Dead Zone

Because the enjoyable book I just proofread was kind of a knock-off of Dead Zone, I pulled out my DVDs to rewatch the pilot and a few episodes.

- It's kind of disturbing how these are now almost a decade old. The changes in TV CGI effects alone...

- I still think the episode "Precipitate" is one of the most genius episodes of television. Because it takes the premise of the show--John Smith touching things activates the "dead zone" in his brain, giving him visions--and takes it to a totally cracked out place. What happens if he gets a blood transfusion? Answer, he gets visions of the six donors anytime their blood passes through his dead zone. The first fifteen minutes of the episode are just exploring the idea. The plot only shows up later.

- I watched most of season two of this show in one day, the day after I pulled an all-nighter singing Tavener's "Veil of the Temple." Consequently I was really loopy, a, and I was wearing my glasses instead of my contacts, so the TV screen wasn't completely in focus. I later watched season three, but that was at least six years ago at this point. So I don't remember the ongoing plot of the show at all. I mean, I know the general idea. But it's like starting a book and putting it down in the middle then waiting five years. I'd like to watch the rest of the show at some point (even though I've heard through the fandom grapevine that it's crap), but I think in order to understand it, I'd need to rewatch the whole show from the beginning.

- Nicole de Boer still annoys the hell out of me.

Memoir by Ben Yagoda

I just finished the book Memoir by Ben Yagoda, and I had flagged a bunch of things I wanted to quote from it, but I've left the book at home...

The book is a history of the genre of memoir/autobiography. It has almost no analysis. Instead, it's a compendium of memoirs that have been published in the last three hundred or so years, often with little descriptions, and showing the links between related works. Despite the lack of overt analysis, you get kind of a picture of trends, much of which I found very interesting. You also wind up with a whole new reading list.

( Some of what I learned )

Yagoda's compendium also gives some illumination into the ways people have dealt the inherent impossibility of presenting a "true" story about the subjective experience of one's life. Over time, people have published their autobiographies under pseudonyms or anonymously, or they have presented them as fiction (one of the most famous examples, Sylvia Plath's "The Bell Jar"). The lines can be very fuzzy. For example, Gertrude Stein wrote a "memoir" from the perspective of her closest friend, talking about that friend's relationship to her.

There are of course those who outright fake their identities or their experiences for memoirs, but all memoirs include inaccuracy and untruth. They have to, or they wouldn't be compelling stories. Yagoda's yardstick is a good one: the author must adhere to a higher standard of accuracy when he/she is a) aggrandizing themselves, b) denigrating someone else, or c) pushing an agenda. Otherwise you have to evaluate the author's voice as you would a stranger telling you a story.

In conclusion, this is a good book if you are interested in the history of publishing or a memoir addict. It gives a good perspective on the history and points you at a lot of former bestsellers that have been mostly forgotten. But unless you're already interested, it's an impenetrable list of books.