The curse of Macbeth

Most Guys' Lit Wire posts focus on books you don't know about but might enjoy. This one is a little different. This post is about a play thousands of guys read in English class every year, Macbeth, without knowing the strange happenings and bad luck that have followed it down through the centuries:

During a 1672 production of Macbeth, the actor playing Macbeth got into an argument with the actor playing Duncan. During the play, switching a real dagger for the prop one, he killed him on-stage.

Drunk audience members heckled the actors during a 1721 performance. Finally fed up, the actors leapt off the stage and attacked the hecklers with their swords.

In 1849, a performance of Macbeth in New York ended in a riot. 31 people were trampled to death.

In 1937, Laurence Olivier's sword broke. A piece flew out and killed a man in the audience.

Over the course of a 1942 production, three actors (Duncan and two witches) died. The costume designer committed suicide surrounded by costumes of witches and demons.

In 1948, Diana Wynyard, playing Lady Macbeth sleepwalking through the castle, accidently walked off the stage and died.

"Core" of Discovery: Nick Bertozzi's graphical Lewis & Clark

Nick Bertozzi is out with a splendid graphical overview of the journey of Lewis & Clark, fresh from First Second. That'd be "Meriwether" and "William," of course, those plucky adventurers sent by Thomas Jefferson to explore the then-unknown (to most European-Americans) West, along with their handpicked Corps of Discovery.

Of course, not everyone had a choice in the matter: Clark's slave York, though treated more "equally" out on the trail than he would be "back home," didn't actually "sign up" for the adventure. So too the fabled Sacagawea, encountered that first winter in the Dakotas as a pregnant teenage mom. She'd been sold/traded to her older husband, Charbonneau, by the tribe that had originally captured and enslaved her.

So -- somewhat fittingly -- this first great domestic American adventure had two slaves in it. And if not for Sacagawea, it might not have succeeded, since her presence allowed successful (and literal) horse-trading with the Shoshone tribe -- the very one from which Sacagawea had been kidnapped when she was 13. Those horses allowed the Corps to make it to Pacific Coast (and back to their boats, parked in the inter-mountain west, the next spring).

If I go on about this particular Exploration, it's because I'm one of its "fans," from a history buff's perspective. So much that is essential to the American experiment -- and its present, clearly faltering state -- is contained in that journey: the high hopes, the contradictions between aspirations and eventual fall-out (Lewis is shown ruminating the fate of Native Americans, now that the "West" had been opened up, perhaps mindful of his role in the coming, inexorable atrocities).

The book even touches on the failure of the Corps' worldly success to quell inner demons -- certainly those of Lewis. The Corps had become the early 19th century versions of "media stars" upon their return, thanks to the copious journals the group kept.

My third "Danger Boy" book was about Lewis, Clark, Jefferson, and many of those contradictions. Of course, I insert a 21st century boy into the mix (along with a dinosaur and teenage girl from Alexandria -- Egypt, that is, not Virginia) to ratchet up those contractions. But I spent about a year steeped in Lewis/Clark-iana, and I never tire of learning new facets about that particular odyssey.

Home, Away by Jeff Gillenkirk

Jeff Gillenkirk takes the classic saga of a father's love for his son and updates it with a major league baseball setting in Home, Away. It's a pretty straightforward tale - young father who desperately loves his son gets caught in the mother of all custody battles and finds himself forced to prove, among other things, that he is not abusive (proving a negative is always fun) and ends up losing very nearly everything. Then, just as Jason claws his way to the top of the pack (and a huge contract with the Colorado Rockies), his son shows up in trouble and he has to make a choice about how to save him - and then the long hard road to fixing their relationship begins.

The Art of Tron: Legacy reviewed by Adam L.

An introduction from Little Willow: I'm pleased to be posting a review from one of my regular customers, a high school sophomore named Adam. He was hanging out in the store when The Art of Tron: Legacy and Tron: Betrayal arrived. The items jumped into in his hands immediately. (Too bad they didn't glow!)

Without further ado, here is Adam's review of The Art of Tron: Legacy, which has text by Justin Springer and art by the amazing artists who worked on the movie.

Just by glancing at the cover, one can see what really makes Tron unique: shown is a black-and-silver picture of a light cycle. The art is done in such a way that even the simplistic circles and lines have an underlying beauty that catches the eye.

Then, the read begins. The foreword, written by Tron Legacy's Production Designer Darren Gilford, lets the reader see his mindset throughout the project. Gilford talks about seeing the first Tron movie and being amazed at its groundbreaking new visual effects, a media technique that, at the time, had never been seen in such a daring and intriguing way as was used in Tron.

The art in the book ranges from simple sketches to full-blown digital computer images; one can see by the contrast between the two just how difficult it was to establish the artistic guidelines for the film, even with those already put in place by the 1982 classic.

In short, the book illustrates the journey it took to produce Tron Legacy, a feat which stays true to its original while at the same time incorporates new special effects that add to the simplistic beauty of Tron. - Adam L.

The Gawgon and The Boy

Lloyd Alexander is best known for his Chronicles of Prydain series, full of medieval magic, horned kings, and black cauldrons. But he was able to find the fantastic even within more familiar settings, as with The Gawgon and The Boy.

Our narrator, David, is boy bursting with imagination and an overriding sense of adventure in 1920s Philadelphia. Out of school after a bout of pneumonia, adventure eventually leads him into trouble and he is placed under the tutelage of his Aunt Annie, or as he first knows her, the fearsome Gawgon.

I Beat the Odds by Michael Oher

From Doret's interview with Michael Oher:

1. Many people read Michael Lewis's book The Blind Side, in which your story was depicted. Even more saw the movie. When I first heard about I Beat the Odds, I was very excited you were telling your story since Hollywood tends to distort everything.

When did you decide to write I Beat the Odds?

As the movie took off, I started to get a huge flood of mail from people wanting to know what I thought of it and if my life was really the way it looked on screen. I also started getting letters from kids in foster care or from families who had taken in troubled kids, and they all thanked me for being a voice for them. That really made me start to realize the need for someone to step up and speak out about the reality of life for too many kids in America. It seemed to me that maybe God was giving me the opportunity to help people by sharing not just my perspective on the story, but also to try to become the kind of role model I wish I’d had when I was growing up.

2 This is a very personal look at your early years in Memphis and growing up in foster care system. What gave you the strength to remember?

I had gotten as far as I did by trying not to remember – by putting everything behind me and not dwelling on the past. Sometimes, it’s scary to think about looking back because you’re afraid that you might get pulled back into the world you’ve fought so hard to try to escape. But if I was going to write a book about my story, it needed to be as honest as possible. I wasn’t doing this for me; I was doing it for all the other kids out there who were like me, and I wanted to give them something real.

There is also mention of poetry, Cinderella and Don Yaeger. Check it out and get a glimpse of who Oher is, in his own words.

Guys Write for Guys Read

The Guys Read website (guysread.com) "offers a list of books recommended by the webmaster, children's author Jon Sczieska..." Part of the site's funding comes from sales of this book, edited by Scieszka: Guys Write for Guys Read. It is filled with stories by guys who know what being a guy is like: Pinkwater, Paulsen, Paolini. And that's not even all of the "P" contributors. Matt Groening. Eoin Colfer. Anthony Horowitz, whose piece, "My French Teacher Tried to Kill Me," ends - "But if you ask me what it was like to be a guy... well, for me, doing badly at school was part of the answer.

"I hated school. But I still enjoy the dreams...

"Random Fact: Had a dog called Lucky but accidentally ran it over, so he changed the dog's name to Unlucky"

Atlas of Remote Islands

In this age of GPS tracking satellites and Google Earth it might seem like books of maps and atlases are little more than quaint collections of geological and political demarcations painted in dusky tones from some other era. How much fascination can there be in looking at a collection of remote islands, their contours shaded by pointelest dots against gray and white surrounded by seas of pale blue, each facing a page of text that gives their location, their distance from nearby land masses, their size, and a bit of history?

Plenty.

Judith Schalansky, in her introductory essay to Atlas of Remote Islands, was born in East Germany and calls herself "a child of the atlas," a person who never imagined going beyond the limitations of her country's borders much less see the exotic lands that peppered her schoolroom maps.  Looking at maps was her way of escaping, of grounding daydreams. As the political lines on her world map changed radically with the fall of the Berlin wall and dissolution of the Soviet Union what remained unchanged were the islands, and each of those lonely places had their own stories to tell.

CAKE POPS by Bakerella

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and it occurred to me that (1) some guys really like to cook and (2) some guys really want to impress their significant other, and (3) MANY guys need a Valentine's Day gift, and CAKE POPS is the answer for a bunch of those guys. And it turns out that they're not all that hard to make.

Seriously. If I can make them, anyone can.

Donald Goines and the Low Road

Make no mistake, Donald Goines' books aren't for kids. Yet his vividly-titled novels--Whoreson, Black Gangster, Swamp Man and White Man's Justice, Black Man's Grief, for example--are read by teens as much as by adults. The reason for this is partly in their "forbidden" subject matter of addiction, prostitution, and gangster life, and partly in their undeniable authenticity. Goines lived what he wrote.

Low Road: The Life and Legacy of Donald Goines is an attempt to put his accomplishments into the context of their specific times. Allen describes the Detroit in which Goines grew up, as well as the racial situation throughout the country. Goines, son of a successful middle-class black family, faked his way into the air force at fifteen, served in Korea and returned at seventeen a veteran and heroin addict. He tried careers as pimp and hustler, served time in prison and then, inspired by former pimp turned literary darling Iceberg Slim, decided to pursue writing.