Game of Thrones 2.01: The North Remembers

Hello again everyone, and welcome to the Game of Thrones season two co-blog between myself and my good friend Nikki Stafford from Nik at Nite. It’s been a long, slow ten months since we signed off after the end of season one (briefly alleviated for me in July when book five, A Dance With Dragons came out). But we’re back, and how! In the time since, GoT has received countless accolades, and is firmly ensconced among the shows that have given HBO its reputation for smart, quality TV.

For those new to how we’re doing this, Nikki is a George R.R. Martin newbie, coming to the series without having read the novels, whereas I originally read A Game of Thrones in hardcover back in the dark mists of 1996. So we do a back-and-forth between the unbooked Nikki and the total Ice & Fire geek (that’s me).

So without further ado … Nikki?

Nikki: Game of Thrones is back with a brilliant return that hasn’t lost one iota of its action, character-building, sharp dialogue, and set design. What a glorious show this is.

So I’ll start with my favourite thing about this return, and what a lot of people were anticipating… Tyrion. He makes his grand entrance right near the beginning, walking in on Joffrey’s sadistic name-day ceremony, dropping a few verbal bombs just to piss off his insane nephew, and then marching into the Small Council, where he pisses off his sister even more by announcing he’s the new Hand of the King. When he first walks in he makes a big show of insincerely greeting all of his nieces and nephews, and then pauses and genuinely offers his condolences to Sansa, infuriating Joffrey. Sansa looks at him, pledges her undying love to Joffrey, and flatly calls her father a traitor. You can’t trick a trickster, and there’s a slight shift in Tyrion’s face that signals he gets it: Sansa is a very smart girl, and she’s playing the game just like everyone else is. She’s saying what she needs to say to stay alive, and is burying her emotions so deep the only concern is she’ll forget what they once were.

But Sansa’s not the only one who feels helpless, and must use her wits to stay alive. Tyrion is much the same as she is, and when he drops the bomb that he’s the new hand of the king, his sister goes mental. First, did you notice he signals his arrival with a creepy whistle now? You can hear him before you can see him. As soon as I heard this, I thought, “He’s Omar!!” that other fan favourite from an HBO series.

The biting words between the two of them are one of the highlights of this episode:

Cersei: What do you know about warfare?
Tyrion: Nothing. But I know people, and our enemies hate each other almost as much as they hate us.

Tyrion: You love your children. It’s your one redeeming quality. That and your cheekbones.

Tyrion: We had three Starks to trade — you chopped one’s head off and lost another. Father would be furious. Must be hard, being the disappointing one.

The smug look on Tyrion’s face at this last one, and Cersei’s sudden shocked silence, speaks volumes. What a turnaround this moment is. Cersei should have all the power now, with her son sitting as king, but she’s nearly as smart as Tyrion, and is ruled by her emotions for Jaime. I absolutely adored this scene.

Chris, one thing I kept wondering while watching this early episode was this: Tyrion was clearly a fan favourite in season 1, and Peter Dinklage was the one who garnered all the attention come awards season for his performance (which is brilliant, even though I must admit my nitpick again that I think his accent could be better; it’s nothing like the others and doesn’t sound right). This season he’s suddenly the major character. Is that because of the books? Was he a fan favourite in book 1 and so George Martin brought him front and centre in book 2? Or is this a television-led thing? Or, was Martin always intending to bring him forward from the beginning?

What were your general thoughts about this first episode?

Christopher: Without giving anything away, I think it’s fair to say that Tyrion takes over Ned Stark’s role as putative protagonist in book two, but then that’s also a hard case to make as Westeros gets Balkanized and our story fragments into even more disparate narrative threads. Tyrion does play a more central role than he does in book one; which was why, in addition to squeezing over Dinklage’s wonderful interpretation of Tyrion (accent notwithstanding, and yes, I agree with you on that front), diehard GRRM fans also breathed a sigh of relief—it would have been a painful thing for such a pivotal character to have been poorly cast. Fortunately, that is not an issue.

As for GRRM increasing Tyrion’s role after book one: unlikely. To hear the man himself speak of it, the Ice and Fire series took a few books to get going. I suspect that he either had planned Tyrion’s prominence from the start or realized that this snarky dwarf was the best thing in Westeros early on.

So … my thoughts on this episode. I can honestly say I have no complaints, and am deeply impressed both by what they’ve been utterly faithful with, and what they’ve added. I’ll first add a disclaimer that I haven’t had a chance to reread A Clash of Kings prior to April first, as this is my busiest time of year, but I’ll be getting on that this week. So if I lose a detail here or there, I apologize.

I’ll start with my first genuine squee moment, which happened during the credits. Dragonstone! The island fortress guarding the approaches to King’s Landing plays a much more significant role in the novels than it has in the series so far, and not just because we haven’t seen it until now: it was where the first Targaryen king planned his conquest of Westeros, and it was where Daenerys was born while her mother and brother fled the armies of Robert Baratheon. And it was the seat King Robert granted his brother Stannis, which always rankled with the dour martinet, as it meant the youngest brother Renly (who wasn’t old enough to fight in the war) got the ancestral Baratheon seat of Storm’s End.

In book one, both Stannis and Dragonstone are spectral presences, spoken of but never seen. So one of the great pleasures of A Clash of Kings was finally meeting Stannis there. And I certainly wasn’t disappointed by the way that fell out in our opening episode: what we see of Dragonstone is appropriately grim and dark, and Stannis himself is likely appropriately dour and humourless. Casting Stephen Dillane in the role shows that series continues with its deft casting choices. I loved the scene in which he drafts the letter revealing Jaime and Cersei’s incest and making his claim to the throne. On occasion, the series has been a bit clunky in its exposition. In this case, it was beautifully done, and utterly faithful to the text. His refusal to countenance even a lie of courtesy in calling Renly “beloved”; his insistence that Jaime be labeled “Kingslayer,” because that is what he is; but also insisting on the honorific “Sir” because, “whatever else he is, he is still a knight”; this short sequence tells us everything we need to know about Stannis’ character, and Dillane’s severe, harsh delivery is pitch-perfect.

Other new faces! We meet Melissandre, Stannis’ red priestess who has seduced him (not literally) into renouncing the seven gods of Westeros, and his devoted and trusted right-hand-man Davos Seaworth. I won’t say anything more about these two for fear of spoilers … suffice it to say, they are also pretty much exactly as I imagined them.

So far, the new season seems to be preoccupied with the question of how to rule—with what makes a king, or queen, or simply a leader. We shift thousands of miles between scenes, with the ominous comet as our segue and reminder that, however distant, all of these stories are intertwined … and fated to meet. Nikki, what did you think about the way the episode dealt with all of the different threads left over from season one?

Nikki: Funny you should ask that, because the first time I watched this episode that’s exactly the point I brought up with my husband: that “The North Remembers” is the perfect blend of wrapping up the previous season while opening up the new threads that will be carried through this season. Bran, left behind in Winterfell, is now a lord, having to listen to the complaints of villagers. But he’s having different visions (remember he had those strange dreams in season one) that, this time around, appear to be aligning him with his direwolf. Is he somehow sharing the soul of his direwolf in a way? Robb, “King of the North,” is maturing as a leader, working alongside his mother to try to broker peace, but on his terms. Daenerys is in The Red Waste, and her baby dragons are with her. I know a lot of us were dying to see those dragons, and they really looked amazing. I thought there was a bit of incongruity with the special effects, as in Emilia Clarke wasn’t looking right at the dragon, but more in front of her, as if her eyes weren’t aligning with the dragon properly (which obviously wasn’t on her shoulder). However, when she reached up and let it move to her hand and put it in the cage, the effects were amazing, and she moved her arm as if there really was a dragon on it. I LOVE them so far, and hope we see more of them. Jon Snow is with the people from the Wall at that vile man’s house (his daughters become his wives to make more daughters… Jee-SUS), Joffrey is showing how absolute power corrupts absolutely, and Sansa is reeling from what is probably post-traumatic stress disorder and covering up her hatred to save her own skin. And Arya, that character we fell in love with in season 1, only shows up in the closing seconds of the episode, looking every bit a boy on her way to the Wall.

But for season 2, there are the new people at Dragonstone, as you pointed out, and the Fire Priestess and Stannis, and his brother Renly. We only heard about the other Baratheons last season, so it’s good to actually see them now. I was thrilled with your rundown of them, because I did find these scenes a little confusing, not being familiar with the characters. I will certainly be turning to you week after week to explain things to me! Does the Fire Priestess worship dragons at all? Why is she at Dragonstone? Is there a connection between her and the Targaryens? Is it too soon for me to be asking all these questions? ;) The priestess is creepy as hell, but gorgeous with those chiseled features, and her words ring through the episode. “The night is dark and full of terrors… but the fire burns them all away.”

Christopher: We met Renly last season, remember? He sat on the Small Council with Ned, tried to convince him to usurp the Lannisters while he had the chance, and is closeted gay (remember the bath scene with Loras Tyrell). Renly’s sexuality is only ever hinted at in the novels, so it will be interesting to see how they play it on the show when we meet his betrothed, presumably in the next episode when Catelyn journeys to meet with him.

I’m not sure how much to say about Melisandre, the fire priestess, as I don’t know how much the show will choose to reveal, and whether or not they’ll hew to GRRM’s specifics. But this much is safe: she worships the god R’hllor, the god of heat and light and life. Her belief system is Manichaean, positing R’hllor on one hand, and the god whose name must not be spoken on the other, Voldemort. No, wait … I kid. R’hllor’s foe is the god of anti-life, of darkness and cold.

Sort of like what might, I dunno, be lurking in the “real” north? Heh.

Speaking of the real north … that scene in Craster’s Keep was (pardon the pun) chilling, no? I wondered how they were going to treat that particularly revolting character. I must say I always imagined him bigger; he’s described in the novels as a huge man grown egregiously fat, but still powerful. (Actually, whenever I read his parts, I always find myself thinking of Judge Holden from Blood Meridian). But they captured his particular mix of petulance and pride, and the smugly proprietal way he treats his “wives”.

And remember the pregnant question (sorry, couldn’t help myself) “What does he do with his sons?” That one will be something we return to.

And to return to what I guess we now have to consider the fake north—what did you think of Robb Stark’s confrontation with Jaime Lannister? That was not in the novel, but was, I thought, very well done and did a good job of laying out just how dangerous a prize the Kingslayer is. And: holy direwolf! They do get big, don’t they?

Nikki: Oops, sorry, in my haste I meant to say seeing Renly being incorporated more directly into the Baratheon battle was new. Yes, I absolutely remember him in the first season (my first comment to my husband was, “Isn’t that the gay king?”) and yes, we will see his significant other(s) in next week’s episode.

I thought Robb Stark’s confrontation with Jaime Lannister was brilliant, and it brought up something I wanted to talk about in this last segment: that this episode was all about power. Who has it, who is willing to use it, and what power actually is. The best ways they demonstrate that is by showing the two very different mother/son relationships on the show.

Tyrion, as I mentioned earlier, has the power of words. He knows just what to say or do to make people listen, or piss them right off. Since he doesn’t have any physical or political power, he makes do with what he has, and is able to take people like Cersei and make her wither in his presence.

Robb Stark faces off with Jaime, who mocks him for being a boy. Even tied up, filthy, sitting on the ground, Jaime believes by being a Lannister, he will always be more powerful than Robb. Robb, however, sees it differently, spitting back, “You’ve been defeated by a boy, held captive by a boy, perhaps you’ll be killed by a boy.” Jaime is unfazed. “Three victories don’t make you a conqueror,” he says.

“It’s better than three defeats,” says Robb smugly. And then he lets his direwolf step into the cage to sniff Jaime. Who promptly pees his pants (offscreen).

Robb is stronger than he seemed in season 1. When he discusses his position with his mother, Catelyn, you can tell the two of them see their role in the war as a partnership, working together. He sends her off to Renly, and has everything in hand, and she agrees to go, telling him he’s doing a great job. She looks upon him with the same pride she looked upon her son.

Cersei, on the other hand, doesn’t have that relationship with her son. After being shown up by Tyrion, she decides to bring someone else down to make herself feel better. She confronts Baelish and asks him what power is. He replies, “Knowledge is power.” Which is what Tyrion would argue. Then she uses her guards as little toy soldiers, instructing them to slit his throat, then stop, then walk three paces away, turn around, close their eyes… and do the hokey pokey. They do it all, and she looks at Baelish with a sneer, saying, “Power is power.”

Is it? Those guards only do what she wants because Joffrey has told them to respect and obey his mother. But the moment he says otherwise, she will be nothing but a speck of dust to them. And if the Lannisters are overthrown, Joffrey has no power, either.

After this moment of triumph, Cersei speaks with her despicable rat-son Joffrey, who throws the possible incestuous relationship with “Uncle Jaime” in her face, and she slaps him across his. He stares at her and says, “What you just did is punishable by death. You will never do it again. Never.” And suddenly Cersei realizes she has very little power indeed. She can make her guards put their left foot in and take their left foot out before shaking it all about, but he can tell his guards to go all King Herod on the place, killing every bastard child who has dark hair. For now, that is power. But how long will that last?

New graduate English blog

Oh, and as long as I'm posting ...

We recently just launched the new blog for the graduate program in English at Memorial. Check it out, and if you're feeling so inclined, link to it -- we want to spread it as far and wide as possible!

Oscar who?

I watched the first fifteen minutes of the Academy Awards, and that was about all I could manage. I was past indifferent this year, in part because there was nothing nominated that was truly amazing or shocking, but also because the whole formula has become just so stale. It didn't help to have Billy Crystal back doing his once-hilarious but now tired schtick.

Though perhaps he best summed up the reason for my big yawn with his best line (in the brief time I watched): "Nothing can take the sting out of the world's economic situation like watching millionaires present themselves with golden statues."

Here's a thought: next year, they should change the format to mimic The Hunger Games, and have all the nominees fight each other to the death for their statuette. Considering it's entirely possible that The Hunger Games might be nominated for something, this appeals to my postmodern sensibilities.



**One exception to my above crankiness: I'm so happy Christopher Plummer won for Beginners, and would have liked to have seen his acceptance speech. There's a man with immense talent AND class.

We few, we happy few ...

I’ve been quite enjoying season two of Downton Abbey, particularly with the added drama of England’s entry into the Great War—no one has escaped its effects or been left unscathed (one way or another). The show has done a nicely understated job of showing how the pressures of war exposed the extant fault lines in the British class system (and caste system), as well as cracking open new ones. The drama of manners we saw in season one has been transformed into what I like to think of as nascent tragedy: a suspended sense of catastrophe and Damocles-like helplessness made manifest by the flood of maimed and wounded now convalescing in Downton.

My viewing of season two has serendipitously coincided with reading the second volume of Tim Cook’s excellent history of Canada in WWI, Shock Troops . Volume one, At The Sharp End, covered the war from the beginning to the end of 1916; Shock Troops starts with Vimy Ridge and goes on to the end of the war, detailing the evolution of the conflict in terms of tactics and strategy, all the while grounding the narrative in specifics about the troops, their travails, and life in the trenches. Never does Cook become abstract: always is the reader aware of the human cost of the decisions made by the high command, of the brutal butcher bills that accompanied our troops’ greatest triumphs (our victory at Vimy Ridge, for example, was massively more costly than defeat at the Somme).

It has been instructive to read this book while following Downton Abbey, though at times somewhat frustrating. It has meant that, for example, when Matthew Crawley led his troops over the top at Amiens, I was painfully aware that the show got the historical specifics pretty much exactly wrong.

To wit: the scene begins in anxious silence in the trench as the soldiers wait, with Matthew checking his pocket-watch. Then he leads them up over the top into the teeth of German fire. They charge in a tight line across No Man’s Land; soldiers fall to shot and shell as we are shown the Germans, also tightly clustered in their trenches, firing their rifles.

The biggest inaccuracy was the silence preceding the attack. Early battle doctrine was to mercilessly pound the enemy lines with an artillery barrage, clearing the trenches and cutting the barbed wire. At the moment of the attack, the barrage stopped, and the soldiers tried to cross No Man’s Land as fast as they could, ideally before the enemy could reoccupy their trenches. More often than not, they did not succeed.

Later in the war, standard procedure became the “creeping barrage.” The gunners would lay down a heavy barrage that moved forward in fifty to one hundred yard increments, and the soldiers advanced as close as they dared behind the curtain of shellfire. This way, they could raid the enemy trenches immediately after the barrage lifted, clearing out the strongpoints with bombs and grenades before the enemy could emerge. The incremental movement of the shellfire acted as a massive killing broom, sweeping the enemy wire and trenches with methodical brutality.

It was the Canadian Corps who essentially invented and perfected the creeping barrage, and used it to do what neither the British or French had managed in spite of multiple attempts: take Vimy Ridge, easily the most formidably dug-in and defensible German possession on the Western Front.

My point is that there would have not been silence before Matthew Crawley’s attack: even the most stiff-necked and hidebound of British commanders had adopted the creeping barrage at that point in the war. Early in the war, the attack would have been heralded by the sudden silence as the guns ceased the preparatory barrage. Either way, the sequence gets it wrong.

All of which, I am sure, makes me sound very pedantic … but that is, I suppose, the curse of having a little knowledge.

The intersection of Downton Abbey and Shock Troops in my imagination has made me think, of all things, about the HBO series Band of Brothers (wrong war, I know). Of all the films, mini-series, and television shows I have seen depicting 20th century warfare, Band of Brothers has a strong claim on being the best. The series—mini-series, technically—ran for eight episodes and followed the fortunes of the paratroopers of Easy Company from the 101st Airborne Division. Like many HBO series, Band of Brothers is an ensemble drama; though the main character is arguably Lt. Richard Winters (played so well by Brit Damian Lewis), he more often than not fades into the background as other members of the company become the story’s focus.

The historical realism of the series is admirable, as is its refusal to fall into cliché. I find it endearingly ironic that it was produced by Stephen Spielberg and Tom Hanks—because Band of Brothers is what Saving Private Ryan desperately wanted to be, but instead, after its stunning sequence depicting the Normandy landings, fell into sentimentality and every WWII film cliché imaginable.

What I wish for is a Band of Brothers treatment of Canadians in WWI. Reading Cook’s history, I am struck by how well it would work as source material for such a series, and how compelling our troops would be if treated with the kind of intelligent, unsentimental writing that marked Band of Brothers. If done right, it would fly in the face of many conceptions of Canadianness: our troops were notorious for their profanity, coarseness, and their chronic disrespect for authority (especially British authority). Many of our troops refused to salute their superiors, and rudely rejected the fussy discipline that was customary for British soldiers. A popular joke from the war involved a sentry demanding “Who goes there?” “British.” “Pass, Brits.” “Who goes there?” “Australians.” “Pass, Aussies.” “Who goes there?” “Mind your own fuckin’ business!” “Pass, Canadians.”

A series that, like Band of Brothers, followed a specific unit of Canadian soldiers over the course of the war—and did so with an eye to historical realism and resisting the urge to sentimentalize—could work really well. And I’m sorry, but Paul Gross can’t go anywhere near it. As much as I love him, Passchendale should disqualify him from ever doing anything about WWI again.

She turned me into a Newt! (I got better)

To be clear, I do not think that Newt Gingrich stands a hope in hell of being nominated as the Republican candidate for president. There is simply way too much stacked against him: he has proved to be an inept campaign manager, he can’t come close to matching Romney’s money, the Republican establishment loathes him, and (perhaps most important of all) South Carolina played too perfectly to Newt’s strengths in a way that is highly unlikely to be repeated as the primary battle drags on.

My prediction: Newt rides the momentum of SC for everything it’s worth, fighting until his last dollar is gone. Perhaps he wins another, perhaps he comes close; in either case, he deals irreparable damage to Romney. I have to wonder if the worst damage hasn’t already been done: three states down, and the presumptive Republican candidate has won (then lost—the recount in Iowa went to Santorum) in a squeaker, won respectably in New Hampshire, and got his ass handed to him in South Carolina. This could potentially go on for a long time, and every primary and caucus that passes without Romney locking in the nomination bleeds him more. It’s not like four years ago in the protracted battle between Obama and Hilary—there, we had two strong candidates with devoted and indeed worshipful followings, and whatever resentment might have lingered, there was never any question that the loser would get behind the winner.

That isn’t a certainty here. Quite the opposite, actually. The antipathy to Romney is powerful, powerful enough to elevate wingnuts like Bachman, Cain, and Perry, a religious bigot like Santorum, and … well, honestly, I don’t know how to classify Newt. All of the above?

Mind you, I’m not totally counting out Newt. Just mostly. “Not a hope in hell” normally means no chance whatsoever, but having followed this carnival for what feels like ten years now, I don’t want to commit myself to the reasonable prediction. If I was a betting man, I’d say the good money’s on Romney … but I’d be really, really tempted to put a dollar down on Newt’s long odds. The old chestnut, “That’s so crazy, it might just work!” needs a re-jigging here. The Republican base is so crazy, they just might nominate Newt. How’s that?

For what it’s worth, I think an Obama-Gingrich showdown is precisely what the Republicans need. Would I be utterly gleeful to see Newt get destroyed by Obama? Yes. Would I be over the moon to watch the FOX/Limbaugh industrial-complex stymied? YES. A thousand times, yes. But I also want conservatism in the U.S. to return to its senses, for all our sakes. I think it needs its Goldwater moment again, to be so thoroughly destroyed that it has no choice but to reject the Palin/Bachman/Santorum wing of the party, to discredit the FOX contingent, and to embrace its intelligent spokespeople.

Of course, I say this knowing that a Gingrich-Obama showdown holds a 1% chance of Newt winning. At which point, Newfoundland doesn’t feel far enough away and I might start looking for English-language universities in Sweden.

And you thought "teabaggers" was bad ...

Oh, Rick Santorum ... as of this moment, you are the #1 reason Jon Stewart has the easiest job in show business. Seriously.

Apparently, Santorum has just launched a new fundraising group (or PAC, or SuperPAC, I'm uncertain of the distinctions these days), named "Conservatives Unite Moneybomb."

Got that? Yes. He has in fact started an organization whose acronym is C.U.M. Which meant that this morning I was treated to this headline in Google Reader:

(Which would not have been quite as bad if I hadn't been drinking a slightly gelatinous breakfast smoothie. Blerg.)

Besides going down (heh) as the most inopportune acronym since Canada's right wring briefly united under the moniker Conservative Reform Alliance Party, it also reflects so well on Santorum. Or at least it does from my perspective. His unrelenting and frequently unhinged attacks on gay marriage, gay rights, and the LGBT community generally echo the unreconstructed racism of people like George Wallace railing against civil rights even as the tide of history swamped them. That's what Santorum has to look forward to, but with a particularly cruel twist. Dan Savage's revenge--making "Santorum" synonymous with, and I quote, "the frothy mixture of lube and fecal matter that is sometimes the by-product of anal sex," and making it the number one result when one Googles the name--has effectively made the former senator's very name a joke ... and which added a rather revolting double entendre during the Iowa Caucus, when pundits and commentators spoke of him "surging" in the polls.

The Conservatives Unite Moneybomb won't do nearly as much as Savage's savaging, but it has the added bonus of being self-inflicted. And the fact that America's most vocally anti-gay mainstream politician will go down as a footnote to history forever associated with bodily fluids and gay sex ... well, to quote Buffy Summers, as justice goes, it's not unpoetic.

The appeal of Downton Abbey

We’re now three episodes into season two of Downton Abbey, and the show continues to enthrall and delight—a fact that has apparently flummoxed some commentators, not because they don’t like the series but because it seems odd that such a proper and mannered British period piece should find the audience(s) is has. What, it is asked, is the appeal?

The question seems to me at best ingenuous and at worst paternalistic, ignoring in the first case the fact that such stories have always had a broad appeal, and subtly suggesting in the second that if it doesn’t contain sensationalistic story and spectacle, contemporary audiences (especially non-English ones) won’t get it. Yes, the hidebound class system depicted in Downton is alien to contemporary social mores; and yes, the series proceeds at an appropriately stately pace, with little in the way of lascivious storylines (Mary’s near-affair with the Turkish diplomat being the exception, sort of), and much harrumphing among both upstairs and downstairs about tradition and custom and the difference in kind between the aristocracy and everyone else.

But to wonder why this all appeals to contemporary audiences doesn’t give enough credit to contemporary audiences, who know a good story well told when they see it. There was much the same sort of pondering during the Jane Austen renaissance in the mid-90s, starting with the Colin Firth Pride and Prejudice and continuing with the adaptations of Emma, Sense and Sensibility, Persuasion, and Mansfield Park (which, had a production of Northanger Abbey been done, would have run the gamut of Austen’s corpus). Why, everyone asked at the time, is Jane Austen so popular again?

Theories advanced at the time tended to focus on nostalgia, a wistful desire for the certainties of a stately and stable class system; Generation X (remember them?), stuck in their dead-end jobs and aimless lifestyles, thought longingly of the calm certainty of Mr. Darcy or Emma Woodhouse’s lives. The appeal of Downton Abbey, it has been suggested, lies in both the revisitation of Austen-esque manners, but also the social ferment underlying the action as WWI starts to show the fault lines in the British class system and heralds the slow decline of the British Empire. In a recession-stricken time, it has been suggested, the discomfiture of the aristocracy and the new possibilities for social mobility resonate with audiences angry at the predations of Wall Street.

None of which I disagree with—certainly the waxing and waning of Austen and the periodic prominence of such series as Upstairs, Downstairs, The Jewel in the Crown, and Downton Abbey reflect shifts in the popular imagination—but it does seem a little overblown to me. The better considerations I have read do get around to the more important question, “why now?” as opposed to just “why?” but then the appeal of Downton Abbey seems self-evident after watching just one episode … it is extremely well written, well acted, and well produced, and makes one want to know what happens next.

The unbearable cynicism of Mitt Romney

There once was a time during this extended carnival of the Republican race for the nomination that Mitt Romney seemed like the one sane person in the asylum, and his inability to establish a commanding lead an indictment of the current state of the Republican base. Seriously: the best thing that can be said about the successive surges of the non-Romney candidates—Bachman, Perry, Cain, Gingrich, and, most recently, Santorum—is that they all proved unsustainable, that in the end all but the most froth-at-the-mouth evangelical nativist wingnuts conceded that these people were at the very least unelectable. (I won’t speculate on how many would still be backing the likes of any of these candidates if they were conceivably electable; it’s enough relief to know the vast majority of Americans run screaming from the prospect of President Gingrich).

I’ve never liked Romney, always seeing him as basically fake, a reasonable simulacrum of what Hollywood imagines presidents to look like. But he was at least moderate and reasonable, as his record as governor of Massachusetts shows. And I can forgive a certain amount of flip-flopping in the name of campaigning, as that’s really just the nature of the beast. To be certain, I would have more respect for the man if he were to say something like “I passed liberal policies like health care in Massachusetts because Massachusetts is essentially a liberal state and I am not an autocrat.” Of course, that wouldn’t get him many votes among the party faithful, but it would earn him more respect than his relentless pandering.

At any rate, what I said two paragraphs ago about once seeing Romney as the sane one? Not so much anymore. And it’s not so much that he’s batshit as that he is appallingly, cynically mendacious. I watched his victory speech in the New Hampshire primary and was just left open-mouthed. It basically broke down to: (1) Obama is not American; (2) Obama is waging war on the private sector; (3) Obama is attempting to reshape America along a European socialist model; (4) hence, this election is about saving America’s soul; (5) and finally, Obama is an appeaser who wants to denude American military might, something he (Romney) will reverse and return America to its proper global military hegemony.
Seriously. Watch it:



When I hear someone like Michelle Bachman say this kind of horseshit, I’m at least convinced that she believes it. But Romney? He can’t possibly be that stupid.

These days I find myself increasingly reading conservative bloggers and essayists inveighing against precisely this kind of mendacity. When David Frum becomes the voice of reason in conservative circles, the time is out of joint. One of their frequent refrains is that such patently false accusations as Obama’s antipathy to capitalism—to say nothing of birtherism or the attempts to characterize him as an “anti-colonialist Kenyan,” to borrow Gingrich’s memorable phrase—completely miss the boat when it comes to issues on which Obama is genuinely vulnerable, such as his appalling record on civil rights and executive power (which, incidentally, are issues on which certain segments of the left and right vehemently agree).

Speaking as a committed liberal, the complete asshattery of the Republican presidential hopefuls distresses me on two fronts. The first is that I firmly believe a rational and reasonable right wing is vital to national discourse, not least because it keeps those of us on the left on our toes. The second is because it is not inconceivable that Romney might be the next president … and he has shown himself to be a man of no principle whatsoever, entirely beholden to whomever he happens to be wooing.

An overdue lament

This is a long-delayed post, almost a month late. All things being equal, I was a little surprised at how affected I was by the death of Christopher Hitchens. I woke up the morning his passing hit the news to his voice—my clock radio blared him mid-invective, playing one of his more notorious anti-theistic speeches on the barbarism of circumcision, and my first thought was “My god, he died.” My second thought was that it would probably have irritated him that I prefaced my realization with “my god.”

My first real encounter with Hitchens’ writing came during my research for my dissertation, when I quoted an essay of his (collected in his book For the Sake of Argument) about Norman Mailer’s CIA conspiracy novel Harlot’s Ghost. The best part of it, unfortunately, had to be dropped into a footnote:

Harlot’s Ghost exhibits the typical Mailer touch of the ongoing question of self-definition of one’s manhood in a particular context, for which the undercurrent of homoeroticism is a constant and alluring tug. British writer Christopher Hitchens tells of the danger of questioning Norman Mailer’s heterosexuality to his face: paired up with Mailer on a talk-show once, Hitchens apparently prodded him a little too strongly on the question of just why, in novel after novel, the practice of sodomy figured so prominently. Why, Hitchens inquired, did Mailer seem so fascinated “by its warped relationship to the tough-guy ethos”? Apparently Hitchens pressed too hard—to the point where Mailer became incensed at the implication that he went in for such behaviour himself. While stopping short of offering to fight Hitchens, he some time later vented his ire in a vengeful interview with the magazine The Face, declaring that he had been attacked by “the London faggot literary coterie.” (Mailer named Hitchens, Martin Amis and Ian Hamilton as the vanguard of this “coterie.” Hitchens says that he and Amis considered writing a letter to The Face saying “that this was very unfair to Ian Hamilton, but dropped the idea.”)

What I love about this anecdote, even more now than when I first stumbled across it, is how clearly I can imagine Hitchens deftly pressing Mailer’s buttons. It’s a shame that, given the plethora of miscellany available on YouTube, I cannot find that particular clip.

I was soon to become more familiar with him in the aftermath of 9/11 and the lead-up to the Iraq war, his advocacy for which Hitchens lost many friends and became branded as apostate by former colleague on the political left. Hence in my first real exposures to his polemics, I found myself in constant disagreement with his arguments. But however infuriated his writing in favor of the invasion and prosecution of the war made me, I could not help but be impressed by his argumentation and style. As has been said by many of his opponents, the experience of reading Hitchens when you vehemently disagree with him is to say “I know you’re wrong! Now, just give me a day to get my evidence together,” because however violent the disagreement, one found oneself being persuaded by the force and rhetorical flair of his argument.

Hitchens never gave an inch on Iraq. Unlike many advocates of the war who later recanted (such as his friend Andrew Sullivan, another polemicist I greatly admire), he defended the essential rightness of the invasion until the end; and in fact doubled down in his memoir Hitch-22. But here’s the thing: I strongly encourage everyone to read his chapter justifying his support for that campaign (actually, I encourage everyone to read it entirely), not because he convinced me, but because he is so good at stripping away the pieties liberals and leftists are good at cloaking themselves in. I don’t think he makes an ironclad case, but he does make you think.

And in the end, that is what I will miss most about Hitchens’ writing—the fact that when I disagreed with him, he nevertheless made me face the weak elements of my position or, more significantly, those arguments I was channeling rather than constructing. In a lot of ways, I am just as happy to never have met him. He was notoriously pugnacious and pugilistic, combative, and frequently hostile. My own mild and milquetoast demeanour, I suspect, would not have gone over well with him.
The longer I spend in academia, the more I value those who fill the role of public intellectual—and the more that species seems to be passing from the earth. Hitchens was among the best, and he nicely summarized his personal philosophy in Hitch-22:

How … I am asked, do I find meaning and purpose in life? How does a mere and gross materialist, with no expectation of a life to come, decide what, if anything, is worth caring about? Depending on my mood, I sometimes but not always refrain from pointing out what a breathtakingly insulting and patronizing question this is. (It is on a par with the equally subtle inquiry: Since you don't believe in our god, what stops you from stealing and lying and raping and killing to your heart's content?) Just as the answer to the latter question is: self-respect and the desire for the respect of others—while in the meantime it is precisely those who think they have divine permission who are truly capable of any atrocity—so the answer to the first question falls into two parts. A life that partakes even a little of friendship, love, irony, humor, parenthood, literature, and music, and the chance to take part in battles for the liberation of others cannot be called 'meaningless' except if the person living it is also an existentialist and elects to call it so. It could be that all existence is a pointless joke, but it is not in fact possible to live one's everyday life as if this were so. Whereas if one sought to define meaninglessness and futility, the idea that a human life should be expended in the guilty, fearful, self-obsessed propitiation of supernatural nonentities… but there, there. Enough.

Even better is this:



I’d tell you to rest in peace, Hitch, but that really isn’t your style.

Best reads of 2011

Happy 2012! It has been some time since I have updated my humble blog, but one of my new year’s resolutions is to do one post a week. We’ll see how that goes.

I’ve missed a lot in the lag since early September, from crucial world events to the carnival of the GOP race for the presidential nomination, to my various reads and viewings, to the sad death of Christopher Hitchens. This last event came close to inspiring a post; I wrote a draft or two of my thoughts on the occasion, but simply have not been in a blog head space for some time.

But I’m back, and let’s hope I can maintain something of a regular schedule. I miss my blog.

I thought I’d lead off 2012 with a list of my favourite reads of 2011—though I should clarify that few of these books actually came out in the past year. They are, rather, just books I read and enjoyed. So without further ado …

Monique Truong, The Book of Salt 

The story of Binh, a Vietnamese cook forced to leave Saigon in the early 1920s because of his affair with the head chef of the Lieutenant Governor’s house—an affair less scandalous for being homosexual than for crossing racial boundaries. He ultimately ends up in Paris in the 1930s, employed by Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas. Besides being beautifully written—a feast in a variety of ways, and a must read for any literary foodie for its exquisite descriptions of food—it is a remarkably nuanced and deft critique of the “Lost Generation.”

George R. R. Martin, A Dance With Dragons 

As any reader of this blog will know, I have been an avid follower of GRRM’s Ice and Fire series since A Game of Thrones was in hardcover … and like my fellow readers, I had to wait four long years between books three and four, and six—six years!—for book five. Which would have not been nearly as arduous were the books not so good, so readable, and addictive. Dragons was so long in the writing that many of GRRM’s formerly diehard fans turned against him starting vitriolic websites devoted to attacking what they saw as the betrayal of his obligation to them as his readers. (For the best response to such whininess, see Neil Gaiman’s comments on the subject). Coming on the heels of the incredible achievement of HBO’s Game of Thrones adaptation, Dragons did not disappoint—full of GRRM’s trademark intrigues, complex plots, nuanced characters, and surprising twists, it was almost worth the wait.

Christopher Hitchens, Hitch-22

Hitchens was diagnosed with stage four esophageal cancer almost immediately after the book was published; it was during his initial book tour that he suffered his first collapse. I had put off getting his memoir for a while, until I realized that I was, without realizing it, waiting for him to die. I was horrified at this realization. I started reading it mid-October, and finished in early November. A month and a half later her succumbed to his disease, and I was genuinely saddened by his passing—after reading his elegantly written, often self-serving, but always riveting autobiography, it was like losing a particularly prickly and sometimes infuriating great friend. Love him or hate him, he was the best of a dying breed—the public intellectual. Would that there were more like him. It is an historical irony that Kim Jong Il died only a few days afterward; I like to think the North Korean tyrant held out so that Hitch wouldn’t be around to write his epitaph.

Anne Patchett, Bel Canto 

Quite simply one of the most beautifully written novels I have read in a long time. The story of an unlikely group of people brought together by a hostage situation in a nameless Central American country. A meditation on music, love, passion, and language.

Terry Pratchett: Thief of Time, The Colour of Magic, Snuff, The Light Fantastic

I continue to work my way through the vast corpus of Pratchett’s Discworld novels, which he seems to write almost as fast as I read them. Not counting the young adult novels, the current Discworld crop stands at thirty-five books, of which I have now read twenty-six. Snuff is the most recent. I am currently at work on a few articles about Pratchett, and so this has become a professional concern … but then, that’s one of the reasons I love my job.

Colson Whitehead, Zone One

A few years ago, I read Whitehead’s novel The Intuitionist, and was blown away. He is one of the most critically acclaimed contemporary American novelists, an African-American whose writing offers a truly challenging and unique take on race in America today and the entire concept of “post-blackness”. So when I read reviews of this, his most recent novel, and saw that it is his version of a zombie apocalypse narrative? Sight unseen, I put it on the fourth-year seminar I’m teaching this term. And while I have once or twice put books on courses without having previously read them, they’ve usually been well-worn canonical works I’d been meaning to read for some time. So I went on faith this time—and was not disappointed. Exquisitely written, it is at once an innovative take on the zombie genre, a valuable addition to American dystopian literature (I paired it on my course with The Road), and a painful love-letter to New York City.

Justin Cronin, The Passage

Speaking of post-apocalyptic undead yumminess: Cronin’s novel combines the best of the zombie and vampire genres into a truly terrifying narrative. And that’s all I have to say about that.

Jamie Fitzpatrick, You Could Believe in Nothing

This one is a pleasure to plug: Jamie is a friend, and so it was with delight that I found his first novel to be a (a) exceptionally well-written, and (b) totally fun and engaging, even as it was (c) vaguely disturbing to a man approaching middle age. This is a novel about hockey and Newfoundland, and the troubled masculinity of a protagonist hitting his middle years with not a heck of a lot to show for it all. If I was to suggest an analogue here, it would be Philip Roth: sport as a metaphor for fraught national and regional identity and the waning of male virility and confidence. But it has none of Roth’s pretension or self-regard, and is inimitably at once a Canadian and Newfoundland novel.

Ned Sublette, The World That Made New Orleans 

I have to thank my friend and colleague Andrew Loman for turning me onto this one. While I was researching a paper on the HBO series Treme, Andrew suggested I read Sublette’s incredibly engaging and readable history of how New Orleans jazz became New Orleans jazz. Sublette does not shirk the history, going back to the original settlements of the Gulf coast, and beautifully explicates the complex relationships and interactions between English, French, and Spanish conquests and colonizations, and in the process provides one of the best histories of slavery in the Caribbean I have yet encountered.

Tim Cook, At the Sharp End 

This was a Christmas gift from Kristen last year, and this year she got me the sequel Shock Troops. These are the best popular histories of Canada in World War I that I have encountered—extremely readable while also scrupulously researched. Sharp End tells the story from the start of the war to the aftermath of the Somme. It balances the broader history and the individual stories of soldiers in the trenches. One emerges with a vivid understanding of both the political realities and the horror of battle. A must-read for any military history enthusiast.

Lev Grossman, The Magicians 

This novel is at once a fabulous corrective to Harry Potter and Narnia, and a cracking good yarn in its own right. Grossman takes the conceit of a school for magicians out of Rowling’s twee realm of the British boarding-school novel and turns it into a brilliant satire of the privileged culture of exclusive small east coast colleges. Quentin Coldwater is a brilliant and gifted student from Brooklyn with his eyes set on Princeton when he is recruited by Brakebills school of magic. He is also secretly obsessed with a series of fantasy novels that are a transparent analog of C.S. Lewis’ Narnia books; unsurprisingly, after many hardships and adventures at Brakebills, he and a handful of friends discover that Fillory (the Narnia clone) actually exists, and they make their way there. What I loved about this novel was that it pushes its derivative elements well past the point of simple parody. The novel is no mere satire: it is deadly serious, and its bald-faced borrowing from Rowling and Lewis acts as a trenchant critique of those books flaws and shortcomings. The second book in the series, The Magician King, sits now on my desk.

Patrick Rothfuss, The Name of the Wind, The Wise Man’s Fear 

Must-reads for fantasy enthusiasts. Kvothe is a former hero whose exploits are known across the land, but has gone into quiet and deliberately anonymous retirement as an innkeeper. For a variety of reasons he decides to tell his story to a chronicler, and that is how the narrative unfolds. Extremely well written, Rothfuss’ world is richly imagined and the plot compelling. If it has a flaw, it is in somewhat thin characters at times, and a tendency to be somewhat repetitive by the end of The Name of the Wind. This is somewhat corrected in Wise Man’s Fear as young Kvothe is forced to leave his university education and go out into the world. Neither book exactly ends on a compelling note, however; unlike GRRM’s Ice and Fire books, finishing Rothfuss’ does leave me frantic for the next installment.  


 Stuff I was ambivalent about

Kathryn Stockett, The Help

This was one of those rare novels that worked better for me as a film—mainly because actors Viola Davis, Octavia Spencer, Allison Janney, and Jessica Chastain all brought a depth and nuance to their characters that was lacking in the novel. The novel was, to give it its due, a good read, and very well written; and it did a useful job of reminding contemporary readers just how pernicious and hateful—and all-encompassing—Jim Crow laws were. But at the same time, there was something a little cheap about it. It never hurts to remind ourselves what the pre-civil rights South was like, but Stockett effectively gave herself an easy target in the much larger realm of race in America. There are few today outside the enclaves of white supremacist compounds who would not cheer long-suffering Aibeleen and irascible Minny and boo smug, superior Hilly (and feel satisfying schadenfreude when she gets her well-deserved comeuppance). Which makes it a pretty safe narrative in the end. It is a bit ironic that one of the novel’s frequent allusions is to Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird, which is also all about a virtuous white person helping African-Americans find their voices in the racist south. The difference is that when Lee wrote that novel, it was brave of her to do so.

Richard Dawkins, The God Delusion 

Dawkins spends a chunk of time at the outset of the paperback edition of his atheism manifesto debunking the criticism that he is “shrill” in his denunciation of religion. He presents a coherent argument to the contrary, but you know what? He is shrill. Though perhaps “shrill” is the wrong descriptor. He is, rather, disdainful and dismissive; he is glib and mocking when a more measured argument would be more likely to carry the day. Which is not to say that I wasn’t impressed by the book—perhaps more than anything however, I learned interesting things about science. To paraphrase Toby on The West Wing, the best answer to the question “Why are you preaching to the choir?” is “Because that’s the best way to get them to sing.” For me, this book was preaching to the choir. But unlike Hitchens’ God is Not Great, The God Delusion didn’t exactly inspire me to join Dawkins in song. The melody was just too discordant.

Suzanne Collins, The Hunger Games Trilogy (The Hunger Games, Catching Fire, Mockingjay) 

If I had stopped with the first book, I’d have many more glowing things to say. But in the end, I found the series disappointing, mostly because it fell into a hackneyed teenage love triangle with utterly no affect. The dystopian world Collins imagines is at once plausible and chilling, and the framing conceit of the Hunger Games themselves a useful turn on a not-uncommon SF trope. But beyond that, I was generally unimpressed.

Friday sunbeam (while they last)

Back to school. Oh, and Republicans.

Well, it’s my first day back teaching, and I have the usual back-to-school thrill that accompanies that. With an extra edge this morning: while having my coffee, I’ve been watching some clips from the Republican candidates’ debate, and for some reason it has me thinking about the importance of having an education.

Seriously. I thought Sarah Palin represented the nadir of know-nothingness in American politics when she first made the stage three years ago, but sometimes it seems the current crop of Republican presidential hopefuls are vying to outdo the grizzly queen. Michele Bachman in particular appeared to be working from the Palin template, but she’s even scarier—unlike the feckless Palin, she embodies an effective and focused ignorance, as highlighted in Ryan Lizza’s recent profile of her in the New Yorker.

And then Rick Perry threw his hat in the ring. Here’s Jonathan Chait’s spot-on comment about his performance in the debate: “Perry treats questions as interruptions. What scientists do you trust on climate change? I don’t want to risk the economy. Are you taking a radical position on social security? We can have reasons or we can have results.”

We can have reasons or we can have results? Seriously? What dim bulb on his staff crafted that particular genius sound bite?

But my favourite of his pithy answers was a comment on his climate change skepticism: “Galileo got outvoted for a spell.” Yes, yes he did. But here’s the thing, and here’s why listening to Perry made me think about the importance of education. Galileo frequently gets cited by climate change skeptics and advocates of creationism and intelligent design, which is a neat little rhetorical gambit: “All you ‘scientists’ think you have the answers, but really you’re just as mired in groupthink as those who persecuted Galileo.” This is of course particularly galling when it comes from creationists, but let’s consider two reasons why bringing up Heavy G in these contexts is inane.

1. Galileo’s single most lasting contribution to the discipline of science was not his astronomical theories, for which he was persecuted, but was in fact the invention of the discipline of science. Galileo pioneered what we now call the “scientific method,” the process of observation, hypothesis, experimentation, conclusion (usually with a whole lot of revised hypotheses and more experimentation in the middle) that is the standard practice in labs the world over. It is, in fact, how we have arrived at the theories of evolution and climate change. So to hold up Galileo as your patron saint when advocating against either is particularly inane.
2. Far be it for me to defend the Catholic Church, but Galileo didn’t do much to help his case when summoned to Rome to account for his heliocentric theories. He knew from observation that the solar system was sun-centered, but he didn’t have the model or the math to back it up. When ordered to prove that the earth spun on its axis, he ended up producing a half-baked justification based on the tides that, forgive the pun, simply held no water. And the Pope’s people responded predictably. The great irony was that there was ironclad mathematical proof that had been around for some time in the form of Johanne Kepler’s Astronomia Nova … proof Galileo would not use because his egomania would not permit him to cede the stage to another genius. Which just goes to show what happens when even a great scientific mind departs from the wisdom of his own scientific method. 

Three years ago I was writing with great enthusiasm on this blog about Obama’s candidacy, and then his election—largely based on the perception that the know-nothingness and willful ignorance of the Bush years looked finally to be coming to an end. I have since then known countless disappointments with this president, but my greatest despair comes with the fact that the American right has doubled down on what Al Gore called the assault on reason.

It inspires two thoughts: first, I am happy to be a Canadian. Second, I go to my first classes today with renewed purpose. Perhaps I’ll drop a comment or two about Galileo.

An infographic about grade inflation

Found here. This was compiled with reference to U.S. universities so some of what's here isn't quite relevant to Canadian universities, but some of it hits too close to home to be comfortable.

As of September 1st I have tenure ... and will have something more to say on the topic of grade inflation after that. But for the time being, I can happily say that A grades consistently comprise less than ten to fifteen percent of my final sheets, and I can count the number of A+'s I've given out in my six years at MUN on one and a half hands.

Grade inflation is a problem, but in my experience it happens in other grade brackets than the A range.


Created by: Masters Degree

Books, not donuts

Since moving to Newfoundland, I have looked back at Toronto, my city of origin, with increasing dismay. Every time I am home and happen to wander downtown, it feels like the city has eroded … and while I’m perfectly willing to entertain the idea that part of that stems from nostalgia for the days I lived in the Annex, it’s not entirely my imagination. I find it hard to believe that for decades, literally decades, Jane Jacobs made TO her home and the city so consistently ignored her suggestions and arguments for how to improve urban life.

Well, maybe not THAT hard to believe.

Lately of course, the election of Rob Ford as mayor has me more worried about my old home than usual, mainly because he and his brother Doug have promised to outsource and privatize everything that isn’t nailed down. And most recently I encountered this petition protesting plans to privatize community libraries.

Big sigh. This more than anything I have lately encountered is emblematic of the failure of conservative imagination. I understand the arguments behind privatization and cost-cutting; I don’t agree with many of them, but I understand them. I also understand the conservative fantasy of the self-made man or woman, who pulls him/herself up by the bootstraps. It’s a lovely idea and extremely commendable when it does happen, but it doesn’t happen in a vacuum.

Community libraries are already impoverished, but even in their most rudimentary form they provide invaluable services in terms of simply providing for those who can’t otherwise afford internet access or books or any of the other dozens of information resources they make available. Community libraries have, in many cases, become employment centers, clearing-houses for job advertisements and providing assistance with creating resumes.

Privatizing libraries would essentially eliminate this resource—first by levying user fees, but more significantly by closing down when it becomes obvious that libraries are, quite simply, not profitable enterprises.

And I really need to ask Doug Ford: if in fact there are more libraries in your neighbourhood than Tim Hortons, why is that a bad thing? If anything, it reflects well on your neighbourhood. And, to perhaps put it in terms you understand, do you not think that reversing that would adversely affect your property values?

Six years

I think part of the project of being a better blogger will mean not feeling compelled to write only weighty and/or lengthy posts. There was a time when I did not suffer this compunction, but then Facebook came along and it effectively became my default forum for my briefer rants, philosophical maunderings, and (hopefully) witty observances about life.

I will change that, even though my audience here is considerably smaller than my list of friends on Facebook. That being said, I notice as I look at my list of “followers” that three more people have joined this humble blog since last I looked. Considering that I haven’t posted in over a month, what drew you? By which I mean: welcome!

I’ve been working on a few posts that have, in the way of my posts, gotten a bit longer than I had planned. I had hoped to put up my it’s-been-six-weeks-since-GoT-ended jittery withdrawal symptoms / thoughtful retrospective post, but it’s busy getting nice and long and verbose. Hopefully tomorrow.

Meanwhile, I am ashamed to say I have missed two milestones. The first was this humble blog’s six-year anniversary. For those who have picked up my online maunderings midstream (and/or haven’t read my little “About Me” blurb to the right), I started this blog as a means to keep friends and family informed about my move to Newfoundland, and how life was unfolding here. Somewhere along the line as St. John’s morphed from extended tourist experience to home, I had less to say about life here and more to say about … well, really anything I was excited, perplexed, or angry about.

This blog’s birthday is July 20th, incidentally; I still remember writing the very brief first post in my newly-empty office at the University of Western Ontario. Less than a week later, I was on the road, heading for my new job at Memorial University and new life in Newfoundland.

The day before hitting the road, however, I became an uncle. My niece Morgan was born on July 25th, and yesterday she turned six years old.

Six years. So long and yet so short. Happy birthday, Miss Morgan!

Thoughts on Norway

I’ve got about three new blog posts in process, in an effort to get myself back into a respectable blogging schedule, but I feel quite compelled to post a brief comment about what has happened in Norway … first, because it is a tragedy that needs to be recognized; second, because it so terrifyingly embodies the most prevalent fear in the developed world; but third, because it strikes me that the political commentary apparatus currently in place is so ill-equipped to respond to these brutal attacks in any reasonable or nuanced manner.

There are two strains of response amongst western commentators that disgust me rather a lot. The first was the knee-jerk response from the right that immediately assumed the attacks were carried out by Islamic jihadists. But just as nauseating was the schadenfreude on the left decrying the right’s response when it became evident that the perpetrator was in fact an anti-Islam, vaguely neo-Nazi radical. I say “vaguely,” because it emerges that, though he was affiliated with various white supremacist websites, he is also apparently a staunch Zionist. Which itself has given ammunition to right-wing commentators, and back and forth the argument has gone.

If this horrendous act shows us anything, it is that those driven to such violence are of a piece; as Christopher Hitchens observes, the jihadist groups actually at work in Norway gleefully took credit at first, assuming it to be one of their own … making the same assumption, ironically, as right-wing commentators in the U.S. did. Anyone who tries to delineate the “capability” or “willingness” or “likelihood” of people to perpetrate such horrors based solely on straightforward ideological or religious affiliations is being dangerously, willfully ignorant. A case in point was what has widely been considered the stupidest comment on the massacre, courtesy of Erik Eriksson of Red State, writing for CNN: “With Christians, it is rather rare to see a self-described Christian engage in heinous terrorist acts.” Which is a ludicrous statement I could spend all day taking down, but will simply say instead: Northern Ireland.

Anders Behring Breivik, the vile architect of these killings, doesn’t fit into a simple mold, any more than Jared Loughner or Timothy McVeigh did; or for that matter, any more than one can unproblematically call the late-not-lamented Osama bin Laden “Muslim.” Bin Laden, after all, was just as antagonistic to Shiites as he was Americans, and had even more loathing for Sunni Muslims he saw as abandoning his rather narrow interpretation of the Koran. Apostates were worse, in his mind, than infidels; and it’s worth noting on that front that Breivik’s target was not Muslims, but Norwegians he saw as traitors to Norway’s heritage. His attack was actually of a piece with all of the sectarian violence we saw in Iraq after the fall of Saddam—not violence against the outsider, but the countryman who does not live up to one’s absolutist ideology.

When it comes to such violence, it really ceases to be left versus right. It’s about human versus inhuman.

Game of Thrones, Episode 1.10: "Fire and Blood"

Well, here we are at the end of all things … or, well, the end of Game of Thrones for the time being, as we say goodbye with the rather spectacular image of a naked Daenerys with a dragon on her shoulder. I must say: I knew that was coming, and it was still a moment that took my breath away.

As always, I am blogging with my friend Nikki Stafford from Nik at Nite, who has not read the novels … and I write from the perspective of one who has read the books from day one, and is currently counting down the days until book five in the series finally makes its long (LONG!) anticipated appearance in less than a month (squee!)


Chris: Well, I am devastated. I don’t know what I am going to do next Sunday. I think I can however safely say, and I will say this very quietly and only once, WELL FUCKING DONE, HBO. So often is fantasy brought to either the big or small screen completely ruined in the process (I’m lookin’ at you, Earthsea!). Peter Jackson, happily, reversed that trend with the Lord of the Rings trilogy; and HBO has pulled off something magnificent with Game of Thrones.

(Quick TV geek digression for Nikki’s benefit, re: casting for the upcoming The Hobbit. Evangeline Lilly of Lost and Lee Pace of Pushing Daisies have both been cast? Are you kidding? ).

But back to GoT … where to even begin? I think I’ll begin with the huge pleasure I have had these past few days reading people’s Facebook status updates after watching the finale (the winner is my former student Ashley’s blog post . Incidentally, half the images from the episode I’m putting in this post are stolen from hers), and talking to people who have not read the books. SO MANY great moments from the novel translated beautifully into the episode: Robb being hailed as King in the North; Jon’s brothers of the Watch reciting the vow to him; the Lord Commander revealing he knew of Jon’s attempted flight (“Honor set you on the Kingsroad. And honor brought you back.” “My friends brought me back.” “I didn’t say it was your honor.”); Arya facing down the boys with Needle; Tyrion being sent to act as Hand; Sansa finding some steel in her spine; Daenerys killing the shell of Drogo; and of course DRAGONS.

Deep sigh. It was all done so well, with such a deft touch. I wondered, going into the episode, how they would begin. And that opening shot with the bloody sword, and Ser Illyn picking up Ned’s head to brandish before the crowd; Sansa fainting; and Yoren cutting Arya’s hair and his repeated insistence that she is now a boy. I had been concerned about Yoren when we first met him—he seemed so different from the novel’s depiction, a hearty and hail-and-well-met kind of fellow. But seeing Ned Stark executed took the good humour out of him, I think, and his tough love where Arya is concerned is much closer to what we see of him in the novel.

Of course, the question I want to ask you is about the last moments of the show, but we should probably save that for the end. So let’s begin a little more innocuously: I really, really hope that in season two they continue with the Littlefinger/Varys show. That conversation, like all their conversations over the course of the season, was an invention of the writers. I have quite come to love the way Baelish and Varys have these little mini-plays where they poke and prod each other and reflect on the nature of power and ambition. What do you think?


Nikki: While the ending of this episode, however surprising, seemed muted compared to last week’s jaw-dropper, this was a great finale that definitely set up many, many plot points for season 2.

Oh absolutely, the conversation between those two keeps you on your toes throughout. Listening to those two talk is like watching a chess match: you know at one point there’s going to be a trick, and one is going to topple, but you don’t know when that moment is coming, or which one will be victorious. Their wits are evenly matched, with Littlefinger lobbing an insult at Varys, who’s unhurt by it and lobs something back, and Littlefinger is equally unfazed by what Varys just said. Those two are fantastic, and the actors play it brilliantly.

I like that you said Sansa found steel in her spine, because that’s almost exactly what I exclaimed when she verbally spat in that little sniveling idiot’s face, when I said, “Yes! Sansa has a spine after all!” Of all the siblings, she truly is trapped right now. Moments after we saw her faint, we see her on the sidelines of the court, red-eyed and done up in her finery with her crazy halo hair matching Cersei’s, and I thought, she just can’t escape. These people are her worst enemies, and she’s still betrothed to that piece of shit. Cersei looks uncomfortable all the time now (for the little we saw her in the episode), and I LOVED that Sansa forced herself to look at her father’s face, and instead of recoiling, she found power in it. She didn’t do what Joffrey wanted her to do in this scene. At first when I saw her look down, I thought she would throw herself over the edge of that bridge, until she took a step forward. Damn the Hound for stopping her, although he was right to do so. I’m actually quite fascinated by the Hound, to be honest, and hope he plays a significant role in the next season.

I also enjoyed the scene where we find out the old fart (whose name escapes me) isn’t an old fart at all, but a spry man pretending to be old and decrepit. That scene was very amusing, but if he were able to be with Roxanne, she had to figure there’s SOME life in the old guy!

Arya making the long walk north pretending to be a boy – alongside Robert’s bastard son, no less – should provide some very interesting fodder for the next season. My first question to you is, does book 2 pick up immediately where book 1 left off?

Chris: Not exactly. The prologue of A Clash of Kings takes us to the island of Dragonstone, where we meet Stannis Baratheon for the first time. And then the first chapter of the novel proper is Arya walking north with Yoren and the rest of the Night’s Watch “recruits.”

And you are correct in assuming that Arya’s journey north is compelling and, as you say, excellent narrative fodder. I don’t think I’m giving anything away when I say that the journey ends up being, ah, more circuitous than was planned at the outset. ;-)

And the old fart whose name you’re forgetting is Grand Maester Pycelle … the scene was interesting, and a complete invention. At first I wasn’t sure what to make of it, but I kind of liked it in the end … he is about as much of a schemer as Littlefinger and Varys, so it’s kind of cool that they’re establishing his dotage as just a façade. Which will be good for the next season—he and Tyrion have quite the showdown, heh.

Speaking of everyone’s favourite Halfling, what did you think of the interaction between Tywin and Tyrion? We know quite well at this point that Tyrion is one of the smartest (if not the smartest) character in the series … obviously his father sees in him some value, even as he despises him for his whoring and the sin of being a dwarf. Again, not giving anything away in saying that this sets up Tyrion’s principal plotline for season two—he takes his wildlings to King’s Landing, and has the unenviable task of trying to rein in Joffrey’s worst tendencies.


Nikki: That was a great scene, especially the look on Tyrion’s face when it slowly dawns on him that his father is complimenting him. I loved the line, “I took you for a stunted fool,” with Tyrion’s response, “Well, you were half right.” I cannot WAIT to see him try to be the Hand of THAT king.

How old is Joffrey meant to be when he becomes king, do you know? Is he about 15 or older than that? I couldn’t quite remember how old he was said to be at the beginning of the series.

But as the new king rises, it’s time to talk about the other king falling, and the death of Khal Drogo. What a devastating moment. It reminded me of a scene in a later season of Buffy (because of our ongoing Buffy Rewatch, I don’t want to give anything away), where someone wants to raise the dead and is warned that what you bring back might look like them, but it isn’t actually them. Daenerys asked for Drogo’s life, and she got it, but that’s not what she meant. I was on the verge of tears watching her begging her “sun and stars” to come back to her. I thought perhaps there would be a strange scene of the sun appearing to rise in the west and he’d come back to her, but it wasn’t meant to be.

And the very end was interesting, because early in the season, I can’t remember which episode, she places a dragon egg in the fire and picks it up, but it doesn’t hurt her hand. I remember saying to my husband, “Maybe the eggs are like popcorn and they’ll pop open and the dragons will jump out.” Of course, when Daenerys herself was walking toward the pyre that image was the LAST thing on my mind, and all I could think of is when Daenerys was told in last week’s episode that once Drogo was dead, she was nothing, but man, if that woman survives the pyre burning, they’ll be loathe to walk away from her! So when Ser Jorah walked up to her and she lifted her head, I thought that was the miracle. Until something popped up behind her and I thought, “Oh my GOD she spilled water on Gizmo and there’s a Gremlin behi— no, wait… OMG it’s a dragon.”

A freakin’ DRAGON.

Oh, take THAT, Joffrey!!!!!!


Chris: In the novel, Joffrey is thirteen. I think he’s supposed to be fifteen or so in the series.

What I love most about GRRM’s storytelling is how consistently he subverts your expectations. Ned is the hero? He’s going to escape to join Daenerys? NO! BAM! He’s dead. Drogo is going to cross the sea with Daenerys and reclaim her kingdom? NO! BAM! He’s dead. But then into those shocked spaces he instead advances less expected, and better plots … Dany seems to lose everything, but emerges from the fire with dragons. Ned is killed, but his son is crowned King of the North. Jon Snow finds himself in the vanguard of the only war that really matters.

And so on.

This final episode was really emotionally charged for me, and not just because I knew what was coming … the final bit with the dragon appearing over Daenerys’ shoulder was simply perfect, and I rewound and watched the last three minutes no fewer than half a dozen times. The emotional timbre of the scene was pitch-perfect, with Jorah’s shocked and amazed expression as he, and everyone around Dany, sinks to their knees to pledge themselves to her. That is the moment that she becomes a queen.

The death of Drogo, however, is genuinely heartbreaking, because of course he does not die at first. Seeing him as an empty husk is worse than seeing him fall in a fight; and the ambivalence we feel when Mirri Maz Duur unapologetically admits that she knew exactly what she was doing is emblematic of the way the series (and the novel) never panders or gives us clear-cut rights and wrongs. Drogo’s khalasar DID commit atrocities—they did take women to be raped, even in spite of Dany’s intervention, and enslave half a village and slaughter the other half. Of course Mirri Maz Duur didn’t want Drogo’s son to be born, and none of Daenerys’ best intentions can change the woman’s hatred of the Dothraki.

I also have to give props to Sophie Turner. Playing Sansa is something of a thankless role, as she had to be bratty and annoying for the better part of the season while everyone rhapsodized in reviews and online about Arya and Daenerys. A question that frequently came up among the n00bs was “Does Sansa ever get less annoying?” And the answer, of course, is a resounding yes. She has learned hard lessons, and the hatred on her face when she faces down Joffrey at the end makes up for all her previous simpering.

And as long as we’re on the topic of thankless roles, let’s not forget to give a shout-out to Jack Gleeson, whose excruciatingly hateful portrayal of Joffrey was brilliantly done—and spot on, as far as the novel goes. And unlike Sansa, he gets no redeeming moment … we end the season hating him even more than we did at its outset.

So there we are. Big sigh … Now we have to wait a year, or however long it’s going to take HBO to get season two together (pleasepleaseplease do not pull a year and a half hiatus, a la The Sopranos … it was bad enough waiting six years between books).

Take it home, Nikki!


Nikki: Wow, the last word on such a fantastic season. I didn’t say anything about the King of the North scene, but yes, that was amazing, and I loved the look of pride on Catelyn’s so recently anguished face, as well as her earlier promise to Robb that they will go to King’s Landing, find Sansa and Arya, and then kill all of the Lannisters (the women in this episode are SO strong). And while I hope Jaime Lannister gets beaned in the head by a few more boulders along the way, I found the scene between him and Catelyn to be intriguing when he simply tells her the truth when answering every one of her questions about Bran… all except that last “why?” of course.

I can’t wait for next season, and I plan to read the first book now to see for myself what the show was based on (but I’ll have the opposite experience of you, because my reading will be coloured by the way the TV characters are now in my head, whereas your viewing of the show was influenced by what you’d read). But the way they’ve left it, I’m not sure if I’ll be able to wait on reading the second book.

But the one thing that will hold me off from reading that second book is the chance to do this again with you. I want to extend a huge thank-you on behalf of myself and my readers for agreeing to do this every week with me, giving us your insight without spoiling what was to come (where else could we get the perspective of a GRRM fan and still have Ned’s death be an absolute shock?) and making this a much richer experience for all of us. I do hope we can do it again on the second season.

Until then, may the warm winds blow from the South, may the Dragon make her way to King’s Landing, may the King of the North prevail, and may Joffrey cut himself with a razor, trip and fall into a vat of peroxide, break both his legs on the way in, end up in a half-body cast, and have the inside of that cast invaded by fire ants.

Ah, I knew playing “Worst-Case Scenario” in public school would pay off some day…

See y’all in season 2!