The Annotation Project: A is for Alibi

I had never read this series, but was looking for books that started bestselling series. I thought there were aspects of the book that were distinctly uncompelling, but that only made me more interested in how the book overcomes those elements with BCI...

Believe Care Invest: Go Tell It on the Mountain

John becomes aware on the morning of his fourteenth birthday in 1935 that he does not want to become the preacher that everyone expects him to become. He imagines cursing his abusive father on his deathbed. He goes down to breakfast and worries that no one has remembered his birthday.

Why John might be hard to identify with: For modern readers, no real reason. He’s an intensely sympathetic character.  White readers in 1952, of course, were not primed to care about black, possibly-gay masturbating teenagers, but Baldwin didn’t give AF.  

Believe

• It’s always good to differentiate siblings right away by having them react to the same thing in individual ways: “John and Roy, passing these men and women, looked at one another briefly, John embarrassed and Roy amused.” Even the baby has an individual personality: “The baby, Ruth, sat in her high chair banging on the tray with an oatmeal-covered spoon. This meant that she was in a good mood; she would not spend the day howling, for reasons known only to herself, allowing no one but her mother to touch her.” Every character comes alive when they have secrets, even babies.
• Semi-autobiographical novelists have a ready-made store of the sights and sounds of their childhood: “the sisters in white, heads raised, the brothers in blue, heads back; the white caps of the women seeming to glow in the charged air like crowns, the kinky, gleaming heads of the men seeming to be lifted up—and the rustling and the whispering ceased and the children were quiet; perhaps someone coughed, or the sound of a car horn, or a curse from the streets came in; then Elisha hit the keys, beginning at once to sing, and everybody joined him, clapping their hands, and rising, and beating the tambourines.”
• There are lots of song lyrics. Baldwin has abandoned his religious upbringing, but he knows it provides him with lots of good material.

Care

• The opening quote says of the faithful: “They shall run and not be weary”, but that’s never true in Baldwin’s work, where weariness is never far behind. Later, he says: “Her full lips were loose and her eyes were black—with shame, or rage, or both”. In Baldwin’s books, rage often becomes shame and shame often becomes rage.
• John is burdened by an unwanted legacy: “EVERYONE had always said that John would be a preacher when he grew up, just like his father. It had been said so often that John, without ever thinking about it, had come to believe it himself. Not until the morning of his fourteenth birthday did he really begin to think about it, and by then it was already too late.” Begin at the moment the longstanding personal problem becomes acute and undeniable.
• Everybody feels misunderstood, though some of us think of ourselves are better than we’re regarded and some of us think of ourselves as worse. John is tortured by secret shame: He has “sinned with his hands” in the night, looking a shape on the ceiling that looks like a naked woman. (And he also seems interested in the body of the boy who plays the organ at church, which is presumably even more likely to bring him feelings of shame)
• Shades of Sixteen Candles, he’s worried that his whole family has forgotten his birthday: “His first thought, nevertheless, was: ‘Will anyone remember?’ For it had happened, once or twice, that his birthday had passed entirely unnoticed, and no one had said ‘Happy Birthday, Johnny,’ or given him anything—not even his mother.”

Invest

• He has decided to defy God, which is pretty badass: “The darkness of his sin was in the hardheartedness with which he resisted God’s power; in the scorn that was often his while he listened to the crying, breaking voices, and watched the black skin glisten while they lifted up their arms and fell on their faces before the Lord. For he had made his decision. He would not be like his father, or his father’s fathers. He would have another life.”
• He remembers being praised by his principal at his school and sensing what that might mean: “That moment gave him, from that time on, if not a weapon at least a shield; he apprehended totally, without belief or understanding, that he had in himself a power that other people lacked”
• He is beaten for his individuality, but he knows it’s a superpower: “it was his identity, and part, therefore, of that wickedness for which his father beat him and to which he clung in order to withstand his father. His father’s arm, rising and falling, might make him cry, and that voice might cause him to tremble; yet his father could never be entirely the victor, for John cherished something that his father could not reach. It was his hatred and his intelligence that he cherished, the one feeding the other.”

Strength/Flaw: Self-aware / Guilt-wracked

The Annotation Project: Go Tell It on the Mountain

This blog is not just podcasts!  There will still be lots of content, I promise.  This is a stunning novel. 

Marvel Reread Club Episode 1: November 1961!

Steve and Matt Bird · 001 Marvel Reread Club Nov 1961

Hey, everybody, big news! Today marks the debut of my second podcast! (Don’t worry, the “Secrets of Story Podcast” will continue unabated, but it will now share space with this one.)

My wife has two podcasts, one of which is with her sister, and I’m following in her footsteps, because this second podcast is with my brother Steve!  He was an inker for DC Comics for many years and literally knows the comics world inside and out.  

“Marvel Reread Club” will consist of us rereading every single Marvel superhero comic, starting with the beginning of the Marvel Age, one month at a time, and having fun discussing them. Most episodes will feature multiple comics, but for this first episode, we’ll just discuss the only Marvel comic to come out in November, 1961: Fantastic Four #1!

How should one listen to this podcast? We’re hoping to make it enjoyable whether or not you’ve read these comics. Have we succeeded? That’s up to you to answer! If you do want to read along, then get yourself a Marvel Unlimited subscription. Fair warning: This podcast is certainly more niche than “The Secrets of Story”. If this topic doesn’t interest you, just ignore these posts and I promise I’ll still give you lots of other content on this blog.

We hope you like it! We’re still finding our footing, and will continue to do so. Unlike my other podcast, which is on a monthly-or-so schedule, we will actually be releasing this one weekly, at least for a while, every Wednesday (aka, New Comics Day!) We’ve got two more episodes in the can for the next two weeks!

We may spin off into our own website eventually, but for now we’re just going to squeeze ourselves in with the other content on secretsofstory.com. After all, a lot of story secrets will be discussed!

Okay, folks, give it a listen if you’re interested and let us know what you think!

Believe Care Invest: Slaughterhouse Five

In the first chapter, Vonnegut tells us that this is a mostly true story and he was actually there for the bombing of Dresden. The second chapter introduces us to Vonnegut’s alter ego Billy Pilgrim, who is convinced that he’s unstuck in time, and has been abducted and put in an alien zoo, in addition to his own experiences in Dresden. In the war flashbacks, he has to deal with a psychotic fellow soldier named Roland Weary.

Why Billy might be hard to identify with: The first chapter gets us to invest in Vonnegut, not Billy, then it’s a little awkward to shift to the fictional character. Once we meet Billy, we never really believe his perceptions: He’s got PTSD from the bombing and he’s recently had a head injury from a plane crash. In the Dresden flashbacks, he stresses that he was totally incompetent, which usually keeps us from liking a hero. Even worse, he “wouldn’t do anything to save himself.” Traditionally this makes heroes pretty hard to care for, but Billy is an exception. I think it has something to do with the recurring phrase “So it goes”. The book gets us into a different, more philosophical mood, admiring the character who is learning to let himself be carried along by events, and despising the character fighting so hard against the Nazis with his own weaponry

Believe

• An abundance of detail that Vonnegut actually witnessed: the bizarre equipment of a chaplain’s assistant, for instance. “While on maneuvers in South Carolina, Billy played hymns he knew from childhood, played them on a little black organ which was waterproof. It had thirty-nine keys and two stops- vox humana and vox celeste. Billy also had charge of a portable altar, an olive-drab attaché case with telescoping legs. It was lined with crimson plush, and nestled in that passionate plush were an anodized aluminum cross and a Bible. The altar and the organ were made by a vacuum-cleaner company in Camden, New Jersey-and said so.” 
• His life as an optometrist is believably mundane.
• His son is fighting in Vietnam, tapping the novel into real life national pain. To a certain extent this whole book is about Vietnam, where America was already creating a lot of new Dresdens. Vonnegut is saying, “Even the ‘good war’ wasn’t all that good, so what does that say about our current entirely-unjustified war?”
• Vivid similes throughout: “Billy was preposterous-six feet and three inches tall, with a chest and shoulders like a box of kitchen matches.”

Care

• He’s “cold, hungry, embarrassed, incompetent.” We care for characters who are cold, hungry, and embarrassed. We usually ask that character not be incompetent, but we accept it here.
• He’s totally humiliated: “A chaplain’s assistant is customarily a figure of fun in the American Army. Billy was no exception. He was powerless to harm the enemy or to help his friends. In fact, he had no friends. He was a valet to a preacher, expected no promotions or medals, bore no arms, and had a meek faith in a loving Jesus which most soldiers found putrid.”

Invest

• It’s hard to invest in him because he’s so hapless, but his meek faith will serve him well: God seems to be watching out for him throughout the novel, as he survives against steep odds through no effort of his own.
• No matter how much he blundered into it, that doesn’t take away that he survived being a prison of the Nazis at the Battle of the Bulge, so that’s still pretty badass.
• We do admire the way he spars with Roland Weary by refusing to engage with Weary’s psychosis. We like heroes who don’t let themselves be baited, and let big talkers hang themselves.
• ‘How’d you-like to be hit with this-hm? Hmmmmmmmmm?’ he wanted to know.
• ‘I wouldn’t,’ said Billy.
• ‘Know why the blade’s triangular?’
• ‘No.’
• ‘Makes a wound that won’t close up.’
• ‘Oh.’
• ‘Makes a three-sided hole in a guy. You stick an ordinary knife in a guy-makes a slit. Right? A slit closes right up. Right?
• ‘Right.’
• ‘Shit. What do you know?’

Strength/Flaw: Zen / Helpless

The Annotation Project: Slaughterhouse Five

An odd book, where the first chapter is really a prologue, and the hero only appears in Chapter 2...

Believe Care Invest: Insecure

On her birthday, Issa gives a talk as youth liaison to a class of high schoolers, but the kids mock her. She then reports back to work at her non-profit, where she’s the only black employee. She goes to a birthday dinner with her best friend who tells her she’s been dumped. Issa admits she’s thinking of breaking up with her own boyfriend, but doesn’t admit she texting an ex.

Why Issa might be hard to identify with: Her white co-workers ask her what “on fleek” means and she responds, “I don’t know what that means.” Then, in voiceover, she tells us “I know what that shit means, but being aggressively passive is what I do best.” Passive aggressive heroes can get frustrating.

Believe:

• The kids react to her unique hair and clothes.
• She has a good friend who she laughs with, telling her, “I think your pussy’s broken. No, I read about it, it’s like, pussies breaking everywhere. It’s sad, it’s had enough, if it could talk, it’d make that sad Marge Simpson groan.”

Care

• She’s too white for the black world and too black for the white world: The first question a student says, “Why you talk like a white girl?” When she responds, “You caught me, I’m rocking blackface,” the students and teachers are uncomfortable.
• Second question: “What’s up with your hair? My cousin can put some tracks in it…unless you like it like that?” Other questions: “Are you single?” “Why ain’t you married?” When she says she didn’t want to settle for less, a student calls out to the class, “Her outfit settled for less!”
• She fears that she’s just a token at work. She says in voiceover when she’s back at work: “My boss founded a non-profit to help kids from the hood, but she didn’t hire anybody from the hood.” Her boss says, “I’m torn between the Booker T. method and the Debois method. What would James Baldwin say is most beneficial for people of color?”
• She still hung up on an ex.
• She lacks confidence: “How different would my life be if I actually went after what I wanted?”
• She confuses work and personal life, “I think these kids need permission to explore on their own,” she says, really talking about herself.

Invest

• She’s not easy to invest in because she’s pretty hapless.
• She has a creative outlet: “I used to write a journal to vent, but now I just write raps.” Her raps, however, are just okay, as she well knows.
• She does her best with the kids and with her friend.

Strength / Flaw: Trying to do the right thing / Insecure about it

Believe Care Invest: Nomadland

Aging drifter Fern empties out her rented storage space and throws most of the stuff out. She hits the road, peeing by the side of the road when she needs to. She goes to work at an Amazon warehouse. She shows off her van to one of her co-workers. Amazon lays everybody off and she’s back on the road.

Why Fern might be hard to identify with: We’ll come to realize that, while she’s clearly suffered unjustly in various ways, she’s ultimately chosen to be homeless, which is ironically a very white-privilege thing to do.

Believe

• Ironic song lyrics to sing for someone with few possessions: While Shepherds Watch Their Flocks by Night.
• She doesn’t have a lot of stuff but what she has is fascinating: Her little stove, her Santa lamp, etc.
• The job she gets in an Amazon warehouse is believably mundane.
• Signature object: She’s named her van “Vanguard”

Care

• She’s very much suffering real life national pain. We begin with a title: “On January 31, 2011, due to a reduced demand for sheetrock, US Gypsum shut down its plant in Empire, Nevada, after 88 years. By July, the Empire zip code, 89405, was discontinued.”
• It seems as if one of the items in storage might have belonged to her dead husband, from the way she hugs it.
• She has to pee standing up by the side of the road.
• She’s embarrassed to run into a woman with kids she used to tutor, who is clearly concerned for her. “If you need a place to stay, you can come over and stay with us. We’re worried about you.” “I’m not homeless, I’m just houseless. Not the same thing, right?”
• Parallel character: A woman in a similar situation talks about getting near suicide.

Invest

• We just invest a little. We don’t have much reason, because she really can’t take care of herself or anyone else. But we admire her ingenuity with her van, “The guy who had the van before he just had a mattress in the back but I didn’t want to keep it that way, I wanted to built the bed up so I could have storage underneath. You see that? This was my husband’s old fishing box, I put this little latch on it. Open it, the stopper holds it and creates more counter space.”
• We find out she taught the girl Shakespeare, so she’s upsetting our expectations of drifters.

Strength / Flaw: Self-reliant / Can’t find a home

Believe Care Invest: Soul

40 something would-be jazz musician Joe Gardner teaches talentless middle-schoolers and gets offered a full time job. He visits his mother’s tailor shop, where she orders him to take the job. He agrees, but then an old student calls him and offers a chance to audition for one of his favorite musicians, Dorothea Williams. He passes the audition, and he’s excitedly telling a friend about it on the phone while walking home when he falls into a manhole and seemingly dies. He finds himself in “The Great Beyond.”

Why Joe might be hard to identify with: He’s a bit of a loser, still having his mother wash his underwear (with holes in it.) He insults his kids’ playing to the principal.

Believe

• Externalized emotions: He looks at his wall of great jazz musicians and wants to be one.
• Signature wardrobe: turtleneck and hat.

Care

• His students are terrible and check their phones in class.
• Ironically, good news is the last thing he wants to hear: “I wanted to deliver the good news personally: No more part time for you. You’re now our full time band teacher! Permanently!” He winces to hear this.
• His mother doesn’t want to hear about his dreams: “After all these years, my prayers have been answered: A full time job.” “Yeah, mom, but” “You’re going to tell them yes, right?” “Don’t worry, mom, I got a plan.” “You always got a plan. Maybe you need to have a back-up plan too…We didn’t struggle giving you an education so you could be a middle-aged man washing your underwear in my shop. With this job, you’ll be able to put that dead-end ‘gigging’ behind you…And just think, playing music will finally be your real career.” It’s painful to hear.
• Dorothea Williams gives him a withering look. “So, we’re down to middle school band teachers now?”
• He seemingly dies on the day all his dreams were coming true (after telling his student, “I would die a happy man if I could perform with Dorothea Williams.”)

Invest

• Despite the fact that his students aren’t very good yet, we can tell from his lecture and the way he plays for them that he’s a good teacher. And one student is good: “Connie got a little lost in it. That’s a good thing.”
• He’s good enough to pass the audition. He gets in the zone.

Strength / Flaw: Great musician who gets in the zone / zoned out

Believe Care Invest: House

Okay, I know you’re tired of these, and believe me when I say that I’m tired of them, but the book’s still not done, so I did one last batch, and I figured I might as well share them. I do have future plans for good content for this blog, of various kinds.

It’s network TV so we begin, of course, with a cute young white woman in trouble. A teacher starts speaking nonsense to her classroom, then has a seizure. A few months later she ends up under the “care” of a misanthropic doctor named Gregory House, who refuses to actually talk to her. He meets with his team and they decide to run some tests, but his boss tells him he’s not allowed to run any further tests, because he hasn’t been doing his clinic hours.

Why House might be hard to identify with: He’s even more of an asshole than most TV asshole heroes. About his patient: “The one who can’t talk? I like that part.” He finds out it’s his friend’s cousin, but still responds, “Brain tumor, she’s gonna die. Boring.”

Believe

• Jargon: In response to a list of symptoms: “None of which is even close to dispositive.” Later: “Differential diagnosis, people, if it’s not a tumor what are the suspects?”
• He has a unique POV, literally: The camera zoom up the patient’s nose.
• He has mottoes: A team member asks, “Shouldn’t we be speaking to the patient before we start diagnosing?” “Is she a doctor?” “No, but--” “--Everybody lies.” “Dr. House doesn’t like dealing with patients.” “Isn’t treating patients why we became doctors?” “No, treating illnesses is why we became doctors. Treating patients is what makes most doctors miserable.” “So you’re trying to eliminate the humanity from the practice of medicine?” “We don’t talk to them, they can’t lie to us. And we can’t lie to them. Humanity is overrated.”
• Token items: cane, pill bottle.

Care

• He’s disabled and self-conscious about it: His first line, as he limps along with a cane: “They all assume that I’m a patient because of this cane.” “So put on a white coat like the rest of us.” “I don’t want them to think I’m a doctor!” “You can see where the administration might have a problem with that attitude.” “People don’t want a sick doctor.”
• His boss keeps humiliating him: “I was expecting you in my office twenty minutes ago.” “That’s odd, because I had no intention of being in your office twenty minutes ago.” “Your billings are practically non-existent.” “Rough year.” “You ignore requests for consults.” “I call back. Sometimes I misdial.” “You’re six years behind on your obligations to this clinic.” “See, I was right: This doesn’t interest me. It’s five o’clock, I’m going home.” “To what?” He has no snappy answer to that last one.
• Later, his ability to do tests is taken away, and she’s humiliating him more effectively. He yells at her: “You showed me disrespect. You embarrassed me, and as long as I work here--” “--Is yelling designed to scare me, because I’m not sure what it is I’m supposed to be scared of. More yelling? That’s not scary. That you’re going to hurt me? That’s scary, but I’m pretty sure I can outrun you.”
• We will eventually find out he has a pain killer addiction.

Invest

• We can see he’s very good at his job, albeit not the “bedside manner” part.
• His friend says sarcastically, “No wonder you’re such a renowned diagnostician, you don’t need to actually know anything to figure out what’s wrong,” but we can tell he means it about the renowned part.
• His boss tells him: “Your reputation is still worth something to this hospital.”

Strength / Flaw: Sees the truth / Misanthrope

Episode 28: The Order of Odd-Fish

The Secrets of Story Podcast · Episode 28: The Order of Odd-Fish

Hey everybody, it’s that long-promised episode of the podcast about James’s book! Ultimately, at James’s insistence, we recorded 4 ½ hours of material over two nights, and then thankfully he offered to cut it down himself, so this is the first ever James-edited episode!

Buy the book on Amazon here!

Buy the book on Audible here!

Some of the book’s fan art on James’s website, and on Instagram.

Here's a write-up of the art show. 

And finally, here’s the amazing chart James just drew up of the characters:

Believe Care Invest: The Order of Odd-Fish

Faded Hollywood starlet Lily Larouche throws a blow-out Christmas costume party at her palace in the desert. Thirteen years ago, she found a baby in her laundry room with a note saying “This is Jo. Please take care of her. But beware. This is a DANGEROUS baby”. Now Jo is the responsible take care of her “aunt”. A mysterious Russian named Korsakov gets in a dust-up with a teen in a hedge-hog costume, who comes back with a gun. A package from the sky lands on the teen’s head and he accidentally shoots Korsakov. The package says “to: jo larouche, from: the order of odd-fish”

Why Jo might be hard to identify with: It’s always a little tricky having a hero who wants to shut the party down. Certainly we get the sense that Jo is not James’s own favorite character. But the three authors that seem to be the biggest inspirations here, Dahl, Juster, and Adams, all have in some of their biggest books party-poooperish heroes surrounded by wilder, more fun-loving characters. (Matilda is an exception)

Believe:

• If there’s one thing this book does not lack, it is an abundance of vivid details. The Ruby Palace comes alive instantly with sights, sounds and smells (Jo closed her eyes and inhaled the familiar smell of Aunt Lily’s parties: the lemony smoke of tiki torches; the clashing, flowery perfumes; the warm musk of cigarettes . . .)
• Every member of the ensemble is strongly characterized, with not just strong personality traits, but unique syntax.

Care:

• A classic trick: She overhears herself being criticized: “Did you see?” whispered the eggplant. “Lily’s gone nuts again.” “Cracked as a crawdad, and worse every year,” said the UFO. “The woman’s going to hurt herself.” “It wouldn’t be so bad if it weren’t for the poor girl. Do you know, I’ve never even seen her?” “I heard she’s some kind of freak, actually,” said the UFO. “Remember what the newspapers said about her being ‘dangerous’?”
• We care about introverts in party situations. Once parties get wild enough, we’ve all felt that way: “Nobody noticed her in her plain black dress, but she preferred it that way. She hated attention.”

Invest:

• Like Harry Potter killing wizard-Hitler, Jo is already bad ass as a baby, for some reason nobody knows. We like dangerous characters.
• She’s volatile and scrappy: “Jo didn’t have time for this; her heart was beating too hard, she had to find Aunt Lily—but she heard herself shout, ‘Hey! Get back here!’”
• She can throw someone’s words back at them, which we always like: “‘I have dispatched my partner, Sefino, to patrol the grounds for suspicious characters.’ ‘You’re the most suspicious character I’ve ever met.’”
• We always like spies: “Jo never talked to Aunt Lily’s friends, but she loved spying on them.”

The Annotation Project: The Order of Odd Fish

Hey, we never did James’s book! Let’s fix that.  You can buy it on Amazon here or Audible here. And we’ll discuss it on the next podcast!