Shattered Glass

How entertaining should it be, really? A young writer at a prestigious policy magazine fabricates some articles, gets caught, and creates a crisis for a young managing editor who hasn't yet won the loyalty of his staff. If this weren't the incredibly true story of Stephen Glass –– the real-life writer for The New Republic, whose sensational stories established him as one of the hottest young writers in America before his lies were exposed – the movie never would have been made. That the movie Shattered Glass works as a taut thriller and terrifying character drama is a tribute to the fine writing, acting, and directing. While it was on screen, it was thoroughly captivating entertainment, but once the movie was over, it left me with many questions unanswered, and many more unasked.

The movie covers the brief span of time between two critical firings: former New Republic editor, Michael Kelly, and Stephen Glass. Glass is the youngest contributing editor on an unusually young staff. He tells us in the opening that the secret to his career is two-fold: modesty in his professional life and a willingness to see the reader's needs within the story. By the end of the movie, we see how both qualities have ruined him. Glass has a fine art for extrapolating small details into a compelling story, regardless of the veracity of that narrative. The plausibility of his tales, combined with his willingness to please his audience and lack of presumption, mean that his research is rarely questioned. Glass, played subtly by Hayden Christensen, tells everyone exactly what they want to hear, responding timidly, "Are you mad at me?" when anyone comes close to questioning his fictions. The movie portrays Glass not so much as an unethical journalist, than as a pathological liar and crafty self-promoter. When the carefully constructed lies begins to fall apart around him, the collapse of Glass's personality is truly terrifying.

The movie takes on many issues here, and the most compelling of the movie's subplots involves the ascension of new managing editor, Charles Lane, played with the right balance of leadership and vulnerability by Peter Sarsgaard. After former editor Kelly was fired by the publisher for political reasons, Lane finds himself with a staff fiercely loyal to Kelly and on the verge of mutiny. The crisis with the popular Glass strains the office even further. The movie does a great job of showing how difficult it was to prosecute the truth of Glass's reporting while also fulfilling his role as advocate for his writers. The way that Glass systematically exhausts Lane's favor and forces Lane to refuse Glass any further sympathy is heartbreaking.

The movie does leave many questions open, and as a result, this is a movie that I find myself still thinking about days after seeing it. The movie never really addresses the underlying causes of Glass's behavior. It somewhat suggests that Glass broke under the stress of trying to manage a writing career while attending law school, but his fabrications and lies began long before his graduate studies. Was Glass nothing more than a social climber? The movie also suggests so, showing Glass courting successively more prestigious publications, while actively denying his ambitions to his colleagues. And yet, when Glass is exposed as a fraud, he continues to dissemble, destroying his career in the process, rejecting opportunities to repent and rehabilitate his reputation.

The most frightening aspect of the film is its most unsolved:– the gap between research and reporting. The movie was released the same year as the Jayson Blair scandal and reports on journalists being paid by the Bush administration to repeat government opinions as news. The Glass scandal nearly sunk The New Republic and permanently damaged its reputation, but the movie never really addresses how these kinds of scandals come to pass. Michael Kelly is practically canonized here, and when the characters realize that most of Glass's falsifications happened under Kelly's editorship, the movie quickly changes the subject, as if afraid of the implications. If the movie has any lingering conclusions to make, it is to shatter trust in those whose words seem so polished and whose ideas seem so sure, and to expose them as flawed human beings in a flawed system.

A Scanner Darkly - Philip K. Dick

A Scanner Darkly is a shockingly anti-subversive novel from one of the most subversive novelists of the 20th century. It is a most realistic work of a science fiction master. It is Philip Dick's most vulgar, most fatalist, most subtle, most humane, most modern, and arguably his best novel.

The story's central conceit is that drug distributors and dealers have so completely infiltrated law enforcement, undercover narcotics officers must hide their identities even from their own police supervisors. This means that a narc must report on his own dealings as a suspect so as not to identify himself to the other detectives working the case. It is in this situation that Bob Arctor finds himself, playing the double role of up-and-coming dealer as "Arctor" and "Fred", the incognito undercover narc. Arctor's mission is to work his way up the drug distribution ladder and move up through the organization to find out the source of a drug called Substance D, known on the streets as Death.

The novel's critical moment comes when a drug-addled Fred sees Arctor on the scanner for the first time and doesn't recognize himself. The novel begins to subtly veer off into a paranoid delusion as Arctor suspects that someone is trying to kill him while Fred makes it his life's work to bring down Arctor. This would be a fine set-up for a by-the-numbers Philip Dick novel, but Scanner is so much more.

During the 1960s, Dick went through a period of feverish creativity and intense production, often churning out several novels per year. Scanner marks the beginning of a new era of his career in which his novels became more autobiographical and earnest, maintaining the same basic themes, but bearing a maturity and discipline not present in even some of his most famous works. Dick writes in his poignant afterward that this book was inspired by the years he spent sharing his house with itinerant young people who came to his house to do drugs and crash. As a result, Scanner is shockingly authentic in the language of this California drug culture, and endearing in the genius of many of its characters.

Though the book is something of a celebration of the sub-culture of the dopehead, Dick makes it clear, both in his afterward and in the novel's chilling final act, that drugs are a kind of pestilence on our lives and our society. Dick's personal paranoia – of the government, of the police, of power in general – is a misdirection from the true villains of the story. The authorities, often working at odds with themselves, are far less sinister than the disciplined organization that sells the promise of a view into a larger reality, but only shows our own world through a scanner darkly.

Lord Byron's Novel: The Evening Land - John Crowley

"Abendland (Evening Land): There is always a West into which the heroes of the older age may go. Just beneath this word, in the small dictionary that I have, is another, Abentreuer, which means generally an Adventure, but is more exactly or loosely a journey West. Where dawn comes, of course, as everywhere. No end to the West till those who journey thence come round again at the last."

So writes Lady Ada Lovelace in a set of annotations to a long lost novel by her estranged father, the poet, Lord Byron. In Crowley's novel, Byron set pen to paper sometime between 1816 and 1822 and wrote The Evening Land, his only work of prose fiction. The manuscript falls into Ada's hands in the twilight of her life and she dutifully edits and annotates the novel for the father she never knew, before destroying the manuscript at the request of her emotionally manipulative and controlling mother. The notes and letters associated with the novel are sealed away for 150 years until they fall into the hands of a modern woman who calls herself Smith, working on a detailed biography of Ada Lovelace for a Women-in-Science website. The notes, along with page after page of numbers, transcribed meticulously by Ada as she was dying of cancer, form a central mystery for Smith and precipitate her reunion with her own estranged father.

The novel is told in three layers: The Evening Land, Byron's lost novel, presented wholly for the reader; Ada's annotations, in which she tries to explain Byron's literary and historical references; and the electronic correspondences between Smith; her father, Lee; and her lover, Thea. The Evening Land occupies the majority of the book and is a sprawling novel about a half-English, half-Albanian boy, Ali, sired by a mad, adventuring English lord, and eventually adopted and transplanted to the British Isle. The tale is wildly inventive, if rambling, as Ali encounters one improbable scenario after another. The novel features drafty Scottish abbeys, dank English prisons, brave heroism on the field of battle, duels, unexpected reunions, midnight liaisons, and even a zombie for good measure.

Crowley is a master stylist, and he is masterful here as he weaves the three threads of his story. I am no Byron expert, but The Evening Land is effective at evoking that period of literary history –– between Austen and Dickens – when the novel was novel. The prose is, at first, overly rich with literary flourishes. After only a few pages, though, even a modern reader can sink into the flow of the text to hear the story within. Crowley's modern sections, told through email, are as modern and authentic as The Evening Land is romantic and ornate.

The story outside the story, is largely one of characters who exist outside the narrative. Central to the novel is Byron himself. Left to the context of history, The Evening Land might have been the source of unending speculation and criticism, but here, Ada (our other great unseen character) seems to be looking for some message from her father. Crowley uses Smith and her father both to tell their own story, but also to provide a modern reader (who likely has no particular knowledge of Byron, his life or poetry) a context for understanding the story he is trying to tell. These parts can be largely expository, but they help in understanding the subtle yearning in Ada's notes and in Lee's identification with the novel to understand his relationship with his own daughter.

The outer story also features ancient computers (the so-called Difference Engine), secret ciphers, and mysterious strangers. (Crowley has Byron write himself a cameo into The Evening Land, just as Crowley writes himself into the framing story.) However, this is no Lord Byron Code. This is a story about art and style and characters. The book is largely an effusive love letter to Lord Byron and a celebration of his literary legacy through homage. But most of all, it is a grand Abentreuer, and a splendidly told one at that.

Adult - Tokyo Jihen

Tokyo Jihen has finally melded into a band in its own right, rather than merely being Shiina Ringo's band. The current Tokyo Jihen lineup is not only the most talented set of musicians Shiina has ever worked with, but based on the studio set presented on Adult, Tokyo Jihen is greater than the sum of its formidable parts.

It is always difficult to tell exactly how popular foreign artists are in their home countries, but all evidence is that Shiina Ringo's popularity at its peak was nothing less than stratospheric. With her distinctive voice, quirky musical sense, and iconic mole, her solo career took her from impressive alt-rocker grrl with a pop sensibility to art-rock diva, even inspiring a character in a popular video game franchise. Her final solo album, Karuki Zamen Kuri no Hana was a swirling blend of noise rock, electronica, traditional Japanese folk, and cabaret. After announcing her retirement, she had her signature mole surgically removed and reemerged as the vocalist for Tokyo Jihen. Their debut album, Kyoiku, was a crafty bit of post-punk rock-lite, full of high-tempo, angular songs and garage rock production. The disc had a few strong songs but never elevated beyond feeling like a Shiina Ringo one-off project.

Tokyo Jihen retooled its lineup since the release of Kyoiku and has come back stronger and more confident. The songs are more diverse, covering a range of 20th and 21st century popular musical styles. Shiina Ringo's musical influence is still felt strongly here – in fact Adult evokes the range on Shiina's influences and covers album, Utaite Myouri. The disc has all the polish and up-tempo swagger that Kyoiku lacked. The overall sensation is of a energetic jam session.

Shiina refreshingly reins in her performance to let the magic happening with the band shine. As a result Shiina's voice, usually so effective, sounds somewhat thin compared to her older work. She is weakest here on some of the jazz and swing-influenced numbers where a true chanteuse or a more forceful performance would have been preferable, but might have destroyed the precious balance of ego that catapults this disc to such heights.

The hard-rocking, daring, solo Shiina was brilliant while it lasted, but the musical maturity on display on Adult presents a Tokyo Jihen with a future just as bright.