Tonight we kick off Episode 13 of the weekly Guest Post series: Medium Cool with BGinCHI.
In case you missed the introduction to the series: Culture as a Hedge Against this Soul-Sucking Political Miasma We’re Living In
You can find the whole series here: Medium Cool with BGinCHI
Tonight’s Topic: A Point of View You’d Never Really Considered Before
Take it away, BG!
We just finished watching one of the two best TV series I’ve seen in the last year, an HBO series called “Our Boys.” The other is a Netflix series called “Unbelievable.” Both shows succeed for a number of reasons.
“Unbelievable” puts women at the center of an investigation into a serial rapist. Not just a focus on the victims, which it does spectacularly, but into the two female detectives that take on, and break, the case. It makes it clear that men approach these crimes differently, and often do a very poor job at it (they blame the victim, don’t believe her story, ignore her trauma, etc.). This switch in point of view is crucial for telling a familiar procedural story differently.
“Our Boys” is a tremendous achievement, and I can’t recommend it highly enough. It dramatizes the true story of the events of 2014 that led to a war in Gaza. Following the kidnapping and murder of three Israeli teens by Hamas militants, Israel is in a state of shock. Then, a Palestinian teen is kidnapped and burned to death. The series follows the investigation, as well as the family of the Palestinian teen’s search for justice in a system stacked against them.
“Our Boys” is about much more than that short description. It’s about the clash of religions, the Occupation, religious belief and fanaticism, gender, and most of all, family. Its achievement is to take a massively complex set of events and weave a drama out of them, all the while getting us to care about the characters and their choices. The key, as in “Unbelievable,” is point of view. The narrative shuttles back and forth between the two sides of the story and we get a deeply humanized portrait of these opposed and separate communities that have (aside from political power) many things in common.
I realize most of you haven’t seen these two shows. But what I want to offer for discussion today is the question of how Point of View can lead us to a perspective we’d never before considered.
What works (books, films, TV shows, music) opened up a point of view that you’d never really considered, and that changed the way you see something important?
The Fat Kate Middleton
I’ve watched “Unbelievable”, and is, as you noted, one of the best series of the last year. I’ll now be watching “Our Boys”. Thanks, BG.
BGinCHI
If you’re interested in doing a Medium Cool on one, or both, of these shows, say so in comments and we’ll give it a try. I know most of you have Netflix, but fewer of you have HBO, I’m guessing.
I read a really, really terrible review of “Our Boys” today on the Ebert site (sadly), and it’s pissing me off.
I’d happily do a few weeks on that show and break it down with everyone.
The shit review is here. Apparently this asshat only thinks about how “entertaining” a show ought to be and not its substance, or its meticulous care in crafting characters, emotions, etc.
Baud
I was a big fan of the Columbo TV series because it was not told from the point of view of the detective trying to unravel a mystery but from the criminal who was witnessing the detective unravel the mystery.*
Also too Peter Falk.
+ I read an Agatha Christie book written from the same perspective, but I can’t remember which one.
raven
Toni Collette was awesome in Japanese Story.
The Fat Kate Middleton
I am interested, BG. I’ll be watching “Our Boys” tonight. BTW, I have a ridiculous number of streaming services I subscribe to. But I don’t feel one bit guilty about it – we have no access to cable TV, unless we want to pay an $8000 installation fee. Naah.
WaterGirl
I would be interested in discussing Unbelievable, for sure. I am wondering whether Our Boys would be too hard to watch.
cope
About halfway through my 28 years of teaching high school science, I got extremely exasperated (about what, I know not) in front of one of my classes. I told them I had no idea why they couldn’t/wouldn’t/didn’t understand or do whatever it was that I felt they should be able to understand or do. Totally at a loss after venting, I looked out on the class, speechless. One student spoke up. “Well, we’re just kids” the student offered. That statement remained a mantra of mine for the remainder of my career.
raven
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Tried “Better Things” on Hulu?
UncleEbeneezer
Every boy/man should be forced to watch Unbelievable. It is possibly the most unflinching and eye-opening example of Rape Culture that I have ever seen. It also features absolutely incredible performances by the entire cast.
As a bonus, several of the exterior scenes: bike riding, convenience store etc., were filmed in my city (Altadena
[Added: There should be a MAJOR trigger-warning for rape/sex abuse. Parts of it are REALLY hard to watch, not so much because of graphic violence but because the show really creates that feeling of helplessness/panic]
BGinCHI
@WaterGirl: It’s not particularly graphic, but yes, it has a few harrowing moments.
It’s certainly not gratuitous, and given that it’s based on a true story, it doesn’t use the murders in order to heighten the suspense or drama. It’s really much more about the people and their choices.
YMMV, of course.
BGinCHI
@The Fat Kate Middleton: We cut the cord a few weeks ago.
It was a great decision. Comcast was robbing us.
Much cheaper now with AppleTV and everything streaming.
Any streaming channels/services you’d recommend (beyond the obvious)?
HumboldtBlue
The Red Tent, Anita Diamant.
@trollhattan:
My parents took our family to see that, as a young man fascinated by military history it was a searing lesson.
Come and See is also seared in my brain, quite simply the most difficult movie I have ever watched. Shook me to my core and haunted me for days.
trollhattan
This may be more about attractive anti-heroes than flipping my typical viewpoint, but “The Americans” was wonderful in presenting Reagan’s America through the eyes of a committed patriot, Elizabeth, and someone who saw many positives where she saw decrepitude, Philip. It also stands as one of the finest teevee series made.
And in good ol’ war movies, “Das Boot” brought us on board a U Boat and truly made us members of the crew as they wage war on Allied shipping and navy vessels.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@raven: I’ve watched Toni Collette in so many venues (“United States of Tara”, anyone?) and she was never not awesome.
BGinCHI
@cope: According to David Brooks, it’s because Kids These Days are all lazy and good for nothing.
evodevo
Yes…saw Our Boys when it first ran on HBO..I had to explain a lot of Jewish and Arabic customs to my husband, but it was riveting. The characters were really well outlined. Just like the whole ME situation, there is no black and white, and very complex.
BGinCHI
@UncleEbeneezer: Agree on all counts.
It’s powerful stuff.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@BGinCHI: Congratulations! We don’t miss it one bit. I like every service we use – Netflix, Amazon (with HBO), Hulu, and Acorn.
evodevo
@Baud: That was probably the Murder of Roger Ackroyd, I think…
cope
@BGinCHI: Mr. Brooks, The World’s Foremost Authority (with apologies to Professor Irwin Corey).
hitchhiker
I loved both of these series; funny that you should put them together because I think there’s a quality shared by both the dark-haired woman detective in Unbelievable and the main detective in Our Boys. A sort of focused sadness.
The first thing that comes to mind re POV is the Mantel trilogy about Thomas Cromwell, whose place in the historical record has been all villain all the time. In the books he’s a sympathetic human being.
The excellent Chernobyl documentary puts us into the bodies of people on the frontlines of the immediate crisis and the efforts to figure out how exactly the reactor blew, which I think meets the criteria about POV. We don’t know exactly what Gorbachev was thinking from this series, but what the miners who had to go into the radioactive water were thinking is crystal clear.
trollhattan
@raven:
Toni Collette has been declared an Essential Aussie. She can do no wrong.
BGinCHI
@trollhattan: We only watched the first two seasons of The Americans. Probably should go back and remedy.
I love all submarine movies.
Dorothy A. Winsor
I don’t think I really appreciated the power of point of view until I started writing. I understood it in theory. I could analyze it in a book. But when I started writing, I realized how much it affected the reader’s judgement of what was happening.
I find it harder to track POV in a visual medium. Yeah, I can see how the camera follows someone, but how objective is that point of view? In a book, you can be in someone’s head. It’s harder to do that visually.
Amir Khalid
@Baud:
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd?
BGinCHI
@evodevo: Agreed. The subtleties of the Settler/Orthodox communities are really fascinating and challenging.
pamelabrown53
@BGinCHI:
For me, it’s really hard to to even crack my point of view, let alone having an epiphany.
I really appreciated Gertrude Bell’s “Queen of the Desert” even though it’s told from a white point of view.
The Fat Kate Middleton
@raven: I will. Thanks!
BGinCHI
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Criterion well worth the money.
And so far, YouTube TV is great for all the regular TV (MSNBC, BBC, Bravo) we need. Unlimited DVR as well.
cope
@trollhattan: Taking the wartime tack, we read “Im Westen, Nichts Neues” (“All Quiet on the Western Front”) in German class in high school. That really changed my point of view for sure. Thanks for jogging that memory loose from the cobwebs in my mind.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI:
It never wanes IMHO and the maturing Jennings children catalyze a lot of change. Some of the capers, of course, are their own reward.
Need I add: never take your eyes off of, or piss off Elizabeth.
Scout211
The Great Believers by Rebecca Makkai was the most powerful book I have read on the AIDS crisis in along time. I had read several books previously, including And the Band Played On and was deeply moved by them. But they were more about the crisis at the time and the disease itself. This was a fictionalized account of a close-knit group of friends living in Chicago’s Boys Town in the 80s. It was such an emotionally rich narrative focusing on relationships and the lives of the characters in the story. That was a new perspective for me. She is an amazing writer who writes characters full of life, emotions and deep emotional connections.
The second part of the story is set in 2015 and focuses on the sister of one of the men who died in the first part in the 80s. How her brother’s death affected her life and relationships is a deftly woven thread that ties the two parts together.
Amazing book.
WaterGirl
I’m not even sure what comment it was at this point, but one of the comments about made me think of the TV show Cold Case, which had scenes with the victims in the Cold Cases, and it made you feel like you knew them someone. They also used music, I recall, from the era when the murders happened, which helped transport the viewer back in time.
There was also another more recent show that showed the murderer committing the murder at the beginning, and then you saw the process of the crime being solved from the perspective of both the killer and the detectives.
BGinCHI
@hitchhiker: Damn, you nailed it with this comment.
I was thinking of something similar with those main detective characters in terms of having to persist at something most people would rather gloss over. They get blamed, in different ways, for their pursuit of the truth. But sadness. Yes, that too. World weariness…
Mantel’s books are a terrific example of this. As a specialist in the period she’s writing about, I was wondering whether she’d get the world right and she absolutely does. Those novels are so brilliant.
I also thought Mazin’s Chernobyl series on HBO was fab as well. Great POV work there.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
“Being John Malcovich”? They more or less do just that. “Memento” was another twist on the challenge.
trollhattan
@BGinCHI: “Chernobyl” was masterful. Confess I nearly quit during the dog episode.
WereBear
Earliest was The Tell Tale Heart and his reasonable excuses.
pamelabrown53
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I agree that it’s harder to track POV in a visual medium. It’s harder to realize interior monologues and motivations for behavior.
Still, I’m certain we’ll get some prime examples of movies that overcame the difficulty?!
The Fat Kate Middleton
@BGinCHI: Criterion. Got it.
Baud
@Amir Khalid: I don’t remember. The na.e doesn’t ring a bell, but it was a long time ago.
Baud
@trollhattan:
Thanks for the warning. It is off my list.
BGinCHI
@Dorothy A. Winsor: My screenwriting class starts Tuesday and this is the essential skill in getting students to write in that medium.
Some get it quickly and some really struggle. Doing it well is hard as hell.
MattF
As far as streaming goes, I discovered only recently that one can rent feature films on Youtube. Who knew? Anyhow, a rental lasts for a few weeks and you have to watch the whole movie within 48 hours. It works very nicely.
As for POV-that-makes-you-think, there’s been a small movement in SF-Fantasy about the consequences of treating AIs as actual people. Ann Leckie may have started it in her Imperial Radch Trilogy, but by far the most relatable AI is Martha Wells’ Murderbot. Wells has written four novellas and a novel with Murderbot as the narrator and protagonist. Murderbot is a SecUnit, an android who is designed to protect humans, who has freed itself from its ‘governor module’, so it is a free agent. It’s a killing machine with weapons implanted in its arms who would rather watch soap operas than deal with humans and does not want to talk about its feelings. Which, needless to say, makes it an extremely relateable character.
eddie blake
the masterful science fiction by the late, great iain m. banks. both his culture series and his other genre works. dude was amazing at putting you inside perspectives you would never dream of.
fabulous, eye-opening stuff.
RSA
@cope:
That book came to mind for me as well. It’s still my favorite anti-war novel. In high school, we read The Red Badge of Courage, which I think plays a similar role for young adult readers, introducing a new perspective on war.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
It goes back to Dostoevsky’s Crime and Punishment. The murder is committed at the beginning, we see it happen, and we watch the detective trap the murderer. But Columbo doesn’t have Sonia.
zhena gogolia
@Amir Khalid:
I thought that had a different trick, involving the narrator.
BGinCHI
@MattF: I love this idea! Gonna check that out.
zhena gogolia
I was talking to somebody the other day about The Sixth Sense. I know its reputation has been tarnished by that director’s subsequent films, but this friend and I both thought it was a brilliant twist that made you want to see the film all over again from the beginning — and Bruce Willis’s POV has a totally different meaning when you watch it again.
Betty Cracker
Testing to see if I can still comment.
BGinCHI
@RSA: If you go to the Course Hero “All Quiet…” pages, you can watch me go through the plot, etc.
I did several books for them (Othello, Antigone….).
Dorothy A. Winsor
@trollhattan:
I remember trying to explain “Being John Malkovich” to my aerobics teacher. I started out, “There’s this puppeteer.” She said, “A what?” And it went downhill from there.
Baud
@zhena gogolia: I’ve never had the courage to take on Dostoevsky.
@zhena gogolia: I think that’s the one I’m thinking of. You’re correct, it’s not a story where you know who did it from the outset.
UncleEbeneezer
@BGinCHI: 2019 featured two of the best critiques of our problematic Criminal Justice system. Unbelievable confronts the way our messed up system handles victims, women, and sexual violence. When They See Us (the story of the Exonerated/Central Park-Five) confronts how it handles Black boys/men. Both were superb and really eye-opening and incredibly well done (performances, dialogue, cinematography, score etc.) in every way. If it were up to me, I would give these two series’ ALL the Emmys…(oops, and Chernobyl too)
Dorothy A. Winsor
@pamelabrown53:
Yeah. Great movies do it well. It’s just harder for me to see how they do it. If it’s done well, it feels seamless.
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Hope Cole didn’t bar you.
trollhattan
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
Heh, I couldn’t even begin. My kid watched “The Royal Tenenbaums” Friday, and loved it. Another I would not even attempt to summarize.
HumboldtBlue
@Betty Cracker:
I see you
Brachiator
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
There is a marvelous scene in James Clavell’s “Shogun” that perhaps illustrates how a deft writer can guide a reader’s POV.
Throughout the novel we focus on the English pilot John Blackthorne as he struggles to understand Japanese society and the world of the Shogunate. He learns the language and culture and becomes an intermediary between the Shogun and the Portuguese Jesuits trying to establish their own relationship with the nation’s leaders. Deep into the book, there is a scene where Blackthorne is finally reunited with the remainder of his crew, who had all been shipwrecked with him.
He looks at the crew and is repelled by them. They seem like unwashed and unkempt savages, brutish and ignorant. The scene is shocking and funny, and I as a reader realized that Clavell had totally flipped the perspective from that in the beginning of the novel, where the Asian society was viewed as strange and exotic, and the sailors from the West strong and fearless.
BGinCHI
@Dorothy A. Winsor: I’d watch this short film.
BGinCHI
@UncleEbeneezer: When They See Us definitely belongs on this list.
Great call.
BGinCHI
@Brachiator: That’s a great example.
That is also a hell of a novel. And amazingly, based on a true story.
Cheryl from Maryland
“Unbelievable” was amazing, but I felt as if the female detectives had less trouble in their home lives than many women professionals, who must be at times obsessive about their work. The dynamic of work vs. home for women really came through for me in the first series of “Prime Suspect,” where Helen Mirren as D.I. Tennyson has to cope with not only issues with her male colleagues, but issues with her male partner. And yet her male partner, played by Tom Wilkinson, is imminently sympathetic but doesn’t understand how she must dedicate herself.
MattF
@BGinCHI: The four novellas precede the novel, the first novella is All Systems Red. And here‘s an NYT review of the novellas.
Betty Cracker
This is meta-on topic as well as hilarious:
Man, did Princess Complicity get ratio’d or what? ?
BGinCHI
@Betty Cracker: Don’t fuck with the Wachowskis.
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Oh, Dostoevsky is fun!
zhena gogolia
@Baud:
Roger Ackroyd is another one where you feel you have to read the whole thing from the beginning the moment you finish.
Betty Cracker
@zhena gogolia: Agreed. I find him way more accessible than Tolstoy.
dexwood
@MattF: Love the Martha Wells series.
Trumbo’s Johnny Got His Gun, the book and the movie really put me inside a character’s head. It’s a story and a character that has remained inside my head for decades.
As for a popular culture pov, Dexter. I read the first in the series, watched the first two seasons. You see the world from the eyes of a serial killer with a sense of justice. Though, it bored me eventually.
zhena gogolia
@Brachiator:
That sounds neat.
WaterGirl
@Betty Cracker: ?
Dorothy A. Winsor
@zhena gogolia:
There’s a YA fantasy novel called “The Thief,” by Megan Whalen Turner, that’s like that too. It’s in first person. You’re in the character’s head. He never lies to you, but if you read the novel a second time, almost every sentence takes on a different meaning.
zhena gogolia
@Dorothy A. Winsor:
I love that sort of thing.
Delk
@BGinCHI: did their studio ever sell?
Josie
Bury My Heart at Wounded Knee gave me a look at history through the eyes of the American Indian and affected my outlook on American history as a whole. I started to wonder, if we were lied to about that part of history, what else had been perverted in the telling?
rekoob
@BGinCHI: A couple of relatively short works. James Wood’s “How Fiction Works” was revealing in how writers encourage their readers to think about things. John Williams’s somewhat obscure novel “Stoner”, which had some surprisingly descriptive passages about emotions, and probably one of the most interesting and intimate conclusions I have read.
raven
@Josie: Dee Brown, a great Illini!
raven
@Josie: Pick up “A Bright Shining Lie”.
HumboldtBlue
@raven:
Oh yes, man, you nailed that. I’ll never forget turning the page to part 2.
BTW, have you seen this episode on the Battle for Okinawa? I understand your dad was a Tin Can sailor and it’s an excellent look at the campaign, how they got there and how they won.
zhena gogolia
@rekoob:
I read Stoner recently and I was blown away by it. What a writer.
oatler.
Try “Celine and Julie Go Boating.” It’s a mystery… kind of…well anyway there’s a girl trapped in a house so two women eat the magic candy to rescue her…OK there’s a cat.
zhena gogolia
I love these threads every week, BGinCHI. I learn something every time.
dexwood
@zhena gogolia:
Top of my list for favorite threads. A great diversion getting our troubled minds working in other areas. Honestly, though, the top of the list is often shared and frequently changing.
RSA
@BGinCHI: Oh, thanks! I’ll definitely visit–it’s great to have access to experts.
Raven
@HumboldtBlue: Was there a link? I picked up two books on “The Picket Line” and neither list my dad’s ship. The Crosby was a converted DD that became an APD,,, high speed transport so they often get the short shrift when Tin Cans are in play. The record reflects they were on the picket line
Crosby arrived at Okinawa on 18 April and for antisubmarine patrol and radar picket duty, narrowly escaping damage from a kamikaze on 13 May. She stood out for San Francisco 18 May and arrived 19 June. Overage and badly battered from her long and strenuous service, it was considered unfeasible to repair her. Crosby was decommissioned 28 September 1945 and sold 23 May 1946, to Boston Metals Co., Baltimore Maryland
HumboldtBlue
@Raven:
Crap, here’s the link
SFBayAreaGal
@The Fat Kate Middleton: Hi Kate, what do you use for streaming?
minachica
@BGinCHI: I’ve seen both and, like you, found both the be amazing. I probably couldn’t have articulated it before, but it really is the way the viewer is given a unique perspective (and especially Our Boys, with both the Palestinian family and the Israeli ones). Would love to hear more of your thoughts.
Amir Khalid
There’s a movie I remember, Side Effects, where the character you thought was the victim eventually turns out to be the villain.
AM in NC
OK, this is maybe not exactly what you’re getting at, but for me, Lolita was the book that made me understand the importance of POV and how easily manipulable we are as readers/viewers.
Humbert Humbert is a pedophile. I know this. I abhor it, and yet Nabakov is so good he makes us see the world from Humbert’s perspective. He makes us flirt with the idea that Lolita was the temptress and Humbert her victim. It implicates us in Humbert’s crimes because we sympathize with him at various points. It’s astounding. And a real wake up call to the power of narrative in framing reality.
Josie
@raven:
Thanks. I’ll add it to my list.
RSA
@MattF:
You’ve reminded me that science fiction in general has explored perspective changes extensively, in particular telling stories from the perspective of an alien.
The first story of this kind I remember reading, or at least noticing, was in a collection, and I can’t remember the title or author. Ugh. In any case, this short story walked us through various historical events, showing how they influenced future events. We quickly find that these events are under the control of two very powerful aliens; for example, one delicately changes the trajectory of a bullet so that it does not miss a U.S. President. It ends with the one asking the other whether they should play again. This was written in the 1960s or 1970s, so influenced by Risk but not by modern video games.
Anyway, the perspective made me think about the contingent nature of history in a way I hadn’t before.
Raven
@HumboldtBlue: thx
Baud
@RSA:
These guys?
BGinCHI
@Delk: Good question. I walked by there 5 mins ago with the pup and there’s no sign. I’ll have to google it.
I really loved the thought of having them working right around the corner….
BGinCHI
@rekoob: I have a love/hate relationship with Wood.
He’s a great critic, generally, but terrible on Shakespeare.
Another Scott
@AM in NC: I did a lot of reading as a kid, but it took a long time for the concept of the “unreliable narrator” to really click with me. Even in college, I took the narrator in The Death of Ivan Ilych at face value. That reminds me, I should re-read it…
Cheers,
Scott.
BGinCHI
@zhena gogolia: Me too!
BGinCHI
@dexwood: I mean, if you want more mopping accidents or bitching about JRTs, we can arrange it.
This is a full-service weekly installment.
gene108
@Baud:
Well better than me. I made the mistake of reading a lot of his work in high school. I was a big fan. I think a lot of it was over my head.
I haven’t revisited his works since.
BGinCHI
@AM in NC: Nabokov, the master. That books dares you to read it, then succeeds in keeping you involved. That one and Pale Fire are masterpieces in craft.
BGinCHI
@minachica: OK, we’ll see what we can do.
dexwood
@BGinCHI: Nah, I’m good with what is.
rekoob
@BGinCHI: Understood. It’s pretty much all I’ve read of his writings, and I therefore can’t comment further.
RSA
@Baud:
LOL. I’m thinking the short story was in a collection titled Epoch or maybe The Best from Orbit, both of which I read as a teenager, but I need to track it down again.
J R in WV
Murderbot is a great series. Take your time with it.
Everything by Iain Banks is great… I’m not that fond of his non-SF novels, seems like he is reaching for something that he finds easily in the SF mode, and can’t find in the other work. The Culture is strange if you work to get into it. If you don’t, it’s just another strange SF novel.
Did not enjoy Lolita at all… maybe my history precludes that? Don’t care, didn’t like it. Won’t go there again.
zhena gogolia
@AM in NC:
Yes, that is a good example.
hitchhiker
Random POV thought is that I’ve loved having access to films/tv made in places outside the USA. It’s refreshing to spend a couple of hours with characters for whom American history, culture and/or politics aren’t even on the radar. Babylon Berlin comes to mind, along with a lot of British police procedurals.
Also, when I taught creative writing an exercise was to have students write a brief (700 word) 3-character scene three times, once for each of the characters. The dialogue had to stay the same each time. This could occupy us for weeks.
Dahlia
@Amir Khalid: Yes, that’s the one.
Omnes Omnibus
One of our projects in an acting class I took in college was to act out a two person play with a script that had punctuation and consisted of a set of words that went something like “what you know no I well no you do not…” We could punctuate where we wanted and assign the word to lines as we chose. It interesting to see how different pairs of people did very different things with it. My acting partner and I did a couple revisiting a long standing dispute.
lahke
I would totally recommend The Family Tree, by Sheri S Tepper for a major POV shift halfway through the book. Got there, yelled out loud, and then sat in total indecision for 5 minutes because I couldn’t decide whether to start the book over, or finish it and then start over. There’s also The Dinner by Herman Koch if you want an unreliable narrator. Started that one on a weekday morning and ended up an hour late for work because I couldn’t put it down.
AM in NC
@Another Scott: Thanks for reminding me about Ivan Ilych – I also read that at too young an age, I think, and need to go back again 20 years later.
HinTN
@Baud: I thought Crime and Punishment pretty much set the gold standard for that.
hitchhiker
@Omnes Omnibus:
That is excellent, and sounds fun.
I also used to pass out images of random people cut from magazines and have students write character sketches of each one of them. It was a POV exercise in that my students had to try to inhabit (be in the POV of) the person they were describing, based on nothing but a photograph. Also showed them how much power there is in good writing.
NotMax
This goes way, way, way back but it did leave a deep impression at the time: Nobody’s Boy (original title Sans Famille) by Hector Malot.
In adult times, the Barefoot Gen(Hadashi no Gen)) graphic novels.
Miss Barbie
@Baud: Yeah… Me, too.
stinger
Another book that, when you get to the end, you want to reread it again from the beginning: Tom Tryon’s The Other.
oatler.
@stinger:
Remember the movie.”I’m king of the mountain! I’m king of the moutain!”
KSinMA
@cope: You just nailed what teaching is all about–finding out where your students actually are, instead of wherever you think they ought to be. Bless you–your students are lucky.