Welcome to the website of author Edward Trimnell!
Perhaps you read my recent critique of the Apple Store concept and thought that I might be a complainer.
Well, a writer at ZD Net had a similar experience: I went to an Apple store to buy an iPhone 11, but no one would talk to me
The article describes “a little chaos in Apple retail right now”.
Based on my visit last week, I would describe that assessment as a very polite understatement.
This was one of the big teen movies of my youth. I saw it when it came out in the mid-1980s. I recently watched it again as a middle-age (51) adult.
The basic idea of The Breakfast Club is immediately relatable: Five very different teens (a nerd, a jock, a princess, a basket case, a hoodlum) are thrown together in the enclosed space of their high school’s library. They are then forced to interact over the course of a day-long detention period on a Saturday.
This is a small drama, but also a much larger one: The setup for the movie provides a concentrated and contained view of all teenage interactions.
I liked The Breakfast Club, for all the usual reasons that millions of people have liked the movie since it first hit cinemas in February 1985. Everyone who has ever been a teenager can relate to feeling awkward and misunderstood; and The Breakfast Club has teenage angst in spades. The cast of characters is diverse enough that each of us can see parts of ourselves in at least one of these kids.
The Breakfast Club is free of the gratuitous nudity that was somewhat common in the teensploitation films of the era. There is no Breakfast Club equivalent to Phoebe Cates’s topless walk beside the swimming pool in Fast Times at Ridgemont High. (There is a brief glimpse of what is supposed to be Molly Ringwald’s panties. But since Ringwald was a minor at the time, an adult actress filled in as a double for this shot.)
Nor are any of the actors especially good-looking or flashy. They all look like normal people. No one paid to see this movie for its star power or sex appeal. The Breakfast Club succeeded on the basis of its script, and solid acting and production values.
I enjoyed the movie the second time around, too. I have to admit, though, that teenage self-absorption can seem a little irksome when viewed through adult eyes. Even the teenage self-absorption of one’s own generation.
I’m the same age as Michael Anthony Hall and Molly Ringwald; we were all born in 1968. The other actors in the film are all within ten years of my age. Nevertheless, this time I was watching their teenage drama unfold as an older person—not as a teenager myself. Teenage drama is, by its very nature, trivial (and yes, a little annoying) when viewed from an adult perspective.
The movie also makes all adults look corrupt, stupid, or craven—as opposed to the hapless and victimized, but essentially idealistic and blameless—teens. Every young character in The Breakfast Club blames his or her parents for their problems, and these assertions are never really challenged.
We get only a few shots of the parents, when the kids are being dropped off for their day of detention. The parents are all portrayed as simplistic naggers.
The teens’ adult nemesis throughout the movie, Assistant Principal Vernon, is a caricature, a teenager’s skewed perception of the evil adult authority figure. The school janitor, meanwhile, is no working-class hero–but a sly operator who blackmails Vernon for $50.
One of the reasons you liked this movie if you were a teenager in 1985 is that it flattered you–without challenging your myopic, teenage perspective of the world. If you weren’t happy, it was probably because of something your parents did, not anything that you did–or failed to do.
That may have been a marketing decision. Who knows? The Breakfast Club goes out of its way to flatter its target audience–the suburban teenager of the mid-1980s. I suppose I didn’t see that when I was a member of that demographic. I see it now, though.
-ET
Thanks to those of you who purchased 12 Hours of Halloween during the recent $0.99 sale. The sale was a big success, when combined with the promotions that I ran for it on several sites.
I’ve got some more fiction in the works for Amazon/Kindle Unlimited publication. Remember that I also have a new story here on the site, “I Know George Washington”.
“I Know George Washington” will eventually find its way into one of my upcoming anthologies. My plan, though, is to keep this story–along with many others–ever-free here on Edward Trimnell Books (or in Kindle Unlimited)
For me, publication is about more than just Amazon. I am also a big fan of the ezine/webzine concept. That means lots of stories and other content here on Edward Trimnell Books, for you to read online.
If you haven’t read my novella Luk Thep, this is your chance to read it for FREE.
I wrote this novella in early 2016, after I read this article in The Economist.
I haven’t promoted Luk Thep as aggressively as some other titles, but readers have generally liked it. Check it out on Amazon!
I own several HP Lovecraft collections, but this one is my favorite: The Best of H. P. Lovecraft: Bloodcurdling Tales of Horror and the Macabre . This volume was published in 1987.
I’ve bought it twice: Once in 1988 (that copy is long since gone); and I bought a replacement copy about two years ago.
This collection has all the stories that the newcomer to Lovecraft really needs, including “The Shadow over Innsmouth” and “The Dunwich Horror”.
Another feature of this collection is the excellent introductory essay by Robert Bloch.
Over the past week or so, the weather here in Southern Ohio has been growing gradually cooler, after a brutal heatwave throughout most of July and August.
Today we had a delightfully cool, overcast morning.
Autumn is my favorite time of year, and the time when I tend to be most productive. (My most sluggish time of the year is the dog days of high summer.)
Let summer end, and let fall begin in earnest.
Only 54 days until Halloween!
Waukegan Public Library unveils Ray Bradbury statue on ‘Fahrenheit 451’ author’s birthday
I’ve read Fahrenheit 451 several times. This is a short novel, and it won’t take you long to read. (Bradbury was more of a short story writer than a novelist. The novels that he wrote tended to be on the short side, too.)
Some of you have been asking my opinion regarding new Barnes & Noble CEO James Daunt’s plan for the struggling book retailer.
Daunt plans to make B&N stores stripped-down versions of what they currently are. The model here is the airport bookstore on one hand, the local, neighborhood bookstore on the other.
In other words, small bookstores that carry about the same inventory as the book section of the nearest Walmart, Costco, or Kroger.
So why do you even need a bookstore, if Walmart already stocks about the same number of books?
Daunt is British, and this might be a viable strategy for the British retail market, which is decades behind that of the United States.
It isn’t a winning strategy for the US, where Amazon dominates by virtue of its wide selection, low prices, and economies of scale.
Daunt clearly has no plan to compete with Amazon. He plans to compete with…small neighborhood bookstores that have already gone out of business in most of the U.S.
Forgive me if I’m underwhelmed.
Just in time for late summer reading, I’ve added these horror titles for you to enjoy FREE in Kindle Unlimited:
(Click the links to view them on Amazon.)
The year is 1976, and the Headless Horseman rides again. A dark fantasy horror thriller filled with wayward spirits, historical figures, and a 1970s vibe.
Halloween night 1980: The suburbs are haunted, as three young friends endure twelve hours of nonstop supernatural terror. Will they survive the night?
Would you risk your life and sanity on the most haunted road in Ohio for a $2000 prize?
16 horrific tales filled with monsters, ghosts, and deadly people. For fans of Stephen King’s short story collections.
An American executive in exotic Thailand. An evil spirit that follows her home. Supernatural mystery and terror on two continents.
Thanks to everyone who purchased the book yesterday. I’ll leave it at 99 cents throughout today, and reset it to the usual ($3.99) price tomorrow.
Also, a reminder that the book is always free in Kindle Unlimited.
If you are not a member of Kindle Unlimited, check out the free trial.
The Kindle version of Revolutionary Ghosts is priced at just $0.99 through the weekend. This is your change to grab the book for next to nothing, if you haven’t read it yet!
Revolutionary Ghosts will, however, return to the normal price of $3.99 on Monday.
Get it now while this low price lasts!
Cassettes Are Back, and It’s Not About the Music
I wouldn’t have expected this one.
I remember cassettes well, of course. (I even owned a few 8-tracks, as they were being phased out, in the very early 1980s.)
There are a lot of things that I miss about the last century, but the hissing, easily tangled audiocassette is not one of them. (That and typewriter correction fluid.)
As the above-linked article states, the big selling point of the cassette was its distinction as the most portable audio format, under the technological constraints we faced in the 1980s. No one loved them for their sound, or their reliability.
Steve Wagner is an ordinary Ohio teenager in the year of America’s Bicentennial, 1976. As that summer begins, his thoughts are mostly about girls, finishing high school, and driving his 1968 Pontiac Bonneville.
But this will be no ordinary summer. Steve sees evidence of supernatural activity in the area near his home: mysterious hoof prints and missing persons reports, and unusual, violently inclined men with British accents.
There is a also a hideous woman–the vengeful ghost of a condemned Loyalist spy–who appears in the doorway of Steve’s bedroom.
Filled with angry spirits, historical figures, and the Headless Horseman of “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow,” Revolutionary Ghosts is a terrifying coming-of-age story with a groovy 1970s vibe.
Jane had been asleep for several hours when she saw the image of the little village. She was alone in the dream (at least at its beginning) without any guides or emissaries from that world. Nevertheless, she knew immediately, instinctively, that the sun-baked collection of thatch and bamboo huts was a village in Thailand—a village not far from Bangkok, in fact.
Jane and one of the night-shift security guards overcame the language barrier enough so that the latter could summon a taxi for the former. Jane was half-asleep by the time the taxi driver dropped her off at her hotel.
Jane’s first inclination was to go directly to bed. It was now a little past 10 p.m. local time. Then she realized how famished she was. If she went to sleep without eating anything, she would feel intolerably weak and light-headed in the morning.
The hotel restaurant was still open; this was Bangkok, after all. Jane ordered a spicy fish-and-rice dish, the sort of fare that could be found in practically any restaurant worth its chops in Southeast Asia. Continue reading “Luk Thep: Chapter 10”
