Thanks to the miracles of technology, I paid a visit last night to Jason Bourne a/k/a Matt Damon.

You’ll never see a more technologically advanced motion picture (well, you probably will, and probably in a few months’ time at that), but I walked out feeling nothing. It was like watching a chess game — interesting to observe the feints and thrusts, but no emotional connection to the characters.

Also, I didn’t know what the stakes were until the end (they turned out to be the well-being of the free world). The stakes undoubtedly had been conveyed early on but I’d missed them somehow amid the jump-cuts and flash-frames and jittery camera shots. As the credits were rolling, I asked my daughter Shawn about some of what I’d missed (yes, there comes a day when your adult children choose to be with you just because they like you). ‘Didn’t you see the first two?’ she responded.

Well. No, I didn’t, and I certainly agree it would have been better if I had. But I take the position that a sequel should stand on its own without depending on reference to the prior work. That, as it happens, is my biggest challenge in the novel I’m currently writing, working title “To Walk Humbly.”

To Walk Humbly (referred to hereinafter as TWH) is a sequel to my first novel To Love Mercy (TLM). TLM was about a white Jewish boy named Steve who encounters a black Evangelical boy nicknamed Sass in Chicago in 1948. Its plot turns on a MacGuffin*, a precious silver talisman fashioned by Steve’s great-great-grandfather. Steve and Sass were 10 and 11 years old in TLM. TWH picks up their lives four years later and entering high school and, again, the plot turns on the silver thing.

So I’ve got a lot of explaining to do. The challenge is to do the explaining in such a way that you, Dear Reader, learn the minutes of the last meeting without getting irritated with me, the Dear Author, for burdening you with them.

I’ve been dealing with this problem by having various characters reveal little bits of the past here and there. Steve and Sass will meet again in Part II and try to resume their aborted friendship. When they meet, I plan to fill in the remaining blanks about their shared history.

I’ve written about 110 pages of TWH — Section I plus two chapters of Section II. I was so concerned about whether it stands alone that I signed up for a Writer’s Center workshop for critique by people who had no prior exposure to TLM. This group gave me very positive feedback, I’m delighted to report, while spotting certain issues and shortcomings.

The best thing I got from them, though, was what they didn’t give me — flak about whether TWH stands alone. The subject didn’t even arise until a half-hour into the discussion, and then it wasn’t a serious concern.

So my advice to Jason Bourne is: If you’re planning to show up on screen a fourth time (and surely you are), work a little harder on having the movie make sense in its own terms. And see if you can fashion a character or two I can care about.

*MacGuffin: An otherwise meaningless thing or notion on which the plot turns — Alfred Hitchcock.

Frank Joseph
www.tolovemercy.com

P.S. Read the first chapter of To Walk Humbly at http://frankjoseph.com.

P.P.S. And read the first chapter-and-a-half of To Love Mercy at http://tolovemercy.com/to_love_mercy_excerpt.html
P.P.P.S. Chicago in November! I’ll be at Barnes & Nobles in Skokie and Vernon Hills, public libraries in Homewood, Skokie, Arlington Heights and Schaumburg, at least two high schools and one middle school, and the annual meeting of the Illinois School Library & Media Assn. More appearances are being added right along. They’ll be posted on our website in a few days. I’ll keep y’all posted.