A Galaxy Divided (Star Wars: Rise of Skywalker Spoiler-Filled Review)

As Mao’s health was failing him, there were two people vying for his position as paramount leader. His chosen successor, Hua Guofang, advocated what came to be known as the “Two Whatevers”, which stated, “We will resolutely uphold whatever policy decisions Chairman Mao made, and unswervingly follow whatever instructions Chairman Mao gave.” The other person who was maneuvering for paramount leader—and who eventually did outmaneuver Hua Guofeng—was Deng Xiaoping, who, advancing his “Four Modernizations”, put far less emphasis on ideology, refused to concede on the utterly disastrous Cultural Revolution, and advocated a policy agenda that sought to rapidly advance the country’s agricultural output (China had still not recovered from the Great Leap Forward), industrial development, defensive capabilities, and economic development (it should be noted that Xiaoping, for all of the good he did for China, also ordered the Tiananmen Square Massacre on June 4th, 1989).



The reason why I bring this up is that, Star Wars, particularly the latest trilogy, seems to be an ideological and cultural struggle in its own right, between JJ Abrams, who directed The Force Awakens and Rise of the Skywalker, and whose vision for Star Wars might be categorized as the “Two Whatevers”; and Rian Johnson, who directed The Last Jedi, who might more closely resemble the “Four Modernizations” in that he sought to change Star Wars and compel audiences to look at it more critically. Unfortunately for the trilogy, and Star Wars as a cultural entity, I think that its version of the “Two Whatevers” (“Whatever George Lucas would have wanted...”) won out with the final film.



I loved The Last Jedi, as I believed that it pushed the Star Wars saga to a close, and, in a very meta way, asked fans to examine it more critically, particularly when Phantom Yoda and Luke Skywalker were discussing the legacies of past Jedi. It was obvious that they were talking about Star Wars, and Rian Johnson very obviously wanted to change Star Wars—I think—for the better.



The primary theme of The Last Jedi was that the heroics of the original trilogy were no longer working against the First Order, and survival required not one single hotshot pilot running suicide missions, but everyone working together. It left the Resistance on the run from an insurmountable enemy, calling for help from the Outer Planets (the idea that the FO doesn’t control and cannot reach sections of the galaxy is very interesting to me and I wish the political situation was more fleshed out in the series), and on the verge of total defeat. It also introduced more diverse characters, and unfortunately the actors who played these characters—like Kelly Marie Tran—were harassed incessantly by die-hard fans who liked Star Wars when it was much less diverse. Again, pushing Star Wars forward.



Of course, because of the tsunami of vitriol and harassment against the people involved, JJ Abrams was called back in to deliver a salve in the form of what one could call the “most Star Wars of all the Star Wars movies,” which not only erased much of what The Last Jedi was trying to say about Star Wars (like how Rey was a nobody—and then, oops!--she’s a nobody but also of Palpatine lineage, and also the final scene of the kid working in the space stables who lifts the broom using the Force, implying that anyone could be Force-sensitive), but also delivered a highly rushed, extremely crowd-pleasing finale built on a narrative house of cards. 25 years later you are going to tell me that Emperor Palpatine survived not only being tossed into the Death Star fusion reactor, but also the explosion itself, and then somehow made it back to the Sith home system? Upon this house of cards, they further piled on brick after brick of fan service moments—Lando shows up! Phantom Luke Skywalker! A touching funeral for Leia/Carrie Fisher! Han Solo gets Kylo Ren to abandon the Dark Side! Totally sidelined Rose Tico!--specifically designed to, like HBO begging people not to cancel their service after Game of Thrones ended, beg the neo-Nazi fanbase not to have a Unite the Right rally outside their offices.



Did I describe Rise of Skywalker as a house of cards? It would be more accurate to call it a bullet train made of rice paper. The two-and-a-half-hour runtime is jam-packed with loud noises, quick edits, few slow transitions, and no character development whatsoever. I said earlier that it is the “most Star Wars movie of all the Star Wars” because it is filled to the very second of Star Wars “stuff”--little character dialogue, a lot of lasers and lightsabers, and a lot of “this is where we need to go next.” There is no tension, no build-up, no uncertainty. There is no logical consideration for anything that happens; no justification. Early in the film, the Squad falls into what is basically quicksand after a speederbike chase, and they find the dagger which tells them where the Sith starmap is, and then suddenly a giant sandworm/snake thing appears. Later, they go to the ruins of the Death Star II (which is very cool, but I hoped that Rey got her tetanus shot beforehand), and all of the sudden she knows that in the handguard of the dagger is an outline of the ruins and a marker showing the exact location of the Sith starmap. She just takes it out of her pack and bam!—she knows everything. The only real narrative tension in the film—up until the end—is when C3-PO gets his memory wiped so they can break the lock on the Sith language in his programming, but this isn’t Data at the end of Star Trek: Nemesis; toward the end of the film, R2 jabs him in the head and restores his memory lickety-split.



Look, I know Star Wars is supposed to be a Big, Important Thing, but the lack of narrative tension is a real issue. The incessant breakneck pace of the film desensitizes the viewer to everything happening on the screen, and what makes matters worse is the foreknowledge that everything is going to happen a certain way. There is no time to build that tension, to ask what or why the characters are doing a certain thing. It’s Star Wars as told by JJ Abrams: Shit just happens and we’re only here for the laser-light show.



Some pretty amazing things happen in the last twenty minutes or so. The Outer Planets’ massive fleet shows up. Neo fights Agent Smith in the rain and ion lightning. Agent Smith unleashes a massive EMP/lightning storm that disables the fleet’s ships. Kylo Ren kisses Rey before he dies (using the last of his life Force to resurrect her in a necessary sacrifice so that Carrie Fisher can be at peace). And, like Independence Day, all of the Star Destroyers are miraculously annihilated after the Sith base is wiped out (someone needs to explain to me how Ewoks—who have never reached space and have been oppressed by the Empire basically since forever—managed to get rid of a Star Destroyer).



JJ Abrams’ “Two Whatevers” won over Johnson’s “Four Modernizations,” and I really think that the entire series as a cultural mecca suffers for it. It is set in the same black stone, a large mass in space that produces its own gravity, and all of us are just orbiting it now, enjoying the pretty lights and not thinking very hard.

The Joy of Reading a Debut Novel

A new book comes in the mail. You've been waiting over a week for it, and you just finished a previous novel the day before. You read a review of it on your favorite literary outlet, and you crack it open. The author hasn't written anything prior. Maybe nobody's heard of it. Maybe it exploded all over the cultural news. But here it is, on your lap, open to your eyes. Here it is, only having existed for a month. Maybe only a year or, perhaps, two. Untested. New. Novel.

I have finished just shy of sixty books so far this year (and it's only the end of July!). It's a lot. Many are excellent, and some are just average. I like to read the classics; I like to read about history, philosophy, politics; I like novels from around the world. But something that gives me particular joy is reading debut novels. I have read many.

I have read There There by Tommy Orange, who won the PEN/Faulkner Prize for a Debut Novel, who had just won the Hemingway prize, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer--on his first book! I was not the first person to read There There; I had read it early in the year after it was published, but I found it wholly deserving of the praise heaped upon it at the time and the prizes and accolades it continues to win.

I have just started Idaho by Emily Ruskovich. I am about 1/3rd of the way through it. It came out in 2017, it earned a Kirkus Star, and  The Guardian had an article about it, which I only found recently, despite the date of publication. Idaho is the story of a woman whose husband is developing dementia, and the husband's previous wife inexplicably murdered one of their children. She wants to know why before dementia overtakes him.

But one debut novel that had been completely forgotten--and that I absolutely love and still mention to people--is The Ghost Network by Catie Disabato. She has yet to publish another novel. The Ghost Network came out in 2015, and I still think about it. It's not a perfect novel, but it is one of the only two novels I have ever read (the other being House of Leaves by Mark Danielewski, which I will discuss later) written in a nonfiction, investigative style. I forget how I even found it, but I remember reading the NYTimes review of it at some point, and decided that I must read it. I was looking for another novel in the same style as House of Leaves, and I had found it.

The Ghost Network is about a celebrity journalist who is investigating the mysterious disappearance of a Lady Gaga-like pop star named Molly Metropolis. The investigation leads a little bit into the weird, featuring an avant-garde architectural movement, among other curiosities. It somewhat borders on magical realism. I felt that it was brilliant and weird enough for me, and I sing its praises wherever and whenever I can.

This is perhaps the biggest reason I enjoy debut novels so much. I am always hungry for something new, something different. Something so totally bonkers, like Animal Money by Michael Cisco (which is not a debut novel, but is wonderful nonetheless. Go ahead, check out that sexy cover!), that no one else would ever even think to look for it.

I do not, however, want to give the impression that I do not also enjoy the classics. I am as big a literary snob as they come. My favorite novelists are Emile Zola and Dostoevsky. I read everything from Dickens to Dune (I'm bringing Dune on vacation next week. I plan to start it after Idaho). But sometimes I need something really, really, really different. That is where my love of debut novels comes from. As well as my other, secret, love of something called Weird Lit, or, more specifically, New Weird...

Are you ready for this rabbit hole?

Weird Lit encompasses authors like Lovecraft or William Hope Hodgeson, as well as Ambrose Bierce or Robert Chambers. It is fantasy and science fiction, but without traditional monsters or events; things that are indescribable or unexplainable. New Weird builds on this tradition, and incorporates offbeat science fiction like Jeff Vandermeer's Annihilation, Borne, or Danielewski's House of Leaves, The Cipher by Kathy Koja, novels by China Meiville, and Animal Money by Michael Cisco. The famous Japanese horror master Junji Ito (Uzumaki, Tomie, Gyo) is also considered a part of this tradition.

Earlier, I had mentioned Animal Money and House of Leaves, two radically different novels--totally unique from anything else I had read before and since--both in substance and style, that have really opened up new worlds to me, and new literary possibilities. Let's start with House of Leaves, which is a little bit less weird than Animal Money.

If you are familiar with the Slender Man phenomenon, it helps to think of that as a point of reference for the kinds of things that happen in this book. The main character's landlord dies, and, among his belongings, is a heavily annotated manuscript that reads as an investigation into a series of home videos called the Navidson Report.

Main Character > Manuscript > Home Video. Three layers. But we aren't yet done!

The Navdison family has just moved into their new house, and it isn't long before they discover that the external and internal dimensions of the house do not line up.  They discover a gap, and in this gap is a dark, possibly infinite, labyrinth that extends into the earth. Mr Navidson decides to spelunk into the labyrinth, and he brings a video camera and lights as far as he can into the labyrinth.

So far so good.

Layer two, the landlord's manuscript, talks about the Navidson Report as though it were real, and includes citations from real publications, just like The Ghost Network does. It is a heavily researched book on the Navidson Report, trying to figure out what it is and where it came from.

It is as if Slender Man were real and was reported about on the news not as some bizarre pseudo-religious phenomenon, but as actual fact.

Some parts of it are hard to read. I read it on ebook and I feel like I missed out on some important parts of it, because there are annotations, some text changes depending on who is speaking, and one section where you have to only read the first letter of every word, which is very difficult and sometimes didn't make sense.

HOWEVER.

It was the only book to ever keep me awake until morning. I've been reading Stephen King since middle school. I read Joe Hill (King's son). I read the supposed "scariest novels ever." Nothing, I tell you: nothing scared me the way House of Leaves did.

And, I think there's a minotaur in that labyrinth....

The other novel that is completely bonkers was not scary, but it did have Communist aliens, occult economists, money that could sexually reproduce, and a character who did not even exist in the world of the novel itself! Animal Money by Michael Cisco was a complete satire on economics and monetary value, and it was as hysterical as it was brilliant. Once again, look at that cover!

I will close with one final Weird Lit novel, this time by another science fiction author who is famous if you know where to look.

The City & the City by China Meivelle (who also wrote Perdido Street Station, The Scar, and Embassytown) was made into a BBC miniseries a few years ago. Reviews of the series were mixed and I never watched it, but the novel itself is perfect for our current political situation. The story is as follows:

Two cities exist in the same physical space, but different psychological dimensions. Citizens of one city are conditioned to "unsee" events, people, and places in the other. "Breaching" this law is the most serious offense a citizen can commit. The main character is charged with investigating a murder of a citizen of one city by a citizen of the other.

When I think of this novel, I think about how it could be that Democrats and Republicans occupy the same physical space, but completely alien psychological spaces. As our political situation grows more severe, the more relevant this fascinating novel becomes.

One of Meivelle's other novels, The Scar, takes place entirely on a city far out in the ocean constructed entirely of boats.

I am always looking for something new, something different, and debut novels are a big part of exactly that, whether they are of the Weird tradition or not. Reading something that few have ever seen before, that has only existed for a short time, brings the joy of discovery, of surprise, and occasionally, of terror.