The Mumpsimus

Kaoru Nonomura's Eat Sleep Sit: My Year at Japan's Most Rigorous Zen Temple (trans by Juliet Winters Carpenter) is, as far as I know, the most detailed look inside the practices of the Eiheiji temple, founded in the mid-13th century with the great Dōgen as abbot. Certainly, it is the most detailed description in English of daily life within Eiheiji. I will read almost anything about monks and hermits, regardless of religion or inclination, if the focus is on the practicalities more than the dogmas. (An obsession with Henry David Thoreau when I was in high school was probably the first sign of this inclination.) My ideal life would certainly be that of a monk; alas, I have no ability to believe in any particular religion, never mind devote my life to faith. Is there a cloister for cheerful nihilists, a quiet scholastic place where I might sit and contemplate the meaninglessness of existence? Many years ago, I met a former Trappist monk in Nicaragua, a man inspired, like many,...

So when you ask some of your questions, you're asking them to a person who's long dead. You're asking them to a person that doesn't exist. But people make that mistake about me all the time.  —Bob Dylan, 2012 If you've ever spent any time around any sort of fan community, most of the people you meet in The Dylanologists  will be familiar types. There are the collectors, there are the hermeneuts, there are the true believers and the pilgrims. Some reviewers and readers have derided a lot of the people Kinney writes about as " crazy ", but one of the virtues of the book is that it humanizes its subjects and shows that plenty of people who are superfans are not A.J. Weberman . They seem a little passionate, sure, and if you're not especially interested in their passion they may seem a bit weird, but how different are they, really, from denizens of more culturally dominant fandoms — say, devoted sports fans? (Indeed, the term "fan" as we ...

Back in January, having imbibed too many book reviews and flame wars, I spouted on Twitter : "Most critical writing could be summed up as, 'My god is an awesome god! Your god sucks.'" That especially seems to be the case with so much writing about science fiction, which is less rigorously analytical than it is theological. Let's look at two examples. Adam Roberts's new Guardian essay on science fiction and politics reminded me of a provocative essay in the current issue of Science Fiction Studies , "Fascism and Science Fiction" (JSTOR) by Aaron Santesso. Here, I'm not going to wrestle with their arguments so much as speculate (perhaps irresponsibly, erroneously, ridiculously) on what itch such arguments scratch, because though I am skeptical of the overall thrust of both pieces, I don't find either to be especially bothersome. As I read each, I realized that I didn't understand the desires and assumptions that motivat...

The latest issue of the film journal Scope has just been posted online , and it includes a review I wrote about three books having to do with science fiction film and tv   (PDF) , with a particular view to their expressions of spiritual transcendence and their use of religion as a plot device, character trait, and general motif. The maximum length allowed for reviews at Scope is 3,000 words, and my original draft was well over that. I cut it down to the best of my ability, but some things got lost. Below the fold here, I'll put the longer version, which gives a fuller exploration of the three books. If you just want to get an overview of the books and what I thought about them, read the Scope version of the review. If you want more detail, keep reading here...

How strange to see a Jean-Pierre Melville movie where none of the characters wear trenchcoats or fedoras ! Melville was a king of style, his best films usually tales of gangsters who are looking for a portal back to the Hollywood movies they fell out of. Leon Morin, Priest , though, is the middle of a trilogy of movies in which Melville tried to capture the experience of France during World War II, a time when Melville himself had been soldier in the Resistance -- the first, The Silence of the Sea , was his first feature as director, the third, Army of Shadows , is his most epic masterpiece, the film where he was able to bring together all of his interests, passions, and proclivities, giving them a depth and resonance they'd not quite had before. Leon Morin  was originally going to be more epic than it is, but part of Melville's goal in making it was to create a more commercial and popular movie than he had before, and so he sacrificed as much as he could bear to tha...