I’m struck the most in reading when an author can articulate an aspect of my own experience in fiction that I haven’t been able to, so that it becomes immediately clear when I read it. Atwood’s description of Zenia and her effect on the protagonists did that for me. I’ve met people like Zenia, and I’ve had people in my life where I’ve definitely found myself carried in their wake, thinking about them after they’ve moved on to engage with someone else. Haven’t we all?

The construction of Zenia is important and instructive as a way to portray a villain. When we think classic villains in pop-culture we think of Hannibal Lecter, Darth Vader, and when we think about them we think about their actions on screen as they struggle with the protagonist. Zenia is described entirely through the various eyes of her victims. In pop-culture terms she’s a mix of Keyser Soze and Nolan’s take on The Joker. Zenia is a creature without hard definition. She expands and contracts depending on who is looking, telling different histories of herself depending on who she is seeking to influence and what she wants from them. She’s destructive chaos, and I think if she were left as just that in The Robber Bride she would still be memorable, but Atwood raises Zenia to legendary status by making her something else as well.

She’s honest.

The structure of Robber Bride follows like this: three characters encounter Zenia, who they thought was dead, and flee from her; each character’s backstory with Zenia is told in succession; in the present day they confront her one at a time; the story resolves (no spoilers). Most interesting here are the confrontations that occur toward the end of the novel that almost take the form of interviews. Each woman has been badly hurt by Zenia. They’ve had people they care deeply about taken from them. So when they confront her the expectation is that they will go in guarded against her. They know she lies, after all. How can a liar keep hurting you after that’s been revealed?

By telling the truth. And that’s the trick with Zenia, the part that hurts the most and the aspect that neither character can run from. Zenia sees clearly. She knows the weakness of the person she’s talking to and turns a mirror to it. She twists the knife. In many ways Zenia is just a dark mirror for each of the women she hurts and in story terms that is extremely powerful voodoo.

The Robber Bride was a book that I thought about long after reading and Zenia was the character I lingered on the most. I thought about what I would say to Zenia if I were in that hotel room and worse, what Zenia would say to me. Could I bear it, that kind of cruel, hatefully motivated honesty? I wasn’t sure. I thought about that conversation a lot. What she might say, what I wouldn’t want anyone to say but always worry that they might. The stuff you can’t share with anyone for fear that you’re the only one who thinks that way.

Powerful stuff that lingers in the mind. The hallmark of an excellent novel and a powerfully articulated character.

First point about commonly accepted wisdom is that it is just that: common. Ultimately there are no rules in telling a story as long as what you do works. Writing’s fun that way. At the time of posting this, I am almost through my fourth book by Atwood, Cat’s Eye, and it was here that I put together a consistent structure she uses in her novels (or at least the novels I’ve read so far).

In this structure, there are two dominant storylines. The first and usually the less important, is the storyline that takes place in the present where the main character or characters are taking action based on a development that has come about due to how the second storyline ends. The second, more dominant, storyline is the character’s backstory that leads them to this moment. In Oryx and Crake the character of Snowman takes limited action throughout the novel while reflecting on his life and the time he spent with the books titular characters. In The Handmaid’s Tale, which, to be fair, demonstrates a more interwoven set of storylines, the narrator goes through her oppressed existence as a handmaiden while reflecting on the world before and what she lost to get her here. And in The Robber Bride the main storyline is that of Roz, Charise and Tony, who encounter the woman who devastated their lives and brought them together. They proceed to confront her in series of interviews and then the story resolves fairly ambiguously. The second storyline that dominates the book in terms of tension and actual text is the backstory of each character and how they met and were betrayed/abused by the antagonist Zenia.

It’s a framed narrative, essentially, but it is also fairly passive.

If characters take action in Atwood’s novels, they don’t do it overtly. A great amount of time is spent cataloguing a character’s thoughts and detailing what makes them the person they are. Most often characters react to actions taken against them, and when they do choose to act it is in small, deliberate ways. What is paramount, it seems, is a character’s inner life, which I feel shouldn’t work but does. There were large sections of story in The Robber Bride where nothing had really happened. I knew the outcome of each story through context and I was just seeing it through. In the case of Tony, I know that Zenia is an impediment in her relationship but given that she is with the man she wants to be in the present, the action has no overt consequence. But that is just it, a lack of overt action does not mean there isn’t a great deal of movement going on under the surface and the way that Atwood details that motion is exact and really engaging.

After reading The Robber Bride I got to thinking about how I structure my own stories and found that I too employ framed narratives almost exclusively. There is a lot to learn here, but I think a good place to start is how much attention Atwood places on getting a character from one perspective to the next.

It’s a flaw I have. I make assumptions and decisions about how things are, how things should be, and then, like magic, it becomes internal gospel. Don’t know where I picked up this trait, but it consistently gets me into trouble, and when it comes to university, it turned my time studying English into an almost complete waste of everyone’s time (big exception for my creative writing classes with Aritha van Herk). I didn’t put the time or work in and for a while after I resented the students who did and who could converse at a level I couldn’t. It’s a chip on my shoulder I’ve had for a while now and has always been in my power to change it.

So I’m gonna. Starting with none other than Margaret Atwood.

Atwood is a prime example of how I made a sweeping generalization about both a writer and her work without even reading a single book. And given how central she is to the Canadian canon, she somehow became this totemtic figure in my own personal mythology that fed into my assumptions about the larger literary community that didn’t accept me and yadda, yadda, yadda. It goes on.

I’ve resisted reading Atwood for years with very little cause. I’ve resisted doing a lot of things. But that changes now, and for the rest of this month I’m going to investigate and explore her work. I can’t cover all of it, but I think by the time I’m through I’ll have gone through a decent selection.

December was a crazy month. Your grandmother on your mother’s side, Annette, flew over mid-November to help us out with the day-to-day operation of being parents but in the last two weeks of the year she was joined by the rest of the family: her husband (your grandfather) Norman, and their two sons, Michael and Matthew (your uncles). The house got a bit crowded all of a sudden but in a good way. Pretty soon people were fighting over who got to hold you or rock you to sleep. The fights died off when it was time to change you, of course, but you can’t hold that against them.

The weather has been surprisingly warm this holiday season. Not sure why I mention that, other than that it’s unusual and made the trip easier simply because having –20 or worse outside generally doesn’t make life better for anyone. We spent Christmas with my parents and you received quite a few wonderful presents in the form of tree ornaments, toys and some very special books with touching inscriptions from both sides of the family.

The thing that struck me most about the trip was how loved you were by everyone on both sides of the family and the friends we introduced you to. I didn’t expect that. We don’t have a lot of young children in our family and out of my close friends I’m the first to become a parent. This was my first time seeing it…although is that even true? I have seen it before, this kind of love, but for some reason it was surprising and heart warming to see it happen so close to home.

Your grandfather Norman in particular was quite taken with you. There were plenty of early mornings when he would pace with you back and forth through the living room until you fell asleep on his chest and then he would settle with you in the rocking chair. You won’t remember this by the time you are able to read this letter but I will, and I want you to know how very much loved and wanted you are. Don’t believe me? Here’s a picture:

The holiday was like a magic trick that way. Lots of movement and lots of sound. With everyone in the house like that it was simultaneously like being back stage and front and center. And then one year passed into the next and in the early morning hours of January 1st your mother’s family left to get on a plane. I watched as your uncles, your grandparents, passed you between them, saying their goodbyes, kissing your cheeks and the top of your head. There were tears, of course. That’s just something that happens in this family, but they were the good kind. And then, as quickly as they had arrived, the holidays were over and it was just the three of us again. The dogs, equally mystified, have been wandering around the house looking for the visitors, wondering where they’ve gone and when they’re coming back.

Postscript: Just in case you’re wondering about your festive get-up in that picture, apparently it is the same set of clothes that your mother and her brothers were brought into the hospital in when they were little. You looked very cute and old timey if I do say so myself.

Love,

Dad

Every year I think about it. I know what I’m going to say. Plans for what we’re going to do together. Hopes and fears about what sort of trouble we’ll get into. The usual stuff. But each year, for some reason, I never get around to doing it, and given that you’re supposed to be the last year  I thought it would be fitting to mark the occasion with something different.

So here’s a letter. It’s my coin in the fountain with a message that’s really just between you and me. No loud production. No chest pounding. No big speeches. Because let’s face it, all that public display stuff makes me feel great in the moment but just leads to a year long performance anxiety. Let’s keep this between the two of us. Just a letter between (I hope) friends. A straight forward correspondence. A passionate time capsule. A neurotic love letter.

I hope you like it.

I’ve always had a hard time reading Canadian literature. In the past I’ve resolved this by simply reading other books.

I don’t know where this reputation came from, how this opinion of mine was formed, but somewhere in University (or maybe even a little bit before) I came to the understanding (or was told and believed) that Canadian writers weren’t that much fun. They could write, sure–some of them could write beautifully–but the stories were hard, tough things, full of hard edges. Some of this turned out to be true. In the few classes I took on the subject, I read a number of books with very doomed characters leading very interior, very defeated lives. The immigrant experience was a focus of one of these class, so there was a great deal of race/gender stuff going on. And like in life, that rarely goes well. If it does, it’s most certainly not fun. Also, I think three out of the five novels heavily featured incest, which led to a running joke of mine that you couldn’t call a book Canadian unless you had one family member having it off with another. I even put a story of it into Wonderfull to feel part of the group.

I don’t come to books to be depressed, although some of the best books I’ve read have left me shaken. I remember finishing  Cormac McCarthy’s The Road on the bus in to work one morning and just feeling ravaged by what I’d read. I looked out the window as the city rolled by, the empty streets, and I just felt hollowed out. I remember specifically staring at the ads on the bus and wondering, given what I’ve read, what does anything really mean. I know, I know. A bit dramatic. The point is it was a tough read, but also compelling. The toughness came in the content but I was with the characters the whole way. I cared for them. I wanted for them. Which made the good parts better and the bad parts more painful.

Before I write off Canadian writers, though, let me say that there’s been plenty of novels and authors that I’ve really enjoyed. This is not really a blanket statement about the state and content of Canadian writing as it is about my assumptions and limited experience with it over the years. Like I said at the beginning, I simply read other books. I put my toe in this Canadian lake and found it too cold. I headed off for warmer climes, not wanting to know if I could go polar.

Margaret Atwood holds a very specific place in my internal pantheon when it comes to how I’ve come to think about Canadian writing over the years. Except for The Penelopiad, which I read shortly after finally getting around to The Odyssey, I hadn’t read any of her books. Which is shameful for an English grad, I know, but there it is. Despite not reading her novels I had a very definite opinion on who she was and about the quality of her work. Again, I am prone to assumptions. I don’t know what information this opinion was based on. I didn’t like her whole sci-fi vs. speculative fiction sentiment. That rubbed me the wrong way. The point is, if I’m being honest, I didn’t like her and saw her as part of the problem I had with Canadian writing without a) reading her work and b) reading much of the work of other Canadian writers.

So I decided to change that. I’ve had this opinion about Canadian writing for so long, it deserves to be challenged, and to that I’ve started off by reading Atwood. She was at the forefront of this invented opinion anyway, so it seems a likely place to start, and the book that I’ve decided to start with is her 1993 international bestseller, The Robber Bride. I’m currently two hundred pages in and already finding it different than I had imagined. I had tried to read one of her earlier novels, Surfacing, but I came to it in the wrong mindset. My jaw was set before the first page and within twenty I had given up.

A couple of thoughts on The Robber Bride so far:

1) Atwood’s writing is excellent. She has such a command of the language and a very strong structural sense in how she builds her story. It’s way too early to make such a sweeping statement about Atwood as a writer, but so far the aspect I’ve noticed most is her attention to detail. The Robber Bride is a mountain of details. Details relating to other details, with all of them going together to form a coherent world. But just having details isn’t enough. I’m not sure it was Neil Gaiman who commented on this before, but a well known author pointed out that if you cannot write description like Atwood, you best keep your descriptions brief. I get that comment now. Atwood’s strength is not just in her details but how she crafts and interconnects them. In some other book by another author I would be bored to tears by the amount of time paid to small details and description, but Atwood makes it sing. I think it’s this exact strength that allows her to get away with not following the age old adage of showing not telling. The Robber Bride is a book of telling. Constantly the reader is being told what people are feeling and thinking, as well as why they are feeling and thinking that way. It shouldn’t work. It should be deadly boring to read. But it’s not. Her characters are very specific and interesting, and I enjoy learning more about them, even if it’s not in watching them do things but reading about how they feel or think about a given situation. Isn’t there a truth to this? Character is action and decision and all of that, but how much of what we do is concrete action moving forward? Most lives are inner lives, the way we think and feel about what goes on around us that we’re not willing or able to act on. It’s part of the reason that even after two hundred pages of having virtually no forward momentum, I’m still with the story. Still interested. Still invested.

2) I’m hesitant to bring up this second point because I think it suggests something larger about how I approach writing that I’m not entirely comfortable with. The quickest way to the punch, though, is that reading The Robber Bride makes me feel that humans aren’t a very good idea. There is a great deal of sadness in the book, which is strange, because sadness is something I gravitate towards in my own writing and in other authors I really enjoy. Perhaps it connects with the first point about details. I was reading a character’s backstory last night and it put into my mind a passage from a Clive Barker novel, where two newly minted supreme beings are looking at each other and the one has to turn away because when he looks out with his new eyes he can see too much. Barker describes it as if the character can see every cell in horrible detail, as if it were a masterwork painting, and that it is simply too much. Perhaps I like my sadness in the vague. There is always an edge present throughout the novel, and again this might just be an aspect of this particular novel. Told as it is, about three women and their histories revolving around this one central destructive woman in their lives, it’s easy to see how the past, no matter how good at the time, still has a sense of the negative about it. It’s just everywhere. It’s not life-threatening. It’s not dangerous. It’s just…there. This negative sense. I don’t see any genuine caring between people. There’s analysis. A weighing of odds. Calculation and miscalculation born from sentiment. Why I’m hesitant about this point, why it makes me feel uncomfortable, is that I think this speaks more about me as a reader than it does Atwood as a writer. Do I prefer simpler stories? Clean narratives with happy endings? I’d like to think I can appreciate complexity, that I can deal with more reality in what I read. Surely not everything has to be life affirming, it can be life critical as well. Or can it? Do I simply not want to look? Does this impact my ability to write to a certain level? Not sure yet. Maybe that’ll come clear over the next few books.

I meant to write earlier and more frequently. I had imagined parenthood and watching you grow would be a steady progression -a one foot after the other- and that I would blog it that way.  Step by step. The highs would be there and the lows would be comical to read. Didn’t turn out that way. Like most things, any assumptions I made about parenthood have been demolished since you’ve been born, and while that isn’t necessarily a bad thing it hasn’t always been easy.

Let’s start this letter off with something pleasant, though: It feels as though you’ve been here forever. Tessa, you’re going to meet people in your life who, when you see them, you’re going to feel like you’ve known them forever, that they were always there but just around the corner. In the same way as your mother, I feel like you’ve been with me forever. Separating the time before you and after you doesn’t really work. There was always you. You were always here. So I never get that feeling of surprise that I imagined, the ‘Oh my God, I have a baby’ feeling. Doesn’t make sense, but there it is. It’s a good feeling.

Television and films feed a lot of my expectations of what being a father should be like. Maybe that’s common, maybe I’m just strange, but I thought when you were born I would be overwhelmed with a sense of love for you that would manifest in a positive warm fuzzy kind of way. I thought I would have this new appreciation of everything and that somehow it would make me calmer, more mature. I could let go of the unimportant crap that I’ve been carrying around for so long. In this I turned out to be half right, because I was overwhelmed with love, but not in a way that was particularly comfortable.

In reality I was really quite frightened. I thought about writing you a letter then, but I think I made the right choice in getting some distance between those feelings and putting something down on paper now. There was a whole week where I existed in this perpetual state of being half-angry, half-scared, as my brain spooled out all the potential problems and threats and dangers that you might face in your life. And I felt helpless to stop it. You were, and still are, incredibly small. I can hold you in one hand and I know that the world is largely indifferent to your existence. And that’s scary. Very scary. It took a week of that before I could calm down enough to get a handle on the surge of emotions and process them properly.

Parenthood is like a second childhood in a way. All the issues you didn’t deal with when you were younger come right back to you with your child, so when I look at you I find myself thinking about how to avoid the bullying I went through in school, the weight issues I’m still wrestling with, the lack of self-discipline. You don’t know this yet, but you and I have conversations everyday. When I’m driving to work, when I’m alone in a room, when I’m pacing with you in the wee hours of the morning. I’m practicing conversations with you for when you’re older. Conversations about the big questions, the little questions, the questions that don’t have solid answers. I’m talking you through your problems. I’m talking me through mine.

I want so much for you, and the rawness of that want surprised me. It is a want I can’t really explain. It gets in my head and into my chest and some things I thought were important aren’t important anymore. You’re important. This family is important. And on top of all of that there’s the urgent need to get all my shit together as quickly as possible. That’s a daily message, flashing in bright lights. It’s how I order my day, or at least try to.

None of this you are aware of, or if you are you’re keeping it pretty close to the chest. For the most part the last six weeks have had you on automatic pilot. You are figuring out your body. Your arms and legs kick and flail without any real purpose. You cry when you’re hungry, when you need changed or when you need held. You have (and I am absolutely biased) the most beautiful little face I ever did see. But I am careful to not read too much into what you do at this point. You’ve been born, yes, but you’re still coming alive. Climbing out of yourself. Figuring out how all the systems work.

To illustrate where we both are at the moment I’ll end with this image: We’re a few weeks in and your grandmother hasn’t arrived yet. It’s just the three of us in the house plus the dogs. Your mother is in bed and I’m taking care of you in the early morning. It’s dark outside and you’ve been sleeping for a while. You start fussing about in your crib and I walk over. You are still asleep but wrestling around in your swaddling blanket, grunting and shifting in a way that looks like you are trying to get free. And I am transfixed. It brings to mind, of all things, The Count of Monte Cristo, and with that thought I think about how you, the woman you are to become one day, is locked away in that brain of yours and it will take decades for you to fully come out. It will be a struggle and you will learn things during your long and great escape, but one day you will emerge from your efforts a free woman with a treasure map to riches and a great wide world. It’s a beautiful thought and it makes me smile down at you just to think it. You are my beautiful daughter, I think, and I love you. You keep struggling. Keep growing. I’m here. I’m-

And then you let out the loudest, longest fart of your whole entire life.

Let’s just say we’re experiencing this you-being-alive thing in two very different ways.

Love,

Dad

So here goes.

You started your arrival early morning Sunday the 23rd. Your mother woke me up just shortly after her water had broken and we decided to go into the hospital, even though steady contractions hadn’t come yet. As we drove through the empty midnight streets we joked back and forth about still not having a name for you and that even though we were making the trip we knew we’d be sent home again until your mother was further along. The parking lot at the Foothills was empty. It’s about the only time of day it’s ever that quiet, so we got a decent spot. We walked in through Emergency and as we were heading down the corridor towards the elevators I turned around and saw a tall, handsome  guy dressed up as Thor prowling the waiting area. Red cape, breastplate and all. He cut a dashing figure, and it made me relax knowing that the God of Thunder was nearby in case we needed him. Fun fact: your mother still does not believe this actually happened.

Once upstairs we got the reception we expected. Professional but not too concerned. Contractions hadn’t started yet and you were still a long way off. When your mother went to the bathroom she was discreetly asked by the nurse there if she was in an abusive relationship. She came back joking about it, because there’s nothing farther from the truth, but it made me ask another nurse later on how common it was. It’s not, as it turns out, but it’s a sad statistical reality that a woman is most likely to be abused by her partner when she’s at her most vulnerable while pregnant. I’m not sure why I mention this. It sticks out in my mind as a sobering detail, even though it didn’t have any bearing on what we were going through.

We were sent home, like I said, and told to come back in twelve hours. We went home. We slept. We ate. My parents came over to pick up the dogs and we had a little sit down before we left for the hospital. It didn’t strike me that when I came back I’d be coming back as a father. You’d think it would have, but it didn’t. I was excited. We were still joking around about names, going through a list of potentials, trying a few out. We still referred to you as little baby No-Name.

Once we arrived back at the Foothills (now in the afternoon, so the parking spaces were nowhere near as choice) we were admitted into a proper delivery room with an amazing view of the city. Fall doesn’t last long in Calgary. It seems the leaves are yellow, red and brown for a week or two before they’re all blown down and the branches stick out skeletal towards the sky. They hadn’t fallen yet when you were born. The view was breathtaking and I ended up getting some good pictures. The sky was clear and the temperature was warm. There was a cleanness about the space.

You were induced, which was not the way we had hoped you’d arrived. We had a plan. We’d made a wish list. And while practically nothing in the delivery went according to plan I still feel it went well. You were never in any level of distress that seemed dangerous (at least as it was communicated to me), and while the delivery was painful and difficult for your mother, nothing ever felt as life-threatening as I was afraid it would be. But yes, you were induced, which meant we ended up electing for pain medication, which in turn led to intervention in the last few, critical moments.

I want to take a moment to talk about your nurses. Over the course of the night you had about four or five of them, and all of them were professional and excellent at their jobs. Seriously, I could not have asked for better care for you and your mother. They made us feel at ease and well taken care of, and if I were recommending places for children to be born, I couldn’t give the Foothills a higher recommendation. I also want to mention that your grandmother, my mother, was there with us almost every step of the way, and that also was a great choice. Having been a nurse, she was a great mediator between Tara, myself and the medical professionals. She understood the culture and was calm throughout.

I was also calm throughout, which is not what I was expecting. I was expecting fear, to be honest. A lot of it. But it takes a long time, the delivery process, and fear doesn’t do well in tests of endurance. Fear has poor stamina. It’s a sprinter. But however well I may have behaved during your delivery, the grand prize will always go to your mother. She was amazing. There’s no other way to describe it. In a situation where she had thought she would curse and potentially buckle, she rose to every challenge. If a nurse suggested a different position that might be more painful but more beneficial to your delivery, she took it. She went the distance in a very real way, and having known her for a good number of years now I can safely say I’ve never been more proud. She made a difficult process look easy. You couldn’t have asked for better.

Finally we came to the end. I’m not going to go into too much detail. We can talk about this when you’re older. Some intervention was necessary and all of a sudden everything moved really fast. The pain went from manageable to unbearable and the last five minutes, that last dash, was terrifying. Your mother was scared. She was tired and scared and the last five minutes were so painful that it broke me just watching it. I held onto her, I supported her with the other nurses, the doctor, my own mother, and I tried in my own futile way to make it easier for her and you.

And then you arrived. Despite charting your progress through the nine months of pregnancy, listening to your heartbeat, watching your movements on the monitor, you did not become real to me until I saw you. I didn’t think I was going to watch, but I did, and I’m so glad that I chose to. After feeling the need to sleep creep up on me during those final hours, I woke up in a second. I was crying, probably shaking. And you were here. Shortly thereafter, your mother and I were holding you.

I thought when I began writing this first letter I would go on to talk about your first week, that somehow I could get your birth out in fewer words maybe. But the rest can wait. If I wait too long before publishing this, I’ll go back and tinker too much and you’ll never see it. I’m sure I’ve missed something. Maybe I’ll remember later. The important beats are there. The significant details.

Actually, wait. There’s two more.

The first: after getting you and your mother settled in the postpartum wing, I had to drive home and get some sleep of my own. The adrenaline of watching you being born was wearing off and I was crashing fast. I needed to sleep but I needed to drive safely home. It was a struggle, but I managed it. On the way home an odd thought struck me. I’m not sure if it was the first inklings of what it’s like to be a father (one week in and I’m still not sure I feel like one), but it stuck out and continues to do so in my memory.

You may discover as you grow up, that I have this underlying belief that things should be fair somehow. Hopefully you never notice this. Hopefully I do not pass it along. It’s a remnant from childhood and has done a lot to add to my discomfort over the years. But driving back from the hospital I realized in a very real way that the world was not fair, and that the world’s opinion towards you, that little baby you, was utter indifference. Not hostile, just indifferent. And that the only ones who were ever going to fight for you, to help you, were going to be us. Family. That this was the job now. That very little else could be depended on. That, like Carl Sagan says in his Pale Blue Dot speech, there is no hint that help will come from elsewhere to save us…like it or not, for the moment, the Earth is where we make our stand.

Which is a downer, to be sure, but it rattled me. The night sky was clear above me and I could see all the stars. I thought about this, about what it meant for me, your mother. What it demanded of us. And while a part of me is not sure I can do this, the better part, the greater part, is going to do his very best to be the help to you that cannot come from elsewhere.

And the second: that bit of business about your name. If you had been a boy we would have had a name for you picked out months ago. It’s still there. Solid. Built to last. But a girl’s name, for us, was trickier. How was it decided? In the middle of things, as it happens. During the delivery. Your mother was going through contractions and I asked about the name and she told me. Tessa Simone. Tessa, because we like it, and Simone, because it was the name of one of her grandmothers. And I found myself unable to argue. That was your name. Being male and going into a delivery room populated solely by women is a strange feeling. It very much feels like intruding. I did my best, but there were things going on that I felt that, no matter how hard I tried, I’d never be a part of. The nurses were, you were, your mother was (hell, even my mother was), but I had to stand a little apart from. And out of that wash of emotions and experiences and connections that I couldn’t firmly understand came your name. A day after you were born your mother thanked me for letting me name you that, which seemed a strange thing to do. It was your name. Like you, it came out of that room. There was nothing I was going to do to change it.

And with that, I’ll pull this first letter (of many, I hope) to a close. You’ve been with us for a week but it feels like you’ve always been here. Your current favorite activities are eating, sleeping and farting. You are really good at farting, as it turns out, which proves to me that you’re more my side than your mother’s. Let’s see if we can keep these letters going, shall we?

Love,

Dad

p.s. Here’s my favorite picture of you with your mother, taking in your very first week.

And I didn’t. My wife did. On the recommendation of one of her co-workers who knew me (and my interests) in passing. And I’m glad he did, and that she did, because Arkham Asylum turned out to be an amazing game and has now become the gold standard example of how licensed property games should be treated in the games industry. Ostensibly an action-adventure game, I’d go so far as saying it’s one of the best role-playing games I’ve ever played in that it gives you, through the story and the mechanics of play, a visceral feeling of what it would be like to be Batman. Which sounds silly, I suppose, because isn’t that what all games do? Give us the feeling that we’re this other person, this better, stronger, faster version of ourselves? Yes and no. What Arkham Asylum manged to do was put me in the role of the person I was playing instead of that character on screen being an expression of my behavior. In a roundabout way, I was invited to be more like Batman than Batman was instructed to behave like me. It’s a subtle but powerful difference.

Leading up to its release this week, Arkham City looked more than capable of fulfilling the daunting promise of doing justice to the original game and making a solid standing for itself as a sequel. And according to Metacritic, Rocksteady Studio has done just that.

As of this writing, I am only a quarter way through the single player campaign, but I already have a couple thoughts on what I’ve seen so far. The first has some first few minute spoilers in it, so if you’re interested in playing it fresh just skip down to the second. Both thoughts are writing thoughts, though. There’s something about games that make it easier to pick up and point to solid examples of good storytelling.  I’m never sure if this points to my education, intellect or taste, or whether that comment would be positive or negative. I just know that games get these points across for me.

Thought #1: No Time to Explain: I can’t help but see hints of Bioshock in Arkham City. Perhaps it’s the environment? In Arkham City, a large section of Gotham has been condemned and turned into a mega-prison where the inmates are left to run wild, creating little fiefdoms for themselves while security helicopters patrol through a thick, polluted sky. This gives the same sense of contained, snow globe isolation that Bioshock had. But more than that, Arkham City starts off with a bang in a way that echoed Bioshock in its efficient execution. Briefly, in the first few moments of the game you play as Bruce Wayne taking the stage to give a speech condemning the creation of the mega-prison when prison guards seize you and process you into the prison proper. You’re beaten up. You’re pushed through the loud and threatening cacophony that is central processing. And then you’re put into a small metal room with two other prisoners like yourself. There is a door in front of you. You can hear the inmates on the other side and you have absolutely no idea what you are going to find. Like stepping out of a bathysphere, anything could be behind that first door, and it immediately got me into the action in a way that felt real and dangerous. I wasn’t running through a training simulation, I was fighting for my life. The door opened and I was hooked. It reminded me of Ken Levine’s thoughts on beginnings. The player should be in peril or conflict from the first moment. The stakes should be high. We should hit the ground running. You get the same advice in novel and film classes, but it hits home a little harder (for me, at least) when you’re in a simulation.

Thought #2: Maybe I Should Write What Interests Me: Recently I’ve been keeping track of books, movies, television and games that I really enjoy and trying to figure out if there’s a common denominator between them. The end goal of this is if I can figure out what I like in someone else’s fiction, I’ll have a good idea of what to do with my own. And so far what I’ve come to is that what I love most about fiction is when it puts me into another world. I know, I know. This sounds basic. Stuff I should have figured out years ago, but I am, if nothing else, a slow learner. I will get there. Eventually. That said, there’s a little more to it. What I enjoy about Arkham City is that I’m introduced into a new environment, a new world, at the beginning of the game and I’ve been tasked with understanding it. There are other players on the board, other agendas, and as I learn about them and what they want, I learn more about the world. But like I said, there’s another element to it. Whether it be Arkham City, Star Wars, Harry Potter or any number of zombie related material, experiencing another world, especially one that resembles ours in some way (those are usually the best) allows me to key into those self-made imaginary games we’d use to play as kids. Where Fish Creek became a medieval forest filled with danger and excitement. Where walking down the street I’d think about the world turned on its head. When the stairs in our house became the rungs of a mountain that my toys would have to surmount. I don’t exactly know what this impulse is or what, if anything, it means, but it’s what I connect with the most. When I experience something like Harry Potter, it makes me daydream about how awesome it would have been to have gone to school as a kid and done something really exciting, strange and wonderful. The other stuff comes in. The messages. The characters. The themes. All that. But what hooks me are the worlds. The us-banging-sticks-together and calling it heroics.  Up until now I don’t think I’ve written like that or tried to even generate it. I’ve consumed it. It’s the media I’m most drawn to, but I’ve been hung up, perhaps, in the wrong places. It’s definitely given me something to think about.

Arkham City has been a solid experience so far and has given me plenty to think about. I’m looking forward to finishing and seeing if anything new comes up.

I was not looking forward to the play.

I had been before. My oldest friend, Aaron Conrad, is in it, and I’ve tried to see all of Aaron’s plays since he started acting in high school . I have to claim bias up front, but the truth is it’s always easy going to Aaron’s plays. Have you ever been friends or family with an artist (of whatever discipline) where you go out to support them but when it comes right down to it you just can’t get your head or heart around what they do? You’d never tell them to their face, of course, but the fact is that you just don’t dig their stuff. You wouldn’t engage with it at all if you didn’t know them. Those kinds of people? That’s not Aaron for me. What I’ve always appreciated about his work is that he’s good at what he does, but more importantly he’s invested in getting better. You hear it in the way he talks, whether it be about a specific role or about the profession in general. It’s always enlightening listening to actors talk about their career. They feel it more than the rest of us do, I think.

In Mockingbird, Aaron was playing the part of Boo Radley. It’s a small but integral part, and from what I understand he got the role primarily because of his excellent (again, bias) work as one of the (I forget the name) mental patients in last year’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. While I had problems with that staging of Nest, what Aaron did was impressive, and I can see why someone seeing his performance there could have found a way for him in Mockingbird. Whether or not that’s the case, I’m not sure/can’t remember.

So it’s a shame that I wasn’t looking forward to it. That the mood had come on that made me resent even stepping out the door when all I wanted to do was go back to bed or spend a quiet night at home not thinking about anything in particular. It’s not the attitude that you want to come to a friend’s work with. In addition, I was starting to suspect that my feelings for last year’s Nest were going to repeat in Mockingbird. I had been told that reviews for this production were mediocre. I was prepared for a difficult/bad mood evening.

I forget how much I like theatres. The actual structure of a theatre. It’s a good idea. When I walked through the smaller hallways and doorways with my mother and sister (who I had come to the play with) we emerged into a large open space that is specifically theatrical. The levels of seats. The tall ceilings. The boxes where the audience mills about the edges, giving the room a depth that would be lost if we were all in the same plane. I looked over at the stage and saw that it was set up like a courtroom, with jury seats where members of the audience could sit. And in the middle of this courtroom stood a tree. A large tree with branches that disappeared upwards out of view.

My first thought was that, if you were ever to have a museum to trees, this was how you’d do it. A large theatre with a tree in an enclosed space, with the tree almost standing in as performer. With roots and dirt for stage. There would be something remarkable about going through hallways and small rooms and coming into a theatre with a tree inside, a massive living, green tree that you would sit and stare at.

My second thought was that the stage was too small. My dread deepened. I couldn’t imagine how the play could work in such a small space. I didn’t like the idea of the audience on stage. It didn’t speak to me immediately (the absolute sign that it will not/cannot work, of course). I sat in my seat and watched the audience get settled. Like last year’s Nest, I found that most of the audience were middle-aged and older. There seemed to be a few younger people here and there, but my first read of the crowd was older. I started to look up the levels and saw people talking, interacting, and something happened that made me relax just the littlest bit. I think I heard someone say before that there were 600 seats in that theatre. If every seat were full that would mean that there would be 600 men and women sitting down to enjoy a performance, a fiction, that was unique in its presenting. We’d sit in the dark and have a relationship with the people on stage for a couple of hours. If the play was good, we’d laugh, we’d cry, we’d have something to think about. Made me realize that it wasn’t just the architecture of theatres that was a good idea. Theatre is a good idea. 600 people all thinking different thoughts with different histories watching the same performance that is interactive is a good idea.

It’s not big revelation, I know, but it started me down the path of getting out of my mood. Sometimes the simplest stuff does. Depression, when it hits, is like being told you’re not just someone else entirely but believing it entirely. It’s like dreaming and not remembering your waking life. And then something happens and you remember. You follow the path out, if you can, and for the next two or three hours that’s what I did.

The play was great. The characters from the book came alive in the performances. I came to understand and appreciate the idea of the jury/audience and the play between the two and by the end of it I couldn’t see how it could have been any other way. It struck me that To Kill a Mockingbird could come across very easily as heavy-handed if you didn’t do it right. It’s very on point with its message, with the questions it is asking, but even though I saw those center stage what saved it for me were the characters and the performances. I cared about these people and I found myself thinking throughout what the message and questions meant for me. I was thinking a lot about courage, and what it meant to start when you knew you were going to lose but starting anyway. Which led me to think about a lot of other things.

And Aaron, of course, for what time he was on the stage, shone.

It’s good to have talented friends. It’s better to have families who put up with sudden mood shifts. And it’s a great thing that we, as a species, came up with theatre. Or fiction. Or music. Or domesticated dogs, for that matter. Architecture. The whole lot. Sometimes it’s a book that rescues me from a bad day. More often times it’s my wife. But yesterday it was a play. And it was a very good play indeed.