Editorial Attacks on The Hunger Games

A few weeks back, our local paper, The Hampshire Gazette, ran a guest editorial by a mother wondering if she should let her child read The Hunger Games. Great question, but the author hadn’t read the book herself, or even a summary, and made several mistaken assumptions that would feed unreasonable fears about the book.

So I –ahem- wrote to the paper correcting those mistakes and urging parents to actually, you know, read the book, or one of the many online summaries, before deciding. The Gazette kindly published my letter with a big box around it and a picture from the film.

Done? No. This week, another guest editorial appeared. This one, from a teacher claiming to have read the book, goes on to decry the violence as a “mind-numbing experience.”

Is the book the right choice for any young reader? No, but near as I can tell, readers actually paying attention will find The Hunger Games if anything, anti-violence.

So… I wrote another response. Unless we’re on the verge of creating some sort of Hunger Games Editorial sub-genre, I don’t know if they’ll publish it, so I’m reproducing it here.  Trusting the gist of the earlier pieces will become clear in context, without further ado, here we go:

The Gazette has now published two editorials on The Hunger Games – the first by Amy Pybus, who hadn’t read the book, and now the melodramatically titled “Hunger Games Starves Soul” by Tom Weiner, who chose to “skim pages at a time” when reading the violent passages his piece is supposedly about.

I’m not sure how much he actually read, since his description bears little resemblance to the book. In The Hunger Games, (SPOILER ALERT) after selflessly volunteering for the games to spare her sister, the main character does all she can to avoid killing. In the end, she threatens suicide rather than kill.

Readers do not “numbly” cheer her survival as a “killing machine” as Weiner suggests. Instead they cheer the survival of her compassion and the growth of her morality. Serious researchers into the subject take context into account. Here, the deaths are clearly depicted as tragic, leaving readers with a sense of revulsion and sadness at the violence.

That violence is itself meager compared with, say, Indiana Jones, Star Wars, or the 1950s EC horror comics widely read by 10 year olds, all of which do glorify violence yet have somehow failed to destroy Western Civilization.

The argument that virtual violence inherently renders us callous is also highly suspect. Since the advent of violent video games, played by hundreds of millions, violence within our society has not increased, but dropped dramatically.

Clearly, virtual violence is not violence. Reading about violence does not make us violent any more than reading about homosexuality makes us homosexual or reading Harry Potter makes us Satanists. Art reflects reality, and while, yes, it influences us, that influence is drop in the bucket compared to the real world.

Why are so many intrigued by tales and games of violence? Whatever else we are, humanity is a predatory species. It’s in our bones. Only by understanding our nature can we can rise above our darker side. Fiction is an insanely useful tool to accomplish that.

That said, how and when our youth learn about horrors like the Holocaust or the real-life Hunger Games of Joseph Kony’s child-army, is, and should be, up to parents and schools. To ignore violence completely, however, is to ignore reality.

Since Mr. Weiner mentions his book in his editorial, I’d feel remiss not mentioning my newest book, Ripper. It is about the son of Jack the Ripper and intended for ages twelve and up.

From Potter to Potty–Harry Potter & the Five Big Buts…

No, not sir Mix-A-Lot, but my latest column at Boomtron takes a look at the slightly convoluted path leading the grand Potter finale.  Here’s the opening graph to get y’all started…

WARNING! WARNING! DANGER, WILL ROBINSON! HERE THERE BE SPOILERS!

There are easier ways, right?  Toss the ring into Mount Doom and you’re done with it!Darth Vader’s your dad, love him and redeem his soul! The Red Skull (who, let’s face it, didn’t do much evil to begin  with, since all his plans – save one assassination – were spoiled by Cap) touches the wrong glowy thing and vanishes in a puff of cosmic smoke! Sure all those villains can come back, hale and hearty and ready to roll, but at least defeating them was quick, clean and made some sense.

And then there’s Voldemort.

To be clear, I think JK Rowling is hands-down brilliant. I’ve no doubt the seven book/eight film Harry Potter saga will be part of our culture, download, e-book or otherwise, for decades to come. At the same time, though, among the crucial hallmarks of great storytelling, I’ve always considered elegance and simplicity, well… important.  And there’s something wildly inelegant and increasingly complicated about the battle twixt Harry and Voldemort.

Not that the Empress has no clothes, but I think she could have dressed a little better.  Much of the series seems planned – hey, I’m tickled to go back to the first book and see mention of Sirius Black’s motorcycle.  Then, as we get to the end of the fifth book, The Order of the Phoenix, Dumbledore takes Harry aside and, for about a hundred pages, to says, in effect, “Here’s the real plot, but I kept it secret because I didn’t want to hurt you.”  At that point, I have to at leastsuspect a certain someone had written themselves into a corner and was now performing a variety of literary-contortionist moves to get out of it.

To read the rest, click here.

And be sure to also check out the Goodreads Giveaway for my upcomingzombie detective novel Dead Mann Walking!

Check out my new Column “An Unreasonable Fan” at BSCREVIEW.COM!

For some insane reason, Elena Wolf, editor at bscreview, upon reading my recent history of vampires, invited me to do a regular, monthly column.  With friends and family pretty used to hearing my opinions, they’ve become difficult to surprise, so I decided to give it a shot.

As a result, the first entry of An Unreasonable Fan is now online, featuring my twisted and horribly misguided thoughts on AMC’s The Killing and a buncha other stuff.  It starts off like this:

“Any dramatic or comedic series, driven by one sort of tension or another, promises a pay-off of some sort, but not all hang their hat on it.  No one really expected Gilligan to get off the island (though, ancient Spoiler Alert, they ultimately did).  Even mysteries don’t always pivot on the crime’s solution. Columbo identified the killer up front.  The fun was watching Peter Falk figure it out.  But some series do. They set up expectations, beat us over the head with them, and often wind up judged accordingly.  As gleefully indicated by the title, the poster, the ads, and everything else, AMC’s The Killing appears to be of that ilk.  (more)”

Who the hell do I think I am, anyway?

The nicest part is I’ve basically been given free reign to talk about whatever, so in the future I’ll be covering everything from unasked-for writing tips to the history of zombies to Jack the Ripper and the Alfred Beach Pneumatic Subway.

So do drop by, and definitely leave a comment!

Pax

Me and the Fangs–A loose history of Vampires

The vampire -- monster, metaphor, lifestyle choice, high school crush. Love ‘em or not, their persistence as a cultural meme seems as immortal as the wacky critters themselves. Be it coincidence or a desperate attempt to cash in before the craze dissipates in the rays of the rising sun, I’ve recently penned not one, but three vampire tales, ranging from the paranormal thriller, Blood Prophecy, to Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer, and last but not least, Breaking Down, a graphic novel parodying the popular Twilight saga.

But where do these creatures of the night come from? Why are they here? Will they loan me some money? Through all this writing, I couldn’t help but ponder the question. What follows is one man’s admittedly narrow view of a phenomena that will no doubt outlive us all.

Though variations appear in ancient Rome, China, and (dubiously), Native American mythos, the undead we know and love began in the Balkans (yep, Transylvania) as a plague metaphor, enjoying spates of popularity in Europe and colonial New England. Short version – someone dies from disease, returns by night, and infects the rest of their family until staked, decapitated, or both. They were dead, they wanted to kill you, they had to be destroyed -- the ethical equivalent of Uncle-as-zombie, sans flesh-eating.

The earliest fictional vamp, Lord Ruthven from Polidori’s The Vampyre (1819), is tad different. Like a more famous Count, and in a similar idiom, this nobleman spends his time sucking blood, seducing virgins and returning from apparent death to attempt feasting on our poor narrator’s sister.

It was a start. More interesting is the 1845 penny dreadful, Varney the Vampire, generally credited to James Malcolm Rymer, though sometimes to Thomas Preskett Prest (your guess is as good as mine as to why). Penny dreadfuls, btw, were the British comic book of their day, fast, cheap and out of control, featuring oft-serialized tales that were as sure to corrupt the youth as today’s video games.

Varney, a precursor to Barnabas Collins, actually tries to get out of his curse. He even commits suicide. In a scene out of the Frankenstein movies, Varney’s brought back to life via galvanic energies (electricity to you) by a Dr. … wait for it… Chillingworth.

The two elephant-corpses in the room remain Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu’s Carmilla (1872) and Bram Stoker’s Dracula (1897). I’ve tried reading Dracula, I think I finished, and, yeah, it’s a seminal horror text and all, but the story, in any form, bores me to tears -- with two exceptions. Browning’s 1931 Universal film version has Dwight Frye’s unforgettable portrayal of the Count’s genuinely creepy assistant, Renfield. I also enjoyed a little-known BBC adaption starring Louis Jourdan, but mostly because of Frank Finlay’s totally whack Van Helsing. Beyond that, though, I just don’t really care about anyone in the story, least of all Dracula, be he Lugosi, Lee, Langella, Oldman, or my own fetid imagination. He’s kind of just this great idea without flesh and blood. (Well, that makes sense, doesn’t it?)

For my money, the female vampire Carmilla, steeped in plague imagery, is much more intriguing. Yeah, sure, there’s the barely concealed lesbianism, which I love as much as the next guy, but really, the relationship between the titular vampire and Laura, her lonely victim, is genuinely touching. After the forces of goody-goodness win, Laura is forced to see Carmilla as a lifeless predator, yet she still misses her, and this is clearly not the effect of a curse, but a genuine emotion.

But Dracula got the sales, the stage play, the movie franchise, and it’s his name that’s all but synonymous with the beast itself. Something of course must be said for sheer survival. So, hooray.

Acquiring a kind of Marvel-superhero sheen in the later Universal films, (the rib-tickling mash-ups House of Frankenstein and House of Dracula), Dracula went from dull to cliché faster than it takes to charge an electric car (originally available at the time the novel was written!). As a character, he was most interesting in the spoof, Abbot and Costello Meet Frankenstein, where at least he had a magic ring, some surgical skill, and a quest – to transplant Costello’s brain into the creature. Why? Supposedly to make him a better servant, but really, I think it was just for yucks.

Skipping a few decades, the thickest nosferatu-root, for me, remains the 1960s soap opera, Dark Shadows. As a writer, I’ve been fortunate to work with several iconic characters, from man-made monsters to the world’s first girl detective, but the main reason vampires own a special place in my heart is that moment when I was eight and first glimpsed Barnabas Collins baring his fangs – an affection I blog about at length here.

Yes, it was cheaply made. Sets wobbled, actors blew their lines and the blooper reel is nearly as long as the series. Yet Barnabas, a tortured Byronic hero, owes as much to Wuthering Heights’ Heathcliff as he does to Varney or Dracula. Laugh if you will, but without him, the works of Anne Rice, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, and Twilight, would not be possible.

It’s in him the notion of vampire as someone trapped reaches fruition. Barnabas had a soul, and thanks to it, whined constantly. He even planned to turn his betrothed, Josette, into a vampire like himself, but she threw herself off a cliff, setting in motion our hero’s long-lasting obsession.

Does he ever get on with his un-life? No. The fiend finds one chick after another whom he believes to be Josette’s reincarnation. Eventually, he didn’t even care if the woman looked like Josette. He was just fine finding someone he could dress up in that musty old wedding gown.

And that concept neatly fulfills an essential trope of the old-style vampire – being completely, hopelessly, eternally stuck. Old school Vampires do not change. They do not progress. They do not grow, not emotionally, not spiritually. They do not let it go. They keep checking Facebook even if they have no friends. That’s because they’re dead. Static. Their hunger for blood is a clear symbolic yearning for lost life.

Which brings me to my own Blood Prophecy, which on the one hand harkens back to the notion of vampire as plague, embodied by the evil Skog, but also to the Dark Shadows idea of salvation, through the protagonist, Jeremiah Fall. Rather than a rich Collins, though, Jeremiah is a simple farmer, a pious Puritan.

Puritanism crystallized a lot about vampires that I wanted to say. They had an intense distrust of not only their own hungers, but of the physical world itself (it is the Devil’s, after all), yet they knew they had to live in it. Their quest for salvation drove them stiff and twitching to wonderful innovations (the idea that each person had to read for themselves, for instance) as well as horrific cruelties like the Salem Witch Trials.

Speaking of the real world, 1972’s Night Stalker TV-movie, produced by Dark Shadow’s Dan Curtis, remains one of my favorite vampire films, and not so much because of the vampire. The baddie, Janos Skorzeny, at least so far as we get to know him, is a sheer predatory monster, characterized by feats of strength more in keeping with the Frankenstein monster than a sly seductor.

The film works for different reasons, primarily because of a 16mm, grainy, noir-ish, holy crap it’s real feel. That zeitgeist giddily takes us giddily all the way into The X-Files and its cagey and equally delightful bastard-child, Fringe. Moonstone Books has since kept Carl alive with a series of graphic novels. (I was happy to have contributed The Devil in the Details, which was nominated for a Stoker Award.)

Anne Rice’s Interview with a Vampire and its sequels certainly earned their following, but for me, steeped in Dark Shadows, it all had a been-there-done-that feel. I did enjoy Claudia, in both book and film, but the whole vampire-coven thing never did much for me. It always seems to dilute the sense of a more personal hell. One demon is terrifying, a bunch of them is, well… kind of a party.

Stepping up to more recent times, there is the oft-brilliant Buffy the Vampire Slayer. When Joss Whedon is on his game he is a master. Now, as co-author of the popular Nancy Drew graphic novel series (along with Sarah Kinney and artist Sho Murase) I’d like to say the Buffster’s a direct descendant of the girl detective, but that’s not completely true.

As intellectuals have discussed to death, Buffy’s a reversal of the vampire’s victim, the historically abused female taking control. The popular image of the vampire leering over the sleeping blonde virgin takes a huge turn when the sleeping blonde has a stake in her hand and knows how to use it. And Joss, bless him, plays around with the whole reluctant-vampire thing. While most of his vamps are generic monsters, some are “cursed” with souls (another reversal), drawing a neat line from Angel to Barnabas and back to Varney.

Buffy certainly has Drew in her blood though. Nancy, first published in 1930, is the original mass media girl power figure. Like Buffy, she doesn’t accept a passive role. She speaks truth to power. She has abilities far beyond the norm (in her case, brain-power). She goes after baddies, no matter the risk, a role she seems born to, and her personal life suffers because of it. Sound familiar?

When the first series of graphic novels from Papercutz came to a close after 22 books, Sarah and I were asked to help re-launch Nancy. That meant thinking about what made the character tick in the first place, taking a look at the history and pondering wither she’s wandered since.

Of course Buffy came to mind, and the two-part Nancy Drew: Vampire Slayer was born. Having our girl appear on the cover with a cross-bow in hand and the devilish, handsome Gregor hanging upside behind her may seem like a wild departure, but it’s really tapping back into the myth that’d kept the character going all these years. Without giving away too much, of course we remain true to what Nancy Drew is, though she does share a kiss with the purported vampire, and seems to like it. The books are a lot of fun, a wild ride, and embrace that oxymoronic element the public insists on with beloved characters – exactly the same, only different.

As for vampires, like Nancy, in order to survive, they need more than just blood, they have to adapt. Sadly, of late, to my mind, they seem to be losing what made them monsters in the first place. Far from cursed souls or soul-less monsters, 21^st century nosferatu are often played as having the same growth-potential as humans. They’re more like misunderstood mutant superheroes, blessed with powers, plagued with weaknesses. They’re not bad – just life-challenged. I suppose it can be an equally interesting trope, but it’s not particularly monstrous. Which brings us to… ahem… The Twilight saga.

Now, I certainly don’t intend to trash Twilight … no, wait, I do.

With the help of Maia, my talented teen daughter, who, at a younger age devoured the books, and artist extraordinaire Rick Parker, that’s exactly what the new graphic novel, Breaking Down does. The promo text for our fifty-page parody describes it as “for fans sick of glittery vampires and wonky werewolves,” and it’s all that, but it’s also not particularly mean-spirited or disrespectful… much.

But… how can I take the vampire so seriously on the one hand and mock it with the other? Putting aside the fact that I just love making fun of things, earlier I mentioned how Dracula ultimately became a self-satire in the later universal films. And many long-lived franchises have gone through the same – witness Star Trek IV or the introduction of Jaws in the James Bond films. Having taken something so seriously for so long, it seems almost natural that there comes a time to… well, poke it with a stick and see if it’s still alive. It’s a breath of fresh air, a chance to take a look at things from another angle, to see what’s working and what’s not.

It’s also an opportunity to analyze the darn thing. Humor, after all, at its best, reveals truth. One of the reasons parody is a protected form under copyright law is because it doesn’t present the further adventures of beloved popular characters, it expresses an opinion about them, in a narrative form. In that sense parody is the same as a book or movie review, only with pictures, and a lot, lot funnier.

As for the original books, I admire them, I really do. Though the writing strikes jaded old me as a poor man’s Buffy, I’ve actually defended Twilight on a number of occasions. That’s partly because I can’t help but think think anything that gets people reading (as long as it’s not preaching genocide) is a good thing. Across the globe, folks who generally might not otherwise pick up a book eagerly plow through thousands of pages of Bela (gee, wonder who she was named after…), Edward and Jacob (who really is the better choice for a lover since he’s not dead). If nothing else, it can be seen as a gateway drug to heavier literature.

And it’s more than that. The old vampire is still in there, lurking around. Edward, after all, is Heathcliff, sans Barnabas’ mean-streak, and some of the vampires are bad and kill people. Maybe, in an era of safe sex, it’s appropriate to have a romantic hero who doesn’t seem at all dangerous beyond a creepy stalker-thing.

The biggest objection many critics have is the flipping of Whedon’s wonderful innovation, the pro-active Buffy, back into Bela’s passive virgin. The girl not only doesn’t fight evil, or anything else, she wants to become a vampire herself, wants it bad, because, well, she never really fit in as a human anyway. If Buffy is the classic victim concealing a stake, Bela is opening the window and dragging the beast inside and toward her neck. Now there’s a role model! What if our daughters want to become like her? Gasp!

Thing is, maybe I’m naïve, but I don’t think most reader see Bela as a role model. I suspect she’s more like she’s an escape from having to have a role model in the first place, a respite from real life. A little terror, sure, but not the big stuff, thank you, and can someone please take care of me? That aspect of literature, escapism, is certainly as valid as any other. And Stephanie Meyers fills the bill nicely.

As for the vampire itself, I have no worries. Dress him (or her) up as sweet as you like, they’re still lurking out there, just beyond the shadows, along with all that terror – just like death. Poke it with a stick. You’ll see.

Two new Petrucha books for March!

It’s nepotism in the spring as my two latest works involve collaborations with family & friends!

The ominous ides of March will see publication of What the (Active Verb) from The New Press by yours T and old pal Shelby Gragg.  Shelby the Great and I go further back than evolutionary theory.  He played Scott in my college Star Trek satire, and in the years following we crashed on one another’s couches during sundry financial crises.  I try not to do the political thing, to quote Lily Tomlin, I try to be cynical, but I can’t keep up.  Shelby, though, had the terribly satisfying idea of taking various utterly bizarre right-wing speeches and turning them into a Mad-Lib style satire, where the reader gets to grab a shovel and fill in the gaping blanks.  Most of this stuff is cookie-cutter crazy to begin with, so the book practically wrote itself.  Check it out -- you’ll laugh until you weep for the nation!

In the slightly safer but no less strange realm of vampire fantasy, on the 29th, Breaking Down, the second in the Slices series from Papercutz shows it’s shiny face.  The rare and amazing Rick Parker again handles the art chores, but this time, I co-authored the script with my talented teen daughter, Maia Kinney-Petrucha.  She shot through the Twilight series in her younger years and was more than happy to take a more wry look at the sparkly-vampire phenomena.  Harry Potty continues to sell well, and if anything, this sucker is even funnier.  No reason to believe me since I’m trying to sell it, but check out the excerpt here.

And now, having spent the morning figuring out how to update my website, since the WordPress dashboard screwed up on me,  time to get back to writing.  Pax!

Blood Prophecy Interview & Reviews!

And welcome to 2011.  Hasn’t really been better that 2010 yet, has it?  But there is good news…

To start off, congrats to my remarkable agent, Joe Veltre, who has joined the esteemed Gersh Agency.  I’ve worked with Gersh on the TV rights for Teen, Inc. and found them fantastic and responsive.  Way to go, Joe - and the crowds (and hopefully my career) go wild!

Now, me.  There’ve  been many exciting reviews of my latest novel, Blood Prophecy, all over the web.  I tend to post these piecemeal via Facebook/Twitter, but this morning was greeted by four reviews and an interview (sound like a film title).  So….

Groovy interview/review is at daemonbooks.com, courtesy of Jose Alvarez, who said in part, “fans of vampire novels will enjoy Blood Prophecy, especially those looking for something unique.”

And in no particular order….

JC Andrews at Whimnotes:  “This book is an excellent read and a definite addition to your collection of memorable fiction.”

Kristen at Bookworming:  “Mix in some romance, and a ton of action and Petrucha has really made a stunning novel that philosophizes the vampire and what it truly is.”

Dottie at Tink’s Place:  “It's a story all urban fantasy lovers will want to take a peek at, fantasy lovers may want to take a peek as well.”

Thanks all, for the great support!  Pax.

A PC Holiday Miracle

Non-technical types please bear with me.  There is a point to this.  Ahem.  In my home, when something goes wrong with a computer or the network I’m the one who gets to fix it.  Having spent years as a tech writer, and long ago being the “go-to” computer guy in the office, I’m no stranger to this sort of stuff.  A few years back, though, I purchased a LaCie Ethernet mini-drive to store our music, photos and videos that’s been nothing but trouble.  Reading files from it is easy enough, but every now and then, for no apparent reason, it decides that NO ONE has permission to write new files on it.  Not a handy feature for a hard drive.  Anyway, when it acts up, I wind up spending a few hours driving myself up the wall, calling tech support, scouring the net for a solution and so on.  Usually, after much hair-pulling and vows to sundry pagan entities, I get it sort of working again, but invariably, the problem repeats.  And when it does, the previous solution no longer works.  It’s as though the problem is evolving, learning how to thwart me.  The warranty has expired and I’m in no position to buy a new one.  It has been my Ethernet albatross.

About a week ago, I absolutely had to remove some files from my daughter’s overburdened laptop and put them on the LaCie.  One of the things I hate most about technical issues is that I never have any idea how long it will take to address.  Could be seconds, days, or worse.  There I was in my familiar purgatory,  checking everything, reading and re-reading the manual, scouring sundry techno-geek fix-it sites.  I was just about to set myself and the drive on fire when… 

A miracle occurred!

I was looking at Amazon customer reviews, when I happened, just happened to notice the last line of a review which said, sort of as a throwaway line, that if you have the “guest” setting turned on, no one will be able to write files onto the drive.  One line.  Neither the manual, tech support, or anyone else on the whole freaking web seemed to know this.  Dubious, I unticked the box, restarted the drive, and, lo and behold, a problem that had been tasking me, literally, for years just… vanished.  Now, the drive works perfectly.  I felt profoundly relieved, and, though I don’t subscribe to any organized religious belief, blessed.

Long story short, my holiday wish for everyone is that whatever trouble sits heavily upon your mind, technical, economic, social, spiritual or whatever, may it have as quick and simple solution, and may you find it soon.  Pax.