In which I concede that e-books are sort-of OK...

Several years ago on this blog I presented an argument against e-books, vowing that I would never use them. But during this pandemic, e-books (and audiobooks) have been a godsend.

That's because the local library is still closed to the public. To borrow a physical book, I have to order the book online, then wait for the librarians to find it on the shelf (at whichever library it is available) and notify me. I then must make an appointment to pick it up within whatever timeframe they have available, sometimes days away. The library leaves the borrowed book(s) on a table in the alcove, in a paper bag with my name on it. 

When I borrowed a book this summer on how to learn Korean the whole process took a couple of weeks. And it turned out to be the wrong book. Without being able to browse it on the shelf (or see previews of it online), I hadn't realized that the book used a Romanized Korean alphabet, when the whole point was that I wanted learn to read Korean.

Last week when I wanted to borrow The Dutch House by Ann Patchett, I merely had to go to my phone, open the Libby library app and request to borrow it, and download the audiobook to the app, which took maybe ten minutes. I was given 21 days to read it. After a few days, when I wasn't feeling Tom Hanks's narration, I checked Libby again and found an e-book copy available and was able to download it in under five minutes to my iPad, so I could read it with the Kindle app. (I sat up last night, well past midnight, to finish it). I sent back both versions of the now-finished book this morning via the app, and now it's available to the next readers on the list.

So I don't think e-books are evil anymore. They serve a purpose. But I don't want paper books to be entirely replaced with them. When my iPad battery runs down, poof, the book disappears. Meanwhile, all the paper books I own sit placidly on the shelves.

Gardening, listening, creating quiet monuments of narrative experience

Aunt Lydia (from Hulu's Handmaid's Tale), haunts my garden

During the pandemic I've been gardening--a lot. There's really nowhere else to go but my backyard anyway so I might as well be growing salad vegetables and getting rid of the weeds.

After I bought two pairs of overalls to work in, I discovered that I could put my phone in the front breast pocket and listen to podcasts and audiobooks from the library. (Before I had struggled to listen with wireless earbuds or a bluetooth speaker I lugged around the yard). I didn't realize how much time I was spending in the yard until I listened to all of The Golem and the Jinni (500+ pages), followed by Becoming by Michelle Obama, and The Testaments by Margaret Atwood--all in a couple of months time. And that was between listening to different podcasts.

An unexpected consequence is that I now associate certain areas of my yard with specific characters or stories. My strawberry patch is now the Aunt Lydia strawberry patch (I think of her and her perhaps justifiable cruelty when I am in there weeding or picking berries). The new patch of grass that, it turns out, happens to be the dimension of two side-by-side cemetery plots now brings to mind Chang and Eng (from listening to Mo Rocca's Mobituary on the original Siamese twins, while I sowed it). And the stone and brick sidewalk I've been putting in reminds me both of the Southside of Chicago and NYC at the turn of the century...

These are quiet tributes created not as statues or anything permanent, and which only I can see. It makes me realize that anywhere we are, wherever we walk, there is probably one of these silent monuments of experience, whether lived in actuality or through words. There may be multiple monuments, multiple experiences, all on the same patch of land or in the same place. Aunt Lydia's monuments may be found on bus seats or city sidewalks or bedside tables. A stairwell, a flower, a patch of earth, may evoke Michelle Obama's voice because that's where you or I were when she told us about her life.

My garden is filled with plants and with memories of places to which I've journeyed through the sound of voices coming out of the bib of my overalls. It may look like I am growing only lettuce and parsley and tomatoes, but I am also growing memories. Small miracles, freely given, voices emitted from a phone that seldom rings.

What Korean TV dramas are teaching me about plot

My discovery of Korean TV dramas has coincided with my working through the book, Story Genius (SG) by Lisa Cron, which is about how to craft a good story.

Specifically, I am currently in the throes of a Netflix creation called “Crash Landing on You” (CLOY), which is still being released. The last two episodes (15 and 16) will be released on Saturday and Sunday—and I will be watching them, possibly in the morning of each day.

I can’t remember the last time I was so caught up in a TV show, except maybe Twin Peaks, which my spouse and I (pre-DVR days) would rush from wherever we were to watch at home in real time. But that was back in the days when there was no social media engagement—so our interest was shared among ourselves and our acquaintances only.

This is the first TV show I have watched that is dropping in real time (instead of its entire season being instantly binge-able), so I have been waiting each weekend with tens of thousands of others for the next episodes to drop. Although the show hasn’t gotten much press in American media (no reviews from TV critics of the New York Times, Washington Post, etc.) it is a fan favorite on Rotten Tomatoes, receiving a 96% audience score and 9.1 stars from viewers on IMDB. When a clip of it is posted on YouTube or when Hyun-Bin (one of the main actors) posts something about it on his Instagram feed, dozens of people comment about how much they are enjoying it—and a common thread among these comments (written in multiple languages) is something like: “Happy ending—please!!” Viewers are really engaged in the story. A few have (jokingly) threatened the writers if it ends sadly. So I am not the only one caught up in it.

It’s fun to enter this fictional world and anticipate the next thing that could happen, especially since almost every episode ends with a cliffhanger (and also to think there are so many people experiencing this euphoric anticipation along with me). But why, according to the tenets set forth in Story Genius, has this been such compelling viewing for me? I know it’s not the best thing I’ve ever watched and I am sometimes frustrated at the lack of action, when the actors just stand there and make moony eyes at each other while the camera pans around them. (Although there is often poetry in what they say to each other in such times--see example dialog at the bottom of this post *).

Since I am still learning what “story” is (apparently what I’ve written a lot of in the past is beautiful exposition), I thought CLOY would be useful as an exercise for me to apply some of Cron’s examples/questions about the elements of story to it. (I can’t apply her earlier questions about why I should care about the story, or what prompted it since I didn’t write it).

SG: What is the problem she/they can’t avoid?

• Yoon-Seri has crash-landed in North Korea—so the first and main question is: how will she get out? And how will Captain Ri help her get out? So simple, yet so compelling (despite the absurdity). She must get out—it is dangerous for her there. But they fall in love, so the secondary question is: how can they/will they reunite?

SG: What is the point?

I’m not sure about this question. Maybe: Love gives meaning to life? Or, if given the chance, people can rise to the occasion and be heroic (they both risk their lives for each other)? But in an online interview, Cron also said: “what most people are writing about is human connection, the cost of human connection. What does it cost me to connect.”

This might be a better question for CLOY. Seri is a woman who has little close human connection—never accepted by her mother, hated by her brothers. Capt. Ri has shut himself down emotionally after the death of his brother. They learn to love and rely upon each other—but the cost is heartbreak, and the absence of a future together.

SG: What did the protagonist enter the story already wanting?

• Is the answer as simple as “to be loved and known”--? Not just romantic love but to find community with people, even those who are as different from you as they could possibly be.

SG: What is the protagonist’s internal change? How does the external dilemma/plot change her worldview?

Seri learns to love, to trust, to be giving—this is mirrored also by Capt. Ri’s internal change as well. But how heartbreaking—and the thing that drives the later episodes forward—that the thing that has changed her the most and given her the most happiness is the one thing she can’t have.

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* Who wouldn’t love a man who can say something like this to comfort a weeping woman?

“Next year, the year after that, and even the one after that will all be good. Because I’ll be thinking about you. I’ll be grateful that you were born into this world. I’ll be grateful that the person I love is still breathing. That’s why your birthday will always be a good day.”