by the fact that I have so much to prepare for in anticipation of moving and getting ready for grad school. That's my long-winded excuse for not tending to this blog more often in the past couple weeks. On the bright side, I'm quitting the old job in less than a month, and will have much more time to write interesting posts on storytelling in video games and the like. Boy do I know my audience.

Right now I'm reading I, the Divine by Rabih Alameddine for my upcoming craft class. The unique thing about this book is that it is a kind of aborted memoir written entirely in first chapters by the protagonist, Sarah Nour El-Din. About 50 pages in, I can immediately see the advantages to this technique. Since opening sections of novels typically rely more on summary and swaths of "telling" prose, Alameddine is able to convey a huge amount of information in relatively short amount of space. He also manages to cheat in actual scenes of dialogue and action by setting them up with very short, yet grand sweeping paragraphs of summary and general statements of fact. The character begins one chapter: "I realized when it came to men, I did not pick the beautiful or the correct. I picked the wrong one. I chose David," which then transitions wonderfully into a very specific scene. What I am curious about is how tension and pacing will be handled through 300 pages of this style. It is more akin to reading a collection of closely linked short stories than a linear book. Will the constant temporal jumping from random scene to random scene get old by page 250 without sufficient build up? I hope not. Right now it's a very good read, and I'm interested in how Alameddine will handle these problems later on.

Tuesday, June 9, 2009

Amazon Kindle = Elitist?

In a previous post, I extolled the virtues of Amazon's Kindle and how it will affect the way people read, both positively and negatively. As a technophile, I generally find myself on the side of technology, and in the case of books and the book industry, I definitely do think that eBooks and the like are the way of the future if the book is expected to survive. Like other forms of media -- music, movies, video games -- the printed word has to change or die. Just look at the newspaper and magazine industries. For better or for worse, paper has to become digital.

Now, I'm not necessarily saying there has to be a wholesale change in the way books are distributed and consumed. Like all things, the transition should be slow and natural, and I don't truly believe that the physical format will ever die out; there will always be a market for physical books. Having spent the better part of my adolescence devouring books from the library, I have countless memories of reading anything under the sun, new and old, large and small, holding books smelling of paper and age, all of which make up my childhood. And frankly, I wouldn't have it any other way. Given the choice and the means, I'd buy books in paper form while trying out the Kindle. But those are my experiences and choices, shaped by my childhood. Who says that children are experiencing literature in the same way today; who are we to say: these are our memories and experiences, you must acquire them, cherish them, and love them too?

Also interesting are writer Sherman Alexie's comments a few weeks ago at New York's BookExpo in relation to the Kindle, specifically calling it elitist. He's right. Technology, especially high technology, is not readily accessible to the poor. My feelings on this matter are mixed; I definitely do agree with Sherman Alexie's charge of technological elitism. But to speak to that, let's face it, literature as us MFAers know it is consumed primarily by the well off, the academic elite, the upper and middle class. Outside of the handful of writers -- the Dan Browns, the Stephen Kings of the world -- books are already restricted by a form of social elitism.

On the other hand, it's important to know that no one reads the way they used to, ten, twenty, thirty years ago. Attention is being siphoned by other media such as video games, movie, and television. If books wish to remain competitive as a form of entertainment, and even more importantly, if it wishes to widen its audience so that it isn't just a medium and art form for the elite, it must change. Whether this is in the form of Kindle books or PDF files easily accessed online by all, I don't know. At any rate, Sherman Alexie is interviewed in the following link, and clarifies his stance of the "elitist Kindle." It's a great read, and encapsulates a lot of important points and ideas on the complex subject. Find it here.

Monday, June 1, 2009

Storytelling and Video Games, Part 2

In this second post of a three part series, I continue to wax nostalgically about my love affair with video games and story in video games. You can find the first post of this ridiculous subject here. Below, I continue my list of my top seven examples of outstanding use of story and narrative in video games.

Also, I'd like to briefly note an article that a kind poster, David, pointed out in my last post, which explores the eloquence (or relative lack thereof) of story and storytelling in video games, written by Junot Diaz! Junot brings up some excellent points in his article, in my opinion, very much in line with one of the persisting fundamental problems with the video game business today; it's still such an immature industry, a medium where the voices and talent have had only thirty years to develop. Imagine how sophisticated the written word or the movie industry was thirty years after its inception. Find it on the Wall Street Journal website here: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB121460385251911957.html


5. Half-Life (PC, 1998)


The premise of this game (as is the case for most First Person Shooters, FPSs) is hideously simple. You play in first person perspective with nothing but a gun and a cross hair, and are charged with shooting anything that moves. In reality, Half-Life is no different from the hundreds of other FPS that have come before or after it. You shoot things. You shoot a lot of things.

Half-Life makes its money in its departure from the video game standard of storytelling, rather than a reinvention of the FPS genre. One of the time-honored traditions of video games is the implementation of "levels" as an indicator of progress. This can be anything from the level your character attains when he/she gains enough experience points to the levels you complete with a tiny red, jumping Mario. Levels are great for video game designers because they make creating games easy (easier). Want to make a snow-based level with lots of monsters? Great. Done. What about a lava world with lots of jumping and dexterity-based puzzles? Easy. The discrete nature of leveling and level creation makes a game more diverse and interesting for the player. Where level design fails, in my opinion, is in the immersion of the player to the game. Simply, it's incredibly jarring to suddenly and arbitrarily end a scene, a situation, or a level just so you can move on to a different environment. It takes the player out of the game, and has a curious effect of "tearing down the fourth wall," to borrow a term from theater, which is something that would rarely be done (or done only with great intent) in other mediums, yet is done all the time in video games. And why would any self respecting story do that? Imagine getting to the castle where you're about to face the big bad boss to save the princess when the game suddenly pauses to essentially tell you: save here, perhaps. Drink a couple of strength potions. Enjoy this little movie cut-scene about how bad the big bad boss is. It doesn't make sense, and it removes one of the strongest qualities a video game has to offer -- interactivity.

So where does this leave Half-Life? Half-Life throws all old video game convention out the window, by giving you nothing to begin the game with except a character to control in first person perspective, and later, a gun and cross hairs. And that's it. There are no "levels" to speak of, no interruptions in the game where control of the game is taken from the player, and from the beginning credits until the the end, there is nothing except the survival of your character. You could conceivably play the game from beginning to end (all 20-30 hours) without stopping; every significant event is experienced real time, whether it is being attacked by an Apache helicopter to destroying a gigantic tentacled alien inside a nuclear reactor to eavesdropping on marines who are hunting you. The scenes of action are extremely exciting, and even better, they are defined by the player's reaction to what happens -- do I throw a grenade at the group of marines and then run in with guns a' blazing or do I snipe them from afar? -- which makes for great gameplay and even better stories.


4. Metal Gear Solid 2 (Playstation 2, 2001)

On the other end of the spectrum, we have one of the preeminent examples of video game interruption during gameplay -- Metal Gear Solid 2. Where you could call Half Life a minimalist exercise in storytelling, letting the player experience everything themselves, the Metal Gear franchise is perhaps most famously known for beating their players over the head with ridiculously long movie sequences, scenes of dialogue, and overt, heavy handed political commentary. To say that the last four or so Metal Gear games is almost akin to playing an interactive movie would not be so far from the truth. So why, especially after spending several paragraphs above deriding the problems with taking player control out of the hands of the player, would I nominate Metal Gear Solid 2? Because I love a good story, especially a story that can deliver with near Hollywood-like production values and effects. Check out the following intro movie to Metal Gear Solid 2:



So what's so important about Metal Gear Solid 2? For starters, it was one of the first games that truly attempted to bring a movie-like quality to the story it was telling. Metal Gear Solid (One) attempted to do this on the Playstation with its transition to 3D graphics, but at the time, the technology was limited and constrained in many ways. It wasn't until the sequel with MGS 2 debuting on the Playstation 2 do we get a game that fully exploits the technology of its day. To me, the above intro movie is something straight out of a Bond film or some spy thriller, complete with dramatic music and high-flying digital stunts. Even more tellingly, you can see how the series has evolved in terms of how the medium of video games (at least for this game) views itself in the intro of its sequel, Metal Gear Solid 3:



Credits? Theme music? If you were watching the above on the big screen, I bet you'd guess it was another Bond movie, for at least the first few minutes. While the gameplay was in general excellent and interesting, what most fascinated me about Metal Gear Solid 2 was its almost rigid adherence to making it seem like you were playing a movie, an extremely well made, well shot, and well financed movie.