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Another month, another holiday, another list of ten. In honor of Easter, I have decided to take this time to celebrate my ten favorite methods of resurrection in fiction! Originally, I was going to do my ten favorite resurrected characters, but there are just too many of them. And, for those of you offended, just think: I could have done worse. I couldn't think of too many freed slaves I love to honor Passover. Only really Mammy from Gone with the Wind. Yes, Dobby counts as one, but who actually liked him? I know; no one! And then people cried all sadly when he died! But I assure you, no one would like to see him employ any of these methods.

Fakin’ It

Offenders: Laura Fairlie (The Woman in White), Madeleine Elster (Vertigo), Sinestro (Green Lantern), Laura Bristow (Alias), Aunt May (Spider-Man)

This method of resurrection is a cohort of either very strong plotting or very lazy retconning. In novels and movies, it often serves a larger purpose than simply allowing the writer the shock and dramatics of killing off a character only to use him or her later in the story. The results of the death and the discovery of the deception are the source of narrative tension and therefore the story would be weaker with an actual shuffling loose the mortal coil.

However, this method is also famous in comic books and many television shows as a way for writers to bring back characters that they were annoyed at their predecessors for eradicating. A death certificate sometimes is less valuable than a Blockbuster gift certificate (the worst of all gift certificates). The person in question could have been secretly carried away from the plane wreck or had a secret compartment in the building just as the bomb went off. The writer could be particularly creative (read: ludicrous) and fabricate reasons like “Ah! But you killed a hard-light construction of me I engineered in order to drive you further to the brink of madness!” Yes, that is a real reason used.

In short, Fakin’ It is rife with dichotomies. The recently-resurrected could have instrumented the plan or been a victim of it. It is almost certainly the case if there is no corpse but cannot be ruled out even if there is one. And, most oddly, it has simultaneously been behind some of the greatest films and biggest eyerolls of all time.

Army of Me

Offenders: Ayanami Rei (Neon Genesis Evangelion), Hank and Dean Venture (The Venture Bros.)

You get to have your corpse and eat it too. Or something like that. I suppose you could eat the corpse. The beauty of this convention is that it proffers all the joy of the bloody death (no escape hatch or faked allergy to honey) without requiring some hokey way to have a character drive Charon’s ferry in reverse. The character does die and does not come back from the dead…but you still get to enjoy their company. Why? Because some lovely figure (be it the writer or head of a government agency or both) had the foresight to store a few spare copies of this person just in case. This method also then invites all fun introspections on “What is a self?,” which intro to philosophy college students can gush over for hours!

Messiah Complex

Offenders: Neo (The Matrix), Aslan (The Chronicles of Narnia), Sailor Moon (Sailor Moon)

Word to the wise: if you find yourself in a world with superpowers (oh, let’s say the guy you’re with can leap over skyscrapers or you have a piece of enchanted lipstick that turns you into a pyrokinetic superheroine), you really should not be all that cautious when approaching the subject of your mortality. Honestly, you should just assume that shuffling loose this mortal coil is a pretty much akin to landing in jail in the early stages of Monopoly. It will be an inconvenience, but it’s not the end of the world (neither, for that matter, is the end of the world). This point is particularly salient if you were to find yourself dying because you were nobly sacrificing your life for the greater good. That’s a “get out of jail free” card right there. There’s no way you’re going to stay dead. None. You pretty much hit the jackpot in Pascal’s Wager and won not only the glory for being such a noble, good being, but also that precious little thing called life.

Only Mostly Dead

Offenders: Westley (The Princess Bride), Norman Osborn (Spider-Man), Morph (X-Men: The Animated Series)

They say that if there’s no body, there is no death. Well, sometimes, if there is a body, there’s still no death. As Miracle Max explains, there’s dead and there’s mostly dead. Mostly dead allows for the shock of the death and perhaps even the loss of a heart-beat/heart, but without the irritating finality of death. Mostly dead is very similar to “Fakin’ It” (in fact Norman does a little of both), but more often than not lacks the possibility of preplanning by the writer (with the exception of Westley) and is a frequent enough device that it deserves its own category.



I’m a Dark Lord. ‘Nuff said.

Offenders: Sauron (Lord of the Rings), Voldemort (Harry Potter), Dr. Doom (Fantastic Four), Megatron (Transformers)

Word to the wise part deux: beings of unimaginable evil and power always come back after their first death, even more evil and more powerful. If you and your friends have just defeated the Great Terror Lord of Gonthrax, you should not be celebrating. If anything, you should be even more worried! All you have accomplished is chaperoning your calamitous caterpillar into the pernicious pupa stage of his metamorphosis of malevolence (where he will then reemerge as a bloodthirsty butterfly)! Granted, I do not know what the implications of this fact are when applied to the best-selling novel, The New Testament, considering we have the death of a powerful being with multiple supporters, only to reemerge a few days later even more awe-inspiring. Maybe Jesus was actually the first Sauron. And all poor Judas wanted to do was pull a Peter Pettigrew and atone for his alliance with wickedness.



I know, I know…I just committed a mortal sin; I confused Harry Potter with Lord of the Rings.

We Don’t Need No Stinkin’ Explanations!

Offenders: Daffy Duck (Looney Tunes), the crew of Sealab (Sealab 2021), Action League Now! (Kablam!)

How does Daffy survive a gun-shot to the face (or a visit to Hell at the end of some episodes)? How does the Flesh reconstruct himself after being blended, run over by an SUV, exploded, crush by a block of concrete, etc.? How do the denizens of Sealab continuously survive the undersea holocaust and rebuild their home (and don’t say there is no continuity, because they reference past episodes)? WHO CARES?! Look at all the stupid explanations there are for characters coming back to life: Horcruxes, clones, lookalike twins, magical flowers, bullets that send people through time, cocoons at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean – sometimes the best explanation is no explanation. You know what they say: if you don’t have anything half-credible to say, don’t say anything at all.

Hell-bent on Slaughter

Offenders: Michael Myers (Halloween), Jason (Friday the 13th), Freddy Kreuger (Nightmare on Elm Street)

This category is almost a subsection of Daffy’s category. Personally, I am not as well-versed on slasher movies as I should be; I’ve only seen the first one of each series. Of course, I have never really surmised that all that much energy is devoted to concocting reasons as to why that axe didn’t fully sever Michael’s head or how Jason survived the room of a thousand dynamites. All that matters is that these creatures have one reason to live: to exenterate the insides of every horny teenager on the planet. And, clearly, there are still horny teenagers out there. In fact, they’re multiplying in numbers! And sometimes this very increase in numbers is due to, you guessed it, horny teenagers! These guys can’t give up on their duty! They have a varsity-level commitment that I only wish I had back when I did track. Death to them is like a few broken bones to an Olympic gold medalist: enough of a reason to pause for a moment, but that’s it. Afterwards, they slap on some duct tape, grit their teeth, and continue the chase. And good for them!

(I can express such sentiments since, as a horny 23-year old, I’m pretty sure I’m exempt from their eviscerations)

I Had an Extra Guy!

Offenders: Pac-Man (Pac-Man), Mario (Super Mario Bros), Sonic the Hedgehog (Sonic the Hedgehog)

Man, wouldn’t the world be an interesting place if you had multiple deaths before you truly died? I know that The Onion did an investigation on the personal psychological implications of such a reality…but there is so much more. Would people sell their extra guys (or green mushrooms, etc.) in times of economic distress, leading the rich to become nigh-immortals? Or, in fact, would people be born with different amounts of extra lives, which in turn would decide their level in society?

Oh, the possibilities for anti-utopian novels are endless!

Lazy Writing/The Fans Demanded It/Cocoon in Ocean

Offenders: Hal Jordan (Green Lantern), Barry Allen (Flash), Bucky (Captain America)

Okay, so usually the writer will ultimately fall back on one of the aforementioned categories or a particularly special case of “cocoon in ocean” (yes, I already mentioned that, but it’s SO freakin’ stupid!). But some cases of resurrection are far more transparent than others. While I can half-buy into certain cases of averted death, there are points where the movie or telev – oh who am I kidding, comic book writer should just devote a few panels to his hand reaching into the grave and picking the dead character out of it before imbuing life back into him or her. Because, no, Barry Allen isn’t alive because of the Speed Force…that is unless Speed Force is “Geoff Johns wants it to be the Silver Age” in another language. What? Grant Morrison wrote that story? No, not believing it. Because, to be fair, Morrison is probably the only one who executed my suggestion. Seriously. Read Animal Man sometime.

It’s My Other Mutant Power

Offenders: Pretty much everyone who has every graced the pages of X-Men

I could pretty much populate this entire list with mutants. Fakin’ It? Yup, Magneto has done that so many times he should probably meet with Dr. Ruth. Clones? Uh-huh. Even if you’re an X-Men and aren’t Multiple Man, a cosmic, nigh-omnipotent deity will provide a few clones of you just to ensure you can die tragically and still come back to grace the shiny variant covers of issue 300. And don’t even get me started on the last category I just discussed.

I’m relatively certain by this point that one of the prerequisites for joining the X-Men is that the potential member in question has to have died at least once. That must be what X-Force, X-Factor, Generation X (oh, am I dating myself?), and all those other teams are force: acquainting the next class of mutants with the concept of their own mortality and their mortality’s mortality. The X-Men are the most elite group of mutants out there; they cannot be wasting their time dealing with death-virgins who actually get worried when a Sentinel beam fries Cyclops. Come on!





Did I miss any of your favorites?

Happy St. Patrick’s Day everyone! While I could do an entry on favorite Irish characters or green stuff or best movies with carbombs, I have chosen instead to do something far classier and more appropriate to honor such a special day for my fellow Irish-Americans. Without further adieu, I give you the ten fictional places at which I would most want to get drunk!

The rules:
1. The place has to be fictional (not a real place that appears in a fictional context).
2. There has to be some precedent of alcohol readily available at it – enough so to get one drunk (so while getting schwasted in Wonderland would be pretty awesome, that’s not an option…and I don’t think Vizzini had enough wine on that mountain top to get all parties past the point of tipsy).
3. These are not in any real order. Not a top ten, just ten.

Sterling Cooper Advertising Agency (from the television series Mad Men)

One hand clasping an old fashioned, with the other one busy slapping a secretary in the rear. A lovely blend of alcohol abuse and sexual harassment, straight from the sixties (it was a simpler time). I feel cooler just from watching Mad Men; I can’t even imagine what a boost (no matter how unjustified) to my ego it would be to knock a few back with Don, Roger, and company. I’d probably be under the table while most of them were still capable enough to make multi-million dollar deals, but as long as no one takes out any piece of John Deere machinery, I think I’d be okay with that.


Rick’s Café American (from the 1942 film Casablanca)

Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, this one looks like one of the best. It has awesome live music, from “Knock on Wood” which always seems to be a crowd pleaser to the duet of the “La Marseillaise” and “Die Wacht am Rhein” to special forbidden songs. There is a delightful cast of characters (even most of the Nazis are a hoot!) with whom to converse. And if you provide enough of a sob story, you can get the owner to turn the roulette wheel in your favor. The only thing that would worry me is that I might stumble into some stray bullets if I have a bit too much “Vichy water.”


Mos Eisley Cantina (from the 1977 film Star Wars: Episode IV: A New Hope)

Grab a Blue Russian (or whatever you make out of the late Beru’s blue milk), brush aside that severed arm, and enter Nerd Heaven. And don’t worry – in this cantina, Han always shoots first.


Moe’s Pet Shop (from the episode “Homer vs. the 18th Amendment” of The Simpsons)

Moe’s Tavern usually seems quite dreary, dirty, and unappealing. It only serves deviled eggs and one draft of American beer that I suspect is not the epitome of gustatory arousal. However, Moe’s Pet Shop is the best damn pet shop in town! Everything is more fun when it’s illegal and, in a perfect world, every bar would be a speakeasy! This establishments provides not only the draw of secretive spirits, but puppies, turtles, and all sorts of mechanical contraptions as well!


Hogwarts (from the, er, movie (?)Wizard People, Dear Reader)

If you haven’t listened to/watched Brad Neely’s brilliant Wizard People, Dear Reader, go out and do that now. Then get back to me. Because his Hogwarts kicks the Cruciatus Curse out of Rowlings’s. Wine-out-nowhere spells, cognac by the fire as you speculate on Valmart’s next move, and swigs of peach schnapps amidst a tense game of Wizard Chess: this place sounds like a lot more fun than that half-decaying castle with a goblet of fire and a few broomsticks. My one caveat: if you’re starting to get beer-glasses, stay away from that wretched Harmony or the hideous Snake. You’d regret it in the morning.


Willy Wonka’s Chocolate Factory (from the 1971 film Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory)

Candy may be dandy, but liquor is quicker. Aficionados of 70s cinema (or Gene Wilder films) will remember that part of the film with butterscotch and buttergin, which makes this a-okay with Rule #2. I’m just curious to see what this sucrose savant has dreamed up in his marriage of the two best vices known to man: candy and hard liquor. Gin that will make you fly? Vodka that will take you through time to meet Catherine the Great? Bourbon that tastes like a whole weekend in New Orleans? Oh, the possibilities are limitless!


The Walker Dinner Table (from the television series Brothers & Sisters)

Not only would I get to have superb wine in abundance, but I’d be treated to a show like no other. Every Walker dinner party inevitably ends in disaster and I’d love nothing more than to be able to sit in the epicenter of the chaos as it unravels! Who’s been sleeping with whom? Who is whose father? Who isn’t a Walker anymore? Can I grab Justin in middle of the commotion and ferry him off to the pantry? What better way to spent a Sunday night than guzzling down Walker Landing’s pinot as family secrets inevitably come out and this week’s rivalries boil over to a histrionic catastrophe! And don’t forget Sally inevitably breaking down in tears and cursing her late husband! Dinner, drinks, and entertainment! Sign me up.


Jay Gatsby’s Mansion (from F. Scott Fitzgerald's 1925 novel, The Great Gatsby)

This locale is like Moe’s Pet Shop, but with a splash of Ke$ha (“Oooh-oooooh-oh-oh-oh, it’s a party at a rich dude’s house!”). It provides all the fun of drinking illegally but with the extra benefits of hobnobbing with the elites of the fictional 1920s, not having to pay a cent for any of the hooch, and exploring the grounds of an opulent mansion that only a generation both jaded by war and unheeding of economic depression can create! And if you like a twist of symbolism in your martini, there’s always that green flashing light across the water.

Lucille Bluth’s Apartment in Balboa Towers or Señor Tadpoles (from the television series Arrested Development)

I could not decide between these two Bluth-haunts. Señor Tadpoles does seem tempting, especially as there would be quite a lot of people there right now for Spring Break (WOO!) and I could probably get a glimpse of some girls with low self-esteem (and maybe get into a drinking contest or two). However, Lucille’s apartment provides me with a unique opportunity: getting absolutely smashed with Lucille as we trade barbs. She’d probably win in the battle of words and drink me from there to Wee Britain without winking an eye, but the experience would be worth it.

Noonan’s Bar (from the comic book series Hitman)

This place seems like the quintessential Irish pub in a bad part of town (practically the realized platonic form of that concept), which is already a decent enough reason to want to go. Now just make that town Gotham City and add in a demon bartender named Baytor and some awesome assassin patrons (and maybe a visit by Batman or Green Lantern now and then) and I think I may’ve found my dream place to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day.

What places did I forget? Where in fantasy land would you love to destroy some brain cells? Where's a prose-portal when you need one?

The past month, I had a few dreams that have been parodies/homages of The Wizard of Oz. Naturally, I mean the movie, not the book, as the dreams tend to be Technicolor spectacles and involve me skipping down the Yellow Brick Road (since, ever since Judy Garland did so in 1939, there really has not been an alternate, acceptable method of travel along such an itinerary). Upon reflection, I realized that the best part of these dreams were that, in a way, they were just as valid as the “original.” After all, Garland’s Dorothy only dreams she goes to Oz and, upon waking up, I too can say to my friends, “I had the most wonderful dream. And you were there. And you were there,” etc. The whole idea of dreaming that one is in the dream part of MGM’s The Wizard of Oz is actually quite post-modern if one thinks about it.

I then had the good fortune of seeing The Wizard of Oz again, on a big screen, at The Film Forum in New York City. I went there with my friend anticipating to marvel at the Technicolor and some of the aesthetic choices, and maybe the acting, but that would be it. I would appreciate Oz as many do: a brilliantly done fable that has withstood the tests of time. I would see the movie as a masterpiece so elegantly simple, a tale with such a universal appeal, and the quintessence of imagination on celluloid. Hell, even the furthest Roger Ebert goes with glorifying the cranial aspects of the film is to say:

``The Wizard of Oz'' has a wonderful surface of comedy and music, special effects and excitement, but we still watch it six decades later because its underlying story penetrates straight to the deepest insecurities of childhood, stirs them and then reassures them. As adults, we love it because it reminds us of a journey we have taken. That is why any adult in control of a child is sooner or later going to suggest a viewing of ``The Wizard of Oz.''

Upon revisiting the film, I was shocked to discover a movie with a tremendous amount of bite. In the act of creating an Oz perhaps more archetypal than that of L. Frank Baum’s novel, it still manages to parody and question the subject material. The Wizard of Oz is simultaneously the classic Oz and the classic Oz parody.



Before I go further, let me just add a few words to those of you raising Joan Crawford eyebrows right now. By the time the movie came out, the novel was already 39 years old and widely regarded as a “classic.” Of course, “classic” delivers both reverence and a propensity to be mocked. Furthermore, the film was at one point under the direction of George Cukor and eventually delivered to Victor Fleming to create. Both of these men were not simple-minded, idealistic artists who only wished to entertain children. Fleming had quite a few pre-Code sex comedies under his belt and Cukor, after leaving both Oz and Gone with the Wind, would find himself directing the bitchy catfight known as The Women. While none of these facts automatically prove my prior paragraph, they should at least quell any knee-jerk reactions that I am simply trying to fit the square peg of post-modernism into the round hole of 1939.

Now for the film…

As I have already said, the movie already feels like a parody of The Wizard of Oz, or at least an homage. Consider any parody/homage you have seen of the film. Most of them involve taking already existing characters and placing them in roles from the classic. One example which immediately comes to mind is Futurama’s. As we watch Leela go along Martin Luther King Blvd (the renamed Yellow Brick Road) she encounters Fry as the Scarecrow, Bender as Tin Man, Dr. Zoidberg as the Cowardly Lobster, Professor Farnsworth as the Wizard, and Mom as the Wicked Witch. We would never simply say she encounters the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lobster, the Wizard, and Wicked Witch. Furthermore, all of the choices are meant to fit the characters to the pre-made roles from the work and each side (for example the Cowardly Lion and Dr. Zoidberg) has a role to play in the ultimate product on screen.

Oddly enough, we never seem to take note that the exact same concept is at play in the MGM classic film. We do not simply meet the Scarecrow, Tin Man, Cowardly Lion, The Wizard, and the Wicked Witch. Just as we think “Oh, look! It’s Fry as the Scarecrow,” we also should think “Oh look! It’s Hunk as the Scarecrow!” Both are fitting matches, as Fry is quite brainless and Hunk had earlier been talking about a head of straw. Just as Mom’s inclination to evil deeds makes her an ideal choice for Leela’s Wicked Witch of the West, so does Miss Gulch’s cruelty make her an ideal choice for Dorothy’s Wicked Witch of the West. Mom’s choice of words colors her portrayal of the Witch; Miss Gulch’s hatred of Toto makes her green-skinned counterpart threaten “I’ll get you my pretty and your little dog too!” (a line absent from the source material).

I could list the differences between the film and the novel for quite some time. But let me just sum up this argument by talking about how each of the actors uses his or her position to play to his or her own acting and comedic strengths. We are watching a classic vaudeville routine as much as we are watching a recreation of Baum’s classic.

I could argue that Dorothy’s Kansas is more akin to our own than to that of L. Frank Baum’s and that, in fact, Dorothy herself has read The Wondeful Wizard of Oz. Encountered with a similar situation and a need to sort out problems, she is taken by her mind into a world very similar to a book from her childhood. The characters of the novel are replaced with familiar faces and situations are modified to become more pertinent to her own crisis. After all, in the original work, Dorothy truly travels to Oz and we know little about Kansas beforehand. The mirroring of her Kansas life to her Oz life is a device unique to the film. Just as I have had dreams about The Wizard of Oz that have reflected my own life (and have found myself not referencing the source material in my dream), so could Garland’s Dorothy have encountered such an experience.

But I digress. The whole dream sequence (i.e. the meat of the film) is conscious of its own theatricality. Every character is an actor playing a role. The movie rubs its Technicolor in the viewers face more than almost any other film had or ever will. But with this self-awareness also comes a self-awareness of the sinister nature of a children’s story, particularly the very one on which it is imbuing cinematic immortality.



This film is not a faithful recreation of L. Frank Baum’s children’s tale. Everything has an edge, a bite, and wink and a nudge to the audience. The whole celebration is Munchkinland is, indeed, quite manic, gaudy, and indicative of an acid trip. Most parodies will include some jab at Munchkinland. But look at Dorothy’s face during the event: she knows she is not in Kansas anymore and the film knows we are not in Kansas anymore. The entire transition to Oz must be anything but gradual. From sepia to Technicolor, from a world where the most action comes from falling into a pit with some pigs (twister excepted, as it is the doorway between Kansas and Oz) into a frantic celebration of nonsense and high-pitched singing. Whereas Snow White and the Seven Dwarves and earlier children’s movies seem comfortable in their spectacle, The Wizard of Oz both excels in such category and is at odds with its own nature.

Furthermore, there is Glinda. Most people seem willing to write Glinda off as an empty-headed character of insipid pink goodness. But actually, Glinda is quite sinister. Parodies have noted the danger she placed Dorothy in by not telling her how to get home immediately (again, a difference between Baum’s novel and the film, as there are two different good witches and Dorothy only meets Glinda at the end). Yet her dark nature only begins here. Watch again the first encounter between Dorothy and the Wicked Witch of the West. Glinda pushes Dorothy towards the billow of smoke before pulling her away to “protect” her. Furthermore, throughout the whole exchange, she taunts the Wicked Witch of the West and practically paints a target on Dorothy. Even putting the ruby slippers on Dorothy by magic is a machination of the film. In this “parody” of Oz, the good witch is just as foul-minded and sadistic as the wicked one. At least the Wicked Witch is courteous enough to be ugly and to grimace.

I could again rattle off examples, such as the effeminate, queer natures of the Tin Man and the Cowardly Lion or the changed nature of the Wizard’s gifts. All I will say about the latter subject is that whereas the novel emphasizes the fulfillment of the characters and how they had those traits all along, the movie appears more skeptical. After all, the Scarecrow doesn’t even give a correct mathematical equation. Instead, the focus on that scene is the movie seems to be the deception and ineptness of the Wizard and gullibility of the others. Their gifts are as much of a placebo to keep them happy as a kid’s movie is a placebo to make children feel at ease with a world on the brink of war (or a dream to make Dorothy believe there is no place like home).

And that sentence does bring us to the end. The end may be the most unsettling part of the film. Yes, there is no place like home, but there’s also no place like Alcatraz. We are ferried away from a tear-jerking scene where Dorothy says goodbye to the first characters we have seen display true affection and respect to her to the boring, sepia world of Kansas, full of claustrophobic shots and people who do not believe a single word coming out of Dorothy’s mouth. Is Dorothy’s final mantra the truth or merely a way to delude herself into happiness, even though she just abandoned her friends and the beautiful Technicolor world of Oz where she was a hero?



In short, the entire movie seems critical of its own story and characters. It tinges “good” characters with hints of sadism, heroic ones with behavior not fitting their genders, and joyous celebrations with bouts of insanity. The very tale is a dark retelling of Oz despite being the iconic telling of the story. And, all the way, it manages also to doubt its own reality. The very novel is framed as a dream, not a reality, a world of fake sets and actors in make-up. Yet, would that make Kansas the reality? Are we comfortable allowing a world without color and with character actors on the loose in the vague pretense of being farm hands to be reality? I am not sure. After all, this reality is far less present than the dream and in the end, both are figments of the imagination.

I suppose reasons like this are what grad school is for. I have only scratched the surface of the Oz question, one that most movie critics seem terrified of even acknowledging. Which I guess I leave as my final question: why has no one written about this…or if they have, why has it not broken into the world of common critical knowledge? Are we so desirous of always having one piece of innocent childhood to return to that we will, if necessary, turn something that was never all that innocent into it? In the end, I guess we are like Dorothy: ready to ignore the reality of our situation and, no matter the circumstance, click our heels together and mutter “there’s no place like home.” We do not care what “home” is, as long as it’s “home.”

This entry is going to be a bit more personal/auto-biographical than my usual work. This past summer, I received a Kindle as a graduation present. My mom’s fiancé (who is a standup guy) got it for me with the best intentions; he knew I was a bibliophile and thought I should try out the much-discussed “next generation of the written word.” He and his intentions unwittingly paved my cliché to hell.

I was hesitant to use the Kindle. Why? Because I’m a clumsy fuck. In fact, only a few weeks after receiving the Kindle, I was at the foot doctor. I won’t go into my medical history, but I needed to get a cast of my foot made. The process required the following ingredients: my Fred Flinstone-sized extremity, the doctor’s assistant, a tub of water, some little-paste-like-cast-strips, and 45 minutes. Naturally, I brought a book. It was The Moonstone by Wilkie Collins and I had purchased a copy of it at a used bookstore for $4.50. As you can surmise, this wasn’t a first edition. Good thing too since during the process, I dropped the novel and watched it plummet in that real-life slow motion that is only attainable when you drop something and know you will not catch it.

That was when I knew that I could never really use a Kindle. Blow-drying a Kindle won’t do you much good. The Kindle also probably can’t withstand being dropped 10 feet onto concrete or a wood floor and I’m not sure how it will hold up against the sand at the beach. Your average paperback is incredibly more durable, for about 1% of the cost. Also, while I’m relatively certain that neither the Kindle nor your average book can withstand your everyday fire (because I’m sure literature-related accidents happen while camping), at least replacing a book (even if it is a new hardcover) is far less costly. Also, when I lose a book, I lose a book, not my entire library (and while you can redownload a book – for now – you lose all your precious notes, which are big for an English major).

Furthermore, I just didn’t see the point to a Kindle. Yes, with music, I can only burn so-many CDs and tend to enjoy switching back and forth between songs and artists quite often. However, my mind is not so addled with ADD that I need a constant cornucopia of books from which to choose at all times. Someone once said that he likes having a Kindle for 14-hour flights. Let’s see. A page a minute seems like a pretty generous average, especially for an Oxford or Penguin classic. A book is about 450 pages, so that means that at most, you only need two books (and that’s if you do nothing but read instead of, you know, sleep, watch something on the chair in front of you, stare out the window, complain about the crying infant, etc.). Yes, two books take up a little bit more space than a thin Kindle…but I find those extra 50 or 75 or 100 cubic inches not all huge of a sacrifice, considering the drawbacks of the Kindle.

So my Kindle lay dormant for the next few months. Finally, after about 150 days of residency in my room in its box, I decided that I should probably at least give it a chance. I was about to embark on an 18-hour car ride and was aware that (if I read in the car for too long) I had a propensity to get car sick. Normally, this problem is not a noticeable one since I don’t go on 18-hour car rides all too often, but I knew it would be inevitable this time and thought that maybe the Kindle would be better.

Even if the effect was purely in placebo territory, it was there. Score one for the Kindle.

I was starting to grow slightly fond of the contraption. I found the search function mildly useful as well as the dictionary. Of course, I was still not sold. Flipping through a book is just exponentially easier, and I really don’t know if there really is a way to rectify that problem, no matter how much better the technology gets. Writing notes can become easier if they add a pen-esque device, but then I’m sure I’d lose that and continuously spend money replacing that (and the current highlighting/note system is quite cumbersome). In short, the Kindle was not the godsend that many technophiles make it out to be, but it was not completely without merit.

Of course, Nazi Germany had a great highway system, socialized heathcare, and was a forerunner in animal rights. (Hurray Godwin’s Law!) So something can still be demonic without being bereft of virtues.

On the one month anniversary of using my Kindle, I went to turn on the screen and continue to plod my way through Cormac McCarthy’s overrated, self-important, and achingly dull The Road. The screen mostly went on. But about 15% of it would not. Granted seeing “the boy moved ********************* said the man” was about as fulfilling as if I actually got to behold McCarthy’s oh-so-stark prose, but this was a matter of principle. I called Amazon and after about ten minutes on the phone, they sent me a new Kindle.

This, as you may have guessed, meant waiting a few days. Amazon was very lucky I was not particularly engrossed by the molasses-esque pace of the novel or else I would have been most cross indeed. As it was, I was still quite cross. In all my years of reading, I have never opened up a book to find a page malfunctioning (okay, there have been printer errors, but I tend to find those when first looking a book). I felt as if I were living in some work by Italo Calvino, where I was in the middle of a book, only to find an egregious error and be forced to go searching elsewhere for literary fulfillment.

I then got another Kindle. However, lo and behold, it came with broken wireless and quite a few hours of phonetime with Amazon only got me a third Kindle headed my way. In this third Kindle, I experienced the great joy of the Kindle’s autonomy and its desire to purchase a book when I was merely browsing. I must confess, I greatly prefer looking around Barnes and Noble, where I know that picking a book up off the shelf will not mean accidental ownership. Well, maybe if I ripped a page or something, but I would just have to hope that no one was looking. Another angry letter to Amazon, more agita, etc. etc.

The Kindle brings all the faults of technology into the old-fashioned world of books. iPods may have errors, DVDs may have errors, computers may have errors, digital cameras, but all of these are updates on still recent technology. They offer a service you could not get outside of the modern world. The closest you can get is an acted play for a DVD or a Victrola instead of an iPod; one is far too different from the first and the other has a far more noticeable lack of drawbacks compared to its futuristic offspring.

Here we seem to be going from singing a capella to an MP3 of Lady Gaga. The gap is too large to be filled by merely throwing enough marketing and lab work. In the end, the experience and medium is just too different. The Kindle cannot replace the book. At best, it can fill a book-on-tape-esque role, but I think even that is too much. Yes, the Kindle is growing in popularity, but I think most of that is because it is very fashionable right now and attracting both curious readers and people who are only starting to exercise that vestigial skill because it’s trendy. “No one” read books a few years ago. “No one” is still reading books. The only difference is everyone who is “someone” is reading a Kindle.

Recently, someone dug up an article written in Newsweek which may have the title of the worst prediction in history. It essentially denounces any use of the internet. Perhaps this will be another such prediction. I certainly hope not. If I am wrong, I cannot imagine it being due to the victory of a superior being…merely a triumph of marketing.

[special thanks to Ryan Oliveira for the photoshop]