Five Theses on the X-Files: An Appreciation

As an adult, I have never owned a TV or had television in my home. Nevertheless, those that know me know that I have managed to become fanatical about a handful of shows over the past two decades. Despite not having a TV I have exploited videotapes, then DVDs, and more recently streaming technology to catch up and keep up with my faves. I also have benefited over the years from the generosity of folks who were willing to let me come over week after week when I couldn't wait until the end of a season to find out what happened (Jonathan, Maria, and Laura, I am talking to you).

My fanaticism is no joke. I either ignore TV or I obsess about it. This is likely a holdover from my youth when, as a bored (and boring) child, I watched everything indiscriminately. I could sit and watch awful tripe for hours on end. I avoid that nowadays, but I find that, when I let myself, I fall into narratives and get totally wrapped up.

Some of the shows that have held me fast over the years only did so for a handful of seasons. Smallville, for example, faded for me after several major characters left the show (and it started feeling like Dawson's Creek with super powers). Similarly, though the first two seasons of 24 were gripping, it eventually became formulaic at best and a torture-fest at its worst. I still enjoy going back to episodes of both on occasion, but the series arc overall does not hold me.

Then there are the series that held me the whole way through. LOST immediately comes to mind, as does Buffy the Vampire Slayer (it took sticking through a season to get me hooked, but I got hooked and stayed hooked). A more recent discovery was The Wire, which was utterly fantastic throughout, and AMC's Rubicon, which had tremendous promise but has sadly been canceled at the end of its first season.

Of all this fanaticism, however, nothing holds a place in my heart like the X-Files.

I was first introduced to the series by my friend Theron, and over the years I would catch an episode here and there. Later, when the DVD box sets came out, I watched the "mythology" sets, and then the whole thing. Repeatedly. I loved it.

This past Christmas Theron and I had a conversation about the series, and that got me thinking about some of the things I have come to believe about what it means for me. It made me want to watch it again, as well. So over the past several weeks, my wife Kira and I have begun to re-watch the series from the beginning. We are now just finishing Season Three. This is Kira's second time all the way through. It is my fifth. As we've been talking about the episodes along the way, some observations have come up that seemed fit to share. So thanks for letting me be a nerd for a few minutes about my favorite show.

First of all, this is my first time re-watching the series since I finished watching LOST last year. I'll be honest, I had expected that LOST would have cooled me on the X-Files somewhat, but I am finding that is not the case. If anything, the intricacy and connectedness I find in LOST has just made me appreciate X-Files all the more. In fact (and I don't think JJ Abrams, Damon Lindelof or Carlton Cuse would dispute this), in many ways the X-Files made a show like LOST possible. Certainly LOST found an audience primed and hungry for weirdness and conspiracy in the wake of Mulder and Scully's long run. LOST made it respectably through six seasons, weathering a writers' strike and still delivering a quality story throughout. The X-Files managed to make it half-again longer than that, weathering a change of production location and the loss of its major star, and still delivered quality throughout. Kudos to both for that.

I know that some of my readers are long-time fans. I also know some have never seen the show. I hope the following will pique the interest of the latter half and give way to some good conversations with the former half. In what follows, I am going to make some opinionated observations, and I welcome comments and corrections from both newbies and fanatics alike.

Strap in, ladies and gents. We are entering alpha-nerd territory. Here are my five theses about the X-Files:

If you think the X-Files is a series about aliens, you are missing the point. Around the release a couple years ago of the second movie, X-Files: I Want to Believe, I had many conversations with folks who voiced their disappointment and confusion with the film. "Where are the aliens?" was what I heard over and over again.

It makes sense, of course. Clearly the alien stories and mythology were an essential part of the series. But -- as important as a backbone is -- it is nothing without the muscles and sinews around it. The X-Files was preoccupied foremost with telling creepy stories, and telling them well. The alien stories were definitely creepy, but so were the stand-alone "monster of the week" episodes (and sometimes more so. Think of "2Shy" from Season 3, or "Home," which some have rightly called "the scariest hour ever aired on television").

Which is all to say that a focus on the aliens alone means you miss a lot of good tingles -- both from the creepy monsters and from all the good development of Mulder and Scully's relationship.

If you think the X-Files is about figuring out the conspiracy, you're missing the point. This is a similar temptation to the one that frustrated a lot of the LOST viewers. Like the LOST writers, Chris Carter, Frank Spotnitz and the other key players in the X-Files were very good at weaving intricate, long-running story arcs that dropped clue after clue in an ever-widening web of intrigue.

But the X-Files is not a mystery novel. Despite the pedantic tone of the series finale, the story arc does not neatly resolve or tie itself off in satisfying closure. This is largely because there is not one conspiracy at work in the X-Files, but several overlapping ones at once.

Remember that the Consortium are pretty much all dead by the end of Season Six, having been killed off in a hangar by the rebel faceless aliens (alpha-nerd - I warned you). But their death did not mean the conspiracies went away. Even before their demise, we were shown that there were other agendas at work, at all levels of the government and the shadow government.

The one common thread was venality and self-interest. As the conflicting intrigues unfolded we see again and again that self-interest is the strongest loyalty most of the characters hold. Krycheck certainly exemplifies this, selling his services to the highest bidder and repeatedly double-crossing everyone, but he is only the most visible exemplar. Everyone and every organization is out to increase its power and cover its hind quarters. The overlap of these self-aggrandizing machinations drive most of the deep plots of the long-term story arc.

In fact, as time goes by, we come to discover not only multiple agendas among the humans in the show, but also the multi-leveled conflicts among the various alien races, at work for or against the colonization plot, and for or against hybridization. The complexity makes the show rich with narrative possibility, and -- for me -- makes the show's conspiracies all the more lifelike and realistic. I mean, spend a little time researching the various conspiracy theories around the Kennedy assassination -- trying to find one clear narrative in that rabbit hole is a lost cause, mostly because everyone's explanation brings in more and more groups that had some interest in the events, from Oswald ad infinitum.

The desire to take the complex story line and find the key to unlocking it can drive other simplifications, as well. So it seems important to say this -

If you think the X-Files is about the struggle between science and the supernatural, you are missing the point. A theme that resurfaces continually in the series riffs on the polarity between Scully, "trained in hard science" and rational inquiry, and Mulder, whose "spooky" ideas have taken him "outside the Bureau mainstream" into laughingstock territory.

In the first two seasons, in fact, this polarity is sharply emphasized, and it leads to some very interesting stories in which Mulder holds the place of "the feminine" in the narrative. What I mean is that the other men in the FBI treat him, narratively, as females have often been treated in television procedural dramas. Detectives roll their eyes at him, refuse to take his ideas seriously, and work actively to get him out of the way so the "real work" can be done. It is especially interesting to watch Scully's reaction to this behavior, especially when she participates in it.

If that were the whole of the tension, that would certainly be interesting. As the series develops, however, we are exposed to the complexity of this tension, and the polarity is anything but simple. First of all, while Scully is a rationalist and scientist, she is also a person of religious faith -- a fact that should provide common ground with Mulder's supposed "irrationality." Instead, her faith confounds him. Despite his credulity for all forms of the supernatural, this is one realm into which Mulder refuses to venture. In Mulder's world, there is room for aliens, but not angels. Scully, however, can see the hand of God in events, and becomes more bold in saying so as time goes by.

This asymmetry makes for one of my favorite aspects of the show. Throughout the series we see both Mulder and Scully facing crises of "faith," as Scully waxes and wanes with her Catholicism and Mulder bitterly abandons his belief in aliens as a result of one of the many false conspiracies that are "revealed" to him by the venal powers manipulating his crusade for their own purposes. In the final episode, when we hear Scully assert to Mulder that "you and I believe the same thing," the admission is as hard-won as it is accurately inaccurate. Mulder and Scully may believe the same Truth, but their respective articulations of that Truth, and its ultimate meaning, are still deeply personalized.

If you think the X-Files "jumped the shark" after Season Seven, you are missing the point. Next to the lack of aliens in the film, Mulder's departure from the series is often cited by my friends as their biggest disappointment about the series. The implication is that the series went disastrously awry, in terms of character and story, with David Duchovny's absence. In television parlance, this is known as "jumping the shark." Even the Cigarette Smoking Man says, "you know how important Mulder is to the equation."

True as this may be, there is more to the story. Though he is physically absent for the majority of the last two seasons, Mulder's absence forms a central presence to both the narrative and the development of the relationships between Scully and her new partners, Doggett and Reyes.

In Doggett and Reyes we have a chance to see the X-Files through new eyes, and new perspectives. The approaches of both to the unexplained phenomena in the Files are significantly different to those of Mulder, and in confronting these approaches, Scully is pushed to further define her place as the X-Files's advocate. Where her original role was that of skeptic, brought in to debunk Mulder's work, by Season Six she is the voice and the champion of the X-Files in a changed FBI landscape.

I will admit that the final two seasons are somewhat weak, but so are the first two seasons of the show. With the introduction of new major characters, a period of adjustment has to occur for dynamics and relationships to become firmly established. This was certainly true through all of Season One and most of Season Two. Think, for example, of "Ice," an early episode where Mulder and Scully's relationship is tenuous at best and there is very little trust or camaraderie in the face of unknown dangers. In contrast, by Season Two's cliffhanger conclusion, "Anasazi," Scully defends Mulder's innocence despite his violent and aberrant behavior and seeming guilt in the death of his father.

Truly, the high water mark for the X-Files finds its home in seasons Three through Six, but this means that those who would dismiss the Doggett and Reyes episodes should also dismiss the early Mulder and Scully episodes. While weaker than the strongest seasons, I contend that Seasons Eight and Nine are at least as strong as Seasons One and Two, and in some cases stronger.

Which leads to the inevitable conclusion:

If you think the X-Files is about Mulder, you're missing the point. Despite all the twists and turns along the way, the Mulder that we encounter in X-Files: I Want to Believe is fundamentally the same Mulder we first see in the basement office in the Pilot episode of Season One. Mulder is static. He matures, but he does not change.

The X-Files is about Scully. From the very first scene of the series (where we see her enter the J. Edgar Hoover building to be briefed), to the last shot of the show (where she and Mulder lay quiet as the rain falls outside), to the last shot of I Want to Believe (where she begins the operation to save the boy's life under the prayerful eyes of the nuns), Scully is the focal point. Mulder doesn't change, but Scully does.

While remaining committed to her scientific and rational view of the world, we get to watch as Scully rediscovers her childhood faith, and then watch again as that faith broadens beyond dogma to spirituality, ecstasy, and ecumenism. She meets a boy messiah, angels, miracle children, three incarnations of Satan and at least one incorruptable martyr along the way. It is more than subtly hinted that her inexplicable child, William, has a somewhat Christ-like "dual nature" that could someday bring peace between the aliens and the human race. By the last seasons of the show, she has had a remarkable faith journey, to say the least.

More than this, however, she becomes open to the Truth of the phenomena contained in the X-Files. Not in the way Mulder is open, but she achieves a credulity that remains balanced with her commitment to scientific inquiry. As an empiricist she has encountered overwhelming evidence of mysteries; unlike Mulder, she does not jump to explain them, but she accepts that, until the proper answers are found, these experiences cannot simply be dismissed. By the time she is paired with Agent Doggett, then, she has become the "spooky" one at the FBI. She has not become Mulder, but she understands him and what he must have gone through in those early years alone in the basement office.

This, in the end, is what makes the X-Files -- from very start to very finish -- so compelling for me. The slow build up of trust and affection between Mulder and Scully, the eventual consummation and inseparability they achieve in the narrative, despite Mulder's absence, and the tenderness and respect they show each other, are deeply satisfying to me. Moreover, as a person who makes his living trying to understand the deep conflicts that drive and motivate persons of faith, Scully's struggles and triumphs are to me very realistic and extraordinarily edifying.

And that, from start to finish, is for me the heart and soul of the X-Files. More than any other show I have seen, I think the creators and writers of the X-Files kept integrity with that heart and paid honor to that soul. This is why, to the confusion of my friends, I was so happy with I Want to Believe, despite its lack of aliens, and why I am certain this will not be the last time I watch the whole thing, start to finish. I want to. I believe.

Procrastination Central: Bands I dig

So it's eleven at night, and I'm up writing and have hit a momentary block. Tattoo You just came on my headphones, and I'm groovin.' So I decided to do a quick short, non-exhaustive list of bands I love. First ones that come to mind. Why the heck not?

So here 'tis, kids. Enjoy.

1. The Rolling Stones (natch)
2. The Jayhawks
3. Pinback
4. Foghat (because "Slow Ride" kicks raw ass)
5. The hal al Shedad (You've never heard of them. You should have.)
6. Motörhead
7. The 3 Mustaphas 3
8. The Fall
9. Dion and the Belmonts
10. Jonatha Brooke
11. Sonny Boy Williamson
12. Romeo Void
13. Billy Squier
14. Heatmiser

There ya go. Back to writing. Have a good evening. Over and out.

These are a few of my favorite things

In the words of Mike Watt, that last post was a heavy piece. So I decided I would lighten things up a bit.

For your pleasure, here's Unknown Hinson, playing Hendrix. Enjoy.

The 23rd Grand Illusion

Once, many years ago, I lived in my mix tapes. For me, they were an art form; a style of communication better than a written letter (back when we used to write letters). What was wonderful about the medium to little teenage me was the ability (the hope, at least) of conveying not just semantic meaning, but emotion. Like all teenagers, I was inarticulate about feelings when it came to using mere words, but I found I could achieve something like communication through a collage of sounds. I wooed with mix tapes. I worked out anger with mix tapes. I found the possibilities that arise out of juxtaposition and combination. A few cubic inches of plastic and iron filings were my palette. Into this space, which was not a real space but rather a space of the mind and the ears, I painted and collected and assembled sound.

What I found then, and find often now, was that this language of assembly and sound was not (as Wittgenstein cautioned against) any sort of "private language." The assemblages on my mixes spoke to me, certainly, but the only reason I really found them useful was because I believed they would speak to others, as well. To the high school crush to whom I could not bear to reveal my feelings, I could give a mix tape. The mix was crafted and constructed to convey without literal conversance. The mix spoke a secret language of Gnostic inference and ghostly symbols, but it was never meant to be indecipherable. The whole point was for the assemblage to be deciphered.

Years later, I find that I am still bound to those crushes who have remained in my life, no longer or never as lovers, but as friends, by these secret languages. An old acquaintance (for whom I never made a tape, though I am certain she was offered many by others) once said that she did not trust the medium of the mix tape: "They are always political; they always mean to say more than they are." Precisely.

Assemblage is powerful. Assemblage accomplishes, and its accomplishment is always and often unintentionally greater than the elements assembled. How is this so? The answer is not in the elements, or even in the assembly. The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars, but in ourselves, that we are interpreters and meaning-hounds. In psychology, the word apophenia is used to describe an overly heightened state of pattern recognition, where the sufferer seems to be seeing connections in every unrelated thing. If we take a step back from the precipice of pathology, however, we find that each of us benefits (it would be hard to say "suffers") from this condition. Without a certain level of the apophenic, a good game of chess would be impossible, negotiating city streets would be a nightmare, and we would never be able to locate a loved one's face in a crowd. We differentiate and combine, and in that process we associate and imagine that which is not there, but should be. We connect the dots, we fill in the colors among the spaces and the lines, we find new things. For the majority of humanity, this is simply what we do. Hence the articulate inarticulate joys of the mix tape, given and received.

Books that changed my life: How Children Learn / How Children Fail, by John Holt

Years ago, during the first couple years of high school, I had a pretty cool English and Literature teacher, Mr. Youngblood. Being who I was at the time, I didn't particularly care much for English, or Literature, or sitting in a desk to listen to much of anything being taught to me (so goes adolescence). I did, however, care about Mr. Youngblood. Mr. Youngblood was pretty cool.

I guess he thought I was okay, too, because when he was packing up to move (he left for new horizons and opportunities between my sophomore and junior years) he invited me and a couple other kids to his house to get first crack at a bunch of his stuff before he pared it down in a series of yard sales.

Mr. Youngblood pointed me to a stack of albums by Captain Beefheart and the Magic Band - and since that moment there has not been a day gone by that I am not eternally grateful for that gesture. He also had a large and unruly pile of unsorted books, and, being who I was at the time, I didn't particularly care much that they were unruly or unsorted. I dove in.

Turns out a lot of those books in that pile were about education, and it turns out that a lot of them soon made it into my car and eventually into my personal library. Mr. Yougnblood had been schooled in the sixties and early seventies, and a lot of the education books I found had a sort of granola/hippie uselessness to them (I was them, as I am now, essentially a punk rocker at heart, and I distrust mightily all that "peace-love-dope" crap). These were eventually read, considered, and discarded from my own unruly pile. Wheat and chaff, after all.

Despite my skepticism, a handful of the books were worth keeping, and reading, and re-reading. Among these - the top of the unruly pile, certainly - were two books by John Holt: How Children Learn and How Children Fail.

The books are actually collected excerpts from a series of journals Holt kept during the early-to-mid sixties, as he was observing classrooms as part of his own training as an educator. His reflections on what he saw was revelatory to me - both concerning my own difficulties at the time with my schooling, and in years hence as I have worked with students of my own.

A basic thesis of the books can be boiled down to the fact that what a teacher believes is happening in an educational moment, and what the students believe is happening, may be profoundly different - even alien - from each other.

Education, of course, always involves discrepancies of power. Teachers are more powerful than students in that teachers have the power to grade. The difficulty arises in the fact that, in our culture, grading a student's "performance" feels (in many, if not the majority of cases) from the standpoint of the student herself like a summary judgment of her worth and quality as a person. This is not just true of young children; think about adults you might know who hear criticism as attack or disrespect - these responses are similar to how students, young and old alike, feel in such moments. Our culture blends ontology (the state of one's being and worth) with how well one "performs."

Holt argues that the result of this unspoken blending is a situation toxic to learning.

It works like this:

1. the feeling of being judged and found unworthy is uncomfortable, and it is an understandable and shared human trait to want to minimize or eliminate this discomfort as quickly as possible Schools subtly use this discomfort, especially in early education, to keep students "focused on the problem" they are given (as Holt puts it, "We ask children to do for most of a day what few adults are able to do even for an hour" [HCF 198]). Teachers use the unspoken threat of disapproval and rejection to corral young students into "working hard."
2. Instead, students - motivated to minimize or eliminate the discomfort of feeling judged as quickly as possible - redirect nearly all their energy away from the educational moment in favor of working on the real problem, as they perceive it: how to stop feeling, as quickly and decisively as possible, the discomfort of being judged and the threat of being rejected or disapproved of as a person.
3. As a result, what students really learn from these exchanges are simple strategies to end the discomfort quickly. This learning is reinforced, again, and again, so thoroughly that by the time most of us are out of kindergarten they are already fully formed defensive maneuvers.

For some of us, the strategy is to simply learn whatever details will help us answer the questions we are asked so completely that we can always "perform" properly, and thus be praised and rewarded (we all know folks like this growing up. I remember in my class in second grade when one of them I knew got his first "B" - the terror and the tears of the tantrum that followed showed just how much pressure this poor little kid felt he was truly under). Others - perhaps the majority - learn how to "fake it." That is to say, they make a good show of pretending to wrestle with the problem, all the while watching the instructor for subtle, nonverbal clues about what the right answer might be - all amounting, in the end, to a highly theatricalized guessing game. Still others simply quit trying altogether, and just take their lumps, put their heads down on the desk, and tune out (I was one of those).

What is common to the entire spectrum of responses, says Holt, is that whatever the motivation for the student was coming in - curiosity, love of learning, enjoyment of community - it is very quickly replaced by fear.

What is essential to understand - and what is most brilliant in Holt's analysis - is that in every educational moment learning is always taking place. The problem is simply that what is being learned may not what the instructor, or the institution, thinks is being taught.

As a teacher, I may think I am neutrally teaching "a subject" like Algebra or Theology. Some of my students may have come there out of an actual interest in the subject. Many others are simply there because they were told they had to be there (and this is as true in college and seminary classes as it was in grade school). The subject is complex; I give what I think is an adequate and sufficient explanation - some of the students' brows furrow, and I glower at them. "I explained it once already, people - aren't you smart enough to get it...?"

The problem, of course, might not be in my students. The problem might (and often is) in the way I have structured the course, or my examples, or communicated my thoughts. But here we are in a situation where I have the power to make my judgement that some of them are stupid (not me) a matter of permanent and semi-public record. It is a lot easier (and advantageous, in the short run) to perpetuate the illusion that my teaching and reflection on teaching is up to snuff, and it must just be that some folks are too stupid to get it. They simply failed to learn.

But Holt makes this a much more complex interchange. The students are aware, as I am, of this power dynamic at every moment. The difference is that the students are often much smarter about how this dynamic can be used to their advantage. Many of them, from the very first moment of class, are undeniably learning: they are learning to fool me. Most of them will be able to make me think they have learned something, despite the confusing and mis-thought manner in which I have presented the information. I will, unconsciously, communicate enough of my likes and dislikes that students will feed me exactly what they, very perceprively, have learned that I want. In that case, the subject of the class is no longer "Algebra" or "Theology," but rather "David's [or fill in any other instructor's name's] ego." I know, when I was a student, I sometimes got a decent grade in classes exactly this way - I imagine some of you have, too. It took a lot of study and critical thiking to get that grade - but not study of "Algebra" or "Theology." As Holt puts it, "[Students] in the right-wrong situation will naturally grasp at every available clue. We teachers have to learn to present [our educational tasks for the students in such a way that] irrelevant clues will not so often lead to correct performance" [HCF 183].

Other students, by contrast, develop elaborate strategies to outwit the educational expectations entirely. This may be for a variety of reasons. For some students, the instructor presents the material in a manner that is fundamentaly disrespectful or demeaning to the student's background or culture. The strategies developed in such a situation are no less elaborate, but they are much less pleasing to the instructor's ego. If you have been a teacher and ever wondered why certain students, who seem to be so alive and intelligent outside the classroom, suddenly become to dull and unresponsive when they sit down in the chair, it is likely that this is a strategy. By "playing dumb," the student allows herself the means to "preserve a small part of their integrity in a hopeless situation" [HCF 195]. As Holt goes on to say:

Subject peoples both appease their rulers and satisfy their desire for some human dignity by putting on a mask, by acting much more stupid and incompetent that they really are, by denying their rulers the full use of their intelligence and ability, by declaring their minds and spirits free of their enslaved bodies [HCF 195].

I think both Holt and I are pessimistic when it comes to the institutions of education currently in place in our society. Far too many of our classrooms reflect the unspoken dynamics of power mentioned in the quotation above. What I learned from these two books, however, is that I could work to be a better teacher than some that I had (and don't get me wrong - I have had some excellent teachers, and I'm not just saying that on account of the Captain Beefheart albums), and that it might be possible in some moments for actual, real and good learning to take place.

If you are an educator (like me), Holt will give you some concrete lessons in learning to listen to what is not being said (though it is very loud and apparent, once one has ears to hear) in your classroom. If you are a former student who has difficulty remembering multiplication tables and long division (like me), his books may help you unearth what went awry in your own learning all those years ago.

What I think you will most gain from Holt's books, though, is the hope and possibility that (whether student or teacher), even at this late hour, we still might learn something new and useful, together.

My favorite albums of the moment

Please note: all could change in the blink of an eye. However, this will do for now. Simply ignore that much of what follows could have been filed under My Favorite Eponimously Named Albums of the Moment. "Truth in Advertising," as that maniac painter of my ill-fated acquaintance used to say.

1. The Hal al Shedad by The Hal al Shedad. Spitting, angular, and supremely difficult music with amazing lyrics and a heavy Slint-meets-Sonic-Youth-at-your-sister's-graduation-party kind of vibe.

2. B-52's by The B-52's. Pulled this one out tonight (I still have it on LP, natch) and played the A side for Kira. She dug it. I dug it. Great guitar tone, and it sounds like it was recorded in a room with walls covered twelve feet thick in cotton. Strangely, that's a good aesthetic. Plus, the album flat out rocks.

3. Special Beat Service by The English Beat. I remember arriving at the end of one of my high school's football games with the express purpose of finding Jill, the coolest gal I knew, and putting this tape in her hands. It's that kind of album. Fast forward to earlier today, when Kira and I walked past a duo playing a steel-drum version of "Ackee 1-2-3" at a sidewalk festival. I swear the universe is conspiring to make me happy.

4. All the Best Cowboys have Chinese Eyes by Pete Townshend. Even cooler because an episode of Lost is named after it. I remember being quite taken, years ago, with the video for "Face Dances II," which is what initially made me buy the album. Every track is good, but his rendition of the old folk standard "North Country Girl" takes the cake for me every time. A brilliant album.

5. Rock N Roll by Ryan Adams. Came across this one by accident, long after its release and the buzz about it had passed. Heard the track "Burning Photographs" on the local slacker college station and my jaw dropped. Bought the album that very day. I'm told it's a bit different from his other material. That's a pity, because he has a knack for making adolescent crotch-rock with a lot of wit and a lot of heart. Also, the album's first track contains the best chorus any former philosophy major and still-unrepentant hopeless romantic could ever ask for: "Don't waste my time. This is it. This is really happening" - sung in the context of the teenage wannabe lover in all of us. Vital.

So there you have it. Go make your own list, citizen. Go.

Top Five

Kira suggested we go to Borders last night, since we hadn't gone bookstore browsing in a while. I didn't buy anything (she got some Graham Greene, and William Carlos Williams, and a book of essays by Barbara Kingsolver) but being there got me thinking about writers that have really, truly been important in my intellectual formation.

Okay - yeah. LOTS of writers will make that cut. But I was wondering if I could isolate just a handful that were absolutely, positively (in my opinion) essential reading - or, at least, essential reading if you want to think the way somebody like me thinks (and I realize not everybody is going to want to do that - even people like me. This gets complicated).

Anyway, I thought I would venture a top five, purely for the sake of conversation. I'll annotate a bit - though not too much - so that there's some context around the names.

So here we go - Let's call it David's Top Five Essential Writers for Getting your Theory Hella Tight. (How's THAT for a pretentious overture?) - in no particular order, then. Ahem:

1. Frederic Jameson - Last night I was reading the blurb on the back of a book by a Scottish emergent-church bohunk who shall remain nameless, and it mentioned that he got a Ph.D. in "deconstruction theory." (First, I would love to find the school that actually has such a thing in its major offerings. Second, do I need to mention how vehemently Derrida argued against those two words every being placed next to each other? Ah, fair poststructuralism, we barely knew ye...) Such tripe makes one long for a good old Marxist, doesn't it? And Jameson is the best of the good old Marxists - his Postmodernism, or the Cultural Logic of Late Capitalism is already a necessity, but so is everything else the man writes. Brilliant, readable, funny as hell, polymathic, and cruel to anyone evincing idiocy. You could not ask for better than that.

2. Umberto Eco - If Noam Chomsky were as wise about language as he is about politics, he would actually be Umberto Eco. I can't vouch for Eco's fiction, which I have not yet read, but I tell you on no uncertain terms you should read everything the man writes about hermeneutics and semiotics (I would suggest Interpretation and Overinterpretation as a good starting point). Then, once you have read it, you should disagree with a lot of it (because a lot of it sounds too much like Noam Chomsky), but then you should read it again, and still disagree with it, but then read it again... you get the picture. Brilliant and absolutely worthwhile even when it is flagrantly and wildly wrong. I cannot give a writer a higher level of praise than that.

3. Stanley Fish - Speaking of rereading, I find myself returning to the essays of Stanley Fish again and again, always finding that of value in them. An annoyingly clear thinker, and a master of following matters to their peskiest logical conclusions. A latter-day Scottish rationalist dressed in a tweed sportcoat, he sidles into the bar where all the sloppy thinkers are drinking, whips out his pen and simply aerates the sonsabitches (to steal a phrase once deployed in praise of Bob Black). My colleagues will remind you that the likely reason I was so annoying throughout my Ph.D. studies is that I was mainlining a lot of Fish, and such behavior will often make one Difficult. Why not start with There's No Such Thing as Free Speech (and Its a Good Thing, Too)?

4. George Steiner - Simply the most intelligent writer living today. Period.

5. Roland Barthes - It is so clear now. The book is a woman. She sees you, and she wants your eyes on her. The book will do everything in her power to make that happen. You enjoy it, and you can't help yourself. (Don't believe me? Read Barthes's The Pleasure of the Text.) Bracing stuff, this. Structuralism at its very best.

So there you have it. My top five. Simply one reporter's opinion, of course. I'd be delighted to hear your suggestions for alternatives. We can have us a theory pow wow. Go to it, kids. Enjoy.

Of the Six Things That I Love, Here are Five.

1. The San Antonio Spurs

2. Brian Eno's Oblique Strategies

3. Liz Phair's mouth (see left)

4. Bartlett Pears

5. Pope John Paul II


Thank you very much. You're on your own. Goodnight.