COMPANY

Pops decided to spend the beginning of the new year with his least favorite daughter in Boston.

PLAY

SO SHINES A GOOD DEED IN A WEARY WORLD

For the Celebration of White Settlers Massacring Native Americans I stayed indoors and revisited my childhood. This started with my finishing a novel by Ghassan Kanafani, a short collection of his writings titled Men In the Sun and Other Palestinian Stories (Kanafani was killed in a car bomb planted by the Mossad when he was 36). It made me reflect on my childhood and the childhood denied to Palestinian children. 

I went back and thought of the things that I had loved as a child. Things I had not thought of in years, or more than a decade to be more precise, things that had kept me entertained, made me laugh, made me scared, made me want to be a writer, made my imagination go off the rails, made me feel less alone.

So it was only appropriate to start with the 1990 film adaptation of Roald Dahl's The Witches. I remember watching the movie obsessively on VHS when I was a kid, how horrified I was that a children's novel could be so dark and disturbing suddenly on screen. Yet I appreciated how nothing was sugarcoated in those days, that a lot of children's authors had a twisted sense of humor, or were just troubled individuals, from the Grimm brothers, to Lewis Carroll, to Roald Dahl.

Of course, I had to watch Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory right after - the 1971 Gene Wilder version. The only one that matters. It is worth noting as well, that Gene Wilder was a huge presence in my childhood, as my parents were fans of his and would play his movies in our home all the time.

My favorite scene from the entire movie is the one above, taking place a few minutes before the ending (and not from the book).

This simplistic scene that takes place after the whole mess of a factory tour encompasses the heart of the story. The scene is awkward (as confrontations and asking for free things usually are), explosive, a tad frightening, and bears the tone of defeat and frustration on Wonka's part, of which the audience wouldn't understand until moments later (those who don't know the story anyway). A misunderstanding between men ensues, and Wonka ends the escalating argument wth a severe yet classy "Good day, sir!" But after Charlie acts on his conscience and returns the gobstopper, Wonka's tenderness is restored. He quotes a line of Shakespeare from The Merchant of Venice, which suggests that Wonka is in fact a sophisticated, well read man, and suddenly is overjoyed. He explains why he did what he had to do, as it was all a "test" and the brutal honesty of it all became quite poignant. 

That there comes a point in a person's life when one has to go to great lengths, however ludicrous, to find a single trustworthy and decent human being to rely on. Especially if you are a man like Willy Wonka, who dedicated his life to his passion, has no family and close friends, and is reclusive for good reason. The world outside his chocolate factory gates is vile and disheartening, and so he resorts to putting his faith in a child—one still innocent and uncorrupted by society, one of the purest of hearts.

DILEMMAS

"When I was in school, I was a bad kid. Later, when I was invited to give a talk at the school, I wasn't sure if I should tell the kids that they should study hard, or that it is okay to be a rebel. I wasn't sure what advice to give the kids. Studying hard doesn't guarantee you will become a respectable person. Even if you're a bad kid...there are people like me who change. I thought that would be a good lesson to teach. But if I said that bad kids can succeed later on like I did all the kids would start misbehaving, which would be a problem. Always doing what you are told doesn't mean you'll succeed in life."

From Jiro Dreams of Sushi

WHY WHITE TEETH IS A TERRIBLE BOOK

Harrowing times call for a retreat into solitude and fiction. This October I've only managed to read Kazuo Ishiguro's The Remains of the Day, which was a laborious read for the most part, probably due to the fact that mentally I was in a state of constant distraction. It was only upon coming to the end of the novel that I came to fully appreciate it. A story of commitment and sacrifice, and the lost concept of taking pride in your job – I highly recommend the book.

I also read Zadie Smith's White Teeth.

I don't know if you've read White Teeth and if you did, my condolences. Unless you enjoyed it, then we have nothing in common in regards to taste, and perhaps intelligence.

I started reading White Teeth with high hopes (first mistake, never allow awards and high praise from other individuals or literary organizations to determine how you feel about something before you've even tried it yourself), but as the story stretched on for what seemed like an eternity the painful truth began to sink in. The characters and issues "examined" in the novel became ridiculous and annoying. Her language convoluted and overblown. Smith's agenda against organized religion and tradition was dogmatic and typical of new atheists of this day, not to mention irresponsible in what it tried to portray through the pompously superior stance those of pseudo-intellectual backgrounds thrive on. What makes this even more cringe-worthy is the fact that she wrote the novel at the age of 22 (or 23...or let's just say when she was in her final year at Cambridge). That already sets off the alarm bells. (Mary Shelley wrote Frankenstein when she was nineteen, but those were different times, one could argue).

Why did I read a book written by someone lacking life experience and wisdom, who wrote a book nearly 500 pages long about issues as complex as culture, identity, religion, immigration, family, racism, science, all kneaded together until reduced to a white, pasty blob of nothing, I berated myself. Furthermore, I've come to conclude that books of unnecessary cruel length (Michael Chabon's The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Klay is another) (see also Dave Eggers' The Circle, a terrible novel) showcases the author's self absorbtion. Yes, apart from White Teeth being written through a narrow scope of naivete masked by ornate, flaunting sentence structure, it was like reading the rants and estimations of a twenty something hipster so far up their own ass, so in love with the sound of their own voice, commanding an audience of gullible readers who know next to nothing about what it's like being a minority or person of color in a major white-dominated setting. And Smith does nothing to accurately illustrate the reality of race issues in her country.

The whitewashing of the story is embarrassing even for fiction, which is why people love it and applaud the illusion successfully masquerading as reality. There is no violence, hate, or discrimination that exists in England, by Smith's fictional account, except for in the Iqbal family, a Bengali Muslim family so dysfunctional and morally bankrupt due to their own faults and weaknesses. While I did find humor throughout the novel, the caricatures presented as people were the worst element of the story. All of the parents are useless, irresponsible pushovers who have no idea how to raise their kids. Perhaps there is a point to that, in reflecting the good for nothing parents of today's society who neglect to instill any inkling of respect, manners or principles in their equally good for nothing offspring. And that's also my point - that such a pathethic upbringing is not a shared experience of all western or westernized Muslims. Yet Smith uses one family to generalize the idea that Muslims yearn to be white, western, and have no problem assimiliating or surrendering in British society.

To conclude, White Teeth is one of the worst books I've ever read, and I can't recommend against it enough. It is too weak and shortsighted in its juvenile efforts at tackling intricate problems of society and individual human struggles.

*To Smith's credit, she has since acknowledged that White Teeth was an embarrassing work from her younger years (she is now 39).