I was recently asked who I 
consider to be my favorite writer. 
It’s always a difficult question 
for me to answer — everyone I 
look up to for their writing, I 
look up to for a different reason, 
and there are quite a lot of those 
people. A Bob Dylan quote about 
his influences always jumps into 
my mind: “Open your eyes and 
your ears and you’re influenced.” 
There is something to learn from 
everyone.
But today I’m going to talk 
about an answer I pretty much 
never 
give 
in 
conversation: 
Taylor Swift.
I know what you might be 
thinking — “Ugh, not this again.” 
I stumble into a conversation 
about Taylor Swift, or onto a 
news headline about her, on at 
least a weekly basis. We’re all 
obsessed with her, in a national 
sense, whether we love her 
or love to hate her. Even I, a 
fan of Swift’s, can admit that 
it can get a little 
tiresome. 
Today 
my goal is just to 
tackle Swift from a 
literary perspective, 
because 
to 
me 
she 
is 
the 
best 
representation 
of 
something that I’ve 
seen 
from 
other 
artists as well.
When I said I 
never give Taylor 
Swift as an answer, 
it 
was 
for 
two 
reasons. The first 
I’ve already hinted 
at: It’s Taylor Swift. 
There are a lot of 
things about her I 
don’t like. I think 
that 
people 
are 
right 
to 
criticize 
her 
tendency 
to 
slip 
in 
and 
out 
of 
convenient 
identities 
(“the 
victim” being a big 
one), and a few too 
many of her songs 
for my liking milk 
the concept of being 
“not like other girls.” 
I wanted to know 
that she supported 
Democrats 
much 
earlier than 2018 
(although I’m very 
glad 
to 
have 
it 
confirmed 
now). 
Only 
last 
month, 
Akanksha 
Sahay 
wrote a great piece 
interrogating 
the 
complicated, 
at 
times 
problematic 
nature 
of 
Swift’s 
relationships 
with 
feminism 
and 
privilege and her 
recent 
political 
evolution.
The 
second 
reason 
is 
more 
what I’d like to go 
into 
here: 
When 
people ask which 
writers I admire, 
they usually mean 
a specific type of 
writing. I generally 
take 
it 
to 
mean 
novels 
and 
short 
stories, 
because 
fiction is what I 
write 
personally, 

but I’m sure people would also 
be receptive if I named a poet, 
an essayist or a playwright. 
A songwriter is a little less 

expected, which in a way makes 
sense — you don’t sit down and 
read songs.
I got into Taylor Swift in 
middle school, not long before 
I started attending an arts 
school where the literary part 
of myself would be set on fire by 
writers like Joyce Carol Oates 
and Flannery O’Connor (both 
of whom, I’ve found out since, 
have their own huge sets of 
problems, but that’s for another 
time). In those days, I wrote 
constantly: on the bus, in class, 
after school. All of my class notes 

from middle school generally 
follow a pattern — half a page 
or so of real note-taking, then 
two or three pages of exciting 
fiction during which you can bet 
I wasn’t paying attention at all. 
The front pocket of my backpack 
was always crammed with the 
loose pages of some story, strung 
together across whatever was 
around: printer paper, loose leaf, 
napkins, pamphlets.
While occasionally I’d muster 
up a crush on someone just to 
have something to talk about, I 
was not particularly interested 
in romance at the time. So when 
I danced around my room to 
the songs from Taylor Swift 
and Fearless, shouting along to 
the lyrics about some boy I was 
falling in love with, no particular 
person had taken shape in my 
mind. I loved Swift’s images — 
“the moon like a spotlight on 
the lake,” “Friday night beneath 
the stars / In a field behind your 
yard” — but didn’t live in them 
myself, and didn’t really want to 
yet.
I loved Taylor Swift more 

than 
anything 
because 
she 
made writing fun. The pieces 
from that initial phase that I 
remember most clearly all have 
to do with that passion: an image 
from her first album’s liner notes 
of Swift poring over a notebook, 
deep in concentration, a video 
of her exclaiming about how 
she’s getting a really good idea. 
Another video of her high school 
classmates being interviewed, 
talking about how Swift was 
constantly writing — they’d even 
seen her write on paper towels 
and napkins when she didn’t 
have paper.
There were always writers I 
loved, but Taylor Swift struck 
something new for me. In middle 
school, like everyone, I felt 
awkward, cumbersome, insecure 
and off-and-on lonely. It thrilled 
me to learn about somebody who 
was so passionate about writing 
that, when she was my same age, 
she’d decided to make a career 
out of it — and she’d done it 
successfully. Swift was working 
regularly as a songwriter long 
before she put out her first 
album, and a few albums later, 
she was still excited to be doing 
it. Her first album’s first song, 
“Tim McGraw,” mentions “a 
letter that you never read,” and 
one of her very first hits, “Our 
Song,” ends on the image of 
writing: “I grabbed a pen and an 
old napkin / And I wrote down 
our song.” And while it’s true 
that she sometimes wielded this 
self-reference in ways I didn’t 
like (“All those other girls, well 
they’re beautiful / But would 
they write a song for you?”), I 
was still drawn to this attention 
to writing because it made me 
feel encouraged in my own life.
As a kid who had often stayed 
in from recess during elementary 
just to write short stories by 
myself, I was enamored. I’m 
still enamored. Swift didn’t 
just have passion; she had the 
direction and determination to 
see that passion through, and 
she still does. She writes in her 
music videos, and in YouTube 
videos about her songwriting 
process. One Google search of 
“Taylor Swift writing” yields a 
ton of images of her scrawling in 
notebooks, mulling over a guitar.
I think one of the reasons 
we love Swift (those of us who 
do) is always going to be her 
image. When Taylor Swift falls 
in love, it’s in a beautiful dress, 
in the rain. When Taylor Swift 
writes, she looks good doing 
it, and then later that writing 
comes out on an award-winning 
album. Through all of her 
storytelling — her love stories, 
her angry tirades, her diary-
esque reminiscing on childhood 
memories 
and 
family 
and 
friends — she paints a picture 
of a world, a dream, in which 
her own emotions and thoughts 
and ideas become manifest. 
This is the very core of the act of 
writing, and it’s what makes it so 
easy to fall in love with Swift’s 
work. She can take the emotions 
that make her vulnerable and, 
using talent and hard work and 
her craft, turn that vulnerability 
into 
something 
admirable 
and untouchable. To me that 
has always been the ultimate 
superpower.

The Michigan Daily — michigandaily.com
Arts
Monday, November 12, 2018 — 5A

By Matt McKinley
©2018 Tribune Content Agency, LLC
11/12/18

Los Angeles Times Daily Crossword Puzzle

Edited by Rich Norris and Joyce Nichols Lewis

11/12/18

ANSWER TO PREVIOUS PUZZLE:

Release Date: Monday, November 12, 2018

ACROSS
1 Tempo similar to 
lento
6 Quacked 
insurance name
11 Film watcher’s 
channel
14 Plane, to Pierre
15 “Fighting” Notre 
Dame team
16 Listening organ
17 Forgetful moment
19 Falsehood
20 Request
21 Great enthusiasm
22 Revise, as text
24 Indian lentil stew
25 Sporty sunroofs
26 One arguing for 
the unpopular 
side
32 Absorb the 
lesson
33 Applauds
34 Effort
35 Rowing tools
36 “Cha-__!”: 
register sound
37 Delighted shout 
from the roller 
coaster
38 Summer hrs. in 
Oregon
39 William __, early 
bathysphere user
40 Exclaimed
41 Education 
division governed 
by a board
44 Peer
45 Humble dwelling
46 Aleut relative
47 Louvre Pyramid 
architect
50 Govt. agent
53 Windy City rail 
initials
54 Facts known to a 
select few ... and 
a hint to each set 
of circled letters
57 Funhouse 
reaction
58 Wafer named for 
its flavor
59 Like a funhouse
60 Dr. of rap
61 Best Buy “squad” 
members
62 Faked, in hockey

DOWN
1 Dalai __
2 NYC’s Madison 
and Lexington

3 Hockey 
enclosure
4 Received
5 Rescheduled 
after being 
canceled, as a 
meeting
6 Afflicts
7 House with 
brothers
8 Slimming 
surgery, for short
9 Braying beast
10 Frito-Lay corn 
snacks
11 Blessed with 
ESP
12 Primary 
thoroughfare in 
many towns
13 Believability, for 
short
18 Break in the 
action
23 Soft shoe
24 TiVo products
25 Freq. sitcom 
rating
26 Right smack in 
the middle
27 Threat from a 
fault
28 NFL list of 
games, e.g.
29 Crook’s cover

30 Claire of 
“Homeland”
31 Observed closely
32 Cuts (off)
36 Phone in a purse
37 Legal document
39 Enjoying the 
ocean
40 Enjoyed the 
ocean
42 Yves’ yes
43 Biblical pronoun
46 Cooled with 
cubes

47 Ocean map dot
48 Cereal go-with
49 Smooching in 
a crowded park 
and such, briefly
50 Road divide
51 Lake that’s a 
homophone of 
59-Across
52 Lightened, as 
hair
55 Nietzsche’s 
“never”
56 Casual shirt

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Taylor Swift and the 
image of writing

DAILY LITERATURE COLUMN

LAURA 
DZUBAY

‘Outlaw King’ is slow-moving, not worth the time

“Outlaw King” is a historical 
war drama about Robert Bruce 
(Chris Pine, “Wonder Woman”), 
a fearless pariah who leads a 

rebellion with his countrymen 
to reclaim his homeland from 
the formidable English army 
in the 14th century. While the 
movie boasts a strong attention 
to period detail and notable 
battle sequences, “Outlaw King” 
collapses onto a weak narrative 
skeleton 
and 
proves 
mostly 
unwatchable in its later acts. 
Some 
of 
the 
film’s 
few 
highlights are its costumes and 
set design. The first quarter, 
which largely takes place during 
indoor feasts, never fails to 
appear genuinely synchronistic. 
The appropriately plain kilts, 
candlelit interiors of war tents 
and gleaming armor of soldiers 
breathed life into an otherwise 
bland visual palette and dismal 
conversation scenes.
The inarguable high point 
of “Outlaw King,” however, is 
its first shot. The nine-minute 

take initially reveals the politics 
of the war in the confines of a 
dark tent, then travels to the 
brighter war camp outside. From 
there, the shot showcases a 
brilliantly choreographed sword 
duel that likely took weeks to 
rehearse, as well as an impressive 
catapult launch that ends in 
a fiery explosion. At first, this 
opening sequence truly seems 
to herald strong camerawork 
and action scenes from director 
David Mackenzie (“Hell or High 
Water”).
And yet, for all the effort that 
Mackenzie puts into his later 
battle sequences, they fall short 
of being original. One sequence 
involving a riverbank by a dense 
forest was so reminiscent of Peter 
Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” 
that it felt tacky. Another set 
piece involving a fiery nighttime 
assault on Bruce’s camp brilliantly 
combined practical and digital 
effects to immerse a viewer in the 
heat of the battle, but gradually 
descended into incoherence as 
Mackenzie’s camerawork lost its 
focus.
Aside from the film’s action 
and costumes, it is a thoughtlessly 
constructed mess in terms of 
narrative, editing and pacing. 
Almost every character feels 
underdeveloped 
and 
poorly 
written, to the point that entire 

passages of dialogue play out 
nonsensically. While there are a 
few standout performances from 
Pine and Stephen Dillane (“Game 
of Thrones”), even their lines 

feel wooden and hollow. Pine 
specifically does an admirable 
job as a scruffy rebel king, and his 
Scottish accent is spot-on. Though 
the strength of his performance 
cannot overcome a painfully weak 
script, there are several moments 
in the film in which viewers are 
left wondering why characters 

ANISH TAMHANEY
Daily Arts Writer

NETFLIX

NETFLIX

“Outlaw King”

Netflix

FILM REVIEW

make the decisions they do, 
forced to supplant their memory 
with only guesses as to the logic 
of events. Whether involving a 
rushed romantic subplot between 
Bruce 
and 
Queen 
Margaret 
(newcomer Rebecca Robin) or 
a deceitful murder toward the 
film’s start, Mackenzie does not 
seem to care whether viewers 
even receive such explanations.
Another 
reason 
that 
the 
narrative of “Outlaw King” may 
confound the audience is through 
its editing. While the film lasts just 
over two hours, the original cut 
was clearly much longer. There 
are obvious gaps in the story, 

entire missing scenes that later 
contribute to a payoff that simply 
doesn’t land. In particular, when 
a fighter dies on the battlefield, 
the frames decelerate to slow-
motion. The heroes cry the name 
of their fallen companion, but the 
audience often has no idea who 
just died. The emotional impact of 
these moments is nearly negligible 
because the source of attachment 
to these soldiers — a backstory 
— ended up on the cutting room 
floor. 
Although, 
inserting 
these 
scenes back into the film would 
not be a neat solution either. In 
the third and penultimate act, 

“Outlaw King” takes a turn, to 
put it mildly, toward being boring. 
The film is paced in a way that 
bookends the narrative tension, 
and towards the middle, viewers 
may not so much wonder what 
happens next as they will why 
they are still watching. A subplot 
involving Bruce’s wife and a dull 
recruiting phase for the rebellion 
cut between each other for what 
seems like an eternity. 
For diehard war movie fans, 
this film might just offer a solid 
half hour of enjoyment. For 
everyone else, myself included, 
“Outlaw King” is below passable 
and not worth seeing. 

Viewers may 

not so much 

wonder what 

happens next as 

they will why 

they are still 

watching

 She paints 

a picture of a 

world, a dream, 

in which her own 

emotions and 

thoughts and 

ideas become 

manifest