4A • October 5, 2018 | Cannon Beach Gazette | cannonbeachgazette.com
Views from the Rock
ESCAPE INTO DYSTOPIA
T
his season’s political theater
has surpassed adjectives,
leaving “surreal,” “circus-like,”
“outrageous” or “absurd” in the dust —
policy based on Tweets and politicians
graded on their high-school yearbooks.
The New Yorker’s Pulitzer
Prize-winning media critic Emily
Nussbaum, describes this year’s tele-
vision season as reflecting “a familiar
modern mood, the feeling that we’re
all living in crazytown.”
The Nation called it “The Dystopian
Boom”: a season with “The Leftovers,”
“The Good Place,” “Black Mirror” and
“Electric Dreams.”
“The opening of Netflix’s dense,
trippy new limited series ‘Maniac’ does
not give viewers much reason to feel
hopeful,” writes the Hollywood Re-
porter.
‘Adjustment Day’
When it comes to dystopian novels,
Portland author Chuck Palahniuk is
ahead of his time, known for measur-
ing modern-day angst long before our
current pinball political climate.
“Adjustment Day” draws a fu-
ture America doomed to a return to
tribalism, a spinning gyre of miserable
subservience, a mass of humanity
beholden to a privileged few — and all
defined by racial identity.
In a single day, academics, politi-
cians and journalists are killed, their
ears harvested as bounty. Television
and radio stations, internet websites,
all broadcast the same message at the
same moment: “Ad-
justment Day is
Upon Us.”
There is no
changing the
channel.
Names on
a list are to be
destroyed system-
atically eliminated,
but a key tenet of
Palahniuk’s “there
is no list.”
Inspired by an
aged oracle named
Talbott Reynolds,
the political philos-
ophy relies on strict
racial apartheid and
male dominance. This
is a proletariat move-
ment with America’s
long-suffering workers
rising with blood force. With Reyn-
olds’ aphorisms as guidance, the unem-
ployed, underemployed, the steam-
fitters and the press operators “see
themselves slay their oppressors and
then rise to rule their own fiefdoms.”
Some “hightail it to the border.”
Others “suck death from a tailpipe in a
closed garage.”
The dirty work of the revolution is
driven by men with “nothing to lose”;
recruits are those who hate the society
that has “left them no means to achieve
the status that all men crave.”
Informants are rewarded with
currency made out of human skin,
meant to be spent within 30 days or
CANNON SHOTS
Just give me
anything with
Blake Lively
o decompress from the news, I persuaded Mr. Sax
to see a movie. Before I go any further, this might
be a good time to say it’s always been a struggle to
get Mr. Sax to leave the house to see a movie. He prefers
to do his watching
in a recumbent
position. When
VIEW FROM
we were dating,
THE PORCH
some 30 years ago,
EVE MARX
he warned me his
favorite films are
ones he falls asleep
to. Meanwhile I can count on two hands and maybe one
foot exactly how many movies we’ve seen together in an
actual movie theatre.
The movie I dragged him to last weekend was “A
Simple Favor,” starring Anna Kendrick, Henry Golding,
Rupert Friend, Andrew Rannells, and Blake Lively. “A
Simple Favor” could be described as upscale suburban
thriller. The story is a beautiful married mom (Lively) who
asks her best friend (Kendrick) a simple favor, to pick up
Lively’s young son from school. The trouble starts when
Lively fails to collect her child, or respond to Kendrick’s
texts or voicemails.
Blake Lively grew up in Tarzana, California, in the San
Fernando Valley. Her father is an actor. She’s a natural
blonde who looks like she should always be close to a
surfboard. I first noticed her in 2007 when she was cast
as the character Serena van der Woodsen in the television
series, “Gossip Girl.” You may recall her performances
in “Savages,” or “The Green Lantern.” In real life, she’s
married to the actor Ryan Reynolds. They have two chil-
dren. Eschewing the L.A. film biz lifestyle, they moved
to my old stomping grounds about an
hour north
of New York
City. Despite
their bona fide
celebrity status,
locals do their
best to treat
them as though
they’re just
another adorable
young family.
Blake Lively
is fun to watch.
It’s easy to imag-
ine her wearing
a baseball cap
backwards at Pee
Wee soccer. “A
Simple Favor”
reflects a wealthy
and well dressed
society where a
woman with a dicey
past and a need for
money might plot to screw over
a new friend, and
also an insurance company. There’s a scene in the film
where Lively’s character confesses to Kendrick’s that her
enormous, stunning house is for sale, but no one’s buying.
It also falls to her to keep the whole sham afloat since
her husband, once a rising star novelist, hasn’t produced
another book.
The character played by Lively portrays a woman once
upon a time I’d have been drawn to. (I’m too old now
for that level of drama.) Unlike Kendrick’s character, I’d
never have been her doormat, but I might have been her
drinking buddy. What mom of elementary school kids
doesn’t crave a stiff afternoon martini before the hassle of
providing dinner? A cute contemporary touch is Kend-
rick’s character producing her own blog to share tips with
her mom friends how to pack a perfect school lunch —
and play true detective.
I’m grateful to have not just one but two movie theaters
in the area to help me escape reality.
T
R.J. MARX
to rot away. All citizens are required
to carry a copy of a blue-black book
— to fail to do so could lead to being
reported.
Citizens of the former united
states (sic) involuntarily shuttle to
homelands: blacks receive the South,
renamed “Blacktopia”; whites to
Caucasia, and gays to Gaysia; others
exiled to their native homelands or
warehoused in “retention centers.”
‘Submission’
Similar cultural unraveling occurs
in Michel Houellebecq’s “Submis-
sion.”
The novel provided a stir after its
2015 publication and led to 24-hour
police protection for the author body-
guard after the January 2015 Charlie
Hebdo attacks.
Set in present-day France, the
dystopia shift comes as Western culture
gives way and the Muslim brotherhood
ascends to power. “Many of the usual
political issues don’t matter to them,”
Houellebecq writes. “To them it’s
simple — whichever segment of the
population has the highest birthrate,
and does the best job of transmitting its
values, wins.”
The narrator, a pro-
fessor specializing in the
work of 19th-century
writer Joris-Karl Huys-
mans, is fired from his
academic position,
along with everyone
in his department:
“They gave us two
hours to clean out
our desks.”
As in “Adjust-
ment Day,” all is
settled in a flash —
money is frozen,
guards close down
the university.
The storm breaks,
the fighting be-
gins. “You could
make out groups
of masked men
roaming around with assault
rifles and automatic weapons. … It was
impossible to get a clear picture of who
was doing what.”
While Houellebecq’s world is less
violent as Palahniuk’s, the repression
is numbing, defeating intellectuals,
artists, teachers and women. Especially
women.
“The summit of human happiness
resides in the most absolute submis-
sion,” in Houllebecq’s fictional society.
Women leave the workforce en
masse. Palahniuk’s new leaders, like
Houellebecq’s Islamic elite, select their
“home” wives, field wives, cham-
bermaids — all required to undergo ge-
netic testing to prove their worthiness.
Women are “baby-making machinery”
Chuck Palahniuk
Michel Houllebecq
for chieftains. The birth of every child
brings a government subsidy.
Palahniuk’s women wear sexless
gingham, aprons, clogs — “long sleeves
and long skirts were the rule” — Houel-
lebecq’s the burka and the veil.
Both novelists take a cynical,
almost hopeless turn: “The facts were
plain,” Houellebecq writes. “Europe
had reached a point of such putrid
decomposition that it could not save it-
self any more than fifth-century Rome
could have done. … Europe, which
was the summit of civilization, com-
mitted suicide in a matter of decades.”
Doyle to the rescue
If after these reads you are in a state
of utter despair and cable news fails
to offer succor, as a palate cleanser
I recommend Brian Doyle’s sunny,
bittersweet novel “Chicago.”
Doyle, the late, great Portland-based
writer and editor is best know for his
Oregon coastal imaginings and kinship
with Pacific Northwest culture. In
“Chicago,” he writes a fictional mem-
oir about a young journalist working
for a Catholic weekly newspaper and
experiencing the wonders of 1970s
Chicago.
His merry band of housemates is
quirky, quizzical and loads of fun, as
he establishes an intimacy between the
most diverse of people, and in his own
particular way, with a dog named Ed-
ward who is capable of communication
at the highest level.
Doyle describes the city down to
the rattle of the El train and the whiff
of Comiskey Park in a year the team
even made a credible go for the title. I
lived in the city at the time myself —
1977, when the Sox were in first-place
for most of the summer — and remem-
ber those real-life characters: Richie
Zisk, Chet Lemon, Eric Soderholm
and Oscar Gamble. (The White Sox
finished third in the American League
West.)
The author zeroes in on details we
don’t always observe: “odd fascinating
corners and sights — the city’s obscure
fountains, remarkable trees, and “a hid-
den aviary with more than a hundred
parrots and parakeets of every color
and species, tended by a tiny old man
who could not have been more than
four-feet high.”
Advice from a Doyle character is
a welcome antidote for the chronic
dystopia that feels all too real: “Drive
safely,” he writes in “Chicago.” “Be
joyful. Be tender. Everything else is
secondary to tenderness. Remember
that.”
LETTERS
An unpleasant summer
in Cannon Beach
OK Cannon Beach, we have just
finished the single most unpleasant
tourist season in the fifteen years
that I have lived here on the North
Coast. What made it so unpleasant?
Having to deal with all of the tourist
vehicles clogging our streets and
parked around our houses and even
in our driveways.
Our city government, through the
Chamber of Commerce, has been in-
credibly successful in marketing our
town to the rest of the world. They
have done a wonderful job for all of
the merchants here. Businesses have
the customers that they need. What
we residents have all lost is the abil-
ity to quietly enjoy our homes due
to the traffic and parking problems
that have been created.
It is high time that our city
government start paying attention to
our needs instead of solely being fo-
cused on the needs of our local mer-
chants. I truly don’t believe that this
is asking too much. There are many
more residents than merchants. We
actually do have the power, should
we choose to use it.
The very obvious solution is to
require all visitors, except those
Publisher
Kari Borgen
Editor
R.J. Marx
Circulation
Manager
Jeremy Feldman
Production
Manager
John D. Bruijn
in hotels, to use centralized park-
ing. We then would need to pro-
vide shuttle service around town.
Imagine how different it would
make summer life here, for both the
tourists and us.
So, where do we get the money
to buy shuttle buses? How about
having the Chamber of Commerce
agree to use funds that would go to
advertising and promotion instead
be used to buy shuttle buses? They
have created the problem that we
are living with. Is it not fair to ask
them to help make Cannon Beach
more livable?
The point of my missive is
simple. We, as a community, need
to decide together how we want to
live in this special place. Do we let
those who visit ruin our experience
of living here or do we make some
changes to prevent being overrun in
our homes?
Well Cannon Beach city govern-
ment, what say you?
John Huismann
Cannon Beach
Offended by campaign
advertisements
The campaigns have scarcely
begun to replace retiring District
Advertising Sales
Holly Larkins
Classified Sales
Danielle Fisher
Staff writer
Brenna Visser
Contributing
writers
Rebecca Herren
Katherine Lacaze
Eve Marx
Nancy McCarthy
32 State Representative Deborah
Boone and already one candidate’s
advertisements are deeply offensive.
The Republican candidate,
Venetta Lower, has regularly been
running a commercial on cable TV
that begins with video of boisterous
street demonstrations in Portland,
and then intones that we need to
elect leaders who unite us instead of
dividing us. This is really trouble-
some to me on several levels:
• Are we to become afraid that
street demonstrations in Portland
will cause riots in District 32? If
not, what is the point of this video?
• Are we to believe that the
party of Donald Trump will serve to
“unite us” when he and his sup-
porters have done so much, and so
often, to divide us?
• Are we to believe that this Re-
publican will oppose the offensive
immigration policies of her party
because she immigrated here as a
child?
• Are we to assume that this
Republican nominee is going to
be different because she does not
include the “Republican” label in
her commercial?
We do need our leaders to be
truthful with us — and that is per-
haps the most critical aspect of this
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fall’s elections.
Particularly at the local level,
we need to select our government
representatives based not on what
lip service they give to platitudes,
but on what we truly can expect of
their real service in the legislature.
That’s why Tiffiny Mitchell will
have my vote.
Daniel J. Seifer
Arch Cape
Excess dune growth
presents hazards
As home owners at Breakers
Point we appreciate the look and
protection sand dunes north of
Ecola Creek provide. However, the
unchecked and unnatural growth
presents hazards Cannon Beach
ignores.
Height and access: At 56 feet, the
dunes greatly exceed recommen-
dations by the Federal Emergency
Management Agency.
European beach grass: While
other areas remove this invasive
species, Cannon Beach insists it
remain. A report by the Oregon
Department of Geology and Mineral
Industries cites the grass as a major
reason for dune growth.
Beach access: The city main-
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tains easy access south of Ecola
Creek, but no maintenance north.
Walkways were buried years ago.
The walk up, over and down dunes,
along with 20-foot cliffs left by
storms, are a danger to residents and
visitors.
Hiding inappropriate behavior:
Hills, dips and high grass invite
camping and parties. Cleanup of
bottles, food debris and toilet paper,
is left to residents.
While the Planning Commission
slowly reviews its dune manage-
ment plan, they seem intent on
continued and unnatural growth.
Sadly, the only member of the com-
mission representing residents north
of Ecola Creek was forced to recuse
herself from the process.
Restoring the beach, responsi-
bly managing invasive plants and
maintaining safe beach access is not
a question of money. Breakers Point
residents will pay the cost.
City officials need to respect
residents north of Ecola Creek. It’s
time for Cannon Beach to live up
to its reputation as a friendly and
idyllic city not only to visit, but also
to live.
Bill and Cathy Dugovich
Breakers Point Condominiums
Cannon Beach
THE NATIONAL AWARD-WINNING