Reading for pleasure, reading for work, reading for school, editing a peer’s paper, working with a student, reading critically, reading constructively, reading actively, reading passively: the spectrum of reading flashes in images and memories tied intimately to my sense of self. As a writer, as a reader, as a person.

I’m not alone in this bind. This knot. Not even close.

And, as such, reading has become a fraught concept for us all.

So, to get at it, I have to come at this whole thing split. First, as a writer: a purveyor of things to read. Then as a reader: a consumer of ready-things. I’ll argue that they’re essentially the same, but, to begin, let’s quarantine each in its own section. With pictures, of course. For pacing reasons.

Let’s begin with “the writer”.

Not so fast!

I hate to do this, really, excuse me but: What is a “writer”? I’m embarrassed to ask. It seems obvious. But, then, I’ll bet you texted someone recently. That’s writing. Sent an email. Applied for college. Maybe journaled? Those things are writing and when you did them you were a writer. Writing is an verb as well as a noun. I said I was a writer––which makes sense, right, you’re reading something I ostensibly wrote––but are there levels? Big writer, small writer, published writer, amateur? It all seems…arbitrary. And, at least for now (spoiler alert: forever!), I’m going to include everyone in the category of “writer”. If we have to narrow it later, so be it (we will, but, cleverly––trust me! I’m a writer).

Furthermore reading as a “writer” presupposes both the capacity to write and, first and foremost, the capacity to read––which is a solid argument for starting with the other category first. “Reader”, as it were. On every level I’m piling on the terminology. It’s a bad habit. But “reading”, stretching back to your earliest interactions with the written word, is always and quite essentially “writing”. So, no! Let’s stay here. For a while. Keep plugging away at this nonsense.

Also, I tricked you back there. The question is not, what is a “writer”, it is, really, what is “writing”? And the answer is: complicated! Storytelling is not writing. I tell many stories out loud, or by means of interpretive dance. My cats tell stories. For example “There used to be food here and now there isn’t” or “There is a bird and it’s come to the window and I want TO FUCKING KILL IT!!!” And they can’t even speak words. Writing often has something to do with using letters to form words. But, in this case, I want to talk about the more subtle meaning of the verb. Which is: To imbue those symbols with meaning. Taking abstract symbols in formal orders and filling them with purpose. Like this! What you’re reading now! Hey-o!

When I write, I use tools, such words and punctuation, but also syntax, spacing, color, and––in the case of this article––pictures to transmit something I’ve thought or imagined across the unbridgeable gap to you. When I write these words (and spaces etc etc you get the point) I am imbuing them with meaning. I just did it. And again! But there’s a problem: meaning is like fuel. Words use my meaning to cross the gap between us. But by the time they arrive to you, that meaning is gone. Words are leaky receptacles for meaning. And so, when you “read”, or I “read”, we must put meaning back into them. And each meaning a reader imparts to a word will be wildly, radically different from other readers’ meanings (or even that same reader’s meanings, at different times).

Obvious examples include language drift (“weird” in Macbeth vs. weird in contemporary English) or dialectical differences (fanny pack vs. smoke a f*g). If you read The Canterbury Tales, which was technically written in English, you’d get a very different story than what Chaucer intended. Someone else with a PhD in Medieval Literature could probably guess at what he meant, but really the best anyone can get is an estimate of what most people at that time in that region would have thought he meant. Two very different things. Or you could take Dante’s Divine Comedy. Even if you could read 14th Century Italian, without copious supplemental materials (which are in themselves guesswork) the specifics of all his references and the words themselves would be impossible to grasp outside the context of his own land and century and, most importantly, mind!

But that’s broad! To the specific person, each text is an unique collaborative experience. We bring our own baggage to each word: where we first heard it , how it feels in our mind/mouth, what it represents to us. Which blue do you see when you read “the startling blue sky”? How do you engage with an image like “Her nails clicked on the formica countertop like pebbles falling on concrete”? To get very stoner-deep on you, blue is not the same blue to everyone. It is a distinct expression of our own lives and experiences. We all fill in the gaps and fill those leaky receptacles with our own lives, and as such are creative partners in the act of reading/writing.

Sometimes that partnership is fruitful. Over the course of my (albeit brief, thirty year) life, I’ve gone from despising Tolstoy to becoming a devoted fan. Any strong reaction to a text I find to be a success, but, in the case of the great Russian, my capacity for empathizing with his characters and scenarios evolved with my own life experiences, changing his novels every time I read them. At this level of abstraction we are no longer talking about words but about the formal tools of the “craft”. Characters, plot, etc. But the same truth holds: these are empty vessels when they come to us, and we fill them as we may.

Our understanding of the act of reading as the act of writing is the key to exploring of reading in the context of our lives. The further we abstract (like a camera lens, panning back, away from the granular letters words spaces out out past characters past chapters past plot out to the world itself) the more this concept will serve us.

If “writer” is formally synonymous with “reader”, maybe I was mistaken in my quarantining of these sections. But, of course, I could have gone back and edited this to fix that issue, so you know, as a reader, that I, the writer, meant to keep them. There was no mistake.

Because, sadly, for all my technical philosophical nonsense, we know there is a difference between reader and writer. There are two senses to each of those words, and––however intimate they are––we must deal with them each on their own terms.

This is really why I chose to write this. Because once you understand what reading is, in that formal-philosophical way, it reveals a startling truth: every person in America is taught how to read incorrectly. That’s the reason for my ladder of reading experiences. That is why everyone I know hates some book they were forced to read in school. Be it To the Lighthouse or My Antonia or Where the Red Fern Grows: no one comes out unscathed.

Reading is beaten out of us. Generally, it’s by well-meaning teachers. Reading as an act of creation––as an act of love––is molded into reading to an end. That end being a grade, therefore––for many of us––a punishment. The joy so many have reading and re-reading Goodnight Moon or The Berenstain Bears gets stripped off us like old paint and we’re re-lacquered into new, ugly, stupid ways of reading. Not to be extremely “me” about this, but this quantification, reward-punishment model is quintessential of a degraded bourgeois society. Pleasure cannot come into it. It must be for the acquisition of knowledge, the mastery of some skill that will make us more productive. Instilling love or even further understanding ourselves is irrelevant to the conveyor belt education in this fucked-up country.

We are classed “Good Readers” or “Bad Readers”. Our reading is given numerical values (“Little Susie reads at a fourth grade level, while Erik’s lagging back at the second grade level.”) and grades. We are tested and re-tested and taught that “reading” has a definitive shape. You read to analyze. Or, more perhaps more accurately, to acquire.

This is certainly a way to read. And it’s a skill, so I understand teaching it. But it isn’t taught as a mode of reading, a kind of reading, a way to engage. Everything has to be clear cut and grade-able, or else it has no value our society. So the truer way of reading, the one that accepts the unknowability of authorial intent and the primacy of us as co-creators of our reading experiences is completely and utterly disregarded.

This is why I started with writer first. Because reading isn’t fraught in-and-of-itself. Reading might be a little complicated phenomenologically, but once grasped it has nothing inherently fraught in it. In fact, as it is a completely personal act, it should be rather un-fraught: reading is neither good nor bad, neither right nor wrong, like walking or waving your hand it is simply an action taken.

But the way it is taught in school changes that. More and more, reading is a shibboleth for college-educated liberals. A way to sift the in-crowd from the out. They’ve tied “Read” like “Vote” to their incessant war against poor people and joy––and by forcing moral weight on a concept without it, they’ve transformed reading for many into something joyless and, even worse, compulsory. Even worse, they use something as ridiculous as what one reads to mark out their kind. Knausgaard for a particular brand of bro-liberals that effloresce around toxic, self-obsessed authors in the mold of David Foster Wallace. And maybe Rachel Cusk or Maggie Nelson for that same brand but a little more femme, with a whiff of progressive politics that the Knausgaard crowd don’t care for––how can you have time for politics when there’s another thousand pages about your life to write! But at their core, they’re the same: reading (*this*) makes me good. I am smarter because I read (particularly *this*). I know more, am better, and have my opinions because of it, which consequently makes my opinions better than the people who don’t read!

Donald Trump’s illiteracy was a stand-in for his bad opinions, whereas Pete Buttigieg’s reading habits were a sure sign of his moral rectitude and––therefore––his in-ness. Here is a link to Pete Buttigieg’s Top Ten Books if you’re looking for a picture-perfect example of liberal shibboleths. He passed the test! Obama too! These guys READ! (And bomb the Middle East, or in Buttigieg’s case––literally nothing? right?)

Good people read, bad people read. Great people are illiterate (really illiterate, not fake-illiterate like Donald Trump) and some are monsters. The written word is a powerful tool and access to it is very useful, but liking fiction/poetry or reading nonfiction is a meaningless act. Politically, morally, and spiritually. Like words themselves, reading is an empty receptacle: you get what you put in.

This problem has bled into the Left to some extent as well. We make moral judgements about the kinds of authors people read, and separate people based on what they read. “Good Authors” (which generally means authors from marginalized communities) or Old White Men. But as with any habit cribbed from liberals, this one is toxic. The issue is not individual reading choices. It is the publishing industry, and––to be frank––capitalism. Your comrades don’t need to read Angela Davis (however amazing she is) and Du Bois to be your comrades. Who cares? Solidarity has nothing to do with homogeneity of politics or taste, and this constant checking of each other’s credentials is utter, useless, harmful nonsense.

All across the board, the act of reading has been stripped of its true, glorious nature. But fuck that. Your teachers were wrong. All of them (unless, of course, they weren’t––hi students!).

Instead I want to prescribe a kind of reading to anyone willing to do it. A brand new, totally awesome, fully Instagram-able Tik Tok ready trend:

Just-fuckin-read! If you want to!

Some how-to’s:

––If you’re having trouble understanding something, who cares! Keep reading, or look it up, or set it down.

––If you love a book, read it twice. Or throw it in the fire: fuck it, it’s yours. You made it.

––Read and forget everything you just read immediately, or memorize each line so you can pull them out at parties. Has anyone ever recited Paul Kingsnorth’s The Wake front to back from memory at a dinner party? Probably not: be the first!

––Read how you want, when you want, what you want, as much as you fucking want. You owe nothing to anyone in your reading. No one will test you on it. I won’t. Your college professors, your high school English teachers, all of them can suck it. Just do it!

––Read Finnegan’s Wake right now, out-loud, and make fart noises between each sentence (are there sentences? WHO CARES! Fuck that noise!)! It’s nonsense anyway. Literally shit on the book. James Joyce would love that.

––Are you reading this article! Throw your computer out the window! God is dead! Reading is fun! Fuck it!

As for me, I’ve decided to read fifty-two books this year. I like reading, but recently I’d been a little off it. I flitted from book to book, finishing few, never really letting myself get swept up any. So, starting this month, I wanted to get down to it. Why? Because I can do whatever the hell I want!

This month I read fourteen books (counting the one I’m reading now and will finish before the end of January)! One I read with a pen in my hand, taking notes, marking it up. The rest I read either laying in bed or sitting in my favorite chair. Frequently naked. I’ll put the list here, in case anyone is looking for recommendations.

Next month? Who knows! Will I complete my task? It doesn’t matter. No one will do anything if I do or don’t. This is for me! Fuck you! Yaaaaaaay!

I’m reading like this because I want to. It brings me joy. And it makes me a better writer. But if you find yourself daunted by reading, or someone who never really liked reading, I recommend just going off and reading something. Skim, skip, read while you shit. Fuck anyone who tells you differently. No one is better than you because they read something or worse than you because they didn’t. The end.

The child is dead. There is nothing left to know.

Some novels you meet eye to eye. They tell you who they are, you tell them who you are, and you walk together through whatever narrative loops and swirls they have in store. The surprises are earned, in-world, and require little or no work decipher.

Some novels sneak up on you. Mystery novels are surprisingly good at this trick and, occasionally. literary fiction can pull it off as well — though it requires a tautness of purpose the recent trend toward flabby, meandering autofiction could never sustain.

Rare is the novel you have to sneak up on.

“Black Leopard, Red Wolf” by Marlon James is tricky, playful, and slippery as a wild animal. It reinvents itself relentlessly, with wild Protean abandon. I’ve never been so confused and immersed simultaneously; James is smart about it — he always leaves a shore to swim to, or a ledge to cling to, when the water gets too deep. Unlike some of the so-called “ergodic” novels of the early aughts, “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” isn’t a puzzle. There’s no solution, or even Truth, to be found. It is its complexity. The answer, in the end, is to realize just how fragile and unstable answers are.

To be upfront: “Black Leopard, Red Wolf” is a fantasy novel. It is draws deeply from a well of influences within and outside the genre, but it is a fantasy novel at its core. That it gleefully reinterprets West and Central African “mythology” (along with a smattering of Middle Eastern and South African for flavor), rather than the European Mythology many readers have grown accustomed to, doesn’t separate it from the genre. James is in great company of novelists who are doing the slow, meticulous work of radically decolonizing fantasy (I’ll append a list to the end of the article, for those interested in further reading).

That may seem counterintuitive to the uninitiated. Fantasy can seem monolithic: tethered to the cis-hetero-white-male-heroic-narrative and forced to plow the same field over and over again for eternity. Any fan of the genre can understand that perspective; especially when seen through the prism of From the get-go, fantasy was a chimera, an unstable admixture of different voices, styles, tastes, and interests. Tolkien’s Middle Earth, while seminal, is particular to him. It’s idiosyncratic — filled with his interests, obsessions, and particularities, like all any great work of literature are (see: whaling in Moby Dick and farming in Anna Karenina). Before Frodo and his party had even set out for Mordor in the summer of 1954, Mervyn Peake was two books into his spectacular Gormenghast series, Lovecraft had produced his entire oeuvre, Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser were well into their adventures, Robert E. Howard was already dead, and Burroughs had long since completed his “planetary romances” (and was also already dead). The marquee fantasy books of the seventies and eighties drew liberally from all those wells, and many more. And since the turn of this century, we have seen the ascendancy in the genre of voices as varied as they were once homogeneous.

The question is not how Marlon James stands outside this list, but where his place is within it.

Jeff VanDermeer’s review, while it starts out shaky and falls into a sticky homophobic trap (“Have I mentioned there’s a lot of gay sex? There’s a lot of gay sex.” THANKS), it does shed some light on a major influence on James’ novel:

The novel isn’t so much heroic fantasy, with noble quests and sacrifices and a traditional story arc of Good versus Evil, but instead becomes an essential part of the canon for heroic fantasy’s no-good cousin: Swords and Sorcery.

The lead characters (after whom the novel is named), Tracker and Leopard have a queer Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser way about them — if you were to stir in healthy doses of hatred, sexual attraction, and betrayal. VanDermeer sees their reluctant questing as a continuation of the Howard/Leiber lineage of fantasy that undergird the post-modern fictions of Michael Moorcock and his Elric of Melniboné stories. I can see what VanDermeer is picking up on. Take this interaction, for example:

“You don’t waste time so waste it I will not. Three years now a child they take, a boy. He was just starting to walk and could say nana. Somebody take him one night. They leave nothing and nobody has ever demand ransom, not through note, not through drums, not even through witchcraft. I know the thinking, which you now think. Maybe they sell him to the secret witches market, a young child would bring much money to witches. But my caravan get protection from a Sangoma, just as one still binds you with protection even after her death. But you knew this, didn’t you, Tracker? The Leopard thinks iron arrows bounce away from you because they are scared.”

“There are still things to tell you,” I said to the leopard with a look.

“The child we trust to a housekeeper in Kongor. Then one night somebody cut the throat of everybody in the house but steal the child. Eleven in the house all murdered.”

“Three years ago? Not only are they far ahead in the game, they might have already won.”

“Is not a game,” he said.

“The mouse never thinks so, but the cat does. You have not finished your tale and it already sounds impossible. But finish.”

Here, Black Leopard, Red Wolf feels like an evocation of a dead form; nearer a Western than Tolkien’s epic fantasies. This is the grey-and-greyer mythology of Sword and Sorcery that claims Noir narrative as its closest cousin.

But Black Leopard, Red Wolf is not a Sword and Sorcery novel. It is an Epic. It is an Epic Fantasy–though I’m not sure falls under the “epic fantasy” sub-genre.

The epic it most resembles (for a Western-influenced reader), as another reviewer wisely noted, is Beowulf. Like the classic Anglo-Saxon poem, James’ novel tumbles from one adventure to the next, often without apparent connection. The “main narrative” is–perhaps–the thread that ties the whole novel together; but, like any single thread, it does not represent the tapestry as a whole. The first section of the book (encompassing over a hundred pages) doesn’t even touch on the “main narrative”. Everything in this book is interspersed, tangential, and refuses simple linearity. Beowulf was meant to be spoken, and so–I think–was this novel. I imagine the audiobook will be mind-blowing. But I can even imagine sections sung.

Overall, I found James incredibly liberal with his references and influences. For example: Black Leopard, Red Wolf has an enormous amount of Gene Wolfe’s criminally under-read The Shadow of the Torturer in its DNA. Severian and Tracker have little in common as characters, but their slipperiness–their loose connection to the Truth–makes me believe that they’d get along rather well if they ever met (unlikely). New Weird authors like China Miéville and, in fact, Jeff VanderMeer peek through in parts throughout the novel (esp. descriptions of jungle reminded me of VanDermeer’s Southern Reach Trilogy). Neil Gaiman too, a bit; though maybe they have more of a sibling-relationship. Both Gaiman and James are preoccupied with stories and, more acutely, the people who tell them. Tracker’s no Anansi, but the Spider’s as important to Black Leopard, Red Wolf as he is to Gaiman’s American Gods and Anansi Boys.

I would like to believe the work of Samuel R. Delaney had some influence over the novel as well, though I’m not sure. The authors’ connections are many and varied beyond their race gender and sexuality, though their interests run down somewhat different channels. Their mutual unflattering/unflinching depictions of sex might be blinding me to some inherent difference, but without Delaney I don’t know if there could have been a James.

Finally, there is A Song of Ice and Fire. There has been some talk of Black Leopard, Red Wolf being the “African Game of Thrones“. And I can see an argument for that proposition. Both seek to obliterate tropes, rework a grand narrative for a modern audience, and create a new form of Fantasy for future generations to enjoy. But there are fundamental differences between the two series that I can’t imagine bridged by that shared goal.

Martin’s genius is all in his plotting and characters. Over the course of five books (and a TV series that had, at one point, much to do with those books, but now does not), he’s created dozens of characters that the audience loves, hates, worries over, etc.; all while treating them with the mercilessness their situations requires. Heroes Die, as another criminally under-read SF/F novel would have said. Over the course of the series, Martin’s slipped somewhat in his resolve to create a bleak, realistic version of Tolkien’s medieval fantasy–but still, no one comes close to the detail and seriousness of his world (except, perhaps, Steven Erikson)

On the other hand, while the characters that inhabit James’ world are definitely fully-realized and interesting, they’re not where his genius lies (though Tracker is a marvel). Nor–no surprise here–is the plot. What Marlon James did in Black Leopard, Red Wolf is heighten the language of the genre to a level that only a few other writers have achieved (Susanna Clarke, Kelly Link, Miéville, and John Crowley come to mind). He doesn’t subvert tropes by playing into them then pulling the proverbial rug from under his readers, he simply ignores them altogether. There’s an unstuckness to this novel that feels amazingly fresh. A mental limberness. Often, writers who step into other mythologies will bring the template of European mythology along with them. Even Tomi Adeyemi with her much-acclaimed Y.A. novel Children of Blood and Bone never steps far from the warm stream of contemporary Y.A. narratives (INJUSTICE, PEOPLE HATE MAGIC, ACTION PRINCESS, ETC.). The changes, if you’ll forgive the bad joke, are only skin deep. But it’s not like that with this book. Through some combination of excellent research, seriousness of purpose, and powerful imagination, James leaves us fully immersed in his world–from the speech pattern of his narrator, to the structure of the telling:

The third story.

A queen of a kingdom in the West said she would pay me well to find her King. Her court thought she was mad, for the King was dead, drowned five years now, but I had no problem with finding the dead. I took her down payment and left for where those dead by drowning lived.

I kept walking until I came to an old woman by a river with a tall stick sitting at the banks. Her hair white at the sides, her head bald at the top. Her face had lines like paths in the forest and her yellow teeth meant her breath was foul. The stories say she rises each morning youthful and beautiful, blooms full and comely by midday, ages to a crone by nightfall, and dies at midnight to be born again the next hour. The hump on her back was higher than her head, but her eyes twinkled, so her mind was sharp. Fish swam right up to the point of the stick but never went beyond.

“Why have you come to this place?” she asked.

“This is the way of Monono,” I said.

“Why have you come to this place? A living man?”

“Life is love and I have no love left. Love has drained itself from me, and run to a river like this one.”

“It’s not love you have lost, but blood. I will let you pass. But when I lay with a man I live without dying for seventy moons.”

So I f****d the crone. She lay on her back by the bank, her feet in the river. She was nothing but bones and leather, but I was hard for her and full with vigor.

For reference, this scene takes place on page nine. George R.R. Martin might be transgressive, but he’s no Marlon James.

Everything in Black Leopard, Red Wolf is so steeped in mythology, it’s often impossible to separate research from invention. The world feels lushly real, to an extent only few other authors have ever accomplished (Neil Gaiman, for example).

So, the question remains: where does this novel sit in the great line of its kind?

I think Black Leopard, Red Wolf is a superlative, form-defining novel, like Martin’s series, Tolkien’s, Susanna Clarke’s Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, and John Crowley’s Little, Big. And if I were to draw Black Leopard, Red Wolf’s family tree, likely all of those books would be on it. With two books left to write, there’s a lot of room for improvement/failure, but, if this book is any indication, Marlon James’ series is likely to be one of the great works of literature of this decade. And one of the great works of fantasy ever.

Further Reading:

African-Influenced SF/F–

The Famished Road, Ben Okri

Freshwater, Akwaeke Emezi

The Fifth Season, N.K Jemisin

Who Fears Death, Nnedi Okorafor

Rosewater, Tade Thompson

Nigerians in Space, Deji Bryce Olukotun

Some more interesting/non-traditional SF/F (especially by women & P.O.C)–

The Poppy War, R.F. Kuang

Meddling Kids, Edgar Cantero

Central Station, Lavie Tidhar

Jade City, Fonda Lee

Three Parts Dead, Max Gladstone

The Changeling, Victor LaValle

Lovecraft Country, Matt Ruff

The Bloody Chamber, Angela Carter

Magic for Beginners, Kelly Link

Spinning Silver, Naomi Novik

The Left Hand of Darkness, Ursula K. Le Guin

Kindred, Octavia Butler

etc.

Dear Elves,

I think we can do better than you—

But it drives me crazy how thoroughly and how well you’ve colonized my imagination, a realm that should be mine or if shared then only — maybe — with my ancestors. My ancestors didn’t know you. My family never left milk out for you. There are no changelings clinging to my family tree. The only spirits my ancestors knew came wielding torches out of the Ukrainian mists; left us broken in the mud of our shtetl (a word that Medium does not recognize), coughing blood at their nameless feet.

But I’m always writing you.

You’ve taken my imagination. Even my dreams. I dream in Norse mythology. I can barely name a pre-monotheistic Semitic god (the gods of my people), but if you want to discuss Wotan, Thor, Freyja, Baldur, Loki, or any of their iterations in Danish, German, or English mythology — I’m your guy. I know your kind, be you Dökkálfar or Ljósálfar, I know you. My history has been ripped out and resown with yours. If I want magic, it has to be your magic. If I want creatures, their forms flow from your primordial Englishness. Giants walking moors my relatives were expelled from in the 15th century for the treason of being Jewish.

I can never be English enough for you. I am no inheritor of your legacy. You don’t want me, you won’t have me, I can never live with you like Tolkien did. I cannot imagine myself beside you. You are parasite. You are an invasive species that has torn the native flora and fauna of my Jewishness out by the root.

You are the cane toads of literature.

But —

Where’s my magic?

My talking snakes and angels are mainstream, even if their Christian iterations are no more real to me than a person calling The Monster Frankenstein. I can turn seas to blood, smack bread from stones, but its all so religious, all so banal.

My magic is in clay, and breath, and fear.

My magic is in words and their secrets. In hidden languages. In bloody runes (even here I use a fucking Norsism).

I think I can do better than you. I think I can de-colonize my imagination. I can’t promise to never write you again, or an orc, or a squirrel grasping to Yggdrasil for dear life. Your stories, in their eradication of my cultural inheritance, have become it as well. But I have thousands of years of oppression to write out. I have six million relatives moldering in Eastern European pits to reckon with. Ghosts.

I can do better than to forget them.

Sadly, yours —

Michael

Ursula K. Le Guin published The Left Hand of Darkness in 1969, at the height of the Vietnam War, the peak of the Hippy moment, and the end of one of the most influential decades of American history. Margaret Atwood published The Handmaid’s Tale in 1985, smack in the middle of the Reagan presidency, in the year he first mentioned AIDs publicly, at the height of the crisis. It’s telling that The Power, by Naomi Alderman, came out in 2017, a year that will no doubt live in infamy.

Dystopian fiction has been all the rage for a long time now. It’s a simple metaphor — slip a STRONG FEMALE CHARACTER into a world that hates her and viola! Blockbuster book cooked in under ten minutes. Atwood, not Le Guin, could be called the grandmother of the trend, though I think it unfair to blame her for its laziness. The Handmaid’s Tale allowed Offred a little more complexity than, say, your Katniss Everdeens; but the structure of the form were there.

Le Guin, on the other hand, wrote a deeply philosophical novel. It focused less on the way societies police women’s bodies and more on what exactly gender is, its function, and how it influences lives of men and women. It’s hard to say one way is better than the other. I’ll admit that I like The Left Hand of Darkness better, but that’s just a matter of taste. The brutality, the boldness, the unflinching eye of The Handmaid’s Tale has resonated with readers for more than thirty years. There’s little doubt it’s a classic.

So where does The Power fall?

In Alderman’s acknowledgments she thanks Le Guin, but the book is dedicated to Atwood. Alderman was, in fact, a protege of Atwood’s. And yet — while I felt Atwood’s hand all over the novel, at its core, The Power has more to do with Le Guin’s deconstructionist tendencies than Atwood’s dystopian fantasies. There’s a question at the heart of The Power, under layers of humor, terror, and unblinking realism. It sits in the title itself: what is power? How does it work?

She tells us, early on, if we’re willing to believe her, that, “the shape of power is always the same”. But that’s a hard pill to swallow. We want to believe that power in the hands of the righteous would be righteous. And we always have wanted that. The novel begins with an inscription from the Book of Samuel:

“The people came to Samuel and said: Place a king over us, to guide us.

And Samuel said to them: This is what a King will do…he’ll take your sons and make them run with his chariots and horses. He’ll dispose them however he wants…

But the people would not listen to Samuel…(And) when Samuel heard what the people said, he told it to the Lord. The Lord answered, Give them a King”

This concept is central to the novel. We want to believe, so deeply, that power is and can be used for good. The novel’s speculative what if is, in itself, a reflection of that. What if all the women of the world gained the power to electrocute whomsoever they pleased? At first, it’s a very ra-ra-sis-boom-ba concept. Righteous women throwing off the shackles of patriarchal oppression, flexing their muscles for the first time, taking control of a world that’s treated them as second-class citizens since the Iron Age. We cheer them on, because of course we do. We pump our fists at the justice of the reversal. Alderman shows it to us through a number of eyes. Allie, a “mixed-race” foster child routinely sexually abused by her foster father burns him to a blackened, evil crisp. Roxy, the daughter of London gangster, finds her power too late to save her mother from the retribution of rival gangsters, but soon enough to rise in her father’s organization. Margot, the mayor of a mid-sized American city, belittled by her male superiors, finds that, “the power to hurt is a kind of wealth.” And then there’s Tunde, a Nigerian journalist and the only prominent male voice in the novel, who becomes an observer of this burgeoning epochal shift.

This conceit could easily have become a sort-of anti-Handmaid’s Tale. In the hands of a lesser writer, female hegemony could have looked beautiful, ideal, and peaceful. But Alderman’s hand is surer than that, her mind sharper, and her pen more humane. Of course there are plenty of clever reversals in the novel. Margot’s daughter notes that advertisements are now selling girls “one other thing; quietly, on the side. Be strong, they say, that’s how you get everything you want.” Margot thinks of a YouTuber, “how’s she supposed to take him seriously now, when she’s seen his broad shoulders and narrow waist and the rolling landscapes of obliques and delts”. And some of these reversals are cuter than others — they don’t all hold deep metaphorical significance. There’s a running gag with news anchors (the old man gets dropped for a new, hotter one while the woman puts on glasses to add gravitas) that’s more yucks than depth.

But, as the plot proceeds and the power of women over men shifts from tentative to assured, Alderman’s true interest becomes clear. The world changes, men become second-class citizens, what it means to be a “real woman” takes on whole new dimensions of meaning, but the shape of power remains the same. New regimes rise — just as brutal, just as heartless as those that came before. When the question comes up, as it always does, why people with power do what they do, hurt who they hurt, steal what they steal, the answer is: “Because they could.”

All of Alderman’s characters feel fully formed. Her prose is beautiful, clear, and occasionally profound. And at 382 pages (in hardcover), there’s no flab on this book. It moves. I found myself putting it down to go sleep, laying my head on the pillow, and immediately picking it back up — just to see what happens next, just to find the next quotable line, the next idea I want to ruminate on.

Now: I have some quibbles with the book. The framing narrative, like Atwood’s in The Handmaid’s Tale, feels somewhat bony and unformed. Some plot points fall flat, some side-characters trundle through the story in two dimensions. But those are little things. Honestly, I loved this book. It felt vital, grounded, and important. While it should be read in any class that touches on feminist science fiction, I believe this novel should be required reading for the entire human race. We could all do with some deeper reflection on the anatomy of power; what we have, what we lack, how we use it, how it is used on us. And I’ve never read a cleaner or more accurate dissection of power than this.

What makes a Christmas movie? Does the plot have to take place on and around Christmas? Should it have something to do with family? Giving? Love? Redemption?

Then strap up, Andrew Burten, because I’m about to blow your fucking mind.

Die Hard is a Christmas movie. Not just a Christmas movie. The greatest Christmas movie of all time.

The protagonist, John McClane, begins the movie on a plane heading into Los Angeles from New York. He’s a hard-bitten, gruff, NYPD officer who don’t take shit from no man.

But he doesn’t like flying. Makes him queasy.

Already we see the set up. You know — because Santa. What if Santa didn’t like flying in his sleigh? What if? Am I right? Andrew?

We could write the movie together. Get rich. Rich I say!

But I digress.

John McClane is picked up at LAX by Argyle, a limo driver who cracks wise like it’s his motherfucking job. They talk about girls, and Argyle, through craft and guile, drags the truth out of Officer McClane — he is estranged from his wife, and doesn’t know if he’ll even be staying with her during his trip! Gasp!

THINK OF THE CHILDREN, ANDREW. THE CHILDREN.

His wife, Holly Gennaro (she now goes by her maiden name, gasp!), works for the Nakatomi Corporation in a high powered position. She just got a Rolex! She left New York with the kids to follow her career, leaving McClane in the lurch.

They fight when he arrives, bickering, showing us — the audience — that there’s room to grow in John McClane’s character, and, more importantly, in his relationship with his wife.

Oh — I almost forgot — all this takes place during the company Christmas Party!

While McClane is washing the plane off himself, rubbing his bare feet on the carpet to get acclimated to the Los Angeles clime, Hans Gruber and his gaggle of dastardly (read: Grinch-like) villains come into the Nakatomi building and take everyone hostage! Gasp!

Excitement ensues. Battles. Glass. Sexual chemistry between Alan Rickman and Bruce Willis. Deep, thrumming, chemistry. You know what I’m talking about, Andrew Burten.

Over the course of the film, John McClane learns that what truly matters is his wife and children. With the threat of death over him at all times, he comes to terms with the fact that his job is just a job. Holly (who at the end of the film calls herself Holly McClane) and their children are life’s real treasure. And John McClane must protect them. With his life. With his blood.

With his bloody feet.

It is a story of redemption, of family, that — most importantly — takes place on or around Christmas.

By definition, it is a Christmas Movie.

Mind. Blown.

You’re welcome, Andrew Burten.

You.

Are.

Welcome.

I shouldn’t have to do this. The critics were pretty definitive. Star Wars: The Last Jedi is great. Great as a Star Wars movie. Maybe the best Star Wars movie of all time. Also: a great film, full-stop.

But I’ve been looking at the Rotten Tomatoes Audience Score, which (at the moment of writing this) is at 56%, and I’m shocked. Okay, not shocked. Saddened.

I was in the bathroom when I overheard undergrad dude-bros congregating after the premiere to talk about the movie:

“I can’t believe they made Luke a pussy.” One said.

“Yeah, and that whole bullshit with Finn was such a waste!” The other replied.

“Bombs can’t drop in space, dude. Didn’t they take physics?”

And on it went. I shook my head, assuming they were in the minority. But I was wrong. And thus, for the sake of my own intellectual process, here is my spoiler-free defense of The Last Jedi.

I was not in the camp that, over time, grew to dislike The Force Awakens. Here’s why: I get the pressure JJ Abrams was under––I see the Herculean task he was given. Remaking A New Hope was a necessity. If he had strayed too far, he would have been flayed like a gungan at a Louisiana barbecue. Also, it’s important to remember that A New Hope wasn’t revolutionary due to its story. The plot was cribbed from every source in the pop culture handbook (plus Akira Kurosawa). Take Dorothy, give her a lightsaber, and there you go. What it was revolutionary for was its magic — that giddy-wonder every kid feels watching Luke, Han, and Leia face the forces of darkness with a wink and a laugh. The Force Awakens brought that magic back, pulled Star Wars from the swamp of midichlorians and board-room Jedi, and saved the franchise for a new generation of kids.

So I’m not going to criticize it.

But that trick only works once. You can’t redo Empire. It was perfect. You need connection to the source, a pulsing vein that links new trilogy to old; but without boldness, without hard-turns, it’s not a second Star Wars movie. Darth Vader has to be Luke’s father again — and that’s the hardest thing in the world to pull off. Because when people are expecting a twist, a twist can’t surprise them.

Now cut to The Last Jedi. I was expecting a lot of things. The reviews were out, I was pumped, and I’m not really in “the fandom” (as it were), so I’m not going to nitpick. But I was not expecting the movie I saw. Rian Johnson did the impossible: he surprised everyone. He re-figured the meaning of Star Wars. He gave it a depth, a heft, a grayness that the universe we’ve been to so many times now never even dreamed of possessing. This isn’t Empire again. But it is — in the best way possible. I left the theater the same way my parents must have in 1980: thinking that I never really knew Star Wars at all.

And I guess that’s why so many people hate it.

The Last Jedi is a big, fat, funny movie about the consequences of war. Like Rogue One (in my opinion, the most underrated Star Wars movie), it often focuses on the people that grease the cogs of revolution with their blood. If Luke is Lenin, Finn is no-one. Poe’s a fighter pilot, destined (most likely) for a glory-less death in service of an ideal. Rey might be Stalin (or Trotsky), but — more likely — she’s no-one as well. This grand family melodrama about the noble house Skywalker is being torn apart, brick by brick, and remade into an post-modern epic that has more in common with Saving Private Ryan than it does with Wonder Woman (which might make sense, Kathleen Kennedy worked with Spielberg for years).

Everything we’ve been carefully trained to look for in Star Wars is absent. That simplicity is stripped from us, reforged into subtle points. Brash heroes (like Poe) are forced to view the consequences of their brashness. It’s like someone pulling Han aside and telling him the odds — and that’s not what we want!

I get people’s dislike. People didn’t like Rogue One because, in the end (spoiler alert), all the characters die just to get a flash-drive to people who will, in turn, die to get it into the hands of Princess Leia (who then sends it to Tatooine because she gets captured by Darth Vader yadayadayada plot). And that sucks! That’s terrible! We want Luke magically blowing up the Death Star with his Jedi powers, not spies giving their lives for a cause.

But it’s a different world now.

If black-and-white was the medium of Cold War cinema — in which Star Wars planted itself deeply — gray is the color of a post 9–11 world.

“We are the spark, that will light the fire, that will burn the First Order down.”

When I first heard that line, I didn’t like it. The repetition felt trite. The wording felt off. It wasn’t catchy enough. It felt like something that needed to be punched up. I’ve since changed my mind.

The Last Jedi doesn’t hinge on a fortune-changing battle. The Death Star is irrelevant. The legions of jackbooted Storm Troopers are ignored. The scrappy heroes aren’t fighting against nearly unwinnable odds. They’re fighting against unwinnable odds. So there’s no victory. Not in the way Star Wars has taught us to expect. What there is, is hope. Hope that the rebellion can be the spark that will light the fire that will burn the First Order down (insert Hitler, insert Trump, insert any totalitarian-leaning demagogue you want). And that fire is not Skywalker-born. It doesn’t have a pedigree, or a grand destiny. That fire lives in little kids dreaming of a better world. In every person. In all of us––

So I loved this movie. More every time I think about. More because it refused to kowtow to what we expect. More because the people who hate it hate it for reasons I can understand. It’s a bold movie, when it had no right to be. No cause. It’s a complicated movie, one worth digesting, and one you have to see for yourself.

Also — I don’t care what anyone else says — BB8 kills it and porgs are adorable. Come at me bro’.

SARA: What time is it?

ARTHUR: Six

SARA: Is it six, or five-forty?

ARTHUR: It’s almost six.

SARA: What does that mean?

ARTHUR: I don’t have my phone.

SARA: Look it up!

ARTHUR: It’s five-fifty-three.

SARA: Alright, did you feed the cats?

ARTHUR: Shit.

SARA: What?

ARTHUR: I forgot.

SARA: I can’t hear you.

ARTHUR (yells): I forgot!

SARA (yells): What?

ARTHUR (walks to the bathroom door): I’ll do it.

SARA: Fine, do it. What time did they say they’d be here?

ARTHUR: Around six.

SARA: I just have to put on mascara.

ARTHUR: Why?

SARA: Because I look dead without it.

ARTHUR: No, you don’t. You look beautiful.

SARA: Feed the cats. Did you put away your sweater?

ARTHUR: I threw it in the room.

SARA (fumbles through the bathroom cabinet.): Don’t you want to show them your books?

ARTHUR: Why would I want to —

SARA: What time is it?

ARTHUR: Alright. Feed the cats. Put away sweater. You look beautiful. I love you.

SARA: I love you too. Feed the cats, please.

***

Their apartment isn’t fully put together. Boxes hidden in the coat closet keep rolled posters from college, prints they picked up while living in New York, a few framed pictures of friends. The couch is a mess — the cats got to from day one and haven’t let up since. Grey-blue cloth covered in unrolled strings, deep gouges. A plush chair they keep covered with a blanket to stop the cats’ claws is the newest addition to the living room. It didn’t really fit anywhere, so they put it next to the TV, facing the couch. The black rug keeps bunching up, no matter how many times they fix it.

SARA: Are they lost?

ARTHUR: How would I know?

SARA: How does this look?

ARTHUR: You look beautiful.

SARA: Should I change tights?

ARTHUR: I like the burgundy ones.

SARA (looks at her grey tights): So I should change?

ARTHUR: No, I was just saying I like the burgundy ones. I don’t think they’d go with your dress.

Black dress, thigh length, with a pleated bottom.

SARA: Then why would you say that?

ARTHUR: I don’t know.

A beat.

ARTHUR (Cont.): We should light the candle.

SARA: You need to brush your hair. Did you feed the cats?

ARTHUR (sighs): I said I would, didn’t I? It’s six-fifteen. Maybe I should go out to the street.

SARA: Wouldn’t they call?

ARTHUR: Maybe. I’ll just call them. If they’re lost, I can go out to the street.

SARA: It’s really dark. Maybe they missed the cul-de-sac.

ARTHUR: Yeah, probably. They said around six.

SARA: I’m nervous.

ARTHUR: Why?

SARA: I don’t know.

ARTHUR: Makes sense. It’ll be fine.

SARA: I know.

ARTHUR: I’ll put on music. If they don’t come in fifteen, I’ll call or go out.

SARA: I’m going to change.

***

The bedroom is covered in paintings and books. Two ceiling-high shelves lean with the weight of Arthur’s obsessive collecting impulse. Stacks on the floor, on his nightstand, on the dresser. Keith, their black cat, lounges on the bed. Sara kisses her on the forehead (Keith is a female cat). Keith opens her mouth in a yawn.

Sara pulls the string to turn on the closet light. Everything she owns is wrong. She’d have to change her whole outfit to make it work. She’s tapping her fingers on Arthur’s nightstand. Burgundy tights on the bed.

ARTHUR (yells): I think they’re parking!

Too loud. Sara can hear him fine in the bedroom.

SARA: I’m almost ready.

ARTHUR (yells): What?

Arthur can’t hear her at all in the living room.

SARA (opens the door): I’m almost ready.

Sara is wearing nothing but her black bra and burgundy tights. Her wavy black hair is still up — somehow she’s managed to keep the bun intact. Magic.

ARTHUR: It might not be them.

Knocking.

SARA: Shit. Stall!

Closes the bedroom door and runs to the closet. Array of colors. Picks the same black dress she was wearing before. Black goes with burgundy. Black goes with everything. Puts it on­­­­ — doesn’t go. Takes off the tights. No tights. Not even grey ones.

***

Becca and Harry enter. Becca’s the taller of the two. Blonde. All smiles. Harry grips Arthur’s hand competitively. This is their first meeting .

Becca gives Arthur a hug.

BECCA: Where’s Sara?

ARTHUR: Getting ready.

HARRY (looks at his wrist for a watch that isn’t there): We early?

ARTHUR: No, not at all.

Ushers them in.

ARTHUR (Cont.): Can I get you guys something?

BECCA: Water would be great.

HARRY (droll): This place have a drink menu?

Harry laughs at his own joke.

ARTHUR: Got Scotch, beer, mescal, sake, cider, and some mixers — what’ll it be?

HARRY: Scotch.

BECCA: Just water for me, Arthur.

ARTHUR (to Harry): Man after my own heart. I’ll pour one for myself as well.

ARTHUR (Cont.) (to Becca): Just water? You’re sure?

BECCA: Yeah — I’ll drink in a bit.

Sara bursts from the room. Keith eyes the living room warily, then retreats back to the bed. Sara closes the door behind her. Smiling. Her bun shifted at some point, lolling a little to the left. The urge to fix it is overwhelming.

Becca walks up and gives her a hug.

BECCA: It’s so good to see you!

SARA (reciprocates awkwardly): You too.

Harry is already seated. He doesn’t know what to do for a greeting. Lifts his hand to shake. Sara takes it gently.

Arthur walks in with the drinks.

ARTHUR: Water, Scotch — no ice, right?

HARRY: That works.

ARTHUR: And a Scotch for me as well.

ARTHUR (Cont.) (to Sara): Do you want a cider, darling?

SARA: I’ll get it.

SARA (Cont.) (to Becca): You sticking to water?

BECCA: I’ll have whatever you’re having.

SARA (to Arthur): We also have a bottle of wine — remember? The one Kendra gave us.

ARTHUR: Shit! I forgot the wine! It’s white?

SARA: Red.

ARTHUR: You sure?

SARA: Yeah.

SARA (Cont.) (to Becca): Would you like wine?

Becca takes a careful sip from her glass. Her lips leave a red smear.

BECCA: Whatever you’re having will be totally fine.

SARA: Alright. Cider it is. Sure that’s fine?

BECCA (trips over herself): Positive-olutely.

SARA (too kind to notice): It’s really dry.

Becca makes a mmmmm noise and smacks her lips.

ARTHUR: It’s actually really good. Someone brews it around here.

Sits in plush chair, crosses and uncrosses his legs.

Harry is engrossed in sipping his whiskey.

ARTHUR (Cont.): Drink a lot of Scotch?

HARRY (makes a noise): Not really.

ARTHUR: This is an Islay malt. Real peaty.

HARRY: I see that. Tastes like smoke.

Sara hands Becca a wineglass full of bubbling amber liquor, pulls a chair up across the from the couch, sits.

Becca takes the cue and plops down a little ways from Harry.

SARA: I love your dress.

BECCA (sweeping her hand across its length): This old thing? I got it on sale at Uniqlo.

BECCA: Did you drive all the way to Boston?

SARA: Online.

BECCA: You don’t worry about the size?

SARA: Had to send two back before I got the right one; free returns!

ARTHUR (to Harry): So what are you studying?

HARRY (puts down his glass): Not studying. Teaching elementary.

ARTHUR: Oh! I thought Becca said you’re in school.

SARA: He works at school. Not in school.

ARTHUR: I feel like everyone we know is studying something! It’s nice to meet someone who isn’t.

HARRY: I’m thinking about going back.

Sara gives Arthur a look — he changes the subject.

ARTHUR: Watching any good TV?

HARRY: Have you seen The Good Wife?

Sara shakes her head.

ARTHUR: Yeah, with Julianna Margulies and the guy from the Dead Poets Society. I watched that show. How far in are you?

HARRY: Pretty far; no spoilers!

ARTHUR: Okay, okay — yeah, I watched it. Have you heard about the spin-off?

HARRY: Not really.

ARTHUR: I think it’s on CBS’s new streaming thing.

BECCA (interjects): I heard about that! How many streaming sites can there possibly be?

ARTHUR: One less than infinity.

HARRY: Is it any good?

ARTHUR: I only watched the pilot, but I didn’t like. Anyway the original takes a turn after season five — do you guys watch The Crown.

HARRY (points at Becca): This one. Downton Abbey, The Crown, Game of Thrones. If it’s British, she watches it.

BECCA (brows knitting): And if there aren’t lawyers or doctors or cops in it, Harry won’t watch it.

ARTHUR (to Becca): Have you seen the new season?

BECCA: Not yet! No spoilers.

ARTHUR: How could I give spoilers? It’s history — it already happened. Spoilers are stupid. Why does everyone care so much about spoilers? If the show’s ruined if you know something beforehand, it’s a bad show.

Becca laughs, good natured.

Arthur looks at Sara — she’s engaged in listening, picking through threads of the conversation.

BECCA: I love your apartment.

SARA: We’re still putting it together.

HARRY (appraisingly): How much do you guys pay a month?

SARA: We got a great deal.

BECCA: Sorry. Harry doesn’t know when to keep his mouth shut. Or the meaning of tact.

SARA (diffuses): No it’s fine. We pay nine-hundred.

HARRY: Really? We’re getting ripped off.

ARTHUR: I used to work in real estate in New York. I got a good deal.

SARA: We’re not getting ripped off.

HARRY (lists on his fingers): Our place is smaller, the location’s shit, no public transportation, and we pay almost twice as much.

ARTHUR: You live across the bridge right?

HARRY: Yeah.

ARTHUR: There you go. Everything costs more there.

BECCA (scare quotes): They told us it was hipper.

ARTHUR: Well there you go — Sara and I are anything but hip.

SARA: True..

They sip their drinks. Samwise, the striped-grey (also a girl) hops onto Arthur’s lap. Purrs.

BECCA: She’s beautiful!

SARA: And obsessed with Arthur.

ARTHUR: That is true. We’re codependent. Keith likes Sara better.

SARA: Not true!

ARTHUR: Oh come on, she does! Not as obsessive as this one, but she’s definitely got a preference.

Samwise playfully nips at Arthur’s hand. He picks her up, pecks her on the nose, and sets her on the floor. She goes around to inspect the newcomers.

SARA: She’s a face cat — if you bend your head down she’ll sniff you.

Harry eyes Samwise warily. He saw the bite she tried with Arthur. Isn’t interested in getting one on the face.

Becca leans down. Arthur and Sara get good views of her cleavage. Arthur avoids looking with more skill than Sara — practice.

BECCA: Come here sweet lady. This is Sam, right?

ARTHUR (to Harry): She’s seen pictures. I don’t have kids, so I spend all day in class showing pictures of my cats.

SARA (beams): We’re pretty much over-proud parents.

Samwise walks up and sniffs Becca’s nose. She gives it a perfunctory lick then moves on.

ARTHUR: Who wants to play a game?

Sara looks at Arthur. He’s smiling.

SARA: They just got here.

ARTHUR: So? We’re a drink in! Gotta start sometime.

BECCA: What kind of game?

SARA (conspiratorially) (to Harry): He does this every time.

ARTHUR: We don’t have to play if you don’t want.

SARA: Maybe a little later —

BECCA: You didn’t say what kind of game it is.

ARTHUR (devious): It’s a guessing game.

HARRY (gruff): I’m not much of a games person.

BECCA: Is it fun?

SARA: Sometimes.

ARTHUR: Come on! It’s fun!

SARA: Sometimes.

ARTHUR: How much small-talk can we do? Becca and I know each other. You know Becca. And this is the first time we get to meet Harry. Let’s get rowdy.

The music’s on quietly behind them. Arthur went for Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds tonight.

NICK CAVE (sings): I don’t believe in an interventionist God/ But I know, darling, that you do/ But if I did I would kneel down and ask Him/ Not to intervene when it came to you!

BECCA: I’m in.

SARA: If you’re sure.

ARTHUR: How ‘bout you, Harry?

HARRY: Fine.

ARTHUR (claps his hands together): Alright. Let’s refill the drinks and get to it.

***

New drinks. Arthur has another Scotch. Harry’s drinking a beer. Becca downed her water and cider to prepare. She’s nursing a heavy pour of red wine. Sara poured the rest of the bottle of cider into her glass, which now sloshes nervously in her hands.

ARTHUR: It’s a drinking game. The rules are pretty simple. One person, let’s call them the asker, gets to ask someone a question. The asked, the person who was asked the question, has to answer. They can lie, tell the truth, a mixture of both, whatever. Nothing’s off limits. The asker has to guess if the answer is the truth, a lie, or a mixture of both. If they guess right, the asked drinks. If they guess wrong, they drink. Simple.

BECCA: Sounds like we’re getting drunk!

SARA: Depends how long it goes.

ARTHUR: Everyone good on the rules?

BECCA (sarcastically): No, repeat them again.

ARTHUR: Okay — who wants to go first?

SARA (sighs): I will. Becca — who is your favorite classmate?

BECCA (laughs): That’s easy. Cheyenne Montefiore. She always lets me borrow a pen.

SARA: J’accuse!

Becca looks at Arthur. He smiles. She smiles, takes her glass, and sips.

BECCA: Caught me. Do I get to ask one now?

ARTHUR: Sure do.

She gets Arthur straight down the barrel.

BECCA: Who would you sleep with in our class?

SARA (laughs) (to Arthur): That’s the problem with this game, honey. You’re always going to have to drink.

ARTHUR (triumphant): No one. I’m taken.

Gives a loving look at Sara. She sticks out her tongue.

BECCA: Clever — should have worded it differently. Truth.

Arthur takes a deep draught.

ARTHUR: Alright, Harry. Your turn, my new friend. How old were you when you first fell in love?

HARRY (colors): That’s a very personal question.”

ARTHUR: Indeed.

BECCA: This’ll be good.

She’s already a little tipsy. The wine’s stained her teeth, her eyes are glowing.

HARRY: Fifteen.

ARTHUR: Lie.

HARRY (smirks): Truth.

ARTHUR: Sorry, bud, I can smell a lie. You sure?

HARRY (grumbles and takes a drink): I guess I was sixteen. I don’t know what to ask.

ARTHUR: Then ask me the same question.

SARA: He just likes being in control. Ask me.

HARRY (unclear to whom): Fine. Same question then.

SARA: I was fourteen, but I used to think earlier.

HARRY (checks her for tells, then): Truth.

SARA (shakes her head): You’ll get the hang of it, but nope. Truth and a lie. While it wasn’t fourteen, I did use to think it was earlier.

Harry takes another drink. Arthur’s smile widens.

ARTHUR: At this rate, he’ll be drunk by eight.

SARA: Alright. My turn. Becca — what’s your favorite color?

ARTHUR: Boo! Lame!

SARA (indignant): It’s not lame. It’s a good question.

BECCA: I don’t have one, sorry.

SARA: Hmmmm, truth and a lie. You don’t have one, but you’re not sorry.

Becca searches herself, nods, and drinks.

BECCA: Arthur — if you could be anything for a day, what would you be?

ARTHUR (thinks, then): An old man.

BECCA: Oh, that’s totally a lie.

ARTHUR: Drink.

BECCA: What?

ARTHUR: Drink. You said for a day.

BECCA: But you’re gonna be an old man.

ARTHUR: Maybe, who knows? Anyway, I’d like to practice beforehand.

SARA: That’s dumb.

ARTHUR: Your question was dumb, my answer was inspired.

BECCA: But you could be anything!

ARTHUR: I like being me. Just older.

Becca drinks.

ARTHUR: Alright, my turn again folks. Harry. My Harry. Good Guy Harry. Let’s get real, okay. Are you ready?

HARRY (not ready): For what?”

ARTHUR: This question. Have you girded your loins appropriately?

HARRY: Just ask the fucking question already.

ARTHUR: Temper, temper buddy. Let’s see, what should I ask? Oh! I’ve got it!

ARTHUR (Cont.) (clears his throat): Harry — have you every stuck something, anything really, up your posterior? Or, to be more coy about it — have you ever put an article in your possession through the Ivory Gate?

Becca barks a laugh — confirmation if there ever was one. Sara blushes. Harry seethes.

HARRY: No.

ARTHUR: Lie.

HARRY: No.

ARTHUR: Come, man, I know you’re lying.

HARRY (at the edge of endurance): No. I haven’t.

ARTHUR: This is getting tense. Let me be supplicant to your throne. I’ll give you this for free — I have, in the past, had things in my anal cavity. It’s a natural part of life — nothing to be ashamed of.

HARRY (growls): I’m not ashamed. You asked if I have ever stuck something up there, and the answer to that is no.

ARTHUR (hands up, don’t shoot): I am undone.

Arthur downs his drink and goes to pour himself another one.

HARRY (quickly): Have you ever cheated on someone?

Arthur stoppers the bottle of Scotch.

ARTHUR: Is this part of the game, or just a check-in on my fidelity.

HARRY: Game.

ARTHUR: Alright, then, yes and no.

HARRY: What the fuck does that mean?

ARTHUR (sighs, it’s so obvious): Yes I cheated, but no it wasn’t really cheating. I cheated spiritually, in that I knew what I was doing was wrong; but physically, no. We were on hiatus.

BECCA: You and Sara?

ARTHUR: It’s not your turn.

Sara shakes her head in the negative.

HARRY: Lie.

ARTHUR (hand to heart): Truth, the whole truth, and nothing but it.

Harry drinks.

ARTHUR: To me again? Alright then. Hmmmm. Becca, my dove. We’re in class together, so let’s keep it PG-13.

BECCA: Do you ever?

ARTHUR: You’re right — fuck that! Throw caution to the wind. How old were you when you lost your virginity?

BECCA (no pause): Eleven.

ARTHUR: Truth.

She drinks.

BECCA: And it was good too.

ARTHUR: You absolute cad.

HARRY: I didn’t know that.

SARA (a little biting): You never asked. On asking — Harry, do you love me?”

Silence. Her eyes turn hard. Sara shifts her weight.

HARRY: I don’t like this game.

ARTHUR: And yet —

SARA: We can stop. They have to drive home.

Arthur’s still smiling.

BECCA: Answer the question, Harry.

HARRY: Of course I love you.

BECCA: Sure.

ARTHUR (prods): Is he lying?

A beat.

BECCA: Yes and no.

She drinks.

HARRY: My turn. Sara — have you ever done something you regret? Regret with your whole being. Not like, oh I wish I hadn’t bought that dress, but really, truly, to your core regret.

Weight behind it. Guilt. Sara’s uncomfortable. Samwise notes her discomfort with glee.

SARA: Sure, yeah, of course. Hasn’t everyone?

HARRY (to Becca): Yes they have.

Sara drinks.

SARA (tries to lighten the mood): This one’s a biggy. Becca — what’s your favorite position.

Arthur’s the only one having a great time.

BECCA: From behind.

SARA: I don’t know.

SARA (Cont.) (to Harry): What do you think?

Harry doesn’t look her in the eye. He’s caught on Arthur, near bearing his teeth like a wolf.

SARA (Cont.): Oh, alright, truth.

Becca drinks.

BECCA: Harry.

HARRY: You did me last time.

BECCA (to Arthur): Do I have to switch every time?

ARTHUR (shrugs): You do you.

BECCA: Alright. Harry–what was her name?

HARRY: That’s not fair.

SARA: Maybe we should stop.

BECCA: No, I want to know.

HARRY: You said you didn’t.

BECCA: Well now I do.

HARRY: What does it matter?

BECCA (yells): It matters to me!

HARRY: This isn’t the time.

He stands.

HARRY (looks at Arthur): I think we should leave.

ARTHUR: We can stop.

He’s masked his enjoyment, somewhat, but it’s peaking through.

BECCA (still sitting): No — tell me, or lie.”

HARRY: Regina George. That what you want?

BECCA: Fucking liar.

He drinks.

HARRY (vaguely): Fuck you.

HARRY (Cont.): Arthur–why are we playing this game?

ARTHUR (chipper): For fun!

HARRY: Who’s fun?

ARTHUR: One question, one answer, buddy.

HARRY: Lie.

ARTHUR: Truth.

HARRY: Fuck you.

He drinks.

ARTHUR: My turn. Darling — what’s my biggest weakness?

Sara looks between Becca and Harry.

SARA: We should really stop.

ARTHUR: Is that your final answer?

SARA: Arthur, I want to stop.

HARRY (sits): No — answer. What’s his biggest weakness?

SARA: Kryptonite.

Becca’s smile has decomposed into a snarl. Looks at Harry.

ARTHUR: I am superman.

SARA: Lie.

Arthur drinks.

SAR: Alright. I want to stop. It’s my turn and I don’t want to ask any questions.

Becca, Harry, and Arthur turn to her.

HARRY (seethes): Come on, it’s just a game.

ATHUR: You heard the man!

SARA: Really, Arthur?

BECCA: You know what, fine.

BECCA (Cont.) (to Harry) : I wanted this to be a fun night. I wanted you to meet my friends. But you just had to turn this all about you, didn’t you?

HARRY: It’s my fault?

SARA (to Arthur): Maybe we should go to the room.

BECCA: No — I’ll go with you, Sara. Harry can stay out here with Arthur, or leave if that’s what he wants. Whatever; fuck him.

Stands, drags up Sara, and they walk into the bedroom.

***

Harry paces. He can’t hear anything being said in the room. Arthur’s sitting, almost through his third glass of Scotch.

ARTHUR: You want another beer?

HARRY: You’re a shit, you know that?

ARTHUR: A shit? I don’t think I’ve ever been called a shit before.

HARRY: Yeah — you. Are. A. Shit.”

ARTHUR: Don’t you think that’s a bit harsh? We just met.

HARRY: This fucking game. Did Becca tell you?

ARTHUR: Tell me what?

HARRY: You know what.

ARTHUR: Do I? If she told me, then I would. If she didn’t, then I’d have no clue what you’re talking about. Or maybe I would; context clues.”

HARRY (mumbles): None of your business.

ARTHUR: What?

HARRY: Fuck you, man.

ARTHUR: Temper, buddy. Whatever you’re trying to prove, you’re failing.

***

Sara and Becca are on the bed. Keith is nestled in between them, purring.

BECCA: She’s so cute.

SARA: I know, she’s our little cuddle-bug.

BECCA: He cheated.

SARA: Arthur told me.

BECCA: You’re boyfriend’s a dick.

Her mascara is running.

BECCA: I know.

SARA: Mine’s worse.

SARA: Yeah, I can tell.

BECCA: But Arthur didn’t have to do this.

She’s vigorously petting the cat.

SARA: He can’t help himself.

BECCA: I know. I’ve met him. I should have guessed he’d do it when he invited us over.

SARA: He cares about you.

She puts a hand on Becca’s head.

SARA (Cont.): You’re his friend.

BECCA: He’s a dick.

SARA: Yes, but also your friend.

BECCA: I don’t know what he wants?

SARA: Which one?

They laugh.

***

HARRY: It’s none of your business.

ARTHUR (still): What is?

HARRY: Stop it.

Arthur stands. Taller than Harry. Bigger. Less drunk.

ARTHUR: You’re going to have to be more specific, buddy.

HARRY: My relationship is none of your business.

ARTHUR: That is not clear to me.

HARRY: Well it should be.

ARTHUR: Should it? Tell me — which one of us cheated on my friend?

HARRY: You barely know her.

ARTHUR: True. That’s not my question.

HARRY: You cheated.

ARTHUR: Yes and no. But guess what — I was eighteen! You’re an adult.

HARRY: It was a mistake! Okay? People make mistakes.

ATHUR: That is true.

He’s not agreeing with Harry.

HARRY (realizes):What do you mean by that?

Harry puffs up.

ARTHUR: You know exactly what I meant. Now sit down.

***

BECCA: He told me not to take Harry back.

SARA: I know, he told me too.

BECCA: He was so pissed.

SARA: He’s like that — he cares about people, even he won’t admit it.

BECCA: I’m not his girlfriend.

SARA: I am, and I know him better than you do, and it doesn’t matter if he just met you or you’ve been his friend for years. He sticks up for people. Sometimes he does it in stupid ways. But it’s meant well.

BECCA: We barely know each other!

SARA: It doesn’t matter.

BECCA: I’m an adult.

SARA: Sure.

BECCA: He’s not my fucking knight in shinning armor! Is he always like this?

SARA: Kinda.

Keith purrs and rubs herself on Sara’s face.

BECCA: Chauvinist pig.

SARA: It’s not because you’re a woman. It’s because he thinks he’s smarter than you. Don’t worry — he thinks that about everyone.

BECCA: He’s an idiot.

SARA: He is.

BECCA: You’re sweet. Arthur doesn’t deserve you.

SARA: You’re wrong. He’s a good guy. He’s just, well, a little complicated.

Keith yips, annoyed she’s not being pet.

BECCA: It’s cruel of him to do this. Arthur. It’s too mean.

SARA: It is. He means well, but he’s trying to prove a point.

BECCA: Idiot. Did you know he was going to do this.”

SARA: I suspected. He thinks he’s crafty.

BECCA (laughs, then hiccups): Yeah. Idiot.

SARA: We should go back out.

BECCA: Not yet. I want to see if Arthur kicks Harry’s ass.

***

HARRY: I could kick your ass.

ARTHUR: That would be an interesting choice — cheat on Becca, then hurt her friend. You know what? You should do that. Go ahead.

HARRY: Fuck you. Are you into her or something?

ARTHUR (placid): I don’t cheat on the woman I love.

HARRY: Asshole.

ARTHUR: Don’t want to be crass, but takes one to know one. And on that subject, you know what, I have a confession to make. I told Becca to break up with you.

HARRY: Oh yeah?

ARTHUR: Did indeed. She was crying in class. Had to leave in the middle of discussion.

ARTHUR (Cont.) (does an impression of crying): He — he cheated on me — asshole — right in my — fucking — face — he — asshole — fuck!

HARRY: Fuck you.

ARTHUR: You’ve done enough of that, haven’t you.

HARRY: So this was your plan?

ARTHUR: It was. I didn’t think it would work — but, then again, I’m smarter than you, so I’m not surprised that it did. You’re just so — unimpressive. Deeply unimpressive. I’m unimpressed. Even if you hadn’t cheated on her, I would have told her to dump your ass.”

HARRY (yells): Go fuck yourself!

ARTHUR (claps): Clever! Why not take a swing next, Neanderthal. Right at the jaw. One two! Show me who’s boss!”

HARRY: Fuck. You!

***

BECCA: Do they know we can hear everything they’re saying?

SARA: Arthur does. They can’t hear us.

BECCA: That’s weird.

SARA: I know.

BECCA: You think Harry’s going to hit him?

SARA: I don’t know. Arthur does have a very punchable face.

Becca laughs, loud enough to be heard outside. Sounds like sobbing.

BECCA: He does! I’m surprised more people don’t punch it.

BECCA (composes herself): Come on, let’s go.

***

Arthur and Harry are standing not far from each other, the coffee table between them. No punches, thus far, have been thrown. Sara walks in, Becca behind her. Samwise rubs up on Arthur’s legs.

BECCA: You’re both idiots.

BECCA (Cont.) (to Arthur): You’re a dick.

ARTHUR: True.

BECCA: No, really, this isn’t your place.

ARTHUR: True.

BECCA: It was a stupid game.

ARTHUR: It was.

BECCA (to Harry): We should go.

Sara hugs Becca.

Becca comes around the table and gives Arthur a long hug goodbye.

Harry seethes, watching.

BECCA (Cont.): I’ll see you Tuesday.

ARTHUR: You bet, Becca. Be good.

Harry stomps to the front door, opens it, and walks out.

SARA: Are you guys okay to drive?

Becca’s at the door.

BECCA: Yeah, we’ll be fine.

She leaves and closes it behind her.

***

Sara enters the bedroom. Arthur’s in bed. Both cats on him. Trying to position his book so he can read.

SARA: I have a facemask on. Can you set a timer for ten minutes?

ARTHUR: Yep! Siri — set a timer for ten minutes.

SIRI: You got it, Your Magnificence.

Sara gets in bed. Keith rolls over and places her paws on Sara.

SARA: That was dumb.

ARTHUR (unsarcastic): I think it went well!

SARA: What? You think they’re going to break up?

ARTHUR: Maybe, maybe not. But I had fun.

SARA: You’re going to give me an ulcer — you know that? Why can’t you just invite people over like a normal person?

ARTHUR: That was fun, though.

SARA: No — that was stressful.

Arthur gives her a kiss, disturbing both cats.

ARTHUR: I love you.

SARA: I love you too. What are you reading?

ARTHUR (checks his book): To The Lighthouse.

SARA (incredulous): Really?

ARTHUR: No, of course not. I’m re-reading The Fellowship.

SARA (laughs): Alright. How much time’s left?

ARTHUR: It’ll buzz.

SARA: When do you have to wake up tomorrow?

ARTHUR: Whenever.

SARA: Do you want to go see a movie or something?
ARTHUR: Sure. There are some good ones out.

Sara pets Keith. Picks up her book. Starts reading.

SARA: Don’t let me fall asleep with my mask on.

The End

How do I look? Think of a response to that question. Hold it in your mind. Hi, I’m Michael — how do I look? The answer’s good, if you’re being nice. Tired, if you’re feeling accurate. Asking how do I look is qualitative. Give me a description. White might pop into your mind. I look white. But am I? What am I? What are you?

Truth be told, I don’t want to examine the complexities of whiteness.

What am I? Jewish, Latin, Polish, Russian, Argentine, Cis, Straight, Privileged; how many of those labels fit? How many can I wear before they overburden Michal the Writer (another label, this one self-made)? Labels are useful for external definitions. We label animals so we can help them, study them, conserve them; we label each other for different reasons.

But I don’t want to talk about labels. More intelligent, studied, complex people than I am have written plenty about them.

I want to talk about lying.

Lying about others, mostly.

There’s a question hanging in the literary ether; a thorny, important one with no good answer. Who gets to tell my story? Fiction writers have the tendency to believe they can tell any story they want. I tend to believe that I can tell any story I want. But there’s dissonance in my belief (not the fun, Jazzy kind). If I found out that a blonde Nord from Wisconsin wrote a story about a half-Latin Jew from L.A., it would give me pause. How could they possibly know what it’s like? I’m niche, for sure. Not too many novels about half-Latin L.A. Jews swimming around. Honestly, I don’t want to write them either. But that’s not the point! How can someone else write about me without knowing me without being me?

But I don’t believe that, do I?

How boring it would be if every writer stuck to themselves. What would become of imagination if we required artists to stick to their kind?

But then we hit appropriation. Sometimes I wish my nihilism would grow and wash away these questions; they’re fucking persistent. Is it okay for me to write a black protagonist? Not THE BLACK PROTAGONIST but a black protagonist? How about an indigenous one? What about a story about a young Maori girl living in Wellington? Or how about a gay Filipino boy living in the ducts of the International Space Station? If I bring it further speculative, is it okay — or am I cheating by avoiding the question? I’m tired of reading the STRAIGHT WHITE HERO; you’re tired of the STRAIGHT WHITE HERO; but I’m straight, I’m (kinda) white, and I like writing heroes. Is that all I can write?

Maybe the answer is no, but be sensitive. But can I even answer that question? Who can give me permission to write what I want to write? Can you? If it’s good, do I get away with it? If it’s bad, do I become an illiberal villain?

Who gets to tell your story?

Think about you, still young enough to search for yourself in stories. Did it matter who wrote them if you could find yourself hiding in the ink? Did you ever? I didn’t. I had to lob off half of myself to exist in Portnoy’s Complaint, forget that I was Jewish to love The Great Gatsby, ignore my unathleticism to be Aragorn. I don’t write to write myself into literature. That’s too much like masturbation. I want to tell stories; I tell stories. Writing them just makes them live longer than breath.

I really don’t want this to be a thinkpiece. I’m out of answers — I’m not sure they exist. I don’t have a meaningful perspective. I just want to write. I want to be forgiven for lying. I’m not a woman, but I write them. I’m not black, or gay, or bi, or trans, or lots of the labels that show up in my stories. They want to be there, my characters, because they live in my life. I pop up too, probably looking for some kid like me to make smile in recognition. But if I’m the only one you can find in what I write, then I’ve failed.

Or maybe not. Maybe in today’s epistemological desert people are craving Truth. What if everyone wrote their stories; what if the whole world spoke at once, declaring itself sentient and True and impossibly beautiful. What if I could make my voice just one of many, quiet and resonant and Heard. Everyone could see themselves in themselves there.

But what would that do?

There’s a question hanging in the literary ether; laughing at every attempt to answer it, bathing in thinkpieces (like this one), souring every decent conversation.

Who gets to tell my story?

Who gets to tell yours?