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ntertainment
Page 10 The Compass, Nov. 2004
The Alchemist: Out of the
bam and off to the pyramids
By Mark Morris
Stajfwriter
So there’s this guy in a
bar. Actually, there’s this guy in
a bam, because he is bom there.
His family is dirt poor so from
the bam he foregoes college and
becomes a carpenter. Prior to age
35 this guy tums the world onto
its ear with clever parables and
theological interpretations so
precise that high-ranking church
officials have him killed for fear
of his public opinion rating. For
centuries after, people worship
his very name, regurgitate his
poetry and stare into the sky,
awaiting his promised retum.
The best part is he didn’t
accomplish all this through
ambition. It was simply what he
was bom to do.
If you can fathom that
story, I invite you to continue
your study of metaphysics by
reading “The Alchemist” by
Paulo Cohello. After all, can
twenty million people be wrong?
Cohello, the Brazilian author of
seven books, originally
published “The Alchemist” in
1988 and has since seen it
published in fifty-six languages.
Critics, pop icons and former
President William Jefferson
Clinton have heralded the
fictional piece. It is essentially a
novel about realizing your
dreams and manifesting your
destiny, a quest that begins prior
to you even realizing it. Cohello
approaches the concept by
painting a world that is wholly
intelligible, alive and connected
without surfeiting us with
pyrotechnic theism.
His central character is
Santiago, a shepherd straddling
the border of clumsiness and
manhood. This wide-eyed youth,
trained in Latin, Spanish and
religion, decided he would rather
see the world than bury his head
in a dusty seminary. His father,
acting patemally with a touch of
envy, gives him three ancient
Spanish coins to buy a flock of
sheep and begin his journey.
Santiago adopts his sheep as a
pseudo family, choosing to talk
and read to them as he takes
advantage of their wool and meat
for survival. While he sweeps the
countryside perfecting the art of
livestock negotiation, Santiago
has a recurring nightly dream.
The dream features a child
instructing him to go to the
Egyptian Pyramids to find a
hidden treasure. After sharing
this vision with a Gypsy
interpreter and getting little to no
help firom her, he decides to trash
the idea altogether.
Within twenty-four
hours Santiago is greeted by an
elderly man named Melchizedek
who mysteriously knows the
names of Santiago’s father,
mother and the girl he had a
crush on. Astounded by the
man’s psychic abilities, Santiago
is further taken aback when he
pronounces to him, “When you
want something, all the universe
conspires in helping you to
achieve it.” In exchange for one
tenth of his sheep, the
mysterious gentleman advises
Santiago to find his treasure by
following a divinely laid path.
The boy immediately sells the
remainder of his “family” and
embarks on a mission to Egypt.
While crossing the sea
and the desert, Santiago gets
robbed a couple of times, leams
new job skills and meets a series
of peculiar characters, none the
least being an alchemist. An
alchemist is a person claiming to
have the conscious power of
controlling mutations and
transmutations within matter and
energy and even within life itself.
Count Saint Germain of France
identified Christ’s walk on the
Sea of Galilee as demonstrative
of applied alchemy. The
Alchemist becomes a second
father to Santiago, guiding him
through a series of potentially
life threatening situations and
even giving advice on
relationships en route to the
pyramids. At the climax of his
exhaustive trek across the sand,
Santiago finds his treasure in a
place that jolts readers like a
double shot espresso.
“The Alchemist” is an
enchanting reminder of things
for accomplished people and a
motivational anecdote for those
of us on the sometimes-
disheartening path to success.
Equipped with cynical humor,
fuel-injected action sequences,
and magnificent geographical
shifts, “The Alchemist” reduces
“Who Moved my Cheese?” to
ashes of a burned out Mother
Goose rhyme.
Best of all, “The
Alchemist” is a hght enough read
to serve as a break between
homework assignments or a
source of entertainment, in case
your personal destiny includes
driving forty miles north of
Elizabeth City seeking a venti
cup of Starbucks.
In 2003, Harper Collins
released a lO* anniversary
edition in paperback. I
recommend it for the $13 price
tag and the new introduction by
Paulo Cohello. You can find it
at Bames and Nobles—provided
your current mode of
transportation is equipped with
a satellite navigation system—or
purchase a used copy from
Amazon.com for as little as five
bucks. If all else fails you may
borrow a copy from Mr. Larry
Wilson in the ECSU admissions
office. ISBN 0-06-250218-2
(163pp).
10 r ■• =
N C
liikf* si m mi
How to win friends,
influence enemies
By Rene Finkenkeller
Staff Writer
In SLANDER: Liberal
Lies About the American Right
(2002), she meticulously
captured every politically biased
‘report’ by nationally renowned
newspapers and TV journalists,
and summed it up with one
gentle truth: “The immutable
fact of politics in America is this:
Liberals hate Conservatives.”
Ironically, faithful readers knew
Dan Rather wasn’t the first to
make a mistake, npr would he be
the last. In TREASON: Liberal
Treachery from the Cold War to
the War on Terrorism (2003), she
took everyone back to school to
releam everything we had been
taught about the McCarthy era.
And she didn’t dare mince words
when she summed it up with
“...the irreconcilable
opposites—God or Man, Soul or
Mind, Freedom or Communism?
Liberals chose Man.
Conservatives chose God.” And
now in her latest book. How to
Talk to a Liberal (if you must).
Ann Coulter, concerned that she
is “the most unpublished writer
in America”, has put into book
form her most favorite and
sacred political columns that
were only granted blogger space
since 9/11. What does she start
us off with? “Historically, the
best way to convert liberals is to
have them move out of their
parents’ home, get a job, and start
paying taxes. But if this doesn’t
work, you might have to actually
argue with a liberal.”
She has compiled all of
her online columns related to the
injustices and missed
opportunities conservative
politicians have lost to set
records straight, and to “put
liberals back in their place.”
She’s no longer concerned with
what liberals think, or why they
think it. She’s on a mission now
to re-train conservatives on how
to act and react to liberals. In
Coulter’s eyes, liberals are out to
repeat as many lies as they
possibly can, in the least amount
of time, so America is too
preoccupied to notice that
liberals are building a Death Star.
(And the Star Wars Trilogy came
out on DVD this month too; you
should visit or revisit that as
well!). Coulter’s sophisticated
wit, lack of fear, and intellectual
compulsion to get every detail
and footnote right, (so those
nonbelievers can look up the
facts for themselves), is so
effective, you’re either repeating
to yourself, “Why are we so blind
to this?” or “I can’t believe she
acmally said that!” By compiling
her pieces over the past 3 years,
she also unintentionally, or
maybe very intentionally, makes
a stunning point that the majority
of her articles could’ve been
written last week, and no one
could tell the difference.
Liberal’s game plans never
change, their arguments never
change, and despite them being
the party that screams for change,
the actual liberal voices and
names haven’t changed (some
for 30-40 years!).
Ann Coulter is a
graduate of Comell University
and the University of Michigan
Law School. When she’s not
opining in syndicated columns
or books about her brothers and
sisters on the wrong side of
politics (while maintaining her
perfect record of being a New
York Times Best Seller), she’s a
legal affairs corespondent, an
attomey, a frequent guest on talk-
news programs, and was voted
one of the Top 100 Public
Intellectuals in 2001. Whew.
But to most, she’s the college
professor we never had! Release
date October 5, 2004/US
$26.95.
Blanchard’s Breathtaker a breath of fresh air
By Toby Tate
Editor- in-Chief
Imagine waking up in
the middle of the night, lightning
flashing like a strobe light on
maximum, hail the size of
baseballs pounding the shingles
off your roof, and sirens wailing
in the distance like World War
two air raid alerts. You gather
your family into the nearest
windowless room, heart racing
and adrenaline pumping, while
outside the wind howls like a
freight train coming down the
tracks. Then, the front door
swings open, and in the doorway
stands the black silhouette of a
man backlit by a sky full of
jagged streaks of electric fire.
The book is Alice
Blanchard’s Breathtaker, author
of the thriller Darkness Peering
and the award-winning short
story collection The Stuntman’s
Daughter. Though the book
takes place mostly in Oklahoma,
Ms. Blanchard was born in
Connecticut, lives in L.A., and
studied at Emerson and Harvard.
There is no information as to
whether or not she earned a
degree, but one would assume
so.
Charlie Grover, Police
Chief of Promise, Oklahoma,
finds a family of three dead, with
several wooden objects
protruding from their bodies.
This is not an unusual
occurrence since flying debris is
quite common during a tomado,
and most of it moves through the
air with the speed and force of a
crossbow. A couple of things
that strike Grover as odd,
however, are the facts there are
drag marks on the floor of the
house made where the bodies
had been moved from one place
to another, and defensive
wounds on the arms. Further
investigation finds that teeth had
been removed and replaced with
other teeth from someone else’s
mouth; very bizarre.
The M.O. (modis
operandi) of the killer makes no
sense, but when does it ever?
Charlie eventually finds that a
similar killing took place
previously in a small Texas town,
and after unearthing the bodies,
leams that teeth were switched
in them as well. Whoever it is,
this person possesses a lot of
pent up rage and hostility, made
apparent by the sheer ferocity of
the killings. It takes a lot of
anger-driven power to stab
someone all the way through the
body with a piece of wood, let
alone several pieces of wood.
In the story we leam
that Charlie was not only abused
as a boy by a violent, alcoholic
father named Isaac, but that he
was severely burned in a house
fire that killed his mother and
younger sister, earning him the
cruel childhood nickname of
“Bumed-All-Over Grover.” This
tragic event sobered his father
up, but there is still bittemess
between them, a resentment
which Charlie harbors toward his
father, blaming him for the
deaths of his mother and sister.
There is the typical
teenage daughter, Sophie,
intelligent and sweetly innocent
with a rebellious streak. She
misses her mother, who died
from cancer a few years earlier
(Charlie has had a rough life),
but she is attached to her
grandfather, and doesn’t know of
the abusive life he led.
Some of the other
characters include a love
interest, Willa, a storm expert
and research scientist who
Charlie gets advice from
concerning the killer’s ability to
find tornados; an assistant Chief
named Lester peere, a former
football star and ladies man who
mbs Charhe the wrong way, and
who wants to relive past glories;
Boone Pritchett, a high school
bad boy and storm chaser trying
to win the heart of Sophie,
Charlie’s daughter.
Of course, Charlie
suspects anyone and everyone of
being the killer, including his
own father and Boone Pritchett.
This adds a lot of tension to the
story and makes for a pulse-
pounding read. It feels like a
James Patterson novel; short
chapters and concise prose, yet
there is a more eloquent,
mellifluous description of events
and emotions, actually bringing
me to tears in several places.
Maybe I’m just a wimp.
One of the things that I
enjoyed about this book was the
use of the “storm chaser”
vernacular. It seemed to be well
researched and very detailed in
the areas of storm chasing and
medical examination of the
bodies. Lots of techno-jargon
and medical-speak, adding to the
realism of the story. It’s fun to
drive around with the chasers
and hear detailed descriptions of
giant cumulonimbus clouds
dropping out of the sky and
forming spinning vortexes that
rip apart everything in their path.
Some things that
bothered me: the names were a
little too “hickified,” like Lester
Deere and a couple named Sailor
and Birdie Rideout. It reminded
me of the “Dukes of Hazzard”
and Roscoe P. Coltraine.
Contrary to popular belief,
people from Oklahoma and the
Midwest tend to have the same
types of names people in other
states do, like Johnson or
Rosenberg. It seems to be a
common occurrence in books to
sort of stereotype people from
certain parts of the country,
especially the south, as hicks and
bumpkins, and since I actually
lived in many of the places
where the events took place, it
made the story a little less
believable for me.
There were a few
things that happened in the book
that didn’t quite get resolved,
certain relationships which just
kind of languished at the end.
Maybe the author felt they had
lost importance after the climax,
or maybe she just plain forgot
about them, but I didn’t. I
wanted to know what the hell
happened. I can’t really
mention specifics, as I don’t
want to give away too much of
the story, just suffice it to say
some loose ends were left
untied. Overall, the story
doesn’t suffer from it, it’s just a
nitpick.
One thing that was
different from Patterson was that
I knew early on who the killer
was. In a Patterson novel, you
can try to think until your brain
pops and you’re not even going
to be close in most cases. I have
to give Blanchard credit,
however, she did throw a couple
of curves, but not really enough
to knock me off base.
Another small
problem for me was that the
killer’s motive was not fully
explained. Why stick wood
.through the bodies? In fact, why
kill people at all? I never quite
got the premise behind that. It
was clear the man was a psycho,
and there was good reason for
that, as we find out later, but the
mind of the killer was never
really probed, making my
feelings towards him ambiguous.
What was he thinking? Why was
he doing this? Most of the story
centers around the thoughts of
Charlie, and allother characters,
except Sophie, are secondary. I
wanted Charlie to win, not
because I hated the antagonist so
much, but just because I liked
Charlie. I hate to keep bringing
up Patterson, but in his stories
you usually get two narratives:
the protagonist and the
antagonist, so even though you
may not know who the killer is
you get to see inside their head
and learn their secrets and
motives.
Criticisms aside, the
plot was solid and the events
were described in an exciting
way. Charlie is quite a strong
character, and we really feel for
him and get to know him.
Though the book was written in
third person, I felt I was seeing
everything from Charlie’s point
of view. We also feel a lot of
empathy for Sophie, Isaac
Grover and Willa. I found that I
had a very hard time putting this
book down. I wanted to read it
until I was done. Of course, I
realize that shouldn’t be the
ultimate test for good literature,
but if you’re looking for a great
female author with similarities to
Patterson or Jeffery Deaver, this
book is highly recommended.
“Breathtaker,” a
hardcover with 416 pages, was a
Today Show pick, retails for
$24.95, and is published by
Warner Books. Also available in
paperback for $6.99.