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This is one of those made-for-TV Christmas movies. It’s not a Hallmark or Lifetime movie, but it’s the same kind of thing. There’s an over-the-air channel that shows nothing but these kind of films during December. I can’t stand most of them; they tend to all hew closely to a formula that goes like this: the prince of some non-existent country meets a woman with a regular job, they fall in love, they have some sort of absurdly contrived misunderstanding and break up, and then they reconcile in the last five minutes.

Also, the writing tends to be dull, the acting usually isn’t anything special (sometimes the “villains,” like jealous sisters or whatnot, are good) and it’s just generally unmemorable.

Christmas Crush is different. The premise is that the protagonist, a young woman named Addie (Cindy Sampson), makes a wish after a friend tells her wishes can come true at Christmas. Addie wishes for her next-door neighbor to fall in love with her.

She’s thinking of the shy but charming Sam. (Robin Dunne.) But she doesn’t know that an old acquaintance of hers from school, Pete Larson, (Chris Violette) has just moved into the other apartment next to hers. And when her wish comes true, it’s Pete who falls in love with her, becoming obsessed, following her around, bringing her unwanted gifts, and even breaking up with his actual fiancée to propose to Addie. Naturally, all this ruins her attempts to go out with Sam, since from his perspective, Addie appears to have been simultaneously dating an engaged man.

Now, it’s true: a supernatural magical Christmas wish is an even more outlandish premise than the prince-traveling-incognito plot I complained about above. Princes at least actually do exist. But it’s the details that matter. This is a modern version of Victorian dramatist W.S. Gilbert’s classic “lozenge plot,” in which a magical device causes some sort of upheaval to the social order. He used this most famously in The Sorcerer, a comic opera in which a magical love potion causes everyone to fall in love with the wrong person.

Gilbert got his start writing pantomimes. These were entertainment staples of Victorian Christmas, and featured similar outlandish plot conceits. They featured stock characters and generally relied more on spectacle than writing to wow an audience, but there’s a clear line of descent from the craziness of Christmas pantomimes to Gilbert’s signature topsy-turvy satires. (And to be honest, it goes all the way back to Saturnalia, a Roman winter festival during which traditional social norms were temporarily suspended.)

What made Gilbert’s impossible supernatural devices work so well is that they were the only impossible element. Gilbert would create one bizarre, fantastic concept, and then have everything else proceed with perfect logic and consistency from there.

The same thing is going on here. Addie, Sam and Pete all behave logically and consistently given the one absurd premise. The characters’ personalities don’t change on a dime for the sake of the plot. The entire story is based on watching the hilarious consequences of Addie’s non-specific wish play out.

That’s the other thing about this movie: it’s funny. The script is snappy and clever. There’s an extended scene with Addie trying to talk to Pete’s ex-fiancée in a Christmas store that makes me laugh out loud. I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the performances of the supporting cast: Konstantina Mantelos as Pete’s jilted fiancée is great, as is Erica Deutschman as Addie’s friend Drea. It was nice to see the two female leads working together as friends, instead of being rivals for the same guy.

There is also the character of Mr. Donner (I couldn’t find the actor’s name.) He is an important client of the firm Addie and Drea work for, and there is a subplot with them planning a Christmas event for him. There’s a running joke where someone will call it “the Donner party” and someone will quickly correct it to “the Donner event.”

Donner never speaks throughout the film. His performance is purely in his expressions. I loved this touch. Screenwriters take note: less can be more.

The film culminates with the Donner event, which includes an impromptu song by Pete in another over-the-top effort to woo Addie. Addie then gives a speech about the power of Christmas wishes. I won’t say more, even though it’s not really the kind of movie you can spoil. I mean, we all know what the ending will be.

And yes, I guess there is a last-five-minutes reconciliation with Addie and Sam, too. But again, it’s how it’s done that matters. Addie’s wish wasn’t to marry a prince, or a millionaire, or even to get married at all. She just wants to go on a date with a guy she likes.

This movie is fun. Everything about it is a cut above the usual Christmas TV movie fare. The writing is wittier, the acting is better, even the set design is more believable. Normally, people in these movies live in fabulous winter estates. But these characters just live in apartments, albeit very decorated ones.

It’s easy to make fun of feel-good holiday movies because most of them are bad. But you could say the same of most big budget Hollywood movies, actually. Most instances of every form of entertainment are fairly forgettable, to be honest. The fun is in finding the ones where the people who worked on it went the extra mile to make it good. Christmas Crush is one of those.

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Note this should not be confused with the 2005 film of the same name starring Matthew McConaughey, or the 1943 film starring Humphrey Bogart, or the 1995 remake of the same, or either of two Bollywood films.

Whew! That’s a lot of films named after the desert. But we are presently concerned with the one that stars Brooke Shields as a young heiress named Dale Gordon whose dying father asks her to race his custom sports car in the 1927 Trans-African Auto Race, composed of racers representing all the major European stereotypes–snooty French, goofy Brits, and of course, evil Germans.

But Dale has another problem: the stuffy upper-class twits who run the race won’t allow a woman to participate. So she disguises herself as a man right up to the starting gun. Not until she is safely off on the race does she remove her disguise.

Unfortunately, the desert which Dale has to cross is also the battlefield in a war between two Bedouin tribes. She and her two crewmen are kidnapped by a member of one tribe as she tries to take a shortcut, and dragged to his tent. She escapes from his clutches and wanders out into the desert, but is shortly recaptured.

One of the tribe leaders intends to force himself upon her, but he is stopped by his nephew, Sheikh Jafar, who is the leader of the tribe, I guess. It’s sort of unclear whether he or his uncle is really in charge. I guess Jafar is technically the boss, but he’s a young guy, and obviously he defers to his uncle’s wisdom and experience.

Uh, except… all his uncle wants to do is assault their new captive. Jafar is not okay with that, and so outmaneuvers his uncle by marrying Dale. However, she doesn’t want to marry him, and soon they are interrupted when an enemy tribe attacks the camp, using an armored car provided to them by the German racer.

Dale has sticks of dynamite in her car for some reason, and runs out in the middle of a machine-gun battle to place the sticks in the path of the enemy vehicle. This is miraculous enough, but she then runs back behind friendly lines, picks up a rifle and shoots the sand-colored sticks of dynamite, causing them to explode just as the car drives past!

If a script wants us to believe something like that, they need to establish that a character is an expert sharpshooter first. Even then, it’s a bit hard to believe. But I find it impossible to accept that someone could pick up a rifle they’d never fired before and make those kinds of shots.

Anyway, after fending off the attack, Dale has won the respect of the tribe, and she marries Jafar after all. Then, after a night of passion, she remembers that she came here to fulfill her dying father’s wish and win the stupid race, so she sneaks off to her car and drives off into the desert, accompanied by Cambridge, an Englishman and former member of the faculty at the university of the same name, who is now living among the Bedouin for some reason.

Things seem to be looking up, but then unfortunately Dale is once again kidnapped, this time by the chief of the other tribe.

Seriously? This is the third time in this movie that she gets kidnapped. This is lazy scriptwriting if ever I saw it.

Naturally, Jafar leads a party of war to raid the enemy village and get her back. After initially refusing, his uncle agrees to take his faction of the tribe along. Dale meanwhile fights back against her captors–she’s getting to be an old pro at fighting kidnappers–and so, as Jafar’s men attack them, the tribe decides to dispose of her, and obviously the most efficient way of doing that is to FEED HER TO THE LEOPARDS.

Yes, they have an execution pit, dug inside of a cave, with leopards in it. And there’s even a central sacrificial pillar and everything. Clearly, these desert nomads have not been wandering far if they have time to make an investment like this.

But Jafar arrives and rescues Dale from the leopard pit. His uncle perishes in the fighting, and I guess we’re supposed to feel bad for him?

So, Dale gets back into her car and rejoins the race. As fortune would have it, her shortcut was so much faster that even with all the delays, she’s back on track at the same time as the other drivers are closing in on the homestretch.

Naturally, it comes down to her vs. the evil German racer in a final dash for the finish line. It’s neck-and-neck when the German’s wheel pops off, and Dale pulls ahead.

Having fulfilled her father’s dying wish, Dale goes back to Jafar and rides off to live as his wife, thus ensuring that her entire plot arc is defined by men, lest anyone get concerned that she might be independent or something.

All right; I’m sorry. That’s awfully snarky, isn’t it? Look, there’s nothing intrinsically wrong with these plot elements–either the fulfilling her father’s dream, or the romance. It’s just… Dale doesn’t seem like a character. She seems like a plot device. Everything she does is reactive. It’s a little thing, but it would have been much more satisfying if Jafar had come to be with her at the end, rather than her going back to him.

Part of the issue, admittedly, is the acting. Brooke Shields “won” two Razzie awards for worst actress for this movie. Frankly, I think that’s a bit harsh. She’s actually decent in the first few scenes; it’s only once she gets to the desert that her performance starts to fall flat.

Brooke Shields is a good actress, and for the most part, the other performances are equally weak. (The exception is Sir John Mills as Cambridge.) So to me, that suggests this is on the director, Andrew McLaglen, more than the cast. Originally, Guy Hamilton, the director of several Bond flicks including Goldfinger and Diamonds are Forever, had been hired to direct. I suspect he would have been better. Hamilton’s sometimes campy humor, while in my opinion too over-the-top in the world of 007, would have been perfect for this movie.

Sahara sometimes seems almost like it’s going to be a comic adventure, but it never quite gets there. It’s missing something–that wink to the audience that great adventure films like Raiders of the Lost Ark or the 1999 edition of The Mummy have.

So, how did I hear about this movie, and why am I talking about it?

I saw the poster on Henry Vogel’s Twitter page, and had to check it out. And while it was in many respects not nearly as good as it could have been, it did have some gorgeous desert scenes. I just cannot get enough of these barren landscapes. Brooke Shields is no Peter O’Toole, and Andrew McLaglen was definitely no David Lean, but even so there are are some shots in this movie that evoked the sweeping sandy expanse of Lawrence of Arabia. (There was one shot in particular that I’m pretty sure was a deliberate homage to that great desert epic.) And the music is by Ennio Morricone, so you know it’s good.

I’m normally against re-making films. (See my review of Tank Girl.) But this is a rare film that could use a remake. As John Huston–who would have been another good choice to direct this script–once said, the films that should really be remade are not the hits, but the ones that fail. There’s a lot of potential in this movie, but so much of it was wasted.

Of course, a remake should probably have a different title, since as we have seen, “Sahara” is overused. It needs to be something pulpy–how about Dale Gordon and the Great Trans-African Auto Race? Then get Rian Johnson to direct and Gal Gadot to star. You’re welcome, Hollywood. This one’s free, but any more ideas will cost you.

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This is a collection of short speculative fiction stories that deal with complex concepts–the existence of God, the nature of reality, human relationships–as approached by everyday people. Goats has a knack for writing characters who are instantly relatable. Although this is in many ways a stylistic departure from his earlier books, which are primarily comic novels and crime thrillers, the thing they all have in common is the intelligent and humane voice of the narrator.

Even in “Snowlight,” which is one of my favorite short stories ever, and is probably the darkest one in the collection, the protagonist has a basic decency and pathos to him that makes the reader sympathetic, even when he does something that is objectively quite shocking. The characters always feel like humans–even when they’re not. There is a religious robot in one story, and a man who thinks everybody is a robot in another. Philosophy and humor are mixed frequently; as in the case of Zetoxis the philosopher, of whom it is said, “the wise man and the fool reside in the same body.”

Many of the stories suggest a moral or logical question for the reader to ponder. Some of them just let you look at the world in a different way through revolutionary technology, as in “Sentenced to Hard Empathy,” or “The Big Punch-Out,” the latter of which creates a dystopian world reminiscent of the imaginings of early 20th-century futurists. Sometimes this is blended with satire, most notably in “The Obscurators.”

The longest stories, “Alone” and “Fact of Existence” present concepts that could fill whole novels. “Alone” reminded me of John Brunner’s novel Total Eclipse with its depiction of being stranded on a desolate alien world. “Fact of Existence” is a fascinating exploration of consciousness and religion, in the context of a science-fiction mystery. This is everything that science fiction should be–a great story that gives the reader something to ponder. The whole collection is like that, as Goats riffs on the same themes from a variety of different perspectives.

The only problem I have with this book is a purely technical one specific to the Kindle version. It has no table of contents. That’s not a big deal in a novel or novella, but in an ebook of short stories, it’s a hassle to have to scroll through it to find the one you want. As a workaround, I bookmarked the start of each story. Yes, I’m lazy. What can I say?

Still, it’s a small price for being able to read these stories. And we are lucky to be able to read them, for as Goats explains in his afterword, all but “The Big Punch-Out” were rejected for publication. This lack of taste on the part of literary website editors is to our advantage, as these tales might have ended up scattered behind a Balkanized array of paywalls. But you can get them all, now, for $0.99. (Or if you don’t want to deal with the ToC issue alluded to above, it’s worth it to spring for the paperback version.)

I highly recommend this book. I could go on about all the reasons why, but it’s really best if you just go check it out and lose yourself in a world of madmen, robots, wanderers and philosophers, all with different ways of looking at the universe and its mysteries.

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My friend Patrick Prescott has recommended this movie many times. For further in-depth analysis of its themes, see his posts here and here.

Friendly Persuasion is about the Birdwells, a Quaker family living in Indiana in 1862. They are good people, though they each have their flaws. The father, Jess, (Gary Cooper) is a little too competitive when it comes to racing his friend to the meeting. The teenage daughter Mattie, (Phyllis Love) is a bit vain and boy-crazy. The youngest son, Little Jess, (Richard Eyer) is prone to anger as young boys often are, and the oldest son Joshua (Tony Perkins), too, can be tempted to fight.

And Eliza (Dorothy McGuire) the family matriarch, can if anything be a little too prim, as when she takes a hard line against her husband’s affinity for music. More about this in a moment.

In large part, it’s a family comedy-drama. The humor is not over-the-top, but in little things, as when Eliza denies to her children that she danced in her younger days–not really appropriate for a Quaker minister–but then unconsciously taps her hands and feet in time to the music when the family goes to a local fair. Or the way Jess tries to beat his friend in a race to meeting, while Eliza shoots disapproving looks at him. It makes the characters relatable. (I have friends who get much the same looks from their spouses when we get carried away talking about fantasy football.)

The film is based on a book, The Friendly Persuasion, by Jessamyn West, which is a series of vignettes from Quaker family life. It has the feel of being a loosely-connected series of episodes rather than a tightly-plotted tale. But that’s not a flaw. The Birdwells are a pleasant family to spend time with, and it’s always amusing when some element from an earlier episode comes back into play–as when some Quaker elders pay Jess and Eliza a visit while Mattie and her cavalry officer beau are playing music in the attic. (No, that’s not a euphemism!)

What I really like about this film is its portrayal of conflict, or more accurately conflict resolution. Even when it’s something as simple as Eliza and Jess’s dispute over his purchasing an organ–she says she won’t stay in the house as long as a musical instrument is there, and goes to sleep in the barn. Feeling abashed, Jess follows her out and spends the night with her, and they come to a compromise. Cooper and McGuire have great chemistry together–it’s an extremely romantic scene, and what’s more, it’s a very unusual kind of romantic. Most movie romances go for the easy stuff–the excitement of courtship and new love and so on. It’s much harder to portray a couple who have been married for a long time, been through thick and thin together, and still have an underlying affection. But that’s depicted very clearly here.

I really admire this. It would’ve been so easy to play it for cheap laughs by having Eliza seem like just a humorless goody-two-shoes, or Jess seem like just a sort of Quaker Ralph Kramden. But the script doesn’t take the easy path, and the actors play the roles with appropriate nuance.

The screenplay was written by Michael Wilson, who also co-wrote scripts for classics like The Bridge on the River Kwai and Lawrence of Arabia–two of my favorite films. However, he didn’t receive screenwriting credit for these, or Friendly Persuasion, because he was blacklisted after he was accused of being a communist before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

(After some digging, I found a transcript of Wilson’s testimony before HUAC. It’s here, and I strongly recommend reading it, because it helps put Friendly Persuasion in context. I also tried, without success, to find Wilson’s speech to the Writer’s Guild of America on receiving a lifetime achievement award in 1976. Based on the part quoted here, I suspect it’s interesting reading.)

At the end of the film, the civil war begins to impact the Quaker community, and the Birdwells eventually are forced to face challenges to their pacifist ideals. Joshua goes off to fight over the objections of his parents, and when a Confederate raiding party comes to their farm, each member of the family is confronted with a choice of whether to fight or hold to their beliefs.

And this is where the film becomes more than just a family drama and something else entirely. As Pat says in his review, the film implicitly makes the audience ask if they would be able to show the same restraint that the Birdwells do. The family is tempted, yes, and they stray from the path of perfect Quaker doctrine–but not nearly as much as most people would. Watching the film, thee can’t help but ask if thee could do what Eliza or Jess do–giving food to enemy soldiers ransacking thy land, or letting a man who had just killed thy friend go free.

I know what my answer is, and I suspect it’s most people’s answer–and that is why the Birdwells’ courage is of a very different sort than the heroes of other Hollywood period films. They don’t handle things the way John Wayne or Clint Eastwood characters would, that’s for sure. (Ironically, given Wilson’s blacklisting, the film would later be used by President Reagan as a symbolic gift to Soviet Premier Mikhail Gorbachev to illustrate the need for peacefully resolving conflicts.)

Not many movies can make thee ask deep, uncomfortable questions about morality while also being highly entertaining. This film manages it, and all without ever being preachy or sanctimonious. It doesn’t tell thee what to think; it just introduces thee to some characters, and asks thee to put thyself in their shoes.

Now, there are a few technical gripes I can’t resist making. This movie is over 60 years old, and it shows its age in some respects. 1950s Hollywood production designers could never seem to resist using anachronistic makeup and hair styling, and a few of the clothes look like post-1900 materials. Also, although the film is set in Indiana, it’s very obviously shot in California. Maybe most people wouldn’t notice this, but to a native Midwesterner such as myself, it sticks out like a sore thumb.

But these are just nit-picks, and shouldn’t for a moment deter thee from watching it. Better to have dated production values and a timeless theme than to have a sharp-looking piece that has no heart or wit. Friendly Persuasion is a forgotten gem. It was nominated for six Academy Awards, including Best Picture, but it seems to have largely faded into obscurity. That’s too bad; because it’s a really charming movie. I’m very grateful to Pat for recommending it. If thee like classic movies, and want something a little different than a typical historical-war drama, I highly recommend it.

Also, there is something interesting about the way the characters talk. See if thee can figure out what it is. 😉

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This is a historical fiction novel set in the Napoleonic era. It follows British lieutenant James Burke, who is in Argentina as a “confidential agent.” A spy, in other words. While there, he assumes different identities of varying nationalities to worm his way into a position where he can learn the latest news.

With Napoleon’s power growing, the British are trying everything they can to undermine him, which includes taking an interest in Spanish-controlled Argentina. Burke allies with some freedom fighters to scout the land for a potential invasion by His Majesty’s forces.

Of course, this is a spy thriller, and Burke, like another famous literary spy with the initials J.B., is a ladies’ man, and soon is sleeping with Ana, the beautiful wife of a local merchant. Ana has all sorts of connections with major players in Argentinian politics, and in addition to their romance, provides Burke with useful information for plotting a British invasion.

But Burke also makes powerful enemies, including one who soon proves to be critical to the future of the nation. Amidst political machinations and the occasional bumbling of his own country’s military commanders, Burke finds himself having to improvise one plan after another to keep himself alive.

The book is engaging and fun. I know next to nothing about 19th-century South American politics, but the story and characters are so vivid it was easy to follow along with the plot. Williams’ descriptions of the terrain are excellent, making it easy to picture the caravans, troop movements, and other maneuvers in which Burke is involved.

There is also just the faintest element of the supernatural to the tale. At the very beginning and the very end, Burke has an unusual experience which makes him feel like a man guided by the hand of Fate. It’s very subtle, as is appropriate, but I liked the touch.

Burke is a supremely capable man, pragmatic and sometimes cold, though he can be swayed by feminine wiles. He occasionally pauses to reflect on the grim amorality of his work, as he manipulates events and people to further the aims of the British Empire.

In fact, if you read between the lines, while Burke may tell himself he is doing this to defeat the evil Corsican, in actual fact it’s hard not to see it as simply one more conquest by Britain. As best I can tell, l’Empereur was interested in South America solely to the extent it was a possession of Spain, with which he was allied. British foreign policy in the early 19th-century was that Bonaparte’s empire had to be destroyed, and the best way of doing that was to establish an even bigger empire, that happened to be owned by London. Convenient, eh?

But I don’t expect you to trust me on this point, dear reader. After all, I have been accused of harboring Bonapartist sentiments in the past. (I swear, the bust of him on my bookshelf is only there for aesthetic reasons!)

Read the book for yourself, and make your own judgments. Because, while Williams may take literary license now and then, the events are firmly rooted in historical fact. Like, James Burke was a real person. So was Ana, and so was the main antagonist of the book, whose name I’ll not reveal since it could be something of a spoiler.

As I read it, I kept thinking what a good film or TV series this book would make. I was picturing Patrick McGoohan in the role of Burke. Of course, even if we could use a time machine to offer the role to the late Mr. McGoohan, he would probably turn it down for much the same reason he did the role of 007. Alternatively, one could imagine Rowan Atkinson as Burke and Tony Robinson as his servant, William Brown, but that’s not quite the right tone…

But enough of this idle silliness! Read this highly entertaining book, and whatever conclusions you draw about Burke or the nation he serves, appreciate British military intelligence for all the amazing tales of espionage they’ve given us over the centuries.

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The Outer Worlds is one of my favorite games in recent years. I’ve played through it twice and a bit. I didn’t finish my third run as a melee fighter, but I was delighted to fire it up again with my original character to play the DLC.

Peril on Gorgon begins with the captain of the Unreliable receiving a package containing a severed arm and a datapad. The datapad instructs the recipient to meet with Minnie Ambrose in her manor on Gorgon.

Minnie is trying to track down the journal of her mother, Olivia, who was a scientist working in a lab on Gorgon where things went very, very wrong. (As often occurs in video game labs.) Minnie wants to restart her mother’s experiments on Adrena-Time, and needs some to comb through the marauder-infested labs of Gorgon to piece together what happened with Olivia’s experiments.

On Gorgon, we find a ravaged, lawless world that makes Edgewater look civilized. There is one small outpost, the Sprat Shack, that serves as a hub of sorts, but otherwise it’s a largely hostile and barren world with lots high-level enemies to fight. There are a few interesting vignettes in keeping with the game’s signature offbeat humor, but it’s largely fighting, with much of the plot delivered from audio logs scattered around the planet.

Which is fine. The combat in Outer Worlds is smooth and fun. There is one thing I found a little disappointing, and this is pure gamer nit-picking, so readers not interested in a discussion of equipment crafting may skip the following three paragraphs.

One of the things the DLC promises is new weapons and armor. And indeed, there are plenty of new armor sets and unique weapons. The armor was fine, but I have two issues with the weapons. First, with the exception of three new science weapons, they look identical to the weapons in the base game. There’s nothing inherently wrong with that, but it’s a little bit of a letdown when you get a new revolver that belonged to one of the major characters in the DLC that looks like any other revolver.

Second, and more importantly, the unique weapons aren’t that great. Pretty much all of my weapons were modified to Tartarus and back before I ever set foot on Gorgon, and whenever I would try a new weapon from the DLC, I’d inevitably put it aside after a few minutes and go back to my heavily-customized arsenal.

Now, I know: not every player is into crafting, and for those who aren’t, the unique weapons could be a lot more exciting. I admit, I was hoping for additional equipment on a level similar to that found in the DLCs for Outer Worlds‘ spiritual ancestor, Fallout: New Vegas. Every New Vegas add-on delivered new and interesting weaponry, from Dead Money‘s holorifle to Honest Hearts‘ Thompson gun to Old World Blues‘ K9000 to Lonesome Road‘s Red Glare.

But that’s really only a small quibble. The game itself is highly enjoyable–it’s more Outer Worlds, after all, so how can that not be good? Minnie’s quest to restart her mother’s work has a variety of possible outcomes, and the one I got was very satisfying. (I don’t want to spoil anything, but let’s just say I did a quick re-spec of my character and put 150 points in the Persuade skill in order to get it.)

The Outer Worlds is a game perfectly suited to DLC. It’s logical to add a new planet to explore with each add-on. I’m eagerly looking forward to the next one.

Lastly, one word for anyone who already played Peril on Gorgon and is just reading this to see what I thought:

Llama!

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Okay, I know most of you couldn’t care less about American football. But hear me out on this.

George Plimpton was a pioneer of participatory journalism—that is, journalism in which the writer actually participates in what he’s writing about, as opposed to simply describing it as a bystander. His many exploits included playing in the New York Philharmonic Orchestra, boxing with Archie Moore, and pitching in an MLB game.

But arguably his most famous act of participatory journalism was his time as quarterback of the Detroit Lions. Plimpton joined their camp during the 1963 season, and participated for five plays in an inter-squad scrimmage. Here’s how he introduces the fateful moment:

“The offensive team in their blue jerseys, about ten yards back, on their own twenty yard line, moved and collected in the huddle formation as I came up, and I slowed, and walked toward them, trying to be calm about it, almost lazying up to them to see what could be done.”

After his five plays were run, the Lions had lost 29 yards. Certainly an inauspicious playing career, although as time has gone on, it’s proven to be far from the most embarrassing thing to happen to a Lions quarterback.

How interesting could a book about a man being terrible at football be, you ask? Well, that’s just it. Plimpton may have been a bad quarterback, but he was a magnificent writer. He could make anything sound interesting. Something as boring as lining up under center, he makes memorable:

“I took a few tentative steps toward Bob Whitlow, the center, waiting patiently over the ball. I suddenly blurted out: ‘Well, damn it, coach, I don’t know where to put my… I just don’t know…’

The coaches all crowded around to advise, and together we moved up on Whitlow, who was now peering nervously over his shoulder like a cow about to be milked.”

What makes Paper Lion great isn’t Plimpton’s scrimmage performance by itself. That just serves to give the book a structure and a dramatic climax. But the real meat of the book is in Plimpton’s descriptions of what goes on behind the scenes of an NFL team, like the annual revue they put on after the final roster cutdowns, in which the rookies mock coaches, veterans and league officials. Plimpton describes himself performing in the role of then-NFL commissioner Pete Rozelle:

“I wore a Napoleon hat, a cloak, a wooden sword, three cap pistols and a rubber dirk; and I carried a pair of handcuffs, a tack hammer, and a frying pan. These artifacts… were supposed to suggest the inquisitorial aspects of Rozelle’s office.

…and when I clanked toward the footlights, and said ‘Howdy, I’m Petesy Rozelle,’ the audience delivered a stiff barrage of invective.”

Or, during a hazing session where rookies are made to sing their college fight songs before the entire team, Plimpton struggles to recall his alma mater:

Crimson in triumph flashing

‘Til that last white line is past.

er… We’ll fight for the name of Harvard

‘Til… that last white line is past….

There are his depictions of all the Lions players, like Earl Morrall, the journeyman quarterback who would later go on to join the legendary 1972 Miami Dolphins, and of George Wilson, the Lions’ firm but good-natured coach. Dick “Night Train” Lane, whose record for interceptions in a season still stands to this day. Dick LeBeau, who would go on to a Hall of Fame career as a defensive coach, was a member of the team, whom Plimpton recalls the players likening to a pop star.

Above all, there are the antics of lineman Alex Karras. Karras was suspended for the 1963 season for gambling, but he still makes his presence felt as Plimpton recounts stories of him. Karras was a hambone, a performer by nature, always improvising skits and stories to amuse his teammates waiting in the hotel before a game, as in his recollections of an imagined “former life” in World War II:

“I knew all those cats, Runstedt, Goering–Bavaria Fats we called him–and Rommel. He had a terrible weak stomach, Rommel did. He used to get sick all the time. I’d come rushing up to him in the morning to fling the salute at him, and say, ‘Hello, hello, heil, heil, good mornin’ gener’l,’ and he’d get sick.”

It’s no surprise Karras went on to a career in acting after his football days ended. He had a natural gift for entertaining—but then, as Plimpton describes, as game time drew near, he would grow serious, and sick to his stomach. Karras’ queasiness and unpredictable temper actually reassured his teammates: “Alex is ready,” they murmur when his mood turns sour, “In five minutes he’ll be out there on the field making the poor fellow from Philadelphia opposite him pay for it.” Plimpton concludes the chapter, “We crowded into the elevator. No one said anything going down. Karras would sit alone on the bus.”

Plimpton had an incredible talent for knowing just how to end a chapter. I’m not sure I’ve ever read anyone else who could do it as well as he could. Here’s his conclusion of the chapter about his ill-fated scrimmage, when he hears a woman in the stands call out to him:

“She was wearing a mohair Italian sweater, the color of spun pink sugar, and tight pants, and she was holding a thick folding wallet in one hand along with a pair of dark glasses, and in the other a Lions banner, which she waved, her face alive with excitement, very pretty in a perishable, childlike way, and she was calling, “Beautiful; it was beautiful.”

The fireworks lit her, and she looked up, her face chalk white in the swift aluminum glare.

I looked at her out of my helmet. Then I lifted a hand, just tentatively.”

Plimpton’s time with the Lions occurred in the shadow of departed star quarterback Bobby Layne, who had led the team to multiple NFL championships in the ’50s. Legend has it, Layne cursed the team when they traded him, saying they would not win another title for 50 years. And as of this writing, they still have not, being one of the worst franchises in the NFL over the last half-century.

I wonder if the book would have been the same if Plimpton had chosen some other team for his experiment. He had tried to go to the New York Giants, the New York Titans (now Jets) and the Baltimore Colts. But somehow, it seems right that it was the Lions who had this awkward, lanky quarterback who wore number 0 and who stumbled on his first play from scrimmage. There is a poetic quality to it—someone who knows he hasn’t got a chance, but is trying anyway, because, well, how else to know what it’s like? 

The Lions play on national TV every Thanksgiving. Generally, they lose. Even if they don’t, the game is usually meaningless, as they have almost always been eliminated from playoff contention by that time. But I love this tradition, because there’s a kind of melancholic beauty to it, just as there was to Plimpton’s venture. Sitting down to Thanksgiving dinner on a dreary day—as midwestern November days always are, somehow even when they are sunny—and watching the Honolulu blue and silver appear on the screen as the Lions go into another ill-starred competition makes me think of old Plimpton and his wonderfully nerdy courage. 

It’s said that the owners of baseball’s Chicago Cubs believed that fans didn’t care about winning as much as they did entertainment. They were probably wrong, but I still see where they got that idea. Anyone can cheer for a winner; but it takes something special to cheer on a perennial loser, year after year. Don’t we teach kids it’s not whether you win or lose, it’s how you play the game?

And in a way, Plimpton did win. He wrote one of the greatest sports books ever—a book that captures both the details of the game and the poetry of it. Football is a late autumn sport, and is tightly connected with the mood of the season. As John Facenda said in the intro to an NFL films production I once saw, there is “something somber in the eyes of the men, something of winter in their faces…” Paper Lion depicts football’s essence, in all its violent, weird, funny, fading autumnal glory.

I’ve loved football since I was a kid—I first read Paper Lion when I was 13 years old—so I’m probably biased. But I do believe it’s possible to enjoy the book even without being a football fan, because Plimpton was such a fantastic writer. In the introduction to the 1993 edition, Plimpton described an encounter with a rustic fellow who came up to him and said that he had only ever read one book—Paper Lion. Flattered but nonplused, Plimpton asked if he’d ever considered reading another one. The man replied with the greatest compliment a writer can receive: “Have you written another one?”

Indeed, he had, and this is why I think even a non-football fan may enjoy Paper Lion. I’ve read lots of other things he wrote, on subjects which normally hold no interest for me, but which I enjoyed anyway because of his masterful storytelling and wit.

In 2003, less than a week before he died, Plimpton went to Detroit for a ceremony at halftime of a Lions’ game to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the book and reunite with some old Lions’ stars. I remember watching the game on TV, and thinking how weird it was to see number 0 on a football jersey.

Of course, the Lions lost the game, 23-13.

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51s-eBLPWELThis is a collection of four short stories, each set in rugged western landscapes, and each with an ironic twist to them. I learned about it from Pat Prescott and had to check it out. I love weird westerns, and these tales fit the bill perfectly. Each one is a short but memorable concept: An impatient mountain man becomes obsessed with a sinister crow. A would-be stagecoach robber experiences a stunning change in his fortunes. A hike in the mountains turns deadly. 

All these stories are good, but my favorite is “Hangin’ Tree’s Revenge.” This is the story with the strongest supernatural element, and the one that most clearly conveys the mood of a weird western. Frontier justice is never far off from outright revenge, and one feels that the desert is governed by mysterious forces that make little distinction between the two.

Anyone who likes supernatural stories with dark twists will enjoy these tales, and that goes double for people like me, fascinated with bleak desert landscapes. The landscape is very much a character in these tales, as in Bruce’s environmentalist novel Oblivion, and it’s a good way to get lost in the eerie desolation.

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GossamerThis is the sequel to The Gossamer Globe, which I reviewed here. It’s a fantastic book, and I’ll keep the plot synopsis to a minimum because I would not want to spoil the first book. Gossamer Power follows Lucia, Kailani, Ms. Battenbox, Jevan and other characters from Globe, as well as introducing some terrific new ones, including the handsome Sebastian, who is irresistibly fascinating to almost everyone, and a character known simply as “Glorious Leader” or to use his full name, “Oh Great Glorious Leader.”

All the things I loved about the first book are present here as well: the humor, the sword-fighting, the political intrigue. I was worried this installment wouldn’t live up to the high bar set by the first, but I enjoyed this one almost as much. I say “almost” because this one ends on a cliffhanger, so it doesn’t have a totally satisfying ending. Tonally, it’s definitely The Empire Strikes Back to Gossamer Globe’s A New Hope. 

So much of what makes these books wonderful are the little things, as in when, on having traveled by airship to his native land, the Glorious Leader shows Jevan and Lucia the flying carriages of his home, commenting that the people who clamored for them had no “regard for the fact that an airship is, essentially, a flying carriage. They already existed.” And indeed, how many times have you heard people talk about not having flying cars when in fact that’s basically what an airplane is?

The book is full of little moments like this. Ms. Battenbox isn’t in it much, which is kind of a pity, since she was one of my favorites from the first book, but her keen mind for strategy and her biting wit are still in evidence during her few scenes. At one point, she remarks, “There are many state secrets this sham government will never know about… How stupid are you commoners to think you could imprison me in it?”

In addition to being a bawdy, swashbuckling adventure, Gossamer Power, like its predecessor, is also a clever satire, touching on everything from the “Internet of Things” to the modern surveillance state. Like any good fantasy, for all its outlandish elements, there are some things that really ring true.

It’s a worthy sequel, and I can’t wait for the next one!