needs more demons? no.

The Secret History of Star Wars is an exhaustive — and sometimes exhausting — investigation into the evolution of George Lucas’s Star Wars saga>, from two primary perspectives.

First, it examines Star Wars‘ influences, with an emphasis on Lucas’ tendency to incorporate aspects of properties that he unsuccessfully tries to license. Much has already been made of Star Wars‘ debt to Joseph Campbell, Flash Gordon, Dune, and The Hidden Fortress (and Samurai culture in general). Kaminsiki goes deeper, asserting the influence of E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen and Edgar Rice Burrough’s swashbuckling sci-fi, among others.

Second, it examines the changes the saga itself has gone through. Practically since the initial release of the first film, Lucas has claimed he had the whole saga worked out. Kaminski demonstrates — citing primary sources like Lucas’ own notes and draft scripts, as well as numerous secondary sources in interviews — that this was true only in the vaguest of terms. He gives particular attention to some of the films’ biggest twists. He makes the claim that when Ben Kenobi said, “a young pupil of mine, Darth Vader . . . betrayed and murdered your father,” in the original film, he was not dissembling, nor speaking metaphorically; in fact he asserts that the merging of “Father Skywalker” and “Darth Vader” happened during the script revision cycle of The Empire Strike Back. Likewise he explains that Luke and Leia did not become brother and sister until Return of the Jedi was written. Kaminski suggests that their siblinghood was introduced explicitly to tie off the loose end of “the other” potential Jedi knight mentioned by Yoda in Empire, and thereby exclude the possibility of sequels. Kaminksi devotes the most time to undermining the revisionist conception of the six films as “The Tragedy of Darth Vader.”

Kaminski provides insight not only into Lucas’ creative process, but his process for getting the films made. I had always assumed that Lucas was financially independent on the strength of Star Wars. (Famously, he had in insanely favorable merchandising deal, since the studio didn’t think the merchandising would be worth anything.) But Kaminski reveals that Lucas more-or-less bet the farm (Skywalker Ranch) on each successive picture.

The Secret History of Star Wars is thoughtfully organized and assembled, but it suffers from redundancy and some clunky phrasing. Kaminski mostly adopts an academic tone, with his sources diligently footnoted, which juxtaposes oddly with his use of geeky terms like “morph” and “port” to describe Lucas’ assorted artistic appropriations. But if you’re the sort of person for whom 600-odd pages about Star Wars sounds like an inducement, you’ll probably overlook its flaws, and — like me — read all the way through the appendices.

I’m enough of a geek myself to point out that Kaminksi makes one minor factual error that I found surprising: the first indication that Star Wars was “Episode IV” was earlier than Kamisnki says — it was first seen in the title crawl for the summer 1978 theatrical re-release, which we fanboys all went to in part for the Empire teaser attached to it.

needs more demons? where is that demon editor?

Klausner also seems to feel compelled to imbue I Don’t Care About Your Band with some sort of social relevance. Sometimes I think she hits on a genuine insight, but scattered throughout are cringe-inducing bits of armchair sociology derived from from observing a small population with an intrinsic selection bias. Few things get my dander up like sweeping generalizations about gender and sex role behavior, e.g., the “only women can be bisexual, men can only be in the process of turning gay” trope, which gets aired here.

* some versions of this pull-quote substitute Cat Power, which would have made me somewhat less likely to read the book.

needs more demons? just a few

I learned many things, not least of which is that HBO’s polygamous-Mormon-centered soap Big Love, the third season of which we lately finished watching, isn’t nearly as far-fetched as I might have thought. As a proponent of gay marriage, before reading this book I had thought a good place to draw the line between acceptable and unacceptable partnerships might be to allow any combination of adult consenting humans, so a marriage of, say, three women and four men might be fine. But after reading Under the Banner of Heaven I’m forced to conclude that raising children in a polygamous culture — particularly one that prioritizes procreation, devalues external education, and requires unquestioning obedience — creates a situation in which “consent” may be a practical impossibility.

So I feel like the degree to which this volume leaves me unedified and unmoved (except to vague annoyance) requires some systemic explanation: it’s not that these guys have suddenly quit being funny and/or incisive. It’s not that these guys all make themselves the heroes of their dumping anecdotes, or at least not any more than the form intrinsically requires; there’s plenty of sadder-but-wiser and gee-what-a-schmuck-I-was, and even some humility. And I’m a reluctant endorser, these days, of the meta-conceit that underlies this book: the notion that making a relationship survive requires learning things that are mostly readily learned from dead relationships.

So why doesn’t it speak to me more than it does? Maybe these gentlemen seem a little too eager to hash over the sad ends of their previous romantic entanglements. Maybe even in the most awkward moments of these awkwardness-filled essays (Dan Savage’s is up there, for one) there’s still a little too much boastfulness for my taste (Look! Look what I went through to prove I wasn’t straight!). Maybe the “but I’m much better now” attitude that many of the authors adopt somehow trivializes how miserable I made myself for so many years — but frankly, I don’t feel any need to closely examine that misery anymore.

Maybe I just wasn’t in the mood.

needs more demons? Sure. Some demons could’ve shown these guys what it’s really like to have one’s heart ripped from one’s chest. Kidding, I’m kidding.

The reaction puzzled me. Before I started the book, I already knew some intriguing facts about salt, for instance that the English word “salary” derives from the use of salt to pay Roman soldiers. I knew vaguely that salt had been important in the preservation of food before refrigeration. What I didn’t know about salt would fill a book, and fortunately Mark Kurlansky has written it. Kurlansky is also the author of books about cod, the Caribbean, and the Basque — all subjects, it turns out, with close ties to salt. (Perhaps a book about cheese, which depends far more on salt than I had known, will be next?) It’s a tribute to how consistently fascinating I found Salt that I want to read them all.

I may take a good while to read them all, as I took a long time to read Salt. The book moves roughly from ancient to modern times and individual chapters often have a geographic focus. Sometimes I got a little overwhelmed trying to keep track of which culture had used which evaporation techniques, and I enjoyed the book most a chapter or so at a time.

But it was chock-a-block with amazing tidbits. Among my favorites were accounts of the disastrous consequences of state-controlled salt monopolies (vigorous black markets; sparking one of Mahatma Ghandi’s early acts of defiance), the Chinese deep-bore mines, and salt-mine tourism at Wieliczka and Dürnberg.

Needs More Demons? Nope.