Amiri & Odette: A Love Story by Walter Dean Myers

Walter Dean Myers is known for gritty novels like Monster and Shooter and Dope Sick and Sunrise Over Fallujah, and for picture book poetry collections like Jazz. This year, he's managed to combine gritty, urban teen themes with poetry . . . and ballet.

Yeah, I said it. Ballet.

See, Myers was much struck with the story of the ballet Swan Lake, which you may know from, say, having seen Billy Elliot or The Swan Princess, if you haven't seen the ballet on its own. The ballet, which dates from about 1875, was based on a variety of Russian and German fairy tales involving a princess (named Odette) who is under the spell of a magical bad guy named Rothbart (German for "Red Beard"), who tries to pair his own daughter, Odile, with Prince Siegfried. Siegfried, however, loves only Odette.

The ballet comes in four acts, but the final act varies wildly:

Act 1: Siegfried must choose a bride at his birthday ball (sounds like the prince in Cinderella, yes?) He heads into the woods and chases some swans.

Act 2: Siegfried gets ready to shoot an arrow at one of the swans, then realizes she is more human than swan. He finds out she's Odette, bewitched by Rothbart to be a swan by day. Love ensues. He wants to kill Rothbart, but if he does so before the spell is broken, it will never end.

Act 3: Siegfried has his ball. Rothbart tricks him into thinking that Odile is Odette, and he pledges his love to the wrong girl.

Act 4: Back at the lake, Siegfried apologizes to Odette, who forgives him. They refuse to be parted, and kill themselves, thereby weakening Rothbart's power so much that he dies OR their love is so strong it overcomes Rothbart, who dies while they live happily ever after OR Odette is stuck being a swan forever and Siegfried is left broken and alone.

Walter Dean Myers sets this book, Amiri and Odette in the Swan Lake Projects, an urban apartment complex in an asphalt world. Javaka Steptoe, the illustrator, took Myers's idea and ran with it, literally creating collage art on slabs of asphalt and cinder block. His images include original art and the sort of objects one might use in everyday life - I spotted a menu from a Chinese restaurant, actual feathers and some of the real jewelry that Steptoe mentions in his illustrator's note.

In Myers's text, Siegfried becomes Amiri (a version of the Arabic word meaning Prince). Rothbart becomes "Big Red". And Odette? Yeah, she's still Odette. The book, like the ballet, is split into four "acts".

Act 1: His mother says she's having a party so he can find a nice girl to settle down with.

Act 2: Amiri and his friends play basketball in the night:

But on the far edge of this boy-boy dream,
As far as forever, as close as a scream,
There are girl shadows dancing
And one who is glancing

At the muscular form that leaps toward the rim.
He sees her -- she sees him.
A feeling of magic in the air.
He holds his breath,
she smooths her hair.

Act 3: At the party, Big Red sends an unidentified girl in a black swan mask to Amiri; she pretends to be Odette and he pledges his love to her. Odette, who is late to the party (I guess), shrieks and takes off, with Amiri in hot pursuit.

Act 4: Back out on the basketball court, Amiri finds Odette alone, "shivering in the dark". Odette says she's already dead, and only a specter.

"No, I am Amiri," he says.
"And what I see is a sweet promise of tomorrow.
Invent our love, and we will beat Big Red.
Without this hope, we may as well be dead."

Big Red and Amiri duke it out - with weapons - over Odette, and Big Red loses and leaves town as Amiri and Odette end up dancing in the sunrise.

And yes, I just told you the ending, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't have a look at the book, which is, as I've already mentioned, written as a poem. Myers's use of language and fluid approach to meter and rhyme is interesting, and Steptoe's use of textures and rich colors to bring the story alive visually is exciting.

Perhaps my most serious criticism of the story is Myers's decision to call the bad guy "Big Red", because it's a name I can't read without thinking of my favorite cinnamon chewing gum. Putting that aside (which I must do every. single. time. I read the guy's name), I thought this adaptation worked well. It does for Swan Lake what West Side Story did for Romeo and Juliet: brought it forward in time and made it seem fresh and relevant.

Do we really need to win?

As a.fortis mentioned last week, Guys Lit Wire was nominated and then shortlisted for two categories in Book Blogger Appreciation Week (Best Specialized Blog and Most Altruistic). I've been thinking a lot about this over the past few days and how I feel about popularity and blogging. The thing that concerns me the most here is Most Altruistic Blog. Basically, GLW is competing against other sites for the prize of who has been the kindest to others. Everyone in the short list has donated their time to raise money or collect books (as we did in the Book Fair for Boys) to help those in need. And now we are up for an award for our kindness.

And something about that just seems....well, it seems wrong.

I did not remove GLW from consideration in this award because initially I really was touched that folks thought of us. And honestly, I know that being short listed meant that new readers found our blog by perusing the lists and that is good for us - it certainly helps to spread the word on what we work very hard at here. But still. Do we want an award for doing something that in a perfect world wouldn't need to be done at all? Do any of us need to be recognized for helping kids who have little access to books get some?

Not to get all Spike Lee on you, but do you ever need a prize for doing the right thing?

We might very well win this award, I really don't know. But speaking for me, I don't think in the future I will accept GLW being shortlisted in this category and I like to know what everyone else who contributes here thinks. I prefer that folks just buy the damn books when we run the book fair. We put our time and money where our mouths are - and if everyone else would do the same then changing the world (for these boys anyway) would be easy.

There's an award idea - having everyone vote by purchasing a book for one of the causes supported by the shortlisters. Imagine how awesome that prize would be.

Carnivorous Giraffes and Sentient U(n)brellas

Zanna and Deeba have just followed a walking umbrella (and mysterious signs that they’ve been seeing everywhere) and discovered the world of UnLondon, a fantastic place full of amazing creatures--carnivorous (and hungry!) giraffes, pet milk cartons, fighting trashcans called the Binja, and the Smog, which is trying to take control of the city. Zanna is hailed by the UnLondoners as their Shwazzy (Chosen One), but is quickly defeated and sent home, losing all her memories of UnLondon. Can a sidekick save the day? Find out as Deeba journeys back into UnLondon and has adventures all her own.

I ran a teen book club over the summer, and this was the first title that we read and discussed. Everyone was extremely enthusiastic about the book, and none of the 10 avid readers had heard of it before, even though it’s been out for a few years, so I thought I should write about it here, too.

China Mieville creates a vivid world, both with his writing and in the drawings throughout Un Lun Dun. Everything in UnLondon is just a little off, familiar enough to make you comfortable if you let down your guard, strange enough to remind you that you are travelling in new territory. Buildings are constructed from obsolete items that have made their way over from London (record players, typewriters, etc). Travel is by double-decker buses modified to fly. Danger comes not just from the Smog, but from ghosts, flying grossbottles, and spider-like Black Windows. When Deeba realizes that UnLondon is still in great danger, and that Zanna isn’t going to be much help, she has to figure out how to get back there on her own.

Un Lun Dun takes the common fantasy elements of prophecy and predestination and turns them on their heads. The (talking) Book that contains the predictions for UnLondon's future is sometimes wrong, often confused. Words and meanings have gotten garbled over the years, and are misinterpreted by the Propheseers. And some words actually spring into life as Utterlings. To save UnLondon, Deeba is given a list of tasks that she must complete, in order, that will enable her to get the tools to fight the Smog. But what is the true purpose of this quest? Does she really have to do everything on the list, or can she cut to the chase? And what is this UnGun that everyone keeps talking about, but no one has ever seen?

Mieville’s book will surprise you at every turn. Though everyone in my book club was asking if there was a second book, Un Lun Dun also proves that a fantasy novel doesn’t have to be part of a series to satisfy. Yes, you’ll be left wanting more, but your imagination won’t soon forget the world of UnLondon.

Cross posted at my brand new blog, Dwelling in Possibility.

Some Sword-wielders You Can Always Count On

Notice how some stories tend to get told over and over again? They’re our myths, containing patterns and archetypes which nourish our ideologies and our imaginations. Comic books are overflowing with them. How many dozens of times has the origin of Superman been re-imagined? And that story itself is, of course, a collection of ideas and elements taken from mythology and various cultural histories. And sometimes, all you need is a slightly different perspective to bring out the power in one of these familiar tales. Take Outlaw: The Legend of Robin Hood (by Lee, Hart and Fujita) as a case in point. Naturally, it’s got the merry men, Maid Marian, stealing from the rich and giving to the poor, sword fights, daring escapes, romance and archery contests. But it casts them in a darker, grittier light than you’ve seen them in before. Think a Robin Hood origin by way of Casino Royale and Batman Begins. The tone of the art is shadowy and dark, so much so that you can actually feel the chills wafting through those old stone castles, while the Hood’s struggle with corrupt authority is painfully appropriate for the here and now, too. Just the same, Robin is still very much a hero in outlook and deed. And heroes, of course, never really go out of style.

And speaking of tried and true heroic figures, character types that fit story after story and never get boring, how about a samurai? Better yet, how about a rabbit samurai? Hares have long been a symbol of cleverness and resilience (just ask Bugs Bunny) and samurai; well, I'm sure you know all about them. Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai’s always impressive ode to Japanese history and comic book animals, is in the middle of his twenty-fifth year in publishing and has never been better. The thrilling sword battles (right out of a Kurasawa epic) and funny animal characters (right out of an Uncle Scrooge comic) might give the impression that the material is on the simplistic side. But using elements from Japanese history and mythology and through the deeply honorable and moral character of Usagi himself, Sakai always manages to put a complex and thoughtful spin on the most straightforward situations. With a large body of work, it can be hard to know where to start, but I’m happy to say that Sakai’s skill in writing an accessible tale is such that you can dive in almost anywhere. Among his very best are Usagi Yojimbo Volume 12: Grasscutter, a massive epic featuring loads of characters and plots coming together around an ancient sword of the gods and the battles fought to determine its fate. Also, Usagi Yojimbo Volume 23: Bridge of Tears, the latest installment, is a standout episode that finds Usagi contending with the Assassin Guild’s plot of revenge, featuring several of the characters from Grasscutter’s Tale.

You can’t go wrong with knights or samurai as far as I can see.

A question from one of our readers

This was sent in via email - please provide your opinions if you know the book!

Dear Guys,

Have any of you read this title [Michael Coleman's The Snog Log]? My son loved it, and as a (former) girl, I was just a little disturbed about it. I'd welcome any opinions that you have. I think I will buy it for my library, because it was pretty amusing.

Thanks!

Those without tears have a grief which never ends. --Mexican saying

"The driver of the DeSoto tried to pull out, but somebody threw a brick at his head. For a long time, I observed the beatings as if I were outside of everything, as if a moth of tainted wings floating over the steamed sidewalk. Then I felt a hand pull at my arm and I sluggishly turned toward it. Puppet looked squarely into my one opened eye. He had a rusty screwdriver in his other hand.

'Do it, man," he said. Simply that.

I clasped the screwdriver and walked up to the beaten driver in the seat whose head was bleeding. The dude looked at me through glazed eyes, horrified at my presence, at what I held in my hand, at this twisted, swollen face that came at him through the dark. Do it! were the last words I recalled before I plunged the screwdriver into flesh and bone, and the sky screamed."

That's Luis J. Rodriguez describing a gang initiation he went through around age 13 or 14, in Always Running: La Vida Loca: Gang Days in L.A. When his son encountered peer pressure to join a gang, Rodriguez "tried to get Ramiro to understand the systematic nature of what was happening in the street which in effect made choices for him before he was born."


And he wrote this book, a book to help show what happens in the street.

"At 18 years old, I felt like a war veteran, with a sort of post-traumatic stress syndrome. I wanted the pain to end, the self-consuming hate to wither in the sunlight. With the help of those who saw potential in me, I got out.

And what of my son? Recently, Ramiro went up to the stage at a Chicago poetry event and read a moving piece about being physically abused by a step-father when he was a child. It stopped everyone cold. He later read the poem to some 2,000 people at Chicago's Poetry Festival. Its title: 'Running Away.'

There's a small but intense fire burning in Ramiro. He turned 17... ; he's made it so far, but every day is a challenge. Now I tell him: You have worth outside of a job, outside the 'jacket' imposed on you since birth. Draw on your expressive powers.

Stop running."

It is a powerful story. Note that there is a helpful glossary in the back that explains the Spanish slang terms, which I failed to notice until I finished the book! If you like it and want more, try Gang Leader for a Day, by Sudhir Venkatesh, or Brothers and Keepers, by John Edgar Wideman.

Some People Can't Surf

Back in the day, when people read newspapers with some regularity, it was said that only something like 7% of the male population didn't read the sports section. I was part of the 7%. It was around the same time that my junior and senior high classmates began schlepping the sports section to homeroom that I began trolling the art and graphic design sections of bookstores and libraries hungry for some visual stimulation. Uneducated and unfamiliar with the art world, and with no finer appreciation for museums, I loved pulling out something that looked interesting and pouring over the glossy pages at images that inspired.

As a result, I became more aware of the graphic design of everyday life: the covers of alternative newspapers, the flyers for punk bands on the telephone poles, the zine piled in the entry ways of music stores. That love of graphics and the photocopier lead me to create zines and design letterpress books, and foundered a lifelong love of both high and low art. It also taught me that there was gold to be discovered in the bookshelves, if you knew where to look.

For my money, one of the best practitioners of 1990s was Art Chantry. While many (many) amateur graphic designers cut their teeth in the trenches of post-Sex Pistols punk rock show posters, Chantry bent and pushed and burned and mutilated the medium to its extremes. To be fair, what the Sex Pistols were doing was little more than aping the detournement of the French Situationists (who in turn were borrowing the Dadaist approach to found collage) so there is a long-standing tradition of image manipulation within art and politics. Nonetheless, Chantry took the low-budget, high concept approach to word and image and put a stamp on it that was at once sophisticated in it's thievery while appearing completely naive.

Some People Can't Surf: The Graphic Design of Art Chantry is the first survey of Chantry's work and is the sort of thing a teen might find pretty darn inspirational. Based in the Pacific Northwest, one could argue that he was the graphic face of the grunge movement. His work for Sub Pop and Estrus records, among many other small bands and labels, will be readily familiar to fans of music from that era. Unlike other artists who spring from pop culture, like Shepard Fairey and his Obey industries, Chantry has no single iconic image or style yet there is a unique look to all his work that nonetheless feels part of a whole.

"An art book? That counts as reading?" Yes, I admit, it is tempting to pick up a book like this and simply look at the pictures. But I believe that one of the mysteries of the adult world to teens is in the arts where often we only know what's presented to us (or covered in the tabloids). How an artist lives and creates, what inspires them and influences them, tells a younger reader a lot about what it means to follow that path. Outsiders, often living on the margins, artists have to learn how to improvise not only with their art but with survival. Sometimes all it takes is a book like this to ignite the spark in a reader's mind: Oh, yeah, someone had to create that? And how did they do it? And what were their influences? A book that opens the door to questions and perhaps inspires a reader into action counts by me.
An artists' retrospective, like Some People Can't Surf, reads like a biography with documentation. Instead of photos of the subject posing on vacation abroad we see their growth as an artist visually while reading about their struggles to meet deadlines and working with no budgets. They're like a picture book where the words and pictures compliment each other, and provide a window into the world of a working artist.

Chantry has been exhibited in The Rock & Roll Hall of Fame, The Smithsonian, and the Louvre. That's a trifecta in my book.

Some People Can't Surf:
The Graphic Design of Art Chantry
by Julie Lasky
Chronicle Books
2001

GLW Shortlisted for BBAW

Hey, everyone! Guys Lit Wire has been shortlisted for a Book Blogger Appreciation Week award for Best Special Interest Blog. There's a rather dauntingly long list of categories, but if you go check out the post with nominees, you'll have a chance to vote online for GLW and any other favorite blogs that made the cut. And, if you're like me, you'll find a whole slew of intriguing sites about books and reading that you might not have visited before. Check it out!

ETA: Also don't miss that we were nominated for Most Altruistic Blog in recognition of the Book Fair for Boys!

Also, psssst!, don't forget about this year's Cybil Awards, which are kicking into gear with a new 2009 logo and a new crop of panelists--stay tuned to the blog to find out more.

Lighting the fuse on A Bomb Built in Hell

I've just finished reading the bookends of one of my favorite series, the "Burke" novels by Andrew Vachss. After 18 books in 23 years, he completed it with the release of Another Life in 2008. Meanwhile, his website has the free PDF of his first, unpublished novel, a sort of prelude to the Burke series titled, A Bomb Built in Hell.

To call Bomb "disturbing" is an understatement. Written in 1973, it deals with Wesley, a supporting character in the Burke series, one who's so scary even mentioning his name terrifies people. He's an amoral hit man who, weary of his life, decides to take out the next generation of those he blames for making his life what it is. But his judgment, needless to say, is a bit twisted.

What skews it, as in all Vachss' novels, is Wesley's tormented childhood at the hands of the government. Abandoned at age four, he's raised by the state and becomes a petty teen criminal. In the first few pages he refers to reform institutions as "upstate sodomy schools," and thinks no more of going to jail than a normal person would going to Wal-Mart. He's desensitized, an empty vessel waiting to be filled.

His prison mentor Carmine does just that, teaching him the ropes and preparing him for life outside as a hit man. Upon his release, Wesley avenges Carmine on the mobsters who let him rot in prison. When that's accomplished, he decides to seek a more personal revenge, not against individuals but against an entire class of people. I won't give it away here, but what Vachss wrote about in 1973 came to pass in an almost identical event in 1999.

In the author's notes on his website, Vachss says publishers repeatedly told him, "the book was also 'too' hard-boiled, 'too' extreme, 'too' spare and violent. I heard endlessly about how an anti-hero was acceptable, but Wesley was just 'too' much."

And maybe, dare I say it, they were right about that last bit. Burke narrates his own stories; while the other characters see only his carefully-chosen front, we are privy to his thoughts, feelings and motives. Bomb is written in third person, so that the reader sees Wesley the same way the other characters do. There's very little sympathy for him, especially as he closes in on his greatest hit at the climax. In fact, if Bomb were written and published today, the outcry would probably be massive; Vachss might even disappear at the hands of Homeland Security for appearing to advocate (and describing in detail how to accomplish) such extreme acts.

But despite being a period piece in a sense, "Bomb" still resonates with the thing that makes all Vachss' books so powerful: the sense that there's reality in the details, no matter how outlandish the characters or plot might seem. Vachss has spent his life in the trenches, and if he says this is how something should be done, I wouldn't doubt him.

I'm not exactly "recommending" this book to teen boys; it's certainly not written for a YA audience and as I said, it could be misconstrued as advocating what it depicts, although that's truly not the case. But it does show how the juvenile justice "system" often does far more damage to those it's supposed to help. And I'm not saying Bomb is a "scared straight" work, either. I guess what I got from it, and what I hope teen boys would, is the sense of how those deprived of family will always seek one out. It happens in gangs all the time. But maybe here, writ large and in a sense absurd, readers can see the process in such sharp relief they'll be motivated, somehow, to break the chain. Before that same process produces a Wesley for real.

Download A Bomb Built in Hell for free here.

Read Andrew Vachss autobiographical essay here.

The Morgue and Me -- John C. Ford

The Morgue and Me begins:

When you're eighteen years old and you shoot somebody in a public place at two in the morning, of course you expect some attention. Especially when it's the person I shot, and especially when you're found right there on the scene with that person at your feet, gasping away in a pool of blood that seeps around your shoes. Still, I find it really embarrassing.

The summer before his freshman year of college, photography enthusiast and aspiring spy Christopher Newell gets a summer job at the morgue. He was supposed to work at the NWMU astronomy department, but that fell through when... well, it's a long story.

Anyway, the morgue. While snooping (there's really no other word for it) in the coroner's office, he finds $15,000 in cash. Which is weird. But then when he realizes that the coroner falsified his most recent report... well, Christopher Newell is pretty good at math.

He teams up with Tina, a Trans Am driving, fishnet wearing, drinking, smoking, big mouthed (and extremely attractive) young journalist -- he wants to solve the mystery, she wants a big break -- and before the two of them know it, they're up to their ears in an investigation that seems to involve every single powerful person in their Michigan town.

And powerful people do not usually take kindly to being investigated: especially when that investigation is conducted by a couple of nobodies and involves corruption, blackmail and murder.

Christopher's narration definitely brings to mind a hard-boiled detective -- not because he is one (or acts like one), mind you, but because he wants to be one -- and it especially comes out in some of his descriptions of people:

I've heard that lots of movie stars have huge heads. I don't know about his acting skills, but Corbett was qualified in the head department. His giant helmet of black hair was gelled so thick I could almost see a reflection of the clouds in it. On his feet he wore tiny black loafers, equally shiny. In between, there was lots of tailored clothing.

His relationship with Tina is especially well done. He has to remind himself to stop drooling every time he looks at her even though he knows it is SO not going to happen -- and that attraction persists throughout the book, even as their working relationship develops into a genuine friendship. And, very importantly, they're rather hilarious:

"See?" Tina said. "You lurk a little, you get your answers."

"I'm not sure it was the lurking. I think it was more the asking."

"Whatever. We're lurking till I finish this drink."

And while Tina easily could have become a two-dimensional stock character (because it isn't like we haven't met the brash and brassy type many, many times before), she didn't. As the book progressed, as she and Christopher got to know each other, she became more and more real. By the end of the book, I felt like she was as much a main character as he was.

Big thumbs up here -- it's a strong mystery (minus one plot point that felt really, really wrong) that feels both classic and contemporary. It was suspenseful and twisty and funny with strong secondary characters and just good all around. I know I always say it when I find one, but here I go again: I'm so glad that we're starting to see more noir-ish crime novels written for and marketed to the teen audience. __________________________________________________________________

Book source: My local library.
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Cross-posted at Bookshelves of Doom.