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I watched part of the Frontline special on PBS last night, the subject of which was Faith and Doubt at Ground Zero, an examination of religious themes surrounding the events of 11 September 2001. What I saw of the show was fascinating, and I hope to see it in its entirety again. The most striking segment depicted a rabbi who has used transcriptions of those gut-wrenching cellphone calls from those who died in his daily chants. Hearing those words — Tell the children I love them, take care of them, I love you, goodbye — sung to those Hebrew chant melodies is utterly haunting.

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Until now, author Neil Gaiman has been primarily known as the writer behind the remarkable Sandman comic book series. He’s written other things — a couple of novels, some other comics, and a battery of short fiction — but he’s still been mostly known as the Sandman guy. That’s likely to change, though, now that Gaiman’s novel American Gods has won both the Hugo and the Bram Stoker awards for Novel of the Year and now that his newest book, Coraline, is drawing rave notices.

I actually finished reading American Gods on Saturday, the day before it was awarded with the Hugo. Now, I haven’t read the other novels that were nominated this year, so I cannot honestly say whether the award was given correctly. I can only say that Gods is an excellent novel. The story is about a man called Shadow who has been paroled from prison on the same day that his wife is killed in an automobile accident. With nowhere else to go, Shadow ends up in the employ of a strange man named Wednesday who moves in some very strange circles. It turns out that Shadow is to play a part in a war between the fading, old-world Gods and the new-fangled American Gods, deities such as commerce and the Internet. Along the way, lessons are learned and secrets revealed, as is always the case in large-scale works like this in which nothing is ever as it seems.

Gaiman achieves an interesting mix of literal description and metaphorical construct in depicting the conflicts of his novel. At one point, he goes so far as to write:

None of this can actually be happening. If it makes you more comfortable, you could simply think of it as a metaphor. Religions are, by definition, metaphors, after all: God is a dream, a hope, a woman…religions are places to stand and look and act, vantage points from which to view the world.

The book is at times quite literal in its description of events, and at other times it takes on a dreamier, surrealistic tone — especially in passages involving Native American spirituality and its relation to the onset of American society and the constant arrival of new Gods. This can seem facile at times, for how else would one contrast the businesslike demeanor of America versus the more spiritual concerns of others? However, it gradually becomes clear that Gaiman is after something else, and the line blurs substantially as the novel progresses, and as we begin to suspect that the two sides depicted in the novel may not be quite as we are told they are.

Gaiman’s use of setting is also fascinating. The book is set mostly in the upper Midwest. (Gaiman himself lives in Minneapolis.) He invokes landmarks and attractions that will be well-known to anyone familiar with that area as settings in his novel, and particularly fascinating is his depiction of the seemingly idyllic town of Lakeside, Wisconsin which may not be quite as idyllic as it seems.

The novel is very episodic in structure, basically moving from one set-piece to the next. There isn’t so much of a linear development of the plot, which may bother some readers. Gaiman also includes small vignettes that take us out of the main action of the novel entirely in order to depict side-struggles and events in his America, where Gods interact with mere mortals. The most impressive of these, to me, was the lengthy vignette involving an Arab immigrant to New York City. American Gods was written before 11 September 2001, but it is difficult to not read this section of the book in that light. In fact, reading this book after 11 September is an exercise in the American spiritual landscape, as Gaiman makes us wonder just who our gods really are.

The book’s only flaw, in my estimation, is its conclusion. Gaiman leaves one particular story thread, and a fairly minor one at that, unresolved until after everything else has been dealt with; then he returns to that story thread and ties it up with a few more revelations. The answers Gaiman gives are satisfying, but the episode still feels a bit out-of-place. Perhaps, though, this is Gaiman’s intent — his way of depicting the continuing cycle of divinity at play with the profane. I’m not really sure.

I found American Gods immensely enjoyable, as a piece of contemporary fantasy in the manner of Charles de Lint or Robert Holdstock. Recommended.

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Everything that the vibraphone is today can pretty much be traced to a single musician: the amazing Lionel Hampton, who used his proficiency on that instrument to become one of jazz’s leading lights.

Sadly, Lionel Hampton has passed away at the age of 94. NPR’s tribute to Hampton can be heard here.

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A couple of nifty links:

:: ABCNews has a nice article about people who collect things that actually doesn’t make collectors look like, well, weirdos of The Simpsons‘s “Comic Book Guy” variety.

:: Slate has an interesting article making the case for Randall Cunningham as a member of football’s Hall-of-Fame. I never thought that Cunningham’s career was quite up to that level, but after reading this, I’m not so sure. And that touchdown pass of his against my beloved Bills in 1990, where he dropped back into his own end zone, ducked under a certain Bruce Smith sack (and this was Bruce Smith in his prime, mind you) and then put the ball in the air for what turned out to be a 102-yard touchdown pass, remains etched on my brain after twelve years. (The Bills won that game, by the way.)

:: More football stuff. (Get used to it!) All the ESPN gurus have their predictions up on one handy page. The Rams appear to be a majority pick to win it all, although it’s not unanimous. What is unanimous is that nobody is picking the Patriots to repeat. On a page to himself, of course, is the Tuesday Morning Quarterback, who is back writing football-related haikus.

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On the day before the Hugos were awarded to various luminaries in SF-dom, I got my latest rejection slip in the mail from F&SF. This was not surprising, really. The story in question — “Stains” — is a psychological horror story with a very muted supernatural element, inspired by Poe’s “The Tell-tale Heart”. F&SF doesn’t seem to print many stories like it. So why did I send it there at all? Well, for a number of reasons. First, there is F&SF‘s track record for response times: my responses from them (all rejections, by the way) have always come within ten days of submission, allowing me to get the thing out to another market. Second, there is the matter of word-limits. I am almost incapable of writing a story in under nine thousand words, and most of mine gravitate to novellette length (twelve to fifteen thousand words, roughly). There just aren’t that many markets for short fiction willing to handle those kinds of lengths, so I pretty much submit to all the ones that do. I suppose I could figure out how to write actual short stories, thus giving myself more markets to submit to and (theoretically) increasing my chances for publication, but somehow that doesn’t seem right. I would rather write the stories that I have to write, in the manner that I have to write them, than try to shoehorn myself into some other category. (One proviso: I don’t think that I am overly wordy in my fiction. When I edit my stories for submission, I can get pretty draconian. I always remove at least ten percent of the original wordage, and in one case I actually excised twenty-five percent. That particular story came closest to being published, with an editor holding onto it for nearly six months while he tried to find a spot in his publication for it. Alas, ’twas not to be….)

So, what’s next for “Stains”? Tomorrow it’s off to Alfred Hitchcock’s Mystery Magazine.

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Congratulations to all the lucky folks who won one of these at ConJose (the World Science Fiction Convention, held at San Jose) on Sunday night. I’d love to win one of these someday, but I think I’d rather win the Bram Stoker since I write more horror than fantasy (and I write no science fiction currently). I’d also like to actually be published, which is probably a prerequisite of sorts. Sigh….

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The Buffalo Philharmonic Orchestra has released its first recording under the Naxos label. The CD is a disc of three orchestral works by American composer Frederick Converse (1871-1940), a composer of whom I had never heard until I learned of this recording, which is part of Naxos’s effort to explore the rich history of American classical music beyond the usual “big names”. It’s also thrilling to see my hometown orchestra finally appearing on recordings that are nationally available.

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This is the text of a post I made to the Usenet newsgroup rec.music.movies back in March, about Howard Shore’s Oscar-winning score to Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring. I’ve linked to the article on the Google Groups Archive, but I wanted to have a copy here on Byzantium’s Shores as well.

Now that Howard Shore has won his Oscar for Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring, I should like to explore for a moment the score’s remarkable qualities.

It seems at first to be precisely the kind of score one would expect for a large-scale epic fantasy, and in many ways it is. It is full of gigantic orchestral passages, fanfarish heroics, darkly scored passages with lots of low brass for the villains, big choral passages, ethereal choral passages, and melodies both happy and melancholy. Shore’s work is deftly done in all those regards and more. While his orchestral and choral writing are indisputably splendid, with Shore directing his massive resources with consummate craftsmanship and aplomb, the score is hardly unique in that regard; instead his work here stands squarely in the tradition of Goldsmith, Williams, Herrmann, Rozsa, Korngold and all the other great composers of epic scores. What makes this score so remarkable, especially in this day of frequently substanceless bombast, is its construction: its symphonic and leitmotifistic cohesion in which many themes are interrelated and manipulated with a constant eye and ear for Story.

When the track-listing for the LOTR:FOTR CD was made public, the striking detail was that most of the track titles were actual chapter titles from the book. And then, in his Oscar acceptance speech, Shore specifically noted “the words of Tolkien”. These are not coincidences. The LOTR film project is tied to its literary forebear to a much greater degree than most other notable book-to-film translations, and this turns out to be the key to Shore’s work on the LOTR score. Shore uses his music not just to create mood but to reflect Tolkien’s themes and stories. In fact, while Shore’s score almost perfectly enhances Peter Jackson’s film, it is Tolkien’s story that dictates how Shore uses his themes.

Consider, first, what can probably be called the score’s “main theme”: the theme for the Fellowship of the Ring itself. In its boldest form, it is a fairly obvious heroic theme, and it is heard in full at the film’s most overtly heroic moments: when the Fellowship is first formed at Rivendell, and when Aragorn and Frodo leap the bottomless gap in the Mines of Moria. These are moments of undeniable triumph, and the use of the Fellowship theme there is entirely appropriate. What makes the theme interesting is in how it is formed. Shore gives us very brief snippets of it throughout the score up to the Fellowship’s official formation, musically depicting the slow coming-together of the Fellowship’s core. And then, after Gandalf’s fall in Moria, the Fellowship’s theme is never heard in full again. It is quoted as the Fellowship leaves Lothlorien by a single horn, so soft as to almost be offstage. We hear it again a few moments later, louder but no more complete. The musical symbolism is clear: the Fellowship itself is incomplete, and the lack of balance in the theme foreshadows the eventual final breaking of the Fellowship. We next hear it partially quoted as Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli pledge to go after Merry and Pippin. However, the theme immediately seques into the score’s other main theme, that of the Hobbits.

The Hobbit theme is first heard when we first lay eyes on the Shire, and the theme is similar in contour to the second phrase of the Fellowship theme. That interrelatedness of the Fellowship and the Hobbit themes allows Shore to effortlessly switch between the two, and this similarity – the way the middle section of the Fellowship theme echoes the Hobbit theme – musically depicts the fact that the Hobbits are central to the mission of the Fellowship itself. Shore is musically illustrating Tolkien’s conceit that a race long-ignored is about to step to the fore of the crucial moment in Middle-Earth’s history.

It is also important that the Hobbit theme is first heard when we actually see the Shire, but not when we first see a Hobbit in the film: in the Prologue we see Bilbo finding the Ring, but the Hobbit theme is not heard until we see Frodo in the Shire. Thus Shore tells us several things musically: that it is Frodo, not Bilbo, who is to form the central focus of the Fellowship, and that the Hobbits are bound up very closely with their homeland. Hobbits, Tolkien tells us, rarely leave the Shire; in fact, they rarely leave their own communities within the Shire. Thus it is that when we first hear the Hobbit theme it is played as a folk-tune on a fiddle over a playfully tapping drum-rhythm. The next notable use of the Hobbit theme comes at Rivendell. Shore does this to convey a sense of homecoming – Tolkien calls Rivendell “The Last Homely House” – but Shore scores the theme for solo clarinet, the purest sounding of instruments, and gives it some extra ornamentation, enough of a variation to make the theme sound somewhat different. The sense of homecoming is fleeting, and we know from the music that it is not to be permanent.

As noted above, the Fellowship theme at the end of the film yields to a lush string statement of the Hobbit theme. This is an obvious musical depiction of the separation of the Fellowship; but the strong relation between the two themes allows Shore to make the transition from the former to the latter without some kind of “bridge” section, highlighting the sense of separation to an even greater degree. Thus it is that at the film’s end the Hobbit theme plays, in its saddest incarnation, as Sam and Frodo head down into Mordor. But even then, Shore gives us something more: underneath it can be heard the same tapping drum rhythm from the theme’s first statement. Shore is here depicting that it is more than Hobbit against Sauron; it is the Shire against Mordor.

The interrelation of themes in Shore’s LOTR score is not limited to the Fellowship and the Hobbit themes. There is a militaristic theme for Saruman and his Uruk-Hai, and this theme opens with three notes (C-B-C), very similar to the notes that open the Fellowship theme (C-b-flat-C). Where the Fellowship theme uses the major-second interval and solid rhythms to create a sense of heroism, the Saruman theme uses the minor-second and an off-center syncopated rhythm to create a sense of malice. Why would these two themes be so related? Because the C-B-C motif, the germ from which both themes are grown, can be said to be the “Man” motif. It is no accident that the first full statement of the Fellowship theme is not heard until the arrival of Men at Rivendell. A scene with Gandalf and Elrond makes clear that the fate of Middle Earth is now in the hands of Men, for good or ill. Thus two themes for the key men in the story, one good and one evil. It is further worth noting that we do hear a variant of the Fellowship theme, in a minor key, when Gandalf rides to Isengard to confer with Saruman. Shore is musically foreshadowing the betrayal. He is telling us, through music, that Gandalf’s trust in this particular man is misplaced and will come to ill.

So Shore gives strong, thematically-based depictions of the story’s two most prominent races. His treatment of the other two is more muted, more impressionistic. This is also perfectly in keeping with the story. There is no theme per se for the Elves; instead there is a kind of tone-painting that is ethereal in nature, hinting musically that the Elves are outside the history of Middle Earth. Shore employs shimmering strings and soprano vocalists to suggest the almost alien nature of the Elves. Their music is entirely different from nearly everything else in the score. But Shore also recognizes that the film’s two Elvish locales, Rivendell and Lothlorien, are very different in character, and thus while he takes a similar approach to each they both still sound very different. Lothlorien has a darker, earthier sound with hints of Middle-Eastern flavor, and Shore even goes so far as to employ a different soprano vocalist for the Lothlorien music, one with a different sound than Enya. The difference in tone is carefully considered, as is the entire decision to not define the Elves with a single theme of their own. He is musically reinforcing Tolkien’s conceit that the Age of the Elves is ending. The Elves are, to a certain extent, “outside” of Tolkien’s history, and thus their music by Shore is “outside” of his symphonic conception.

Something similar can be said for the fourth race, the Dwarves. Of them we only see Gimli alive; the rest is hinted at through the shattered remnants of the Mines of Moria. Here Shore employs very low sounds – men’s chorus, low strings and brass, et cetera – and he takes a leaf from Wagner and uses anvil-like percussion. Like the Elves, there is no Dwarf-theme per se; this allows Shore to compose Dwarvish music that feels incomplete. This is most striking when the music swells as Gandalf illuminates the Great Hall of Moria, but even then we don’t get a full melody. The story tells of empty, cavernous spaces; thus Shore creates music that is empty and cavernous. And he does so brilliantly before moving onto frenetic action music for the escape from Moria.

Finally, there is the Ring theme itself. Shore does not use the Ring theme nearly as often as one might expect; we hear it several times in the Prologue, primarily as the Ring’s journeys from one “owner” to the next are detailed. Its most striking use occurs late in the film as the Fellowship rows past the Gates of Argonath. Aragorn points the great statues out to Frodo, and the symbolism of the exiled King of Gondor coming home is hard to miss; so why is the Ring motif used instead of, say, the Fellowship theme or perhaps some other permutation of the “Man” motif for Aragorn’s return? Because Shore knows his story, and he knows that Aragorn’s return home is not to be – at least, not yet. He knows that soon Aragorn will have to turn west and go to Rohan (in “The Two Towers”), while the Ring’s journey to its home will continue. Thus it is the Ring theme that we hear. Once again, Shore’s sense of Story guides and

illuminates his themes and how he uses them.

And to think of the at-least six hours of “Lord of the Rings” score that Shore still has ahead of him to compose. Music for the Ents, for the Riders of Rohan, for Minas Tirith, for the Stairs of Cirith Ungol, for Shelob and her lair, for the Cracks of Doom, for the Battle at Helm’s Deep, for the Gray Havens….bring it on, Mr. Shore.

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Author Neil Gaiman can be heard here on Minnesota Public Radio discussing his new book, Coraline, writing for comics, the difference between writing “journalism” and writing fiction, writing horror in the post-September 11 world, his future projects, the linguistic problems faced by a writer from Britain who now lives and works in the United States, and fly-fishing. (Well, not fly-fishing, but he does discuss all those other things. It’s a fine interview, twenty-four minutes long, by a writer who I am admiring more each time I read him.)

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Are you ready for some FOOTBALL???

In celebration of Major League Baseball’s avoidance yesterday of a work-stoppage that would have crippled the game, I will now offer my NFL predictions for the 2002 season, which kicks off one week from tomorrow. I love football, and it is in large part because of football that my favorite time of year is autumn and early winter. This is what I expect to happen this season. (BTW, I am no expert on the subject. I don’t participate in a Fantasy league; I don’t watch SportsCenter at all, since we don’t have cable; and I don’t subscribe to Sports Illustrated. Basically, I expect at least fifty percent of what I say here to end up being wrong. So, at the end of the season when the Arizona Cardinals are playing the Cincinnati Bengals in the Super Bowl, don’t write to laugh at me.)

In question-and-answer format:

:: Will the New England Patriots repeat?

No.

Not only do I not expect that Patriots to repeat as Super Bowl champions, I don’t even expect them to repeat as division champions. Yes, the 2001 Patriots were a great story, the scrappy bunch of no-names led by a no-name quarterback to the Super Bowl championship after a 1-3 start, in the process beating a heavily-favored offensive juggernaut in the big game. But before we strike the mold for Bill Belichick’s bust at Canton, let’s consider the astonishing amount of luck that the Patriots enjoyed on the way there. They were able to capitalize on down-the-stretch swoons by three division rivals (the Dolphins, Jets, and Colts); they got an amazing break thanks to an obscure rule in holding on to defeat the division doormat (my beloved Bills); they got another amazing break thanks to an obscure rule in holding on to defeat a team which had outplayed them in a snowy playoff game in their own park (the Raiders); they went to the AFC Championship Game against a team whose premiere running back was not ready to play and whose quarterback has been a model of inconsistency throughout his career (the Steelers, Jerome Bettis and Kordell Stewart); and in the Super Bowl they were lucky enough that their opponent’s head coach decided, for reasons passing understanding, not to respond to their defensive-back heavy scheme with a power running game that his team was more than capable of executing (the Rams and Mike Martz). The Patriots went on the most amazing lucky streak in NFL history last season, but any person who has ever set foot in a casino will tell you that sooner or later lucky streaks end. The Patriots are a decent team — I expect them to make the playoffs again — but they won’t be hoisting the Lombardi Trophy again.

:: Are the Rams still the “Greatest Show on Turf”?

Yes, I suppose they are — unless either Kurt Warner or Marshall Faulk is injured and misses a significant amount of playing time, in which case the door will be wide open for at least three other teams to march through and seize their NFC title from them.

:: So, if the Rams falter, who will be the best in the NFC?

There is a logjam in the NFC this year. On paper, the Rams are still the best, but as Chris Berman says: “That’s why they play the games.” The Eagles, Packers, 49ers, and Bears could all usurp the Rams’ spot.

:: Can Bill Cowher win the big one?

Lord, I hope so.

:: Could this year’s Super Bowl teams both hail from the same state?

Yes. There could very well be an all-California or an all-Pennsylvania Super Bowl this year. (In fact, I’m picking one of these two to happen. Keep reading.)

:: Is Steve Spurrier going to be the answer in Washington?

I don’t know; maybe he will, maybe he won’t. I don’t think he’s going to revolutionize things, and I don’t expect him to have the Redskins performing miracles this year. Keep in mind, Spurrier won’t really be able to use his recruiting skills to lure talent to his team, as he did at Florida; the NFL’s commitment to parity will make that quite hard, as will the mechanics of the draft. Plus, he won’t have five or six games against the Northeastern Florida Typewriter Repair College Butterflies each year to post scores of 93-3 and pad his record. I do think that Spurrier could turn things around in Washington, given three or four years to do it — that’s how long it took the last really big name from the college ranks, Jimmy Johnson, to turn his team around. This, however, assumes that Daniel Snyder is willing to give him that much time, which is something I would never bet on.

:: Will the Buffalo Bills be a better team this year?

Yes. This is the good news: it was a big offseason for the Bills. They landed Drew Bledsoe, finally acquiring a franchise quarterback which they have lacked since Jim Kelly retired. (Enough, Flutie fans! Doug Flutie is not a franchise quarterback, not now and not ever.) After years of ignoring the offensive line, they finally realized how bad things were up front and used their top draft-pick, the fourth overall, on Mike Williams. They also upgraded their receiving corps, their special teams, and their linebacking corps. The 2002 Bills could easily double their win total from 2001.

And that, sadly, is the bad news, because even if the Bills double their win total from 2001, they will still post double-digit losses. Their offensive line will be vastly improved, but still very young; their defensive line is also very young and very thin. Some observers think that the Bills may actually challenge for the playoffs, but I still think they are a year away. I’m expecting a 6-10 finish from the Bills this year.

:: So who will win the divisions and the wild-card berths this year?

My predictions are as follows:

AFC East: Miami

AFC North: Pittsburgh

AFC South: Tennessee

AFC West: Oakland

AFC wildcards: New England, Denver

NFC East: Philadelphia

NFC North: Green Bay

NFC South: Tampa Bay

NFC West: St. Louis

NFC wildcards: San Francisco, Chicago

:: Who will win the Super Bowl?

OK, here is my prediction, which is almost certainly wrong: the Pittsburgh Steelers will win Super Bowl XXXVII, defeating their fellow Pennsylvanians, the Philadelphia Eagles.

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