Foxfire Burns and Burns...

Exploring female disenfranchisement and rigid class structure within a 1950s cultural backdrop, Foxfire: Confessions of a Girl Gang is the saga of a girl gang from the working class factory town of Hammond, New York. With immediacy this book appealed to me as I have an odd affinity for films and stories about gangs and so-called misfits who live on the outer fringes of society. Something about the fierce loyalty and camaraderie coming out of isolation and misunderstanding hits me right in the feels. I don't know. Either that or I watch The Outsiders and The Warriors way more than I need to.

Foxfire is of a different breed than the bro-fests like The Outsiders as it allows you to ride shotgun to all the mischief and patriarchy dismantling with a band of fierce teen girls. They are unique in that they aren't an off-shoot of a local boy gang, nor are they the 'property of' a bunch of hoods. No, the Foxfire girls have formed this group on their own accord, and have done so more as a survival tactic than out of obligation. Flotsam and jetsam these girls are, misbegotten throwaway junk that is cast out into a briny ocean of problems that are largely not of their making. These girls all come from broken, dysfunctional, and financially strained households, and are looking for a way to just get the hell out of them. The only option for them, the only way they can have some sense of dignity and to fight back against their struggle, is to band together. With bruised knuckles and pride, the Foxfire girls and their aggressive social justice crusade make the Pink Ladies look like mere powder puffs on Sandra Dee's vanity table (...and yes, I’m ignoring Rizzo's cold stare right about now...).

Hope

I began talking about hope in 2003, in the bleak days after the war in Iraq was launched. Fourteen years later, I use the term hope because it navigates a way forward between the false certainties of optimism and of pessimism, and the complacency or passivity that goes with both. Optimism assumes that all will go well without our effort; pessimism assumes it's all irredeemable; both let us stay home and do nothing. Hope for me has meant a sense that the future is unpredictable, and that we don’t actually know what will happen, but know we may be able write it ourselves.

Hope is a belief that what we do might matter, an understanding that the future is not yet written. It’s informed, astute open-mindedness about what can happen and what role we may play in it. Hope looks forward, but it draws its energies from the past, from knowing histories, including our victories, and their complexities and imperfections. It means not being the perfect that is the enemy of the good, not snatching defeat from the jaws of victory, not assuming you know what will happen when the future is unwritten, and part of what happens is up to us.

-Rebecca Solnit, from "Protest and Persist: Why Giving Up Is Not An Option"  -The Guardian, 2018

Ambition Is Putting A Ladder Against The Sky...

"Stealing is very bad. Only really bad people take things that don't belong to you..." 

"Where do you get your ideas from?"

A question deemed formulaic and dreaded by most artists alike, as the answer is complicated, albeit a touch annoying and even difficult to answer. Divulge too much you come off pompous, say too little and you just might be hiding something. You just can't win.

Maurice Swift is someone who knows exactly where his ideas come from. They come to him easy.

Utilizing his charms and smoldering good looks, he ingratiates himself towards famous writers, not to learn the craft or be around like minds, but to steal from them. Maurice is a plagiarist, a story vampire if you will. He has taken the infamous quote --- "good artists copy, great artists steal" --- as a mantra for himself so he can reach his literary ambitions, for there is no other way for him to do so. See, Maurice lacks not only a soul, but writing talent. He wants to be a famous writer and win literary awards such as "The Prize", but he cannot come up with a original idea to save his life, and doesn't possess a flair for prose, thus he must feed off of others to replenish the fantastical image he so fashions for himself.

His climb begins in Berlin in the late 1980s, when while working as a waiter at the Savoy he captures the attentions of renowned novelist Erich Ackermann. Ackermann, lonely, aging, and fresh off of literary acclaim and a Prize win for his latest novel, becomes enraptured with Maurice and his desires to become a success, thus he allows him to become his assistant while he travels for his book tour. After some time Ackermann becomes consumed by Maurice, desiring to further an intimate relationship with him, but when he lets his guard down, Maurice takes advantage and uses his charms to coax Ackermann to divulge a secret that poses damaging consequences for the author. This secret enables Maurice to launch his career, leaving Ackermann's career and livelihood in a shambles.

Then it is onward, and upward the ladder to the next victim...