PROLOGUE

I owe any success I might have to my fortuitous proximity to a high volume of great, good people, and I am continuously grateful for that proximity.

Earlier in the month, I had a conversation with one such great person, the program director at The Reading Team. I forget exactly how we got around to talking about it, but Charity both made me feel good about my professional capabilities as a whole and helped me find a sense of peace with where I'm at, overall, in my life right now. Her insight helped me place where I'm at in my journey; she left me with the assurance that, though I am in the thick of getting established and finding my place and every day the horizon gets lost behind the haze… I am in the right spot, and I am going to come out on the other side of this challenging period and find myself in the right place if I remain mindful. Most importantly, Charity made me feel like I'm in the right place now. Probably a good move for a supervisor, huh?

But, with sincerity—it's conversations and guidance like this that help me stay sane. I'm grateful for the people in my life who offer invaluable perspectives. The exchange was a highlight of a May that blurred by very quickly.

A SENDOFF TO A SPINOFF

Phenomenal Star Wars, and just plain phenomenal TV—no ifs, Andor buts.

This past month, I finished watching the second season of the Star Wars TV series Andor. The weeklong spans between its three-episode arcs were some of the most agonizing waits I have experienced as a fan of a show. Having concluded the series as a whole, I can affirm that it occupies a space amidst my top three Star Wars shows/movies as a of all time, duking it out with later seasons of The Clone Wars as well as Revenge of the Sith. Were I to remove sentimentality from the equation, Andor would very likely occupy the top spot, period (especially where Revenge is involved—listen, I grew up with the Prequels, they're like Star Wars family).

What an extraordinary work it is to so deeply enrich and expand its source material, the art that came before it. A spinoff TV prequel to a spinoff movie, Andor managed to go from a “why do I care?” title about a supporting character to perhaps the best work in the Star Wars canon.

Andor takes a fantastical world and relates it to the world we know by such simple acts as revealing the day-to-day lives of characters, the love they have for each other, the toil they are subject to, and the systems of the environment they navigate. This makes the world of Star Wars no less fantastical; rather, it brings its audience closer to it, invites them to bridge the gap between their fantasies and their reality, to walk across the bridge and believe in a world full of wonders.

Andor treats its audience with utmost respect. Its creative team, lead by Tony Gilroy, depicts its events with a brilliantly nuanced hand that allows connections to fall into place rather than bash its viewers’ heads in; it grounds the extraordinary circumstances of typical Star Wars in the vivid stakes of the characters’ lives and convictions; it relishes in the details and continuity of the world; it does not rely on implausible devices or vague forces to drive its plot—and yet it does not belittle those forces, either, but rather allows them in their mystery to be vast and protean.

Andor reflects the desperate struggles of the world in which we live—consider the modern threats of surveillance capital as mentioned in previous newsletters. Andor depicts a story of rebellion against tyranny, surveillance, injustice, colonialism, fascism. It makes the stakes real. It beckons the audience into an understanding of these things by giving them a richly-crafted lens of fantasy through which to look.

Andor features an extraordinary cast of characters depicted by phenomenal actors mobilized by an immensely talented, dedicated team. The love I mentioned last month, that love of creators for their work, is plainly evident in all aspects of the series.

The feeling in my chest when I ended was as much a sense of loss of the show as it was a satisfaction with the ending. Here’s hoping the series’ immense success encourages more work like it.

Also, Elizabeth Dulau is amazing, incredible, and I’d better see her in more things very soon.

I DON’T KNOW JACK ABOUT PROSE

Taste develops before ability.

It occurred to me while writing my Saunter Special for this newsletter that I am not well-versed in writing compelling prose.

I don’t think that’s to mean I don’t have any talents in persuasive or academic writing, nor a lack of appreciation for impactful writing, but rather I am not nearly as well-studied in what makes effective prose writing, and what it ought to feel like as I am writing it, as I am with script mediums such as screenwriting.

This mild crisis of mine hit me while reading The Magician’s Land by Lev Grossman, the finale of a trilogy exploring the existential ennui of what a Potteresque magical world would actually look like. In The Magician’s Land, there is a series of chapters in which Grossman writes a book within the novel—reading chapters ~16-18 becomes synonymous with reading The Door in the Page by the fictional Rupert Chatwin.

In the wider novel itself, Rupert’s writings are occasionally prodded by the main characters—the writing is described as probably written “quickly, fluidly, with minimal punctuation and only occasional corrections. Plum got the impression he’d never even reread it after he started writing” (Grossman 207). For whatever reason—probably some sense of insecurity with regards to the quality of my own prose—I took the meta-commentary on the book-within-a-book to imply that Rupert’s writing is subpar. Reading The Door in the Page, though, I found myself thinking his account was entirely functional, and became haunted by the thought that the characters within the novel were viewing the writing of this book to be inferior. It made me wonder whether my own prose was any good, either.

There were several misapprehensions that lead to this line of thinking. First, I had neglected the separation between author and character; second, I had blown the commentary of the characters out of proportion; third, I had forgotten the key context of how and when Rupert wrote The Door in the Page. At the time of writing that book-within-a-book, Rupert—the reason he had seemingly “never even reread it after he started writing”—was hunkered inside a British tank in World War II, moments before a major engagement that would spell his death.

This little crisis of faith had me considering how I identify Well-Written Prose. I think of a couple of passages that stand out to me from the canon of works that have influenced my writing.

This book is a key influence in how I write prose (regardless, of course, of how well I actually emulate its grace). Bradbury has a way of elaborating on details which is richly evocative, engaging every sense in order to enrich the others. Whether Clarisse’s hands are actually making sound as they move is irrelevant; what matters is that the detail rallies more of the reader’s imagination, encouraging us to expand our mind’s eye to accommodate it. It reminds me of the breaths and rustles which fill out the soundscape of an anime, tiny and yet so full of character and theatricality that they draw the audience in.

There’s also the way in which Bradbury connects everything to everything else. She moves forward carried by the wind; her face is bent to watch her feet stir the leaves; there is sound and motion that comes with her discovering someone standing before her. It’s a kinetic world, where every description gives it breath and life.

A more recent example is from, perhaps ironically, the most recent Lev Grossman novel, the one which ensorceled my whole mind and compelled me to read the Magician’s trilogy in the first place. This next sample comes from the end of the book; no spoilers, but just to be aware of if you might want to read the The Bright Sword with a clean slate:

So it’s clear I’m a fan of a sentence that lingers a bit. This paragraph’s immense impact is a product, to me, of language loaded with emotional weight. The subjects are “running before the wind,” their literal—and metaphorical?—“shadow lost far out to sea behind [them].” The description of “the ocean like a great rippling meadow,” and the cloudbank “lit up from behind, as though it were holding back a mighty torrent of molten gold”—it’s all extraordinary use of figurative language to paint an absolutely gorgeous watercolor picture that carries the weight of all 667 pages before it. I guess I like prose that builds and builds and builds, that creates grand images which are then dappled with gorgeous details and comparisons that challenge the senses and deepen the passage. I like clarity, rhythm, momentum, and detail; I like having to take a big bite.

Returning to prose in force with the Saunter Special was a fun exercise—I hadn’t written in longform prose, with the intention purely to entertain, in months. I’m looking forward to seeing how it shakes out, and what I learn from it. If you haven’t read the special yet, I would be much obliged, had you the opportunity, if you would check it out and consider offering some feedback—I’d love to know how it resonates.

—

Michael