On the Importance of Trivia

In her review of Charlie Chaplin's The Kid in 5001 Nights at the Movies, Pauline Kael, one of the 20th century's most important film critics, noted that "a little girl named Lita Grey (known as Lolita), later to be Chaplin's wife, appears in a dream sequence set in Heaven."

This final trivia note in her review surprised me in a way and got me thinking about the whole notion of "trivia," which we literally take to mean things of little importance. Kael does not strike me as one to include "unimportant" bits of information in her review, so her inclusion of this strange bit of information made me rethink the potential importance of what we normally call trivia.

 At first, this particular piece of trivia strikes one as slightly salacious, especially given that Kael bothers to note that the girl was known as "Lolita" (a word that, long after Chaplin's film, became associated with underage sirens), and that the "little girl" appears in a dream sequence in Heaven. Chaplin married Grey when she was just 16, just a few years after The Kid was released, and she was one of several much-younger women that he was involved with during his life. Kael's bit of trivia, then, prods us to do additional research (to see if she was actually one of his underage wives) and also seems to emerge as a kind of dig at the long-dead Chaplin, suggesting that he saw young girls as idealized dream figures, after all.

That's all well and good, but how does it help us understand the film? Why does trivia ever matter?  My students are always interested in a similar bit of salacious trivia involving Edgar Allan Poe -- the fact that he married his 13-year-old cousin. So, yes, part of it seems to revolve just around gossip-mongering and the desire for dirt. Yet trivia also humanizes our subjects, reminds us of the intersections between art and life and helps us to get to know filmmakers and authors better by examining their flaws and various obsessions. The Kid, though made in 1921, idealizes and even sentimentalizes children through the gauze of Victorian lace curtains, and Chaplin's ability to understand children affected both his work and his personal life. The Kid is a great movie, my favorite Chaplin film, mostly because of the performance of Jackie Coogan, but we can also see the danger of sentimentalizing childhood. For Chaplin, this led to a messy personal life and even potential legal troubles; in his film, his sentimentality, as Kael notes, was "often awkward, and even mawkish." The perfection of The Kid allows us to see the purity of Chaplin's vision, what he was really going for when he wasn't stumbling on these flaws.

On a more basic and intuitive level, trivia complicates our subject in ways that aren't always clear. Trivia is often strange and surprising; it makes us reexamine our assumptions. Chaplin cast his future young wife as a dream girl. So what? There may not be any clear answer, but it gives us something to think about. That's the simple beauty of trivia. 

"It's not really about me": Writing and the problem of persona

When a writer works in the realms of poetry or fiction, or anything that isn't strictly nonfiction, he must deal with the problem of people thinking that the origin of the poem or story must be autobiographical. Frequently it is, of course, but writers also need to feel free to create art without worrying about how the art will be perceived as a reflection of the self. This is particularly a problem with significant others, I think, because they look at the writing as potentially providing clues about people (writers) who are often taciturn and frustratingly difficult to understand. If you're Stephen King's wife, you read a novel like Carrie, which King reportedly threw in the garbage can, and tell him, "I think this is publishable," instead of, "I can't believe you wrote a novel about a weird high-school girl getting her period and killing everybody at the prom." But not everybody can be Stephen King's wife (herself a poet and apparently also a solid proofreader).  Sometimes a significant other can be less-than-ideal as a "first reader" because they're reading the story or poem for clues about the reader instead of reading it on its own terms.You can't really blame them.

A related issue, unfortunately brought up by the events at Virginia Tech a few years ago, is what writing can tell us about the potentially violent tendencies of a person. This is a wholly misguided and dangerous effort. While the Virginia Tech shooter's creative writings might have been disturbing, what might happen if we looked at the books of a writer like King and decided that he was a danger to society? (Another interesting yet sad footnote: King has refused to allow reprints of one of his disturbing novels, published under his Bachman pseudonym, because he was afraid it was inspiring high-school shooters. This is an unfortunate way of looking at things, and if Salinger had thought the same way, we wouldn't have reprints of Catcher in the Rye. But it's obviously King's right, and it certainly reveals his caring and compassionate side.)

Writers tend to hide behind the idea of "persona," telling friends and especially significant others, "This isn't really about me. It's a persona. It's fictionalized."  This is true, of course, in that all creative writing involves a reimagination of the truth.  But it's also true that writing can tell you something about the writer -- not about his evil thoughts or his past devious deeds, but about what he's thinking about and obsessed with.

Either way, it's important for the writer and the reader to not get too hung up on what's based on real life and what works can tell us about an author. Creative writing instructors, myself included, are always trying to convince students that it doesn't really matter if something happened -- it has to be believable and valuable on its own terms as writing. This also works in the converse; we shouldn't look to discern the "real truth" behind a work of fiction or a poem if it works on its own. We might be curious and that might tell us something about whether the story is good (our imaginary conception of Poe as a deranged drug addict says more about the compelling nature of his stories than about anything he did in real life), but we should push that aside as much as possible, and allow the poem or story to speak for itself.

The Magic of Writing

Writing has sometimes been compared to magic, most famously by Borges in his essay "Narrative Art and Magic." At the danger of simplifying this author, who does not need my assistance (the essay should be allowed to speak for itself), Borges argues that the logic of narrative is similar to magical thinking, in that we as readers and writers allow ourselves to make connections between images and ideas, connections that have no real basis in real logic or rationality. Writing represents a "reordering of the real," and good fiction makes sense the way dreams often make sense. 

The writing act itself also has parallels to what magicians do, in making the reader pay attention to certain things while ignoring others. The magician "reorders reality" through the power of suggestion and distraction, keeping the viewer's focus where he wants it to be. Of course, as Tennessee Williams suggests through his character Tom in The Glass Menagerie, whereas magic attempts to trick and entertain people, by presenting illusion disguised as truth, writing gives you "truth disguised as illusion."* We're speaking here, of course, of the truth as immortalized by Keats. Writers must be "truthful," but they do so by making up stories and fictionalizing reality to get at the underlying truth.

When I think of writing and magic, though, and all this business about the nature of illusion and trickery, I think of the difference in feeling in writing prose and poetry. For me, writing stories and other prose often feels like it involves the magical logic described by Borges. In writing poetry, though, it often feels as if the work transcends these ideas. Poems, at their best, feel not like an act of magic as we usually think of it, the magic of top hats and performance art, but real magic. Poetry is like word sorcery, making words do the impossible and, in doing so, changing the nature of reality.

*Play performances seem similar to magical performances as well. They entertain and enthrall us, and, if done well, make us forget that what we're viewing is an illusion. And the best magicians also know that magic is performance art; it must be dramatic, funny, and mysterious. I think it's also interesting that some magicians of the past were called "Professors," as if they are teaching the audience something.

**Neil Gaiman has some excellent stories and comments about magic in his collection Smoke and Mirrors. As he points out, magic is compelling in part because it makes us question the nature of reality, as do stories. 

On Overwriting

"Overwriting" exists as a curious problem for new and emerging writers, and for some experienced writers it remains a problem to be guarded against. Much of my own early writing, in particular some of the essays I wrote in the 1990s (see links at left) suffers from what I would now call overwriting -- that is, the inflation of language and description at the risk of losing the reader and losing the meat of a story. At its worst, overwriting calls attention to the language itself through flowery description and wordiness. At its best, and good overwriting perhaps only exists in postmodern fiction, overwriting calls attention to the idea of overwriting and the way that words can mask reality.

Overwriting is not simply writing too much or too long, of course. We may be tempted to call "Paradise Lost" an example of overwriting, but I'm not talking about that kind of genius. Just because something is long or difficult to read does not make it overwritten. I am talking about the way newer writers especially often give in to the temptations of language by "showing off" an adeptness with words and phrases. As an isolated problem, overwriting is not such a bad issue for young writers to have, as it reveals a love of language, and it allows the writer to practice expanding images, providing more detail and description. (Underwriting is a far more common and difficult-to-overcome malady.) But overwriting is absolutely something that must be worked toward solving and guarded against as a writer develops.

The problem with overwriting, and one of the central paradoxical problems of writing, is that the writer uses words to obscure real meaning. Often, overwriting arises from anxiety, or from a deeply held fear that the writer has nothing to say, that the story itself isn't good enough -- so he hides behind words.  So the irony -- and paradox -- of writing is that language itself sometimes gets in the way of what a writer is actually trying to say. Good writing works toward achieving a balance and harmony (just like good cooking) between the language and the story, so that the language works for the story and not the other way around. This does not rule out the possibility of beautiful phrases and images, those things that strike us in stories as "brilliant," because that, too, is part of the reason for the existence of writing. I continue to struggle against overwriting, and I think it's as much a confidence issue as anything else. We must learn to believe in the stories we want to tell.

Movie Quotes in Real Life

Lately I've been thinking about some of the quotes from favorite movies that I use every now and then in real life, usually to avoid saying something directly, or just to be amusing or mysterious, to see if the person I'm with recognizes the quote. This is a real-life version of oblique dialogue, used in fiction and movies when a character says something but means something else. As an example of oblique dialogue, in Deliverance (one of my favorites movies, but not one I quote from much), the Burt Reynolds character says early in the movie, "I don't believe in insurance. There's no risk in it."  Now, obviously, he's not really talking about insurance, except as way of insulting the insurance salesman Bobby (Ned Beatty) behind his back. He's really talking about risk, and  the line foreshadows the inordinate amount of danger the men soon find themselves in. In the film, you can tell the line is important in a poetic way, because Burt Reynolds pauses before he says it, just as he also pauses before saying, "Sometimes you have to get lost, before you can find anything."

Here's a list of a few of the quotes I actually use, and what they mean.  The lines may or may not be quoted verbatim, but it's how I remember and use them:

• "You're not going to act this way on the boat, are you?" (Jaws).  Everybody always quotes the "bigger boat" line, a fine line indeed, but this line, uttered by Brody when Quint abuses Hooper the first time he meets him, points to the human conflict in the story, which is really the center of the movie. This line is great for saying, "Are you always an asshole like this?" 
• "Do you have some jurisdiction here that I should know about?" (A Few Good Men). I use this line to say, "You're being bossy, and I really don't think you have any power, do you?"
• "Thank you for that fine forensic analysis." (Titanic).  Old  Rose says this at the beginning of the movie. It basically means, "Shut the hell up. You're boring us."
• "Who do you think you're talking to?" (Less Than Zero). James Spader says this line, and I always thought it was a cool moment. Even though it's a fairly ordinary thing to say, something you hear in all sorts of movies, it's not something you hear as much in real life, if you think about it.  I think in that way, the line symbolizes how much more assertive and conflict-oriented characters are as opposed to real people. And actually, this line, not really being oblique, is something I don't say in real life.  But I really want to.
• "Be nice." (Roadhouse). The other bouncers laugh at Dalton (Patrick Swayze) when he tells them to handle rough customers this way.  I think about this quote (though, again, this one's not one I say so much) whenever I'm dealing with difficult people or students who have problems. You can be assertive and stick to your own rules while still being nice. Yes, occasionally you must be less than perfectly nice when dealing with someone who's abusive or who takes a nasty tone, but even then, you can adopt a Zen attitude (remember Dalton's philosophical training) and remember that conflict is best dealt with by taking the anger out of the situation. Another saying of Eastern origin goes, "If something started in anger, it will end in shame." Being angry is sometimes productive, but usually it gets us nowhere. 
• "I am proud neither of what I have done, nor what I am doing." This quote, also from A Few Good Men, comes from a character who is struggling with a heavy moral dilemma, but I find it can be used in much more mundane circumstances and covers a lot of typical human situations. Most of us, after  all, are not proud of some of things we've done. It's best used for truly silly situations, though, like when you've forgotten to buy hot dog buns and you've resorted to using white bread for the hot dogs. 

Apple a Day

Earlier this week, one of my students gave me an apple. I believe it was part of a fund-raising program at the school that involved students giving their favorite professors apples. Naturally, I was pleased to receive this beautiful piece of fruit, not the least because it came from an online student, and it's difficult to create those human connections with online classes.

This lovely gesture of apple-giving made me think of a being a teacher in a one-room schoolhouse in the early 1900s. One of my great-grandmothers was such a teacher, and though I didn't really know her, I admire her for having this kind of fortitude and dedication to learning. This in turn got me thinking about the origin of students giving teachers apples, and I think it must prompted the student to think about this as well.  When I thanked her for the apple, she responded with a quote that she thought  might reveal something about the origins of the tradition: "Anyone can count the seeds in an apple but no one can count the apples in a seed." That's certainly a nice idea, and the quote, apparently from an unknown source, speaks for itself.

Other possible connections come to mind. Apples are associated with the pastoral landscape of America's past -- the America of abundance, the America of small farms and quaint orchards. We think of the legend of Johnny Appleseed, spreading the simple, nourishing beauty of apples across our young country as it grew and formed its identity. Apples are associated with hearty health and wholesomeness, as suggested by the old saying, "An apple a day keeps the doctor away," which is sometimes attributed to Benjamin Franklin, himself quite a teacher and lover of knowledge (as well as being an ancestral cousin of mine). We think of apples and other wholesome fruits as nourishing the brain and allowing us to learn and grow, and of course, they do just that.

Then there's that famous apple. In popular accounts of Genesis, it is an apple (although it's an ambiguous "fruit" in the King James version) from the Tree of Knowledge with which the serpent temps Eve. This makes sense, in a symbolic way -- giving a teacher an apple because an apple represents knowledge, but it makes the gesture seem somehow more sinister or at least mischevious, as if the student is playing a trick on the teacher. In this case, is the apple meant to suggest that the teacher corrupts the student with knowledge? This anti-educational subtext may seem vaguely American in all the wrong ways, but it's way too complicated and irreverent to make much sense, as far as I'm concerned.

Of course, the idea of tricks makes me consider the apple's association with Halloween (dunking for apples, candy apples) and its general association with autumn (apple picking, apple pies). Now we're getting somewhere. Apples are abundant in the fall, which is why we ended up making pies with them to begin with, and school of course begins in the fall. Anyone with an apple tree in frontier America must have had more apples than they knew what to do with, so of course they'd bring one for the teacher. Teachers in America have always been underpaid, as school was considered a mere supplement to the rigors of farm life, so they might have welcomed the free food. I certainly welcomed my apple when I received it, although I have one colleague who suggested I get it x-rayed for razors. (He said perhaps he had seen Snow White, with its poisoned apple, too many times, which brings up the sinister side of apples....)

And then there's the Apple computer, itself a symbol of modern knowledge and learning. Additionally, apples are fruit, and we speak of the fruits of knowledge. We could really keep going with this for some time. But just as an apple can only be eaten once, so we must limit what we learn and explore at any given time. It's better to eat the fruit and enjoy it for what it is.  

Plans Change

It's pretty easy to make fun of The Brady Bunch, with its corny dialogue, goofy hairstyles, and hopelessly outdated mores. But this silly little show served as important cultural touchstone for people of my generation, as alluded to in the otherwise annoying Gen-X film comedy Reality Bites. It might be an exaggeration to suggest that The Brady Bunch was ahead of its time or that it was thematically complex, but it was a show of contradictions, a sitcom that idealized family life while celebrating the 1970s-era blended family. This was a show that, for all its flaws, continued to speak to viewers for many years after its initial run, as evidenced by its incredible popularity in reruns. (In fact, the show was more popular in reruns and was only known by people of my age as a show that came on after school.)

The other day, while on vacation in Puerto Rico, I apparently spent a little too much time lying in the sun and began idly thinking about those Brady Bunch vacation episodes. You know the episodes I mean -- the two-part Hawaii vacation in which Bobby finds a Tiki idol and Greg has a surfing accident, or when Bobby gets lost in the Grand Canyon (it seems Bobby was a bit bored on these vacations) and the family gets locked in a jail in a ghost town.

There was a less-remembered "special" vacation episode in which the family visits an amusement park in Ohio or something. This was not exactly as exciting as Hawaii or the Grand Canyon (talk about cliche middle-class vacation destinations, anyway), but the kids responded with great excitement, as always, to Mr. Brady's announcement at the beginning of the episode. It was supposed  to be a just a business trip for  Mr. Brady, after all. Yet somehow Mr. Philips and the other folks down at the architecture firm agreed to pay for Mr. Brady to take along his wife, their six kids, AND their maid.

The central mix-up of the episode's plot had Jan accidentally switching a Hanna-Barbera poster she'd bought at the amusement park with her dad's important architecture plans. I don't remember how Jan had access to her dad's plans, or why Mr. Brady left them lying about (he was probably getting drunk in the hotel bar). I also don't know whether as a kid I questioned the likelihood of Jan's poster (in its yellow tube) looking exactly like Mr. Brady's plans. I do remember thinking as a kid, What kind of doofus buys a poster at an amusement park, especially at the beginning of the day, when you know you'll have to haul the stupid thing around with you on all the rides? Geez, Marcia must have been annoyed with her, but then, Jan was always causing problems like this.

The incredible inanity of the plot was just one thing that made this a classic Brady episode. It had a lot of other classic elements: Jan screwing something up, Bobby and Cindy spending all their time eating, Greg smooth-talking a girl, the zany slapstick marathon running-of-the-poster through the park scene at the episode's climax. But the episode also, like so many Brady Bunch episodes, conveyed an important philosophical lesson, a lesson about the nature of plans.

Mr. Brady represents the Every Man of American culture, an upper-middle-class suburbanite with modest aspirations who is primarily motivated by a need to keep his family secure and happy. Of course, Mr. Brady also serves as the family's philosophical guide, teacher of morals, and a wise, Solomon-like arbitrator. He resolves problems in the family, but he also makes sure that his children learn something from their difficulties through careful self-reflection and moral inquiry.


In the amusement-park episode, Mr. Brady begins with an original set of masterful plans, expertly designed and perfectly executed. Yet he ends up with a full-color poster of Huckleberry Hound. As the usually misquoted poem goes (or doesn't go), "The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry." A neat and perfect plan can turn into something that is so chaotic and directionless it isn't a plan at all, just a cartoon swirl of colors and shapes. To put it more simply, sometimes your best plans unexpectedly turn into a poster of a stupid cartoon dog.

What do you do with such a plan? If you're the Bradys, you run around the park until you find the original plans and then do a relay race to the inevitable happy ending, passing the plans like a baton from one family member to the next. But you could also accept that sometimes plans don't work out, and that sometimes, in that symbolic sense implied by the changing of the plans here, a good plan turns into a cartoonish mess that's impossible to follow. At that point, you can just give up, or you can roll with it, and see how the new plan might develop into something workable.

If you put aside the silliness of the idea that the two posters would be stored in nearly identical tubes, you can see another philosophical message at work here. Many plans look alike on the outside, and it's only by breaking them open and really beginning to work with them that we can see what we're dealing with. A plan isn't really a good plan or a bad plan until it works or doesn't work. The plan has to translate to practical, real-world viability. The plan has to come out of the tube.

The Brady Bunch is in a more general sense a show about how plans sometimes change. You get married, have kids, and expect to spend the rest of your life with someone. But then your spouse dies (or divorces you, as may have been the case with Mrs. Brady's first husband), and you find your life changing in big and unexpected ways. Sometimes plan change. You have to deal with it one way or another.

We think of the Bradys as an unrealistically perfect family, but really it's an imperfect family that knows how to adjust to the changes life has in store for all of us. You take whatever plans you end up with, and you run with them, sprinting toward a happy ending. If your plans end up not working, for whatever reason, you take positive action -- you enlist your family to help pull you out of the mess, you make new plans, or you roll with the changes as best you can.