tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-49834566399039391612024-03-12T17:06:42.157-07:00The Virtual Astrolabe Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.comBlogger184125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-9860703349279998972020-06-09T08:55:00.002-07:002020-06-09T08:55:44.206-07:00My article, "Roads Go Ever Ever On" is featured in Oklahoma Humanities Magazine<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I'm excited to have my new article featured in <i>Oklahoma Humanities</i> Spring/Summer 2020 issue! My article, "Roads Go Ever Ever On," focuses on the importance of home in fantasy literature, looking specifically at the works of Tolkien in conversation with Old English literature and <i>The Odyssey</i>. You can download the issue free below, as well as sign up for a free subscription on their website. It's an excellent issue focused on the theme of 'home,' and features articles ranging from food, immigration, Dorothea Lange, Woody Guthrie, WWI-era pop songs, and women's suffrage. Hope you enjoy it!</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read it here: <a href="https://www.okhumanities.org/doccenter/d66870df8ad249eb8b9ca560123d1db4" target="_blank">https://www.okhumanities.org/doccenter/d66870df8ad249eb8b9ca560123d1db4</a></span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-87721932221687118642020-06-08T09:15:00.000-07:002020-06-08T09:15:25.532-07:00Tolkien's The Hobbit and the Prophecy of Language <br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">We’re often reminded that all of Tolkien’s stories began
with language. Tolkien invented the languages of elves first and then wondered,
<em>where did these words come from? Who made them? Spoke them? What books and
legends preserved them</em>? Of course, his languages didn’t exactly emerge out
of a vacuum, either; they were his attempts to connect the linguistic thread
between various ancient cultures, teasing out common words and phrases that
might have belonged to an earlier, ur-language now lost in the folds of time.
If words tell a story (today is “Tuesday,” which was originally “Tyr’s Day,”
the Norse God of war), then it’s amazing how little of this story we
understand, or even puzzle over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tolkien’s works are a way to make us stare a bit
harder in the mirror and wonder where we — and the worlds we
inhabit — originated, and if we can ever go home again. So it’s fitting that
his very first novel, <em>The Hobbit</em>, provides the essential template that
all his subsequent works would follow, and sets the greater books (in scope,
not inspiration) in striking relief.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">With this in mind, we can see Tolkien’s
linguistic bent in <em>The Hobbit, </em>which carries a riddle in every name
and incident of the story. Take Bilbo Baggins, for example, a well-to-do Hobbit
who is hired as a burglar for a band of adventuring dwarves. A “Bilbo” is a
kind of sword once made in <st1:place><st1:city>Bilbao</st1:city>, <st1:country-region>Portugal</st1:country-region></st1:place>,
and “Baggins” has the connotation of “bag” (money/purse) and “bagman” (thief).
Similarly, a “burglar” also contains a hint of the word “burgher,” which means a
bourgeoise (prosperous) citizen. So the linguistic riddle/joke here is that the
Gandalf mistakes a burgher for a burglar, <em>or </em>that he knows the burgher
is a burglar because of his name — “Sword-Thief”!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="5a3f">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Surprisingly, in a world teeming with fantasy
and lore, the Hobbits are completely anachronistic: they behave like proper
English “burghers,” with their tidy Hobbit-holes crammed full of snacks and
tea, to say nothing of their obsession with propriety. When Bilbo wishes
Gandalf a good-day, the wizard quickly realizes that the true sentiment is
utterly lacking: “Do you wish me a good morning, or mean that it is a good
morning whether I want it or not; or that you feel good this morning; or that
it is a morning to be good on?” (5). Bilbo merely shrugs and says “All of them
at once,” and soon says, again, “Good morning!” as a way of dismissing Gandalf.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bilbo is like most of us; we don’t consider the
meaning of our words or where they come from. So what a puzzle to be confronted
with Gandalf, a wizard who has literally stepped out of the pages of an old
romance, and who understands the meaning of everything — including Bilbo’s name
and origin!<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="23ee">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As a professor, Tolkien must have despaired to
see his students unable to feel the same connection to the heroic works of antiquity — <em>Beowulf,
</em>the <em>Sagas</em>, etc. For most these must have seemed like so-many
dusty, irrelevant texts to be pilfered for exam questions, not to be read for
the sheer pleasure of doing so. As Gandalf laments, “Swords in these parts are
mostly blunt, and axes are used for trees, and shields as cradles or
dish-covers; and dragons are comfortable far-off (and therefore legendary)”
(21).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="f8af">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Literature and art has been safely cordoned off
into libraries and classrooms, where they are no longer ‘real,’ but celebrated
as heirlooms and keepsakes. Yet the old works still have power, just as a
sword, once sharpened, can still cut, and a shield can still protect from a
dragon’s wrath.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="a3b8">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">So Gandalf decides to wake up Bilbo by sending
him on an allegorical adventure to the heart of meaning itself. Like most
fantasy tales, it is a “there and back again” journey, but with a twist: Bilbo
is less discovering himself on the road than assuming his alter ego — the
“Took” inside the “Baggins.” As Gandalf reminds him, he’s descended from famous
Tooks who took grand adventures and became heroes of colorful stories. With a
simple name change — burgher to burglar — the man himself changes, since who we
are is shaped by what we call ourselves, and how others ‘read’ it. As a further
illustration of this, Gandalf engraves runes on Bilbo’s door, as if to further
write him into the story. A lie isn’t really a lie, after all, if you believe
it yourself.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Initially Bilbo <em>does not </em>believe it,
nor can he stomach the idea that people still go on adventures, much less with
anyone as socially unacceptable as dwarves. When pressed to tag along, he
insists on everything being as businesslike and rational as possible: “I should
like it all plain and clear…Also I should like to know about risks,
out-of-pocket expenses, time required and remuneration, and so forth” (21).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The juxtaposition of wizards/dwarves and
“out-of-pocket expenses” is of course hilarious, as it begs the question, how
would <em>we </em>go on an adventure today? The heroes of old never thought
about risks or expenses, only of saving the princess and defeating the dragon.
Has heroism been bred out of us? Or did it never exist outside of chivalric
romances and legends?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="de03">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Though Bilbo initially seems to be our modern
‘everyman’ in this world of fantasy, we soon learn that Tolkien has a much more
ambitious scheme in mind. The dwarves prove curiously like their Hobbit
burglar, in that they are obsessed with business and understand little about
the past. As Bilbo comes to learn, “dwarves are not heroes, but calculating
folk with a great idea of the value of money; some are tricky and treacherous
and pretty bad lots; some are not, but are decent enough people like Thorin and
Company, if you don’t expect too much” (192).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="5598">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This has something of the professor’s voice in
it, or maybe the father’s, since this story was initially created for his
children’s amusement. There <em>are </em>no heroes in this world, at least not
of the type we read about, as most people are more likely to be villains,
corrupted by greed and ambition. And yet, if you “don’t expect too much,” but
see humans as humans and dwarves as dwarves, you won’t be disappointed so
easily.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="f99f">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The great downfall of Middle Earth is how
readily the various races fall into routine and blind tradition. They sing
songs they no longer believe in, and hate other races for reasons they scarcely
remember. Even the men of <st1:place><st1:placetype>Lake</st1:placetype> <st1:placetype>Town</st1:placetype></st1:place>,
who live in the shadow of Smaug’s mountain, only vaguely sing about the King
Under the Mountain, but “this pleasant legend did not much affect their daily
business” (173).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The dwarves are also blinded by daily
business — the pursuit of their long-lost gold. But they’ve thought little
about how to steal it back, or more importantly, what to do with an awakened,
avarice-mad dragon. Beowulf or Siegfreid could have confronted him
single-handed and lopped off his head, but such heroes no longer exist in this
world (not until <em>The Lord of the Rings</em> do we meet any of those). So
the question remains, how to undertake a heroic question when you’re only a
man, or a dwarf, or a hobbit? How does a burgher become a famous burglar of
legend?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bilbo transforms himself through two feats of
language. The first and most celebrated is his riddle-game with Gollum. The
tradition of riddles goes back to antiquity, and was particularly favored by
the Anglo-Saxons; several of their choicest examples survive in the Exeter Book
Riddles, which Tolkien drew on (loosely) for Bilbo’s contest. Here we learn the
true meaning of Bilbo’s name: a “sword” not in swordsmanship but wit, which he
uses to defeat Gollum and (almost) win his freedom. Some readers might wonder
why a sinister creature with a magic ring would entertain Bilbo in a game of
riddles when he could eat him whole. However, in a world which religion is
conspicuously absent, faith and belief remain ever-present, albeit hidden in
the shadows.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="2bf7">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">As the narrator explains, “[Bilbo] knew, of
course, that the riddle game was sacred and of immense antiquity, and even
wicked creatures were afraid to cheat when they played at it” (74). Even among
“wicked creatures,” words are sacred, and the reverence for those who can use
them cleverly is more respected than might itself. Tolkien also hints at the
origin of riddles in sacred rituals and wisdom, which is also in keeping with
their name: riddles, as Kevin Crossley-Holland explains in his translation of
the Exeter Book Riddles, “[derive] from the Old English <em>raedan</em>, to advise,
to counsel, to guide, to explain. And in a wide sense a riddle does teach: it
presents the old in new ways” (viii).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="bc6e">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In riddles lie the seeds of ancient wisdom and
ethics, which even the wildest creatures acknowledge and revere (even if they
don’t know why). That Bilbo can master riddles so readily marks him out as more
than a mere burglar; he is something of a conjurer himself, able to bend fate
to his will and save himself and the dwarves. Not coincidentally, Gandalf
begins to absent himself more and more in the story as the ‘wizard’ Bilbo takes
over.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="6205">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Some might argue that Bilbo cheats to win the
riddle game, since his final riddle, “what have I got in my pocket?” isn’t much
of a riddle, at least not one that can advise or explain. Yet it is clever, and
it does defeat an opponent who is similarly unwilling to play by the rules.
There is also the tempting possibility that Bilbo is already under the sway of
the Ring, which wants to escape Gollum at all costs. Yet this kind of trickery
seems consistent with Gandalf’s own brand of misdirection, as when he tricks
the trolls into straying into the first light of dawn. Like Bilbo, Gandalf
almost never uses outright force or magic in the book, preferring to use
trickery and wit to achieve his ends. While this might be disappointing to
ardent lovers of fantasy, it’s in keeping with Tolkien’s love of language and
the power of revealing, and hiding, words.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="6c3e">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Bilbo’s second act of language and identity
comes when he kills the first spider in Mirkwood with his sword. Having stepped
beyond being merely clever to the realm of storybook heroism, he notes that “He
felt a different person, and much fiercer and bolder in spite of an empty
stomach, as he wiped his sword on the grass and put it back into its sheath. “I
will give you a name,” he said to it, “and I shall call you <em>Sting</em>””
(142).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="6dfc">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here is entering into a sophisticated
performance, not merely by naming his sword, but re-writing himself as the <em>hero
</em>of the story (instead of the tag-along thief). Heroes have swords with
names and do feats of derring-do. While many would mock a hobbit who names his
dagger in the manner of <em>Foehammer</em>, the truth is that he does become a
hero, killing dozens of spiders and freeing the dwarves from certain doom.
Legends begin with a single name and a single story, and from this moment on,
Bilbo is effectively the ‘Gandalf’ of the story. To make it stick, he even
makes up an impromptu song to tease — and infuriate — the spiders, like the
chorus embroidering an ancient legend.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="d2a6">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Armed with language and legend, Bilbo soon faces
his most formidable foe in the book: the dragon, Smaug. Another riddle is
contained in his name, not only “smog” but “smug.” Bilbo uses his inborn
arrogance to keep him talking (more riddles) and taunts him into revealing his
gem-encrusted chest, which reveals a tiny gap between the armor — just large
enough for a well-placed arrow. It is fitting that Smaug is the most powerful
(and oldest) villain in the book, since he most embodies what ails Middle
Earth: avarice.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="f356">
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="f356">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The mania for hoarding and counting wealth has
infected everyone from kings to hobbits, and is </span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="f356">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">nowhere better seen than in the
dragon’s mad jealousy over losing a single goblet (stolen by Bilbo): “Thieves!
Fire! Murder! Such a thing had not happened since first he came into the
Mountain! His rage passes description — the sort of rage that is only seen when
rich folk that have more than they can enjoy suddenly lose something that they
have long had but have never before used or wanted” (196).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="ec1b">
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<div class="grafgraf--p" name="ec1b">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This is a key theme of Anglo-Saxon poetry as
well, which we see notably in <em>Beowulf</em>, when describing the treasure
hoard left by the great warrior’s death: “They left the earl’s wealth in the
earth’s keeping,/the gold in the dirt. It dwells there yet,/of no more use to
men than in ages before” (translated by Michael Alexander). Smaug is a fitting
metaphor for the greed of kings, who aspire to little more than to spread their
wings over a nest of treasure, though the ‘eggs’ will never hatch. Gold in the
dirt is “of no more use to men than in ages before,” and will continue to be
worthless, a mute monument to the monarch’s greed. A dragon can have no use for
treasure, and a king (which comes from the Anglo-Saxon “cynning,” meaning the
keeper of the “cynn,” or the “kinfolk”) should more properly protect his people
by sharing his gold.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="13fb">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="13fb">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Seen in this light, Thorin is little better than
Smaug, as he will simply replace one dragon with another, entombing himself in
a mountain of gold. To save him, Bilbo casts his most cunning spell yet, and
the one most in keeping with his dual nature as wizard and burglar: he steals
the Arkenstone which Thorin covets above all else. As Bilbo reflects, “Now I am
a burglar indeed!…But I suppose I must tell the dwarves about it — some time.
They did say I could pick and choose my own share; and I think I would chose
this, if they took all the rest!” (213).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="da20">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="da20">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">This sounds suspiciously like the “what do I
have in my pocket?” riddle that defeated Gollum, as it skirts the rules and
flirts with dishonesty. However, like Gandalf, Bilbo keeps secrets for the good
of the dwarves, realizing that they aren’t the masters of their own story and
can’t be trusted to pay attention. He thus brokers the negotiation between the
dwarves and the men/elves by offering them the Arkenstone and betraying/saving
the dwarves. It is an ethical gray area, but exactly what a wizard-thief <em>would
</em>do, and particularly one who’s decided that he — and not Thorin — is the
master of his tale.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="2d7c">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">By the end of the story, with the enemy defeated
and order restored, one would expect Bilbo to take up residence with the
dwarves, or to return to live out his years with the elves in Rivendell.
Instead, he willingly decides to return home, renouncing his career as a thief
and eager to return to the humble life of a burgher. As the narrator remarks,
“The Tookish part was getting very tired, and the Baggins was daily getting
stronger” (264).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="6e3b">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="6e3b">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Most stories of fantasy and adventure end with a
return home, because adventure only has meaning relative to the static
pleasures of the hearth. Also, adventures can only be told at home, in peace,
marveling at the time that once was, but now (gladly) has come to pass. Or
perhaps it’s the other way around: that home can only be appreciated from the
perspective of exile and adventure?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="dd17">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="grafgraf--p" name="dd17">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tolkien weaves a final riddle into the story by
having Bilbo return home smack-middle in a second ‘battle of the five
armies’ — but this time, it’s the carving up of Bag-End by his relatives and
neighbors. This echoes the return of many heroes to their homes only to find
their possessions spoken for and themselves forgotten. Consider <em>The Odyssey</em>,
when Odysseus finds his wife besieged by countless suitors who have taken up
residence in his home. Though Bilbo regains control of his household (with much
less bloodshed that Odysseus managed), it’s not surprising that some refuse to
recognize him: “It was quite a long time before Mr. Baggins was in fact
admitted to be alive again” (270).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the one hand, his relatives merely want to
keep their ill-gotten gains by having him dead; but more importantly, Bilbo <em>has
</em>become a thief, a wizard, a hero. He now has to learn to impersonate the
man he was, to wear “Mr. Baggins” like a mask, much like Batman pretending to
be Bruce Wayne in polite society. Whereas in the past his Took-like nature
remained submerged, now he has to dredge up the ‘Baggins,’ and remember how to
say “good morning!” with the proper condescension.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">If <em>The Hobbit </em>is a book about naming
and language, it’s also about the power of telling a story. As we get older, we
foolishly assume that only certain people (writers) can tell stories, and that
only a tiny subclass (artists) can harness the imagination. The truth is that
anyone, great or small, has the power to shape their own narrative and to
change their story. Gandalf says as much to Bilbo at the end of the novel:
“Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in brining
them about yourself?” (273). Prophecies are just someone else’s story, and you
can insert yourself into this story — and change this story — by a simple act
of language.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Tolkien audaciously did the same when he
inserted his own creation — hobbits, which are a unique amalgam of traditional
elves, brownies, and dwarves — into the traditional lore of ancient <st1:place>Europe</st1:place>.
Not surprisingly, some early critics rejected this attempt to re-write history,
and German language publishers flatly refused to publish <em>The Hobbit </em>because
they couldn’t find a single mention of “hobbits” in any dictionary or
encyclopedia! And yet, hobbits have now entered the dictionaries and
encyclopedias, as firmly established as the oldest myths of civilization.
Perhaps hobbits <em>did </em>exist in the shadow of these ancient tales,
forgotten until Tolkien had the wisdom (and trickery) to dream them up?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-30175635553692983602020-06-08T08:04:00.002-07:002020-06-08T08:04:50.317-07:00That Time Mary Wollstonecraft Traveled to Scandinavia...and Found a Manifesto<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizr5O2efdhdPue8x0-DAaREwL3qlJeVYQCua-ExnOjG35mtfAOQj-DyeIYxNQTX9R_zWam4tYk5saSTvaY2ricZ5Lmw9MJvi-VW7wTn02RqiAyiw9CqYigPnvLVtaWj5wqz9paQN_Taw0/s1600/Mary-Wollstonecraft-oil-canvas-John-Opie-National-1797.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1268" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizr5O2efdhdPue8x0-DAaREwL3qlJeVYQCua-ExnOjG35mtfAOQj-DyeIYxNQTX9R_zWam4tYk5saSTvaY2ricZ5Lmw9MJvi-VW7wTn02RqiAyiw9CqYigPnvLVtaWj5wqz9paQN_Taw0/s400/Mary-Wollstonecraft-oil-canvas-John-Opie-National-1797.jpg" width="316" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the Nineteenth Letter of Wollstonecraft’s <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Letters Written During a Short Residence in Sweden, Norway, and Denmark</em>, she informs her unnamed recipient, “Do not forget that in my general observations, I do not pretend to sketch a national character; but merely to note the present state of morals and manners, as I trace the progress of the world’s improvement…my principal object has been to take such a dispassionate view of men as will lead me to form a just idea of the nature of man.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The result is one of the most unorthodox eighteenth-century travel narratives, a mixture of vivid description, Romantic rhapsody, pointed social commentary, and veiled scorn for her long-time lover, Gilbert Imlay. Remarkably, these disparate threads cohere into a kind of field study of “the nature of man” in an area well off the beaten-path of the Grand Tour, which few men (and no women) had explored in print.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Like many travel narratives of her day (Montagu, Smollett, etc.), Wollstonecraft compiles a series of letters to a veiled confidant, in order to give the illusion of intimacy and spontaneity. Of course, like those famous writers, she carefully edited and arranged these letters, no doubt removing some of the more incriminating details, while keeping just enough in to hint at a narrative thread. Indeed, the hand of a practiced writer of fiction is evident in many letters, as well as one acquainted with the pathetic stamp of the Gothic novelists. Quite often, an account of Swedish hospitality will fade into a lament for “my babe [her child, Fanny] who may never experience father’s care or tenderness. The bosom that nurtured her, heaved with a pang at the thought which only an unhappy mother could feel.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Though Wollstonecraft reveals little of her personal life beyond these asides, we now know the full story which prompted her journey to Scandinavia with only her infant and nursemaid in tow. In 1795, Wollstonecraft had attempted suicide after her lover, the American adventurer Gilbert Imlay, had taken up with another woman. After nursing her back to health (more or less), Imlay came up with a proposition to either restore her spirits or spirit her conveniently out of the country: she would travel to Scandinavia to recover a treasure ship Imlay owned that had gone astray (with a total value of several thousand pounds).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As he pinned their financial future on the restoration of the vessel, Wollstonecraft must have hoped that recovering it would prove her worth to her straying lover; or perhaps she merely wanted to safeguard her own ‘treasure,’ her daughter, Fanny, then just over a year old. It was a dangerous time to travel, as in the summer of 1795 most of Europe was at war with France, making a young woman without a male chaperone particularly vulnerable. One wonders whether Imlay secretly hoped she wouldn’t survive the voyage.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet she not only survived, but used the experience to travel widely throughout Sweden, Norway, and Denmark, writing letter after letter to her lover, always with an eye toward publication. She must have known that whatever came of her mission, Imlay couldn’t be counted on to support her or her daughter; only a book could save her now, and one that would capture the imagination of a world teetering on the edge of Revolution and Romanticism. While much quieter than her earlier salvo, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">A Vindication of the Rights of Woman </em>(1792), the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Letters </em>pursue their own revolutionary agenda, attempting to ferret out the rights of men and women in a land which, for her, existed at the very edge of Western civilization.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Despite her open-mindedness, Wollstonecraft finds little to like in Scandinavian society, which reeks of the hidebound convention she had longed to escape in England. Like Smollett’s earlier <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Travels Through Italy and France</em> (1766), Wollstonecraft could be savage in her dismissal of the national character — despite her later claim that she was taking a “dispassionate view of men.” She often complains that people so addicted to hospitality are in want of the finer virtues: “in other words, a fondness for social pleasures in which the mind not having its proportion of exercise, a bottle must be pushed about.” Though some of her male hosts praise her (with dismay, no doubt) for asking “<em class="markup--em markup--p-em">men’s questions</em>,” she fails to return the compliment:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“They have no university; and nothing that deserves the name of science is taught; nor do individuals, by pursuing any branch of knowledge, excite a degree of curiosity which is the forerunner of improvement.” </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In these countries, she discovers a land where “knowledge is not absolutely necessary to enable a considerable portion of the community to live,” and therefore, was tossed to the dogs as so many leftovers. If she had hoped to find men unspoiled by the vices of civilization, she finds instead a people too concerned with the <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">whens </em>and <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">wheres </em>of life to ever ask <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">why</em>.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Even more disturbing is what she perceives as a lack of sentiment among the women, who emerge as household drudges, unfailing polite but without life or imagination. Because of this, love is corrupted into a business, a mere bartering for sex and marriage: “the sensuality so prevalent appears to me to arise rather from indolence of mind, and dull senses, than from an exuberance of life.” And how could it be otherwise, when women have even less freedom than they enjoyed in England? She notes with displeasure how “there is a kind of interregnum between the reign of the father and the husband, which is the only period of freedom and pleasure the women enjoy.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This echoes her views in <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">A Vindication of the Rights of Women</em>, when she argues, “if woman be allowed to have an immortal soul, she must have, as the employer of life, an understanding to improve.” A woman could never improve if she was eternally playing the host to some father-figure, and when even the men lacked universities and cultivation of mind, what hope was there for their wives and daughters?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When the towns and cities fail her, Wollstonecraft retreats to the rivers and stones. These natural wonders provide a healing balm to her wrecked soul, ravaged not only from Imlay’s deceit but the horrors of the French Revolution, which she had witnessed first-hand. As she writes in the First Letter,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">How silent and peaceful the scene. I gazed around with</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">rapture, and felt more of the spontaneous pleasure which</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">gives credibility to our expectation of happiness, than</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I had felt for a long, long time before. I forgot the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">horrors I had witnessed in France, which had cast a</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">gloom over all nature, and suffering the enthusiasm of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">my character, too often, gracious God! damped by the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">tears of disappointed affection, to be lighted up afresh,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">care took wing while simple fellow feeling expanded my</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">heart.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This passage bears a strong resemblance to Coleridge’s “This Lime Tree Bower My Prison” (1797), which speaks of the restorative power of nature to heal a troubled soul. The passage must have irked Imlay, who alone understood what she meant by the “tears of disappointed affection,” and presumably only had eyes for the business at hand (perhaps the very reason she coyly omits it).</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">At a certain point, Imlay no longer seems to share her confidence at all, as Wollstonecraft writes increasingly to what sounds like a sympathetic female confidant. Her letters grow more rhapsodic, and passages of pure description push aside the more practical concerns of day-to-day travel. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In this sense, she seems to be writing to her infant daughter, who would one day take up the book to enlarge her understanding. Passages of the sublimity of nature seem geared, in true Wordsworthian fashion, to keep her alive to the wonder of rainbows:</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">With what ineffable pleasure have I not gazed — and gazed</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">again, losing my breath through my eyes — my very soul</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">diffused itself in the scene — and, seeming to become all</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">senses, glided in the scarcely-agitated waves, melting</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in the freshening breeze…more beautiful even than the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">lovely slopes in the winding shore before me.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The contrast of the ‘living’ world with the ‘dead’ people who inhabit it is sometimes too strong for Wollstonecraft to bear. If she was searching for a “just idea of the nature of man,” she finds little to justify her optimism — or any hope for her daughter’s future. In one of the most prophetic moments of the book, she imagines a world where even these Northern wastes are inhabited by an ever-expanding humanity, surging to the breaking-point: “Imagination went still farther, and pictured the state of man when the earth could no longer support him. Where was he to fly from universal famine? Do not smile: I really became distressed for these fellow creatures, yet unborn. The images fastened on me, and the world appeared a vast prison.”</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Though few could imagine the terrible legacy of the Industrial Revolution, then just beginning to chug away, Wollstonecraft knew that power is never satisfied with ruling a single spot of earth. The empire must be ever-expanded, tracts of sublime desolation made to serve more mercantile pursuits. Before long, children will have no green space to play in, and ultimately, no food to eat in the face of mankind’s mindless gluttony. She imagines this as a future “a million or two years” to come, an exaggeration which perhaps explains why she came north in the first place: to see a primal world before the fires of industry pollute it beyond recognition.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In some sense, the damage is already done. While nature still had its charms to offer, mankind was a portrait of blight. For even here, among the relative simplicity of Scandinavian society, people betrayed the cruelty which had swept across France and Europe. Observing the aftermath of a public execution, she remarks,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What a spectacle for humanity! The seeing such a flock</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">of gazers, plunged me into a train of reflections, on</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the pernicious effects produced by false notions of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">justice. And I am persuaded that till capital</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">punishments be entirely abolished, executions ought to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">have every appearance of horror give to them; instead of</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">being, as they are now, a scene of amusement for the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">gaping crowd, where sympathy is quickly effaced by</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">curiosity.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">As someone keenly interested in the education of children, she is always alert to bad parenting and stifled childhoods. The child is father to the man, as Wordsworth would write, and Wollstonecraft saw too many children learn hatred at their parents’ side. When suffering becomes an idle amusement, who would willingly espouse compassion or mercy? Her second daughter, Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, would channel these ideas (and perhaps this very passage) in her famous novel, <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Frankenstein </em>(1818) with the public execution of the innocent servant, Justine Moritz, which breaks the innocent soul of Elizabeth Frankenstein.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whatever her motivations for the journey, Wollstonecraft never forgot that she was writing for two people now. The <em class="markup--em markup--p-em">Letters </em>not only stood to feed and clothe her daughter, but to educate her, particularly when she could no longer be at her side. The women of Scandinavia constantly reminded her of the difficulties Fanny would face as she came of age in a world of institutional misogyny. As she writes in Letter Six,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I feel more than a mother’s fondness and anxiety, when I</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">reflect on the dependent and oppressed state of her sex.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I dread last she should be forced to sacrifice her heart</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">to her principles, or principles to her heart…I dread to</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">unfold her mind, lest it should render her unfit for the</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">world she is to inhabit-Hapless woman! What a fate is</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">thine!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Again, her talent for prophecy bore uncanny fruit, as Fanny’s life would be a tragic one; she committed suicide at 22, shortly after her half-sister, Mary, ran off with the poet, Percy Shelley. Clearly Mary had committed her mother’s book to heart, as she was determined not to sacrifice her principles for anyone — especially not her domineering father and stepmother. She must have also known the passage in Letter Eleven when Wollstonecraft laments, “How few authors or artists have arrived at eminence who have not lived by their employment?” Mary was soon forced to do just that, and began her career by writing one of the most iconic works in the English language; a work, notably, that begins with a series of letters from a solitary traveler venturing deep into the frozen North.</span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-75371424698822281062020-06-08T07:55:00.002-07:002020-08-06T22:18:54.644-07:00Why Keep Western Civilization? Because It Waited So Long To Be Remembered...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSMXmhAlTFH9bEsuMnM6ZWDKfSLKAl9rbv6B2oKVYfltrta4MMayWTkg5iUcg36-i0iMqJV_BYHjCAPHygCIPcohIP-nlop3_yBgMrVSO5YSi7xtdLsxyw5giCSHeDhCCdRib1N4YUzc/s1600/81wFMY9OAFL.jpg" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1200" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhgSMXmhAlTFH9bEsuMnM6ZWDKfSLKAl9rbv6B2oKVYfltrta4MMayWTkg5iUcg36-i0iMqJV_BYHjCAPHygCIPcohIP-nlop3_yBgMrVSO5YSi7xtdLsxyw5giCSHeDhCCdRib1N4YUzc/s400/81wFMY9OAFL.jpg" width="300" /></a></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><br /></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: left;"><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">I just read an article about universities (yet again)
abandoning the Western Humanities in the face of a relentless drive to embrace
diversity and a multicultural outlook. The article decried the loss of a rich
culture in the face of a loose hodgepodge of approaches, none of which offers a
coherent curriculum to university students. As an eighteenth-century British
scholar and someone who wrote a Master’s Thesis on South Asian literature, I’m
torn. Do I want to preserve a world where Homer, Sappho, Virgil, Dante,
Chaucer, Shakespeare, Defoe, Johnson, and Jane Austen still have a place in the
curriculum? Absolutely. But I do want that to be the only voice in the
curriculum, so students have no idea that there was a Golden Age of Indian
Literature? Or never encounter Taoism? Or remain ignorant of names like Tagore,
Narayan, Naipaul, Desai, Lahiri, and Rushdie? Not on your life.<o:p></o:p></span></p><span><span style="font-family: verdana;"><a name='more'></a></span></span><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">For me, the sticking point is diversity and inclusivity. Too
many people define diversity as “replacing one thing with another.” Too many
people can only read multiculturalism as “my culture, fuck yours.” And far too
many people are intimidated and confused and appalled by the past, so find it
better to scrap it. In short, there’s too little of the past remaining to get
rid of any of it. It’s also useful and valuable, not to mention
beautiful and inspirational as well. Even when racist beliefs and ideas crop up
in the works of, say, Haggard and Kipling and Conrad, that’s something we can
work with. It’s important to see how even the visionary writers struggled with
zeitgeist, how even an artist is a member of a society that exists in a
specific age of the world. In one hundred years, how few of us will be read or
remembered because of our own ‘barbaric’ or racist views — views which now seem
to us common place or merely facts?</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another sticking point is that so-called ‘diverse’ writers
are usually readers of culture on the largest scale. They know the past and are
children of that past, even when they find need to correct it. I’ll never
forget an interview with the late Toni Morrison, who, when asked what one of
her favorite books was, the book she would keep by her side to the end, she
answered Gibbon’s History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire.
When pressed on this, she spoke mostly of the way he wrote, his gorgeous prose
and powerful logic. It was a book that inspired and guided her, even though she
wrote as part of an entirely different tradition; a tradition, many would
claim, which is directly opposed to Gibbon’s ideals. A tradition that would
banish his book to the dustbins of history.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Another great writer of the 20th century, V.S. Naipaul, was
an Indian by way of <st1:place>Trinidad</st1:place> who emigrated to <st1:country-region>Britain</st1:country-region>,
knew Western culture backwards and forwards (he studied Spanish literature at <st1:city>Oxford</st1:city>),
and contributed to putting Trinidadian literature on the map. He also went on
to contribute to the rich field of what we often call ‘postcolonial’
literature, as has been the subject of countless books, articles, and
university syllabi.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Granted, some people despise him and think he’s reactionary,
etc., but his story isn’t unique. Look at any great postcolonial writer, and
you’ll find someone who knows and confronts the West without outright rejection
— Rushdie, Ngugi wa Thiong’o, Anita Desai, Jhumpa Lahiri (who just wrote a book
about learning Italian to study Italian literature, such as Dante!), etc. etc.
The idea that you can only enrich one thing by destroying another, however
checkered its cultural past, is ahistorical and I think profoundly ignorant.
Indeed, Naipaul’s books are often about people stuck in the cul de sacs of
history, where ignorance of the past makes it impossible to plot the way
forward.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">This reminds me of a famous story by the great Indian
novelist, R.K. Narayan, which used to be more well-known than it is today. The
story is called “<st1:street>Lawley Road</st1:street>,”
and is about a colonial-era statue of Frederick Lawley which stands in the
fictional town of <st1:city>Malgudi</st1:city>. In
the days of post-Independence, many people decide it’s disgraceful to see the
sun rise and set over this embarrassment of the past, so they decide to pull it
down. A local man rips it down and hauls it home, where it sits until he vainly
finds someone to buy it (there aren’t many takers). In desperation, he hangs a
sign on the monument which reads, “STATUE FOR SALE. TWO AND A HALF TONS OF
EXCELLENT METAL. IDEAL GIFT FOR A PATRIOTIC FRIEND. OFFERS ABOVE TEN THOUSAND
WILL BE CONSDERED.”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The kicker is that after a little digging, the town leaders
realize that Lawley was a local hero: “He established here the first
cooperative society for the whole of <st1:country-region>India</st1:country-region>,
and the first canal system by which thousands of acres of land were irrigated
from the Sarayu, which had been dissipating itself until then. He established
this, he established that, and he died in the great Sarayu floods while
attempting to save the lives of villagers living on its banks. He was the first
Englishman to advise the British Parliament to involve more and more Indians in
all Indian affairs. In one of his dispatches he was said to have declared, “<st1:country-region>Britain</st1:country-region> must
quit <st1:country-region>India</st1:country-region> someday
for her own good.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">So the city demands that the statue be returned, but its new
owner refuses, since he stands to make a profit from history. A clever little
tale, and one that is surely symbolic for our current predicament. Sure, one
decent Englishman alone might not merit a statue, but it also doesn’t merit contempt.
If Lawley died to save human lives, whether British or Indian, he should be
remembered as more than a colonial eyesore. Otherwise, we’re tempted to
re-write history in favor of propaganda, where all the British were evil, and
no one saw the foolishness of the colonial enterprise.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">We have a real life Frederick Lawley in English literary
studies: Rudyard Kipling. He’s become a poster boy for British Imperialism,
racism, and outdated culture. And yet he was born in <st1:country-region>India</st1:country-region>,
spent his early professional life there, and wrote about <st1:country-region>India</st1:country-region> in
a more thoughtful, sensitive way (despite some bias) than anyone before him. He
loved the culture and was very critical of the British imperial project, even
though he later came to champion it in his unique way. But none of his works
are blindly pro-Western, and even his so-called jingoistic works such as “If”
or “The White Man’s Burden” have darkness and nuance. And his richest works,
such as the Jungle Books, Kim, and his many short stories (such as “The
Man Who Would Be King”), are as profound as anything written in the 19th
century and pointed the way toward postcolonial studies in the first place.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Part of the problem for modern readers and thinkers is that
we’ve forgotten that literature is a performance. The narrator is not the
author. The characters are not the author. A good writer has to channel and
reflect their culture. They have to include voices they don’t agree with, that
are antithetical to their own values, to create a story that has any chance of
reflecting our shared experience. Otherwise, it’s just propaganda and doesn’t
merit re-reading. Writers like Austen and Dickens and Kipling were masters of
adopting many voices within the dominant narrative voice, suggesting the true
heteroglossia of a culture’s speech. Kipling, especially, would often adopt the
voices of his contemporaries in a bizarre mix of performance-art and satire, at
times approaching the comic sublimity of The Colbert Report.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Consider the opening lines from “The White Man’s Burden”:</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Take up the White Man’s burden —</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Send forth the best ye breed —<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Go bind your sons to exile<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">To serve your captives’ need;<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">To wait in heavy harness<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">On fluttered folk and wild —<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Your new-caught, sullen peoples,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Half-devil and half-child.<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Okay, many would say, this is abominably racist: “half-devil
and half-child”?? But consider that Kipling was one of these” half-children”
himself, and when his parents shipped him back to England as a small child
(terrified that he was ‘going native’), the boarders that took him considered
him positively foreign (he wrote about this traumatic experience in the story
“Baa, Baa, Black Sheep”). So is this him writing the poem, or is it a
voice from his culture, a surly, conservative martyr drumming up support for
what is increasingly a hopeless cause? The lyrics certainly conjure up the
sense of a recruitment poster, though Kipling cripples the language with irony,
so that even the jingoism falls flat: “Go bind your sons to exile/To serve your
captives’ need.” This is similar to the conservative voices you hear today in <st1:place>middle
America</st1:place> who support the troops but decry having to spill
their blood for “those people.”</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">There’s something pathetic and hilarious about the
invocation to “Send forth the best ye breed…To wait in heavy harness.” So
ultimately, the great white race is no better than cattle, loaded down in
harness while the people they seek to colonize “flutter” wild around them.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p> </o:p>The poem goes on to say,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Take up the White-Man’s Burden —</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">And reap his old reward:<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The blame of those ye better,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The hate of those ye guard —<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The cry of hosts ye humour<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">(Ah, slowly!) toward the light —<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“Why brought ye us from bondage,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Our loved Egyptian night?”<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Each time he repeats the bugle-cry of “Take up the
White-Man’s Burden,” it gets more ludicrous and downtrodden, like a music box
running out of steam. And what’s it all for? Here Kipling slips in his own
critique of the venture: “The blame of those ye better/The hate of those ye
guard.” In other words, the people you’re trying to improve want none of it ,
because (surprise, surprise) they don’t consider themselves in need of reform.
And do the British really think that these “half devils” are capable of
improvement and civilization? Apparently not, as Kipling suggests in the line,
“The cry of hosts ye humour.” It’s all humoring, posturing, an excuse to hide
the true reason of the colonial enterprise: power. But it’s nothing the mere
soldiers will ever enjoy, as they are inevitably wasting away in foreign lands
fighting rich people’s wars.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">As a way to underline the hypocrisy of it all, Kipling has a
Biblical resonance in the last two lines, when a new voice (one of the
colonized), asks “Why brought ye us from bondage/Our loved Egyptian night?” In
short, they were happy in <st1:country-region>Egypt</st1:country-region>,
and to civilize them according to English values merely destroys them both in
the name of ‘progress.’ Such is the White-Man’s Burden: a mindless Catch-22
that no amount of jingoistic verse can parade as fact.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">However, this isn’t Kipling’s voice — he’s using a dramatic
monologue (a throwback to Robert Browning) to inhabit the voice and perspective
of someone who still believes in conquering the “heart of darkness.” Yet his
impersonation is so spot-on, that most people can’t even imagine it is an act;
and of course, most people don’t even bother to read the poem. Otherwise, they
might be disappointed that the “statue” is hollow and is meant to be taken down.
History has a way of being less predictable and inevitable than we would like
to believe. Only literature stands in the way of those assumptions, and the
less of it we allow ourselves to read, the more it will vanish into a utopia of
trend and doublespeak.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">To conclude with one more piece of the ancient past, this
time a fragment from one of Sappho’s nearly-forgotten poems,</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">“I declare</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">That later on,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Even in an age unlike our own,<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">Someone will remember who we are” (translated by Aaron
Poochigian).<o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;">The line “an age unlike own own” is key here: literature
doesn’t require the right fashion to appreciate its merits. We can find the
entire civilization distasteful and still find the ‘human’ in the greatest
works. Indeed, one of the glories of literature is how a culture which had
slaves and confined women to obscurity could still rise to the most sublime
heights of art in defiance of that very culture. Sappho knew that future ages
would understand her, even if we spoke a different language and worshipped different
gods. Like life itself, literature is vast enough to hold everything — great
and small, good and bad, East and West. To confine it to a narrow island of
thought in some misguided hope to protect it, and us, is the surest way to
destroy it — or to destroy what it waited thousand of years to tell us.</span></p><p class="MsoNormal"><span style="font-family: verdana;"><o:p></o:p></span></p>
<p class="MsoNormal"><o:p><span style="font-family: verdana;"> </span></o:p></p></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-66652198261677002072018-06-01T21:59:00.000-07:002020-06-08T09:16:01.289-07:00The Cosmic Vision of Holst: The Planets 100 Years Later <br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkYQ5YITBRVKdE5Al-az_okipmWtmhr0yE3Sn_ihEQ_N2CIImArP5-nteVajuI8qeEZxyU94GP5JiFeiTT4F803Fu1QbcoFDtqIwnZtN77Ygx9dPHVeVJe9-557xiWfS29gehYnjFtd0/s1600/p01h2sh1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="675" data-original-width="1200" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjjkYQ5YITBRVKdE5Al-az_okipmWtmhr0yE3Sn_ihEQ_N2CIImArP5-nteVajuI8qeEZxyU94GP5JiFeiTT4F803Fu1QbcoFDtqIwnZtN77Ygx9dPHVeVJe9-557xiWfS29gehYnjFtd0/s400/p01h2sh1.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Inevitably, certain works in the classical music canon fall
into heavy rotation, often to the detriment of lesser-known (but equally
powerful) pieces. One piece that is a perennial favorite is Gustav’s Holst’s
1916 suite, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Planets</i>, which is
often given the dubious distinction of being a “pops” piece. It is been
recorded numerous times by most of the great conductors and orchestras, and
many people assume that it has said all it needs to say by now, just over 100
years after its first performance. So I often think myself, until I hear it
with fresh ears, or even better, catch a live performance. A few months ago I
saw it again in concert (my third time, I believe) and though I was looking
forward to it, I wasn’t desperate to hear it again, as much as I adore the
piece. </span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Perhaps that’s the best way to go into a concert—expecting
as little as possible. From the opening tread of <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mars </i>I was intrigued, forgetting how exciting it is to hear the
rhythmic backdrop being tapped away on the violins’ strings before it explodes
from the full orchestra. Movement after movement gave me fresh insights—the
runs of double harps accenting the otherworldly beauty in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Venus</i>, or the cavorting of bassoons in <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uranus</i>. It’s a piece that really needs to be seen live to get the
sense of how well Holst manipulates the orchestra, echoing themes in different
sections, and then massing incredible towers of sound in the most interesting
combinations. And who can forget the astonishing entrance of the off-stage
chorus in <st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neptune</i></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>which swims through the orchestra
fabric, only to be the last ‘man’ standing as the piece fades into oblivion? </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Hearing it again made me think about why this piece is such
an astonishing achievement and how much subsequent music—including anything
about space or written for celluloid—owes to its inspiration. Perhaps the most
amazing thing about <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Planets </i>is
how doggedly Holst refused to follow it up with a sequel. Holst was quite an
eccentric composer, hopping from Eastern mysticism to English folksong without
batting an eye. While he was capable of writing crowd pleasers such as the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">St. Paul’s Suite </i>and the ballet music
from <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The Perfect Fool</i>, he usually
preferred writing mysterious, craggy works such as <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Edgon Heath </i>or <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The First
Choral Symphony </i>(there wasn’t a second). </span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet hearing <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Planets </i>alone, you would think he was the most tuneful, extrovert composer
on the planet (heh), rivaling Rimsky-Korsakov for orchestral color and Dvorak
for the sheer number of tunes. Had he written a single movement alone—say, <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jupiter</i>—he would have been world famous;
yet he wrote seven magnificent movements, each one a masterpiece of mood and
music. The piece is uniquely balanced between orchestral fireworks and actual
depth: despite its reputation as a pops staple, this is not empty music in the
vein of, say, the <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">1812 Overture</i>.
Holst slid in some deeply personal thoughts as well as a bit of prophecy: <st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neptune</i></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"> </i>is more than a leave-taking of the suite; it also seems to predict
the future of 20<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> century music. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While many dismiss <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The
Planets’ </i>importance, you merely have to look at 20<span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup> century
music far and wide to hear it all around you. While Holst had his own
influences, Richard Strauss and Elgar among them, he transformed the whole into
something neither composer could have dreamed up. For all of Strauss’ sheer
opulence,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>he always seems a bit
tongue-in-cheek, as if he’s mocking the very beauties he catalogues. And Elgar,
for all his nobility, can occasionally seem a bit too noble, too convinced of
his own rhetoric. Holst exhibits something of Keats’ “negative capability,” in
that he offers some of his own compositional thumbprints, while also seeming
invisible throughout. </span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-size: x-small;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Each movement has its own sensibility and ethos. <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mars </i>is very different than <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jupiter, </i>and none of them are at all
like <st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neptune</i></st1:place>.
There is a lot of connecting thread, mind you, and the orchestration itself
seems to be the ‘frame’ that unites the whole. And yet, Holst never winks at
you, as if to say, “isn’t this clever,” or “here I’m writing a scherzo <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">ala </i>Dukas.” The music simply seems to <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">be</i>, as if it has always existed,
spinning in space and awaiting the first bold explorers from our humble planet.
More than anything, I feel I am visiting a unique, self-contained world in each
movement, with its own culture and laws, some more or less recognizably human
until the last. Only at the end do we get our first glimpse at the “beyond,” a
world where humanity falls away like a dried-up husk to reveal something
frightening in its boldness, yet liberating in its ice-cold beauty.</span> </span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The suite opens with <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mars,
Bringer of War</i>, and it’s possibly the most famous—and most
plagiarized—movement. The brutal rhythmic tread tapped away on strings, and
soon shouted by the entire orchestra, belies the cleverness of the main theme,
which is almost heroic and noble—a mechanized Elgar, perhaps. The piece reminds
me of the WWI propaganda that sent so many idealistic young men to their doom,
and the music, too, seems to ring hollow as the piece progresses. The nobility
is ground away by the sheer violence of the sentiment, even though it’s
extremely exciting and the listener gets carried away in the sentiment. Yet
passionate outbursts attest that those fighting<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;">
</span>in the war believe in their role, and that even if glory is in vain,
some people will die in the pursuit. More than any other piece, this movement
sounds prophetic of Shostakovich’s ‘war symphonies,’ particularly the great
grinding opening movement of his Seventh, though that theme is far more banal
than Holst’s. The genius of Holst is that his themes are truly believable—they
don’t sound like parody, but rather, something beauty and noble pressed into
unholy service. So when the battle explodes to life, you realize what brought
them to this pass—and why no one can hope to survive it. This is not only the
death of young men, but the death of ideals, the destruction of an entire
world. Fitting, in that WWI was raging at the time and that the 20<span style="font-size: small;"><sup>th</sup>
century would never be the same again. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Naturally, this is followed by <i>Venus, Bringer of Peace</i>,
which is tonally and thematically different in every possible way. The opulent,
Straussian orchestration gives way to a chamber-like delicacy, opening horns
and flutes, and then harp, strings, and celesta. This could be a sentimental
cliche in the hands of a lesser composer; Holst makes it sound like a fever
dream experienced by a shell-shocked survivor of war. The opening theme is
ethereal and the very epitome of peace (as the title suggests). A second theme
emerges on solo violin, a Romantic theme but played at a distance—almost like a
memory of love than the feeling itself. The strings join in this theme, which
reaches a restrained climax, then fades back into the warm, glowing calmness.
More than anything, this movement seems to suggest the idea of love in
tranquility, happy memories that can never be experienced again, perhaps at the
moment of death. The pulsing winds behind this second theme give a hint of
darkness—again, like beauty and peace that can only be experienced fleetingly,
a happy ending that is essentially bittersweet. Yet the violin, oboe, and cello
solos try earnestly to create a mood of rapture, even as they are swept aside
by the general feeling of benediction. When the second theme is played toward
the end by muted strings, it seems even more desolate. Like <i>Saturn</i> to
come, there is something of old-age and passions spent in this piece, even if
it still remembers what loves feels like.</span></span><br />
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<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>Mercury, the Winged Messenger </i>is the dark horse of the
suite, and perhaps the most ingenuous movement. Essentially a quicksilver
scherzo, it begins with a motif that flitters all across the orchestra, before
reaching a quirky theme that is again passed around by the orchestra and
interrupted by chimes. A violin introduces a new theme, more plaintive in tone,
which is also passed around as if late for a pressing appointment. However, it
reaches a grand climax by the entire orchestra—the destination reached?—before
fading back into the racing motif of the beginning. The orchestration is
jaw-dropping and requires the utmost virtuosity, and for this reason, really
makes a splash in concert. You can hear a bit of Debussy and Ravel in this
piece, as well as Dukas, whose <i>The Sorcerer’s Apprentice </i>may have
inspired it. More than anything, this jolly, wistful piece reminds me of the
colors and shapes of kaleidoscope, tumbling and falling over and over again. <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Jupiter, Bringer of Jollity,
</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">is the true ‘core’ of the suite,
as well as the most famous single movement. The grand opening predicts big
things, and Holst doesn’t disappoint. More than anything, this movement seems
to be narrating a story: the festivities for a grand ceremony of the gods, with
the music ushering in this and that deity’s arrival. The grand theme on cellos
and horns does indeed seem like a procession, followed by ‘scurrying’ music
reminiscent of Mercury (perhaps some of the gods are late)? Then the big,
strutting theme emerges, perhaps Jupiter/Zeus himself arriving on the arm of
Hera? It all sounds like grand </span><st1:place><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Hollywood</span></st1:place><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
‘sword and sandals’ music, which is appropriate, since they shamelessly
pilfered Holst’s musical language (along with Liszt, Strauss, and a few
others). As the ceremony falls away, something miraculous happens: the arrival
of a second great theme, a “hymn” of arresting beauty and nobility. Someone
even grander than Jupiter himself has arrived. Holst would later write words to
this tune, called “The Land of Hope and Glory,” since it is quite a
show-stopper. In this context, it seems that even the gods are stopped in their
tracks by something greater than themselves. I like to think they are gazing on
the works of man, which are quickly outstripping them and moving them to tears
of admiration—and envy. But the gods have a short attention span: scurrying
music soon intervenes, and the grand entrance of the very beginning repeats.
The gods are immortal! Or are tonight, at any rate. So let the feasting and
drinking resume! <o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">A much more human
note is sounded by the following movement, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. As stated before, it seems to have a mood/tone in common with </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Venus</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, a certain world-weariness and sense of coming to a fatal conclusion.
But </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Saturn </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">is much darker from the outset, and offers
little in the way of romantic excursions. It opens like a question, a mere
pulse (like the ticking of a clock) to set the stage for a cosmic
confrontation. The first motif is full of yearning and passion—more passionate
than anything we’ve heard so far. Finally a theme emerges, sounding like a grand
theme (similar to Jupiter’s) but with passion spent and played too slow. We
expect it to gather steam and become triumphant and jolly, and indeed, it does
seem to acquire a sense of major key optimism—for a moment. Then it reaches a
climax only to fall away to a few distant drums and a restatement of the theme,
in a more spectral garb. It suddenly sounds like a funeral march. A new theme
emerges, full of tragedy and danger. It begins to rise, the drums growing in
size and alarm; the brass pound out the theme, until bells intrude—</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">danger! destruction! death! </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>The
funeral procession seems to topple off a cliff, falling to ruin below. Death
seems to sweep the board clean of players, and the orchestra returns to a
brooding accompaniment of chimes and slowed-down clocks. Yet at the moment of
greatest despair, the music takes an upward turn, harps taking over the
‘ticking’ accompaniment in a more hopeful manner. Horns pick up snatches of the
theme making it sound like a hymn, as a distant church bell seems to signal a
rekindling of hopes—or an ascension of spirit. Though subdued, the music
assumes an almost ecstatic character, reaching a state of transcendence beyond
the world of hopes and dreams. At the very end, flutes imagine the afterworld,
suggesting the peace of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Venus </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">without the illusion of romance. It’s the
calmest and most hopeful moment in the entire suite.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Uranus, The Magician </i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">is meant to startle after this moment of
bliss. The opening motif is aggressive and menacing. A dance-like theme kicks
up its heels in a cackle of spirits. Holst creates an atmosphere of savage
enchantment with music that skitters like </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mercury</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, but quickly
assumes depths that the “messenger” can never imagine. A heavy, rollicking
theme takes over, becoming increasingly violent—like a spell that has escaped
the magician’s control. The use of percussion is masterly, drums and
glockenspiel suggesting shadowy spirits marching across the walls. An
especially chilling moment is when the low brass plays the rollicking theme,
while the flutes play a marching variation—as if two imaginary armies are
drawing battles lines in the magician’s study. This grows into the most savage
climax since </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mars</i><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">—a truly barbaric clash of percussion and
brass, as the entire laboratory is torn asunder. Vials explode, windows
shatter—and then, an explosion punctuated by an organ. Perhaps the sorcerer has
finally banished the spell. But no...harps continue to pluck away at the theme,
suggesting a few embers yet remain. Then the brass comes back for one more savage
volley before a final, and resounding, silence (but not before the opening
notes are played once more on the harp). </span></span></div>
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<span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Neptune</i></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">, </i>as stated earlier, is the great
beyond. It opens with a wandering, mystical flute theme appropriate for its
subtitle, “The Mystic.” It seems suspended in time, without anything human as a
point of departure. The theme avoids any hint of Romantic melody, a quality
emphasized by the violins which trace a spectral accompaniment behind the slow,
spare wind music. Celesta chimes seem to evoke the distant, twinkling stars of
a hundred thousand years ago, light that has traversed the darkness of space to
reach us at last. It’s beautiful and calm, until the brass intones some starkly
unsettling undertones like a warning. After all, it’s always dangerous to leave
home, and who knows exactly what lies beyond. Either way, we won’t return the
same way—or in the same form. When the chorus enters (off-stage, in a live
performance) it’s like the sirens call of adventure, yet far less sensuous than
Debussy’s <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Sirens </i>from a decade before
<i>The </i><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Planets</i>. It wafts in like
a passing cloud, and the music behind <i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">almost
</i>hints at a romantic melody; we are lost in wonder at a hidden truth we
never imagined and long to hold in our grasp. The chorus carries us away, the
music from the orchestra fading, until even sound becomes lost in silence.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-34686941541968326432018-06-01T17:24:00.001-07:002020-06-08T09:16:12.428-07:00Can You Hate a Great Book? That Depends How You Define Great...<br />
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijJtPrc7HcA6d3RJrYvdAHBs3URinDmvjrVItAZbQKEh3RV16IJk_k_ui5_JgyJcHRtNz1rCxtdefTMsHpUUt8dD1PpOOeRaNcGqiHx_hyphenhyphen5nrukZ1N2qwSqlwZmsdK_CuyBTw3lQbeTpI/s1600/penguin.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="480" data-original-width="640" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEijJtPrc7HcA6d3RJrYvdAHBs3URinDmvjrVItAZbQKEh3RV16IJk_k_ui5_JgyJcHRtNz1rCxtdefTMsHpUUt8dD1PpOOeRaNcGqiHx_hyphenhyphen5nrukZ1N2qwSqlwZmsdK_CuyBTw3lQbeTpI/s400/penguin.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When I was younger, I
loved the moment before I started writing a story. When I had the idea, but not
the words. In that never-never land of thought and possibility, I could be on
the verge of writing the greatest story in existence (or at least in my genre).
However, the second I put down a word, then a sentence, then a page, the
percentage would fall. 80% chance of writing a masterpiece...65%... 15%...and
on down to, “well, it’s a book one or two people might love.” Once I inevitably
got to the end of the story, or even the end of a long process of editing, what
I had was far from a masterpiece. I would even debate if I could comfortably
call it “good.” Somehow, it seemed to lack that quality that all great writing
had, even though I had kept those ideas in mind as I wrote. Yet what I ended up
with was merely okay, a flawed hodgepodge of good intentions. Not a great work
of art. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Over the years, I’ve often
challenged myself to define the difference between “good” and “great” works of
art, particularly in writing. I’ve read so many books over the course of three
degrees and forty-four years, and though I’ve enjoyed many of them, only a few
dozen would qualify as truly “great.” Because it’s not subjective (not
entirely), and it’s not just about enjoyment or pushing an individual’s
buttons. No, great writing is something quantifiable, something you can notice
and examine and emulate (even if it’s impossible to replicate). And of course,
you might strongly dislike a work even while knowing with every page <i>this is
a great work of art</i>. I’ve done it—disliked, even hated, a masterpiece.
Because “loving” can’t be the sole criteria of art, or even a viable one. There
has to be more to telling stories and crafting sentences than falling in love. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are a few criteria
I’ve compiled over the years to determine the worth of a truly great
book—though note that these are rough sketches, rather than definitive rules. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">#1: A Great Book Loves
Language. By this I mean that the writer enjoys writing for the sake of
writing. Words <i>mean </i>something, and are not just empty vehicles to drive
a story. Even a writer who hoards his or her words and writes very succinctly
can do this. But as you read, note how the sentences unfold. Read them out
loud. At some point, the words should dazzle you, the sentences should drive
you wild. There have to be passages that make you think, “I know what he/she is
saying but I never thought about it like that!” In short, some of the prose
should occasionally read like poetry. And poetry isn’t just ornate like
Shakespeare or Milton; e.e. Cummings and Raymond Carver also wrote poetry. And
both of them loved language.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">#2: A Great Book Initially
Seems Wrong. Ever picked up a book and thought, “what the hell is this writer
doing? You can’t start a book like that? You can’t switch narrators like that?
You can’t end a scene like that? You can’t use the tropes like this!” No one is
more opinionated or dogmatic than readers, particularly in genre fiction. We
like books to follow carefully prescribed rules and enforce these rules
zealously as self-appointed gatekeepers. Great writers, however, like to
experiment; they simply can’t help themselves. They like to subvert, to turn
upside-down, to tell a story backwards instead of forward. Sometimes, granted,
the experiments don’t work or seem pretentious. But when they do, it changes
the way we think about books. Great writers <i>always </i>challenge the way a
story is told and why we read them. Behind every great book is a ton of bad
reviews and skeptical readers. Until someone finally gets it and goes, “we
should have been doing this from the beginning!” And then we do.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">#3: A Great Book Knows
Other Books and Traditions. This seems obvious, but it’s vitally important.
When you read a great book, you can see/hear the other books and stories behind
it. They not only make allusions to other works, but write variations on
familiar themes and characters, illustrating that great writing comes from
reading <i>other </i>great writing. Too many books pretend that they’re the
only book in existence, that they exist in a vacuum, and worse still, that
they’re not really writing a book. A book should read like a book (not a movie,
or TV show, or something else); the writer should tell us, “look, we’re reading
and writing a book together. So what usually happens in books? Let’s play with
that.” Epic fantasy should be aware of the titans of Homer, Tolkein, Lord
Dunsany, and scores of others in the rear view mirror. You don’t have to tells
us you’ve read them (that’s boring and pretentious), but <i>show us </i>by how
you tell your tale and the conversation you have with your characters. Good
readers will figure it out. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">#4: A Great Book Teaches.
Take this one with a grain of salt. Yes, books can simply be entertaining and
“art for art’s sake.” But even so,<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>a
great book teaches you something about yourself, or the world, or the genre in
question. The authors can’t help it. A great book is so involved in the
tradition of story telling and the interior lives of its characters that
education will inevitably result. It’s like a teacher who goes into a classroom
exhausted, burned out, but encounters a classroom of eager students who read
the book and wants to have a meaningful conversation about it. Within minutes
the teacher will be in love with life again. Ideas will spark up and the
teacher will see connections that previously eluded him/her—as well as the
students. When a writer is confronted by great ideas, more ideas result. Many
of these ideas will be new to us and will change how we see the world. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">#5: A Great Book Scratches
an Itch. Simply put, a great book sees something that we’re all interested in,
or worried about, or wanting to talk about but were afraid to speak up. The
great book <i>says </i>all of these things and scratches that cultural itch.
You can see this happen in real time. When a book explodes, it’s because it’s
found one of our itches and goes to town scratching it. <i>Harry Potter,
Twilight, The Hunger Games, The Martian</i>—these are all books that figured
out what we worry and dream about and repackaged it for us in the most
engaging, readable form. You can pooh-pooh these books all you like, and even
question whether they’re that “great” at all (and this criteria alone wouldn’t
make a book great). However, there’s no arguing with society...we know what we
know, and when we embrace a book whole hog, there’s more than voyeurism behind
it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Are there more criteria
than this? Certainly. Could there be a great book that defies all of these
criteria? Probably so. However, I encourage you to define great books without
recourse to phrases such as “because I loved it,” or “I thought it sucked.”
There are brilliant people in the world who you simply don’t like; they might
even be assholes in private. However, being smart isn’t subjective—it can be
proven, if not with degrees than with actions and results. The same is equally
true of books. A book might turn you off or alienate you, but that doesn’t make
it bad. In fact, the book that pisses you off the most might be the greatest
book you’ve ever read. Think about it...<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span>Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-13771674338809080222018-02-24T21:00:00.001-08:002018-02-24T21:00:16.096-08:00Revising the Creature: or, Does Advice Always Improve a Novel? <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEcTlkR_6nD8igmWPysguAbULjJyUM152fiU5PGlkF9raZsC2gzhr6M6O1gE1EGhY5InR3HIp2CHttscb2wcJlxhJigWo8EaKUWDxNFTfewIc545lsEzd0_LK8OlT8hLXxcjrQQDeYLYg/s1600/illustration-2-mu.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="440" data-original-width="279" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjEcTlkR_6nD8igmWPysguAbULjJyUM152fiU5PGlkF9raZsC2gzhr6M6O1gE1EGhY5InR3HIp2CHttscb2wcJlxhJigWo8EaKUWDxNFTfewIc545lsEzd0_LK8OlT8hLXxcjrQQDeYLYg/s400/illustration-2-mu.jpg" width="252" /></a></div>
<br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">As a writer, it’s difficult to know when a work is
complete. Writing “the end” is only a kind of beginning, after all, since there
are so many stages of re-reading, revision, editing, proofreading, and
nail-biting (waiting for the first readers to tell you what they thought of
it). Of course, some would argue that a work is </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">never</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
complete; only after years or even decades of living with a work can you
finally close the book on what you once wrote and what you actually meant. So
how do you take the first step from writing to revising? Whose words can help
you see the flaws (as well as the virtues) and figure out what kind of work
you’ve actually written? <o:p></o:p></span></span><br />
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">In other words, when do you listen, and when do you
stick to your guns? Who gets to decide what your work should actually look
like: you (the author) or them (the readers)? Do they know better than you? Or
are you more far-seeing than they are? <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Here’s a case in point: in 1818, Mary Shelley
published her now-legendary novel, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Frankenstein</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,
as a twenty year-old with no previous publications (indeed, her name was
suppressed in the first edition, so as to hide her gender as well as her
name—she had recently taken up with the infamous, and married, poet Percy
Shelley). What she published is an out-and-out masterpiece, totally consistent
in tone, style, and length (very short, without a moment of slack). That said,
it’s also quite raw—full of a young person’s passion, impatience, and
occasional bombast (how many times does Victor “gnash his teeth” when he gets
angry?). Though the writing is beautiful and evocative, there are times when
her emotion runs away with her, and descriptive scenes of nature—plucked from
her favorite Romantic poetry (including her husband’s)—could be clipped for
dramatic effect. But these quibbles aside, it rightly established itself as a
masterpiece of Gothic literature and one of the greatest novels of the entire
19th century (and perhaps the 20th and 21st, since it has </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">never </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">gone out of print since its publication). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKZjkmZxNIQxe2yhHzvGptSNYajNBkAncK32aGU552oaIW5DnpVTuBrjCtF-5jyxeix5Qsu_R2zyJaAIUC9hg4p2Zf8yxeCxvkgLm_NTY0jm2YTcNZgaJtoWS5_Mm-Jroxq9GXA5ojMM/s1600/shelley.gif" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="325" data-original-width="609" height="212" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgKZjkmZxNIQxe2yhHzvGptSNYajNBkAncK32aGU552oaIW5DnpVTuBrjCtF-5jyxeix5Qsu_R2zyJaAIUC9hg4p2Zf8yxeCxvkgLm_NTY0jm2YTcNZgaJtoWS5_Mm-Jroxq9GXA5ojMM/s400/shelley.gif" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">But tell that to the author. In 1831, after
surviving several personal traumas (the death of children, her husband, and
several friends) and writing several novels, she returned to her most famous
work and made ‘corrections.’ At 34, she was an established writer and mother,
and hardly the nomadic teenager tramping across </span><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Europe</span></st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> with her flamboyant husband. In short, she
saw things differently, and had a long time to live with her novel—</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">and </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">to hear everyone’s opinions about what was
wrong with it, what needed improvement, and how much of it was clearly written
by her husband. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Yes, many people insisted that a woman (and almost
a child, as she was) could have never written such a landmark work of art, so
clearly her husband wrote the better part of it, condescending to let her
“borrow” its authorship to make a name for herself. Never mind that Percy
Shelley was not celebrated for his prose writing and was in general far too
long-winded to write such a compact novel that often criticized his very
character and ideals (did I mention how angry and passionate she was when she
wrote it?). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">At any rate, she decided to respond to criticism
and revise her novel accordingly. First, she took a shot at critics who denied
her authorship in the 1831 edition’s preface: “At first I thought but a few
pages—of a short tale; but Shelley urged me to develop the idea [of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Frankenstein</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">] at greater length. I certainly did not owe
the suggestion of one incident, nor scarcely one train of feeling, to my
husband, and yet buy for his incitement it would never have taken the form in
which it was presented to the world.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Having settled that, she went on to make some wide-ranging
revisions, softening Victor Frankenstein’s character and guilt, removing some
of the more revolutionary passages (that betrayed her Romantic sentiments and
those of her father, William Godwin), and erasing much of the character of the
novel’s most important female character, Elizabeth Lavenza. The latter is the
most surprising: why would a female author edit out a woman’s voice from her
novel? The easy answer is that probably many readers (chief among them men)
found her sentiments shocking or her character intrusive. </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Why doesn’t she act like a woman—like a victim? </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">they
might have chided. For whatever reason, she complied and made </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> a much quieter and less
effective character, as would be expected of a daughter/wife in the 1830’s. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOn9pHtWwod_AYFRT8JlzvcvxQvHJMYKg7GakndIdRbgPVT24_DrbF_BAmrsyxidOZ79fGnQDcv6-QdywbrDO550mPuamAIfoU1QNAiaXtY-y5dGZqjQJDJFY2_wSlbzgsoj8gvJMLXSo/s1600/shel.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="370" data-original-width="300" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOn9pHtWwod_AYFRT8JlzvcvxQvHJMYKg7GakndIdRbgPVT24_DrbF_BAmrsyxidOZ79fGnQDcv6-QdywbrDO550mPuamAIfoU1QNAiaXtY-y5dGZqjQJDJFY2_wSlbzgsoj8gvJMLXSo/s400/shel.jpg" width="323" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">For example, here’s a major difference between the
1818 version and the 1831 revision. It occurs in Volume One, Chapter Seven in
1818, or Chapter Eight in 1831, when Victor and Elizabeth confront Justine,
their servant who is wrongfully accused of strangling their brother, William.
She will be executed the following morning, and she has just confessed that her
confession was forced—undertaken merely to save her soul. In the 1818 version, </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> responds as follows: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">“Oh, Justine! forgive me
for having for one moment distrusted you...I will try to comfort you; but this,
I fear, is an evil too deep and poignant to admit of consolation, for there is
no hope. Yet heaven bless thee, my dearest Justine, with resignation, and a
confidence elevated beyond this world. Oh! how I hate its shews [sic] and
mockeries! when one creature is murdered, another is immediately deprived of
life in a slow torturing manner; then the executioners, their hands yet reeking
with the blood of innocence, believe they have done a great deed. They call
this <i>retribution</i>. Hateful name! When that word is pronounced, I know
greater and more horrid punishments are going to be inflicted than the
gloomiest tyrant has ever invented to satiate his utmost revenge. Yet this is
not consolation for you, my Justine, unless indeed that you may glory in
escaping from so miserable a den. Alas! I would I were in peace with my aunt
and my lovely William, escaped from a world which is hateful to me, and the
visages of men which I abhor.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">A powerful speech against
the “justice” of capital punishment as well as the bias of men that offers up
another woman for sacrifice. This reeks of the teenage Mary Shelley’s
indignation against male prejudice and authoritarianism. Giving Elizabeth space
to say this makes Justine’s death meaningful; it also calls out Victor for his
inability to protect her, since he is too worried about what people will think
of him (and too selfish to sacrifice himself). However, in 1831 we find
something quite different in this passage, which you can read below: <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">“Oh, Justine! Forgive me
for having one moment distrusted you...Justine shook her head mournfully. “I do
not fear to die,” she said; “that pang is past. God raises my weakness and
gives me courage to endure the worst. I leave a sad and bitter world; and if
you remember me and think of me as of one unjustly condemned, I am resigned to
the fate awaiting me. Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will
of heaven!”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">That’s it. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana";"> says <i>one sentence</i>. Instead, Justine gets to
speak, and rather than blast male pride or judicial hypocrisy, she refuses to
call anyone out, and almost thrilled with the opportunity to die like a
Dickensian heroine. Her final sentence almost seems cribbed from a Victorian
conduct manual: “Learn from me, dear lady, to submit in patience to the will of
heaven!” So no matter how duped you are by your protectors or by justice
itself, simply submit to the will of heaven and say your prayers. You might get
killed, or raped, or even worse, but no matter—you’re only a woman! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Why would Mary Shelley
take out one of her most powerful speeches (and a speech by a woman, no less)
and revise it with something pat and perfunctory? A response to criticism, no
doubt. People were uncomfortable with </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana";">’s agency—her unwillingness to submit to her fate.
She does the same elsewhere, too, and almost every time Mary strikes it out. In
an </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: "verdana";"> inching toward Victorian sensibilities, such women
could no longer speak out. And whatever Mary privately thought of it, she seems
to have nodded her head and bit her lip and crossed out the offending passages.
Did it make for a better novel? After all, a few fine speeches don’t make a
novel, and we can argue that </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana";">’s powerful declaration has nothing to do with the
story proper. Did Mary feel it actually detracted from her tale? Is it possible
that she actually saw it as an improvement?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin: 0in 0in 0pt;">
<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Sadly, we’ll never know,
though to this day, the 1831 version is the more common form of the novel. Most
people read this version, with its truncated </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana";">, than the original 1818 (though this is
increasingly gaining in popularity). So which one should we read? Are first
thoughts best thoughts? Or does everything improve with revision? Whatever we
decide, <i>Frankenstein </i>remains a cautionary tale on revision and
criticism. To be sure, some things improved in the revision: the Creature has
some better scenes, and the novel overall is a bit tighter and more dramatic.
But much is lost, and not just with </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Elizabeth</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana";">. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Revisions are always a
compromise between what you wrote then and what you see now. And criticism can
blind you to the fact of who you were when you wrote the work. The best
revisions are undertaken with a foot in both worlds—the present and the past.
If you only revise based on who you are now, with ignorance or even contempt
the previous writer, the revisions are unlikely to improve the work. I think to
some degree Mary Shelley revised in this spirit—or was convinced that she
should. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizaPQm3Wg2p7qQDZEGD4mHYEzoxdPPbXJJ_Yn4y7FBM2pgsVuM1W3BGtiZRVUksb-DbJbvJuoUTPpGhCcbg1XicVsteheQV7DJWD7QdnU2kbtf9kSNsG8k05gIzrV81hVhrSEpqJeSij0/s1600/Caspar.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1250" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizaPQm3Wg2p7qQDZEGD4mHYEzoxdPPbXJJ_Yn4y7FBM2pgsVuM1W3BGtiZRVUksb-DbJbvJuoUTPpGhCcbg1XicVsteheQV7DJWD7QdnU2kbtf9kSNsG8k05gIzrV81hVhrSEpqJeSij0/s400/Caspar.jpg" width="311" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">Take criticism will a
liberal pinch of salt. Don’t assume that what one or even a dozen readers say
is gospel. Listen closely, carefully, and digest this advice in the balance of
your own inspiration and intentions. Don’t assume that you’ve outgrown the
writer of yesteryear. Sometimes—many times—we were much wiser back then than we
are today. Wisdom isn’t always measured in years, after all. It’s not for
nothing that Mary Shelley wrote many other novels, some of them quite good,
such as <i>Valperga, The Last Man, </i>and <i>Lodore</i>, but nothing that
matched the popularity and visceral thrill of <i>Frankenstein</i>. Perhaps she
never forgave her first novel for being her best, especially when she no longer
thought so herself (for what author ever thinks his or her first novel is their
crowning achievement?). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana";"><span style="font-family: "verdana";">If writing is an emotional
exercise, so, too, is revision. But even worse, revision can become an exercise
in exorcism—a chance to rid yourself of the demons and spirits that haunt you.
Shelley hoped to make <i>Frankenstein </i>more civilized and respectable—an
impossible task. We love it for what it says about who she was and how she saw
the world: as a firebrand teenager who refused to conform to society’s laws.
Only a teenager in the early 19th century could imagine a “monster” who thought
like a child, and was cruelly tortured by his father—much as Mary was betrayed
by her own father for loving Percy. Fiction preserves the follies of youth even
when the adult can no longer stomach them. However, now that she’s escaped the
dogma of 19th century </span><st1:country-region><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana";">England</span></st1:place></st1:country-region><span style="font-family: "verdana";"> and the land of the living, I can only imagine
that wherever she is, she’s reading the 1818 version and smiling with approval.
<i>Yes, that’s exactly what I meant...and the rest of you can choke on it!</i></span></span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-36250063651102978132018-02-07T18:36:00.003-08:002018-02-07T18:36:42.387-08:00Don't Take It Out On the Books! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Oaca3ZwoA0aOBmFvwzizlAwDzMuhwvp5moTJ1VZnboPSjR6oEgdp44Rxs3Y5nk0hE0F114sOZlMO6MvtHEWxRg6nU9QoD27njhnS1hD5Hr3GxpU3Fbbpu4vsObglNLKSRSdL9YHxsAI/s1600/51UVPRLqPAL__AC_US218_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="427" data-original-width="640" height="266" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-Oaca3ZwoA0aOBmFvwzizlAwDzMuhwvp5moTJ1VZnboPSjR6oEgdp44Rxs3Y5nk0hE0F114sOZlMO6MvtHEWxRg6nU9QoD27njhnS1hD5Hr3GxpU3Fbbpu4vsObglNLKSRSdL9YHxsAI/s400/51UVPRLqPAL__AC_US218_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Recently in an article on </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Book Riot’s </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Facebook page, a writer/academic boasted of
her lifelong disdain of a “great” work that everyone is </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">supposed </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">to like, but apparently, no one does. The
work in question is </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Moby Dick</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">,
and the writer congratulated herself for finally tossing the work aside,
realizing that you can be an academic without sacrificing your own sense of
taste. On the one hand, she’s exactly right: being an academic doesn’t mean
conforming to a rigid standard of taste or values, since </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">no one </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">is more argumentative or less homogenous than
a group of English professors. I should know—I’m one myself, and ran the
gauntlet of a PhD program in English literature with a highly divisive group of
mentors. Indeed, one of my favorite professors would often tell us, “</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Jane Eyre </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">is a piece of shit—read </span><st1:place><st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Wuthering</span></i></st1:placename><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></i><st1:placetype><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Heights</span></i></st1:placetype></st1:place><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;"> </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">instead!” I was far too timid to contradict her at
the time, but the question always forming on my lips was, “er, why can’t we
read them both? Does liking one necessarily exclude the other?” <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">But to return to the article in question: why is
rejecting a work a badge of pride or an arbiter of taste? Of course we’re not
all going to like the same books, or appreciate the same music, but that has
less to do with conforming than our individual aesthetics. I get that the
writer felt pressured (by whom?) to like and appreciate </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Moby Dick, </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and by defying it to all and sundry, she felt
she was asserting her independence from the academy. My only question is, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">why take it out on a book? </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Books don’t care what
you think of them; they don’t have a secret agenda to make you feel stupid; and
they certainly don’t belong to a secret club of hipster academic rock stars.
Yes, a group of hipster academic rock stars might carry specific books as icons
of their own importance, but that’s their choice—not the book’s. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I think the most tragic mistake we make as readers
is grafting other people’s personalities onto books we haven’t read. A student
recently told me, “I rarely read books that are assigned in class; I prefer to
chose my own reading material.” While that sounds very enlightened and
independent, it also says “any book an authority figure likes is immediately
branded with their image.” So he rejects the book as an effigy for the professor,
rather than putting his ego aside and taking the book on its own terms. After
all, what if a book he might have read himself is on a class reading list? Does
it suddenly become anathema? Does he pretend he never wanted to read it? Or
does he actually convince himself he never did? Should reading books be so
complicated? Isn’t the point of reading to learn, to dream, to imagine, to
expand, to travel, to exalt, to fulfill, to explore, to be something more than
you are? So why settle for so much less? <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQi14l5BoDgyR9gvxtxBhGvaBrPgtaSzbrZMxTlSBH5DJQE3gH5rRcBMeJMaZOrvuS4CDfMp2ccjaJGCytMbSlosZ3eu3TkfzNvrOe8dqwL75g2JiWWwb0vjZmP4ZwV9xDCLJE-cwhKjs/s1600/61joJZxkV3L__AC_US218_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="499" data-original-width="312" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiQi14l5BoDgyR9gvxtxBhGvaBrPgtaSzbrZMxTlSBH5DJQE3gH5rRcBMeJMaZOrvuS4CDfMp2ccjaJGCytMbSlosZ3eu3TkfzNvrOe8dqwL75g2JiWWwb0vjZmP4ZwV9xDCLJE-cwhKjs/s400/61joJZxkV3L__AC_US218_.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Okay, granted, you might have every intention of
liking </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Moby Dick, </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">or
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Beowulf</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, or </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">To The Lighthouse</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> and a dozen pages in, you’re nodding off. So
you toss it aside and try again a few days later...with the same result. Maybe
you try again in a month, even a year, with the same experience of tedium or
blatant dislike. How could you respond so negatively to a work embraced and
loved and taught by millions? It’s natural to feel a little embarrassed, as if
everyone is laughing at a joke that doesn’t seem in the least bit amusing. And
often that vague embarrassment turns into resentment—and then a total rejection
of the book in question. Some people assume it’s a conspiracy or an act of
pretension; </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">no one really likes that
book—it’s just something people say!</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> Another click bait
article on FB recently announced, “25 books that if people say they’ve read that
proves they’re lying,” with rather tame favorite such as </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Pride and Prejudice </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">and </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">1984. </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Is it really that simple? If two people
disagree about a book one of them </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">has </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">to
be lying? <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Or is the answer much more complex? Books, like all
creative art, have to be examined from multiple perspectives. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Reading</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> alone doesn’t make you
the master of all books, and no matter how many places you’ve lived, you’re not
‘worldly’ enough to understand every book from every culture. Every book has
its own aesthetic </span><st1:stockticker><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">DNA</span></st1:stockticker><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">
which resonates when a reader shares a similar genetic makeup—either through
their life experiences, or the books they’ve read, or their hometown, or their
thought processes. Not liking a book isn’t necessarily a failure of the
book—and it’s certainly not a failure in you. What </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">is </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">a
failure is when you censure a book for not meeting your standards and/or assume
that a book that bores you isn’t a book worth reading. Even worse is when you
go on a crusade to stop anyone from reading that book...which is what the
author of the article seemed to undertake as a newly minted academic (her poor
students!). <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Simply put, </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">you will
hate, dislike, be bored by, or simply find yourself indifferent to very good
books. Even some of the best. Even worse, other people will hate, dislike, be
bored by, and simply find themselves indifferent to the books you love most in
the world. Some of these people will be your best friends...one of them may
even be your husband or wife (gasp!). And it’s okay</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">.
</span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Life goes on. <o:p></o:p></span></i></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">However, as we grow older our tastes change,
broaden, deepen, are refined. The books we loved as teenagers don’t always
carry on into late adulthood. Likewise, books we find deep meaning in after 50
might have infuriated us at 25. So how do we read for both or multiple
selves—the one we are today, and the one we hope to grow into? Here’s what I
would suggest if you find yourself at odds with a book that everyone else
claims to love:<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">
</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">* Read some reviews of the book. Not Amazon or
Goodreads reviews (ye gods!), but a review by a professional critic or another
writer or academic. Or even better still, read the Introduction or Afterward
often published in editions of classic books. Such reviews/intros will give you
a fresh perspective on a book the way a college class can invite multiple
discussions on a single page. The more voices you invite into the reading
experience, the more you might see—and appreciate—in the book before putting it
down again.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">* Learn more about the author. Often we dislike a
book because it seems to exist in a vacuum. If you don’t know anything about
Flaubert, and his book seems tiresome, figure out who he was. Where did he come
from? Who did he love? Why did he write this book? Connecting a book with an
actual human being changes things immediately. It makes it real, a precious
object rather than a mass-produced pile of pulp. It might also explain why some
of the things that annoy or confuse you are actually there.<o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLuE4ys8tAV3i0qJKwdgOmAMLMTQmd8R0I6stGzzpFDD43ZaESQkCDMFNAGA7wTs5ZKg_DqzO1gq1WgYVi3reGBW12cOWSeZK8B5hmGTk6YUMiVDyJh5zubG7NxEA3581mYcscxbO4dA/s1600/610DviosjnL._AC_US218_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="475" data-original-width="303" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbLuE4ys8tAV3i0qJKwdgOmAMLMTQmd8R0I6stGzzpFDD43ZaESQkCDMFNAGA7wTs5ZKg_DqzO1gq1WgYVi3reGBW12cOWSeZK8B5hmGTk6YUMiVDyJh5zubG7NxEA3581mYcscxbO4dA/s400/610DviosjnL._AC_US218_.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span></span></span></span></span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">* Figure out what else was being written at the
time. This is especially important for the so-called classics. </span><st1:city><st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Reading</span></st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">Candide </span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">might confuse you until you realize what
Voltaire is directly responding to. This will help you understand much of the
satire in the little volume, but also how courageous he was in standing up
against tyranny and the dictates of popular taste. Also, seeing how one book
responds to and expands upon another helps you appreciate the “spider web”
effect of literature, and how everything exists in a symbiotic
relationship—even books by authors who used to hate one another. Especially
authors who hated one another! <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">* Give it time. We often think that we’re the most
advanced, enlightened, educated, emancipated person right now that we’ll ever
be. And it’s never true. In a year you might think differently. Things will
change. A relationship (or lack thereof) will change how you read a book. So
will a change of job. An election. Even the time of year. Nothing is more true
than this: </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial;">your taste will change</span></i><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">.
Not get “better,” perhaps, but evolve. The book you toss aside today might one
day become your constant companion. And nothing is more annoying than admitting
that to a friend you convinced never to read a specific book. <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><span style="font-family: "verdana"; mso-bidi-font-family: Arial; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">So don’t hate books. It’s not worth it. Hate
politics, dogmas, bureaucracies, secret societies, even a few people while
you’re at it. But not the books. They represent the best of what we do, and
they last because they offer us more than we could possibly become ourselves.
We diminish ourselves when declare a holy war against art. Because only art
itself is holy, not our self-righteous and often hypocritical ideals.</span> <o:p></o:p></span></span></span></span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-64693722484354528882018-01-20T07:52:00.001-08:002018-01-20T07:52:32.969-08:00Self-Published Books: Better than the Drive-Thru
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC7HN13oX_yij0maqTid2gwN4BzG3xfmcwiuM0x4arBC8x-EIbVd3SuBrMYk9ClqHHq0ngqAvSsWBwWjZ7cyTkJkGtd8vIRdKm1N3kwTGn5QBIjOfT-_eb6_0qmINW5NUAW_FHt4ew-Vs/s1600/mcdsdrivethru_0_0.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1600" height="225" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhC7HN13oX_yij0maqTid2gwN4BzG3xfmcwiuM0x4arBC8x-EIbVd3SuBrMYk9ClqHHq0ngqAvSsWBwWjZ7cyTkJkGtd8vIRdKm1N3kwTGn5QBIjOfT-_eb6_0qmINW5NUAW_FHt4ew-Vs/s400/mcdsdrivethru_0_0.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"></span> </div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">For
many authors, the very phrase “self-published” means defeat. And to some it’s
simply the “easy way out.” Conversely, many people would never buy a book that
didn’t have the stamp of approval from Tor, or Harper Collins, or Penguin. And
let’s be honest, some people only buy books from big name authors and no one
else, publisher be damned. So what chance do indie authors stand, who often
publish on their own and are relative nobodies? In general, people who laugh
when you tell them you self publish have one (or all) of the following
arguments:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
If you can’t get an agent or publisher to accept your work then you probably
have no business being an author; you’re simply not good enough.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Why buy a ‘generic’ book when there are thousands—millions—of bona fide works
of art to choose from? Who needs “Best Value” Cheerios when normal Cheerios are
cheap and readily in stock?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Indie books are poorly written and edited, making it a chore to read them. The
big publishers pay people to smooth out the kinks of their authors’ works—but
indie authors either can’t afford to or simply don’t care.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Indie books are derivative and unimaginative copies of the best sellers, much
like a ‘direct to video’ movie (who seriously wants to watch </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Star Crash
</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">instead
of </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">Star
Wars</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">?) <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">These
are all compelling arguments, and like many stereotypes they contain a kernel
of truth. Are there many poorly written and edited indie books on the market?
Of course. Are some of them derivative and generic versions of the best
sellers? Sure. And do many indie writers turn to self-publishing when all the
big name agents and publishers turn them down. You bet they do. Ah, so I’ve
admitted the truth—it’s </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">all true</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">, you just said so! <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Proving
some things true doesn’t prove </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">all things </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">true. Just because McDonald’s gets your
drive-thru order wrong twice in a row doesn’t mean they </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">always </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">get your order wrong in
every city throughout the country. It ultimately comes down to the individual
franchise or workers, but it can’t be indicative of the experience of an entire
restaurant chain. Whatever you think about McDonald’s food (and I boycott it,
personally) the reality is that many managers take pride in their businesses,
and many workers are happy to do a good day’s work. Not every teenager working
a minimum wage job hates life—and by extension, hates </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">you.</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"> And even I, who hate
McDonald’s, have occasionally been forced to eat there on a road trip and can
get good service and decent food and think, “well, okay, so it’s not </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">always </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">bad—but I still don’t
like it.” <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">You
see where I’m going with this? Are all indie writers hacks, charlatans, and
wannabes? Do they slap together books simply to turn a quick profit and then
skip town? Even more so than McDonald’s owners, they’re people with dreams,
many of whom work long hours at a ‘real’ job and then come home, bleary eyed
and exhausted, and still log in a few hours with a work-in-progress, hoping
that one day it will climb the charts and validate their secret passion.
Because the reality is that not everyone can be a writer. There are just too
many books already out there, and too few people who want to pay people for
writing books (and sadly, too few people who want to buy them). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">Conversely,
there are probably millions of people who are genuinely talented writers, at
least half of whom also exhibit traits of genius—people who could legitimately
revolutionize the field. How many of their works, however, will ever reach
print? Probably only about 1%, and that’s being generous. A sad truth of the
modern world is that many talented people will die without a single person
recognizing their gift. Some will get a measure of recognition, but not enough
to quit their ‘day job,’ and many more will give up in despair and look back at
their affair with art with revulsion—or guilt. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">The
ability to self-publish is, in some ways, one of the most compassionate bones
ever tossed to society via technology. Now </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">everyone </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">can publish their works
and see their works in print. True, the price of getting every talented writer
a book is that millions of untalented writers and outright hacks get one, too.
But is that worth the cost of admission? In general, I would say it is; after
all, bad books come and go, but the good books stay, as long as enough people
find them first. And now, even in a field drowning with books, it’s still
possible to find a truly good book—even by an unknown author. Below are some
very compelling reasons to buy an indie book and support a self-published
author despite everything you’ve heard, everything you’ve said, and everything
you know (or think you know) from first-hand experience:<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Most self-published writers are writing against the current, so to speak; no
one asked them to write this book, they’re not being paid for it, and they
often do so at great personal and professional expense (i.e. when they should
be taking care of kids or doing their jobs—or sleeping!). <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
They’re following a dream. Sure, professional authors are, too, but they’ve
already achieved it in some measure. Indie writers are all like Cyrano de
Bergerac (Rostand’s once-famous play), who claimed that the only fight worth
fighting is the one that you know you can’t win. The fight that you’re doomed
to die in. That’s the indie writer: howling into the winds having already seen
the pitiful fate of their comrades.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
They can afford to take chances. An established author has to think about their
agent, publisher, editor, audience, and so forth, and all of them have a say in
what they write and when. The indie author can write whatever the hell they want.
They can fly in the face of trends and even defy industry wisdom about what
sells and who wants it. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Usually the people who start new trends are doing it where no one is looking.
Honestly, Steven King isn’t going to change the landscape of horror or science
fiction at this point—he did what he did, and his moment is over (though he
continues to write good books). However, even he came out of left field and
changed the market. Today, that’s most likely going to come from someone who
doesn’t have the ear of the industry. Someone who is writing in obscurity until
an intrepid reader catches wind of it and says, “why isn’t everyone writing
like this?”<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
You can actually make a difference in these authors’ lives. If you write a fan
letter to J.K. Rowling, you might get a generic reply from one of her many
handlers. I’m sure she’s happy you like her books, but really, she has bigger
fish to fry. But if you read the work of an indie writer, and you write
them...then will </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">respond to you</span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">. Likewise, it will make an immediate and
tangible different in their lives. You could even become the catalyst that
makes a great writer about to give up write their next bestseller. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
Indie writers are more likely to be fans of the genres they write in.
All-too-often, genre fiction catches the attention of an ‘important’ writer who
wants to revitalize their career, like Margaret Atwood trying her hand at
writing a superhero comic. I’m pretty sure she could give a shit about
superheroes in general, or even comics; indie writers, on the other hand, are
much more likely to </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">read </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">comics and to know the universe they’re actively
trying to shape. In other words, they’re probably more like you. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">*
One word—surprise. Simply put, you don’t know what you’re going to find with an
indie book. The big publishers are very predictable in what they publish:
namely, what has already sold. Indie writers might be trying the same thing, or
they might try their hand at something completely different. You’re much more
likely to be taken unawares by an indie than a mainstream writer, though
admittedly big writers can surprise and indies can disappoint. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;"><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">After
all, reading isn’t a formula or an equation. It’s a gamble...and sometimes, it
really pays off. So while there are many good, sound reasons to never buy a
self-published book, there are some damn good reasons to defy current wisdom
and do just that. And honestly, buying a book is </span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="font-family: Verdana;">never </span></i><span style="font-family: Verdana; mso-bidi-font-style: italic;">a bad thing to do or
something you should regret. In fact, you’re more likely to get better service
and a more wholesome product than if you go through the McDonald’s drive thru!
It’s a hell of a lot cheaper, too...<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-59719343412579357672018-01-02T14:48:00.000-08:002018-01-02T14:48:11.279-08:00My New Novella--Short and Cheap on Amazon: The Shadow Familiar<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiooFDyxYEOrSYd0SwhJxu9bFfBkyxV3xxYQFTPJZiAAV_vup-Wb-k7jsxbYuUDK5eghvFMUD4_X-4fk7TH_i3ykjeoFf_vMf3lt_brX16m87ndzoiXTRADmNLmezNyLopx-_DOCPvBv9Q/s1600/shadow+familiar+%25283%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1003" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiooFDyxYEOrSYd0SwhJxu9bFfBkyxV3xxYQFTPJZiAAV_vup-Wb-k7jsxbYuUDK5eghvFMUD4_X-4fk7TH_i3ykjeoFf_vMf3lt_brX16m87ndzoiXTRADmNLmezNyLopx-_DOCPvBv9Q/s400/shadow+familiar+%25283%2529.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">1681: Two sorcerers are summoned to a remote estate to exorcise
the Viceroy’s daughter. Is she entranced by the ancient book that holds the
soul of a mysterious sorcerer...or the strange blue woman who appears in mirrors
at night? Or have the sorcerers bewitched her themselves? </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Read my new novella (only 75 pages--an hour's worth of reading--or two, if you read especially slow), The Shadow Familiar, set in the 17th century world of Mandragora, in a Europe that never was. You can download it for only 99 cents on Amazon and read it with a Kindle or any Kindle app. Leave a review if you enjoyed it or even if you didn't. </span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Here's the link: </span><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Familiar-Prelude-Backward-Hildigrims-ebook/dp/B078RBBFTS/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1514932945&sr=1-2&keywords=the+shadow+familiar" target="_blank"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">https://www.amazon.com/Shadow-Familiar-Prelude-Backward-Hildigrims-ebook/dp/B078RBBFTS/ref=sr_1_2?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1514932945&sr=1-2&keywords=the+shadow+familiar</span></a><br />
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-37111947375413598162017-12-23T11:01:00.002-08:002017-12-23T11:05:37.003-08:00The Score as Symphony: John Williams’ The Last Jedi (2017)<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Williams’
new score for <i>The Last Jedi </i>is his eighth <i>Star Wars </i>score, an almost
bewildering achievement for the now eighty-five year-old composer. Though he
probably doesn’t view this achievement with quite the applause that <i>Star Wars </i>fans do (he recently
said in an interview that he doesn’t remember writing anything particularly
memorable for the films!), it has created an entire language for the saga—a
language that extends into every byproduct of the original trilogy (shows,
games, commercials, etc.). To see Darth Vader is to hear his music, and to even
think Star Wars is to hear the iconic theme come blasting across the screen.
It’s a considerable achievement to live up to, and even the most cynical
composer must have thought twice before penning a new trilogy—or rather, a <i>third </i>new trilogy!</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Reviews
of the score have followed similar lines to that of <i>The Force Awakens</i>: much applause, but
also a fair amount of people quibbling that there are “no good themes,” “the
same old, same old,” or even worse, that it’s full of “boring filler music.” I
imagine many of these listeners would say the same about a Mahler or
Shostakovich symphony. For Williams’ scores, even at their simplest, are truly
symphonic scores. Sure, he often composes stand-alone themes and suites from
his scores, but they’re meant to be heard as one continuous narrative, much in
the way we can play the Allegretto (2nd mvt.) of Beethoven’s Seventh Symphony
alone in concert. It’s wonderful music, to be sure, yet it’s also part of a
larger musical argument and makes the most sense as <i>Symphony No.7. </i>So,
too, with <i>The Last Jedi</i>, which is a web of themes and motifs and music that has a running
dialogue with the film. Perhaps it works best with the film, too, so we can see
these connections...yet even as a piece of ‘absolute’ music (which Stravinsky
argues, all music ultimately is) it works beautifully if taken on its own
terms. With this music, don’t expect songs or themes, but listen to it as a
story in sound—each theme or motif an actor with its own lines and
contributions to the storyline. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here
are a few highlights from a very impressive score, which like any symphony (or
more fittingly, incidental music) needs to be listened as a whole and
appreciated moment-by-moment.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Main Title and Escape</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">:
The Main Title uses pretty much the same version we hear in </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">A New Hope</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, even with the lone, querulous flute theme
leading into the action. The “Escape” part of the cue is trademark Williams
action music, connecting us to the desperate world of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Force Awakens </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">where the First Order is
hell-bent on crushing the Rebellion. It’s a strident, military march that
echoes every so-slightly the “</span><st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:place>Battle</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> of the Heroes” from </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Revenge of the Sith. </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This leads into a
statement of Kylo Ren’s Theme before being swallowed up by the military music
once again. And then—a heroic Star Wars theme comes up—the Resistance isn’t
down yet! Another heroic theme surfaces, giving hope to the efforts of this
plucky band, which leads right into the March of the Resistance from the
previous film (one of his most memorable themes in years, and one that repays
repeated use in the film). Then we get a lot of action music, all exciting,
white-knuckle motifs that keep us on the edge of our seat. It’s a long and very
satisfying opening to the score, and the perfect backdrop to the opening of the
film, as the bombers try to take out the First Order’s terrible Dreadnaught. Love
the ending which quotes the Force theme briefly as it winds down, not in
triumph, but with a sense of grim hope in the face of overwhelming odds.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Ahch-To </b><st1:place><b>Island</b></st1:place>: The perfect
counterpoint to the battle music is this more serene, mysterious cue which
returns us to music used at the very end of <i>The Force
Awakens</i>. It’s a beautiful, ghostly little theme like fog
lifting off the water by the touch of the sun. Then the strings (and soon
after, the horns) invoke what I call the “questioning” theme, which sounds like
it’s trying to probe the mystery behind Luke’s disappearance. After a quick
climax the Force theme appears, which never fails to give me goosebumps. Yet an
air of mystery remains, and as Rey herself finds, Luke is in no mood to answer
questions or provide solace. Rey’s theme appears, full of hope and innocence,
as she is determined to enlist his help for the Resistance. After all, as she
later tells him, “I’ve seen your daily routine...you’re not busy!” But even
here, the military music raises its head for a moment, as if to say that
Ahch-To may be in the uncharted regions of the galaxy, but it will soon be
engulfed by death and destruction if Skywalker continues to look away.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">The Supremacy</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">:
A plaintive clarinet theme opens this before rushing battle music takes over.
The Resistance Theme is restated to echo their resolve, though the heroism
seems muted once more; the battle music seems to swirl in a frenzy, with Kylo’s
Theme emerging just ahead as his tie-fighter closes in for the fatal shot.
Fittingly, Princess Leia’s Theme appears as she is sucked out of the freighter
and into deep space to die a cold death. And here’s where it gets interesting:
the theme is played in a ghostly variation, with pianissimo strings and
chimes...until the string come back with a romantic surge, a grand restatement
of her theme full of life and beauty! And sure enough, she’s still quite alive,
and the lifeblood of the Resistance is restored (for now, at least). The piece
ends with an eerie restatement of Rey’s Theme, as if to say </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">she </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">might be the last hope for the Resistance.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Fun With Finn and Rose</b>:
One of the truly new themes to appear in this score, it’s a warm, innocent
theme somewhat in the spirit of Williams’ <i>Harry
Potter </i>score, and a bit related to Rey’s Theme as well. It
leads into a quiet though strident restatement of the Resistance March (since
Rose is a loyal follower of this movement) and then Princess Leia’s Theme once
more, though briefly. The piece ends cryptically, as if to suggest the “fun” is
short-lived and might be ironic.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">The Rebellion is Reborn</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">:
This opens hopefully with a restatement of the Rose and Finn theme in a bright,
major key. It’s the most cheerful music in the score thus far—gently romantic,
even. Some adventure music intervenes, but only as a counterpoint to an even
grander restatement of the new theme. The music quickly becomes murkier and
more unsettled, though the staccato “adventure” motif returns several times to
move things along. It grows in strength towards the end of the piece as the
prelude to a grand adventure—and possible romance?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>Canto Bight</b>: A very <i>Star Wars </i>prelude (mysterious, adventurous) leads into
something quite unexpected—jazzy, ‘cantina’ music ala <i>A New Hope</i>. But this music, steel drums aside, are much
more 20’s jazz with wailing clarinets and <i>wah-wah</i>
trumpets. It’s very clever and gives the perfect snapshot to Canto Bight’s
backdrop of high life debauchery. It’s nice to see Williams get a little
unbuttoned and hearken back to some of his most iconic music from the first
film. Short, but a gem. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Fathiers</b>:
Rousing action music for the scene where Finn and Rose free the beasts of
burden—the Fathiers—and take them for a ride in the moonlight back to their
ship after a prison break. This is what Williams does best: zipping strings,
trumpeting brass, chirping flutes, and out of nowhere, a heroic motif that
sends your heart racing. The Finn and
Rose theme makes its expected appearance and gets a grand reprise—very
heroic/romantic in true Korngoldian fashion. The action music goes back in
forth with the romantic theme, until we fade out at the end. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Sacred Jedi Texts:</b>
A grim restatement of the Force theme opens this piece, though this is quickly
pushed aside for an action cue, and then—Yoda’s Theme? But more anxious music
appears, and then an alarming minor key rendition of The Force Theme. Ah—the
burning of the small temple that houses the Sacred Texts! The Force Theme,
surprisingly, appears, as if unaffected...and indeed, texts and temples do not
make the Force. It lives on in the hearts and minds of its practitioners, such
as the Force Ghost of Yoda, whose theme makes a triumphant return in all its <i>Empire </i>glory. It’s very reassurance reminds us that
the Force goes on, even if the Resistance is lost and the “last Jedi” fades
away.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Chrome Dome</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">: An exciting
action cue, which centers around the fight between Finn and Captain Phasma
(brief though it is). A portentous theme with drums serves as prelude, along
with a lot of trademark writing for brass and an almost-statement of the Star
Wars theme. Thudding drums underscore the drama of this piece, along with other
forms of percussion—and brass/winds used as quasi-percussion with shrieks and
wails. It’s brief but exciting, though like Captain Phasma’s appearance in the
film, you almost wish it would last a bit longer.</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">The </b><st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><st1:place><b>Battle</b></st1:place></st1:city><b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;"> of Crait</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">:
The Force theme opens this piece before martial music intrudes—the First Order
forces being marshaled on the surface of Crait. Then a heroic reprisal of the
Finn and Rose theme signaling hope in the face of disaster, followed by a
desperate and brief cry of the Resistance March. Trademark battle music
follows, high brass and xylophone and strings whirling in alarm. In the middle
of the melee comes several themes: the Star Wars theme, and then, Rey’s theme
as she mans the guns on the Falcon. There’s a nice “da-da-da-da-DA-da” motif
that flows through the action as well. And suddenly, a spine-tingling use of
the </span><st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><st1:place>Battle</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">
of the Tie Fighters music from </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">A New Hope </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">as
the Falcon engages them. Sure, they’re reusing a famous old cue, but it’s so
appropriate and underscores the drama perfectly. This fades into more tense
battle music, and finally, a somber dirge as Finn faces down his own death. A
chorus comes in at this point, and we know—or fear—that a major character will leave
the series for good. A climax is reached—but his fate seems unresolved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><b>The Spark</b>: Low strings
and horns introduce this cue, which quickly becomes mysterious and unsettling.
Yet the Force theme assures us that we’re among friends, and in this case, Luke
himself. Luke and Leia’s theme from <i>Return of the Jedi </i>cements
the reunion of brother and sister, a deeply touching moment in the score and in
the film. This was easily one of the greatest, if least celebrated, themes in
the OT. Somber music follows, and then, cleverly, Han and Leia’s theme briefly
follows as a reminder of what they’ve both lost. Tense music intrudes,
suggesting the drama about the unfold outside and the role Luke must perform as
the “last Jedi.”</span><br />
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<b style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">Finale</b><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">: A mystical
theme on the chimes opens the end of the score, along with a bright-eyed flute
motif. This leads the way for the Force theme, which is taken up by the entire
orchestra triumphantly—and right into the Credits music. We know what to expect
here—the brilliant, major key heroic music that has ended every single Star
Wars movie since the beginning. Typically, it then leads into a restatement of
all the new themes of the film, but there aren’t too many new themes except for
one, which is now played: Finn and Rose’s Theme, which sounds even more
romantic and playful. This fades into a piano rendition of Princess Leia’s
theme, which in the Credits had the words “in memory of our princess, Carrie
Fisher...” This is quickly interrupted by martial music and a trotting flute
motif that becomes a tragic version of the Resistance March. Then we get a mix
of themes—Finn and Rose, the Falcon theme, Rey’s theme, all thrown together
behind a tableau of action music. Then everything settles down for what we </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;">really </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">want: Yoda’s theme. At first it’s just as
it’s always been, the serene, slightly melancholy theme...but now the strings
take it up a little more lovingly than they had in the past. But it, too,
quickly fades for the martial First Order motifs that punctuate much of the
Battle of Crait music (as well as the “da-da-da-da-DA-da” motif). So it’s only
fitting that the </span><st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif; text-align: center;"><st1:place>Battle</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif; text-align: center;">
of the Tie Fighters returns as well, almost in its entirety. A muted
restatement of Rey’s theme follows this, fading into mysterious chimes and harp
notes that add a final question mark to this chapter of the saga. </span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-39193035708550153962017-12-18T12:38:00.001-08:002017-12-18T12:39:13.683-08:00Star Wars for the 21st Century: The Last Jedi<div class="MsoNormal">
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whenever
I see a <i>Star Wars </i>movie in theaters, I’m immediately watching it as the 8 year-old kid I
was when I first experienced them in theatres in the early 80’s. I have vague
memories of watching <i>The Empire Strikes Back </i>umpteen times (movies
were so much cheaper back then), and I vividly recall when my mom took me to
attend the opening week of <i>Return of the Jedi </i>shortly after school one
afternoon. I’ll never forget how people booed as Darth Vader came striding down
the ramp in the half-completed Death Star, or how people cheered when he threw
the Emperor down the seemingly bottomless shaft. I would feel ashamed today to
even applaud after a movie’s closing credits...I last remember that occurring
after <i>Fellowship of the Ring</i> in 2001.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">These
digressions aside, I’m still that child who comes to be amazed, transported,
wowed, and inspired. I don’t watch a movie with my PhD diploma in hand (that
stays mounted on my office wall). I don’t even expect that much from a film,
and certainly not as much as I expect from a class reading <st1:place><st1:placename><i>Mansfield</i></st1:placename><i> </i><st1:placetype><i>Park</i></st1:placetype></st1:place><i> </i>or <i>Beowulf</i>. Just give me some
memorable characters, an interesting, twist-turning plot, a dash of surprise,
and an ending that makes it all seem worthwhile. I don’t care if I’ve seen the
plot before or there characters recycle dialogue from a dozen movies I’ve seen
and loved...just make it <i>seem </i>new, seem exciting, and seem like the first time I
sat down to enjoy a <i>Star Wars </i>movie—particularly if it <i>is </i>a <i>Star Wars </i>movie.</span><br />
<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></i>
<i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Last Jedi </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">was exactly that first </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Star Wars </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">movie to me—and then
some. I realize that you can’t discuss this movie without acknowledging the
endless vitriol and praise coming from both sides, though by far the loudest
voices are from the detractors. Reading through these on-line, the main
criticisms seem to be </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">it doesn’t answer the questions from the first
film; the pace is too slow; the time-lines don’t add up; the plots are full of
holes; the villains are dispatched too easily; the humor is too contemporary
and slapstick; it doesn’t feel like a Star Wars film</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">. Hmm. These are tough
points to argue against, and all of them, I’m sure, are more or less valid.
However, I would equally argue that these points can be made against </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">any Star
Wars </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">film,
including the holy duo, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Empire Strikes Back </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">and </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">A New Hope</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Isn’t
the Emperor introduced in one movie and then killed only a handful of minutes
later (never mind that he had a brief cameo in <i>Empire</i>)? <i>A </i><st1:city><st1:place><i>New Hope</i></st1:place></st1:city><i>’s </i>Death Star plot hole was
so vast that it took an entire movie—<i>Rogue One</i>—to fill it, though that caused a few plot holes of
its own. Humor has always been a hallmark of <i>Star Wars</i>, all the more so in the
OT, which had its share of slapstick with Yoda and the droids. And in <i>Return of
the Jedi </i>one
of the greatest side characters (Boba Fett) was dispatched in the most
ridiculously comic matter possible (and granted, fans remain annoyed as hell by
that one). And as for answers...how much did <i>Empire </i>answer about Anakin
Skywalker or Obi-Wan? Or the Force? Or what Yoda’s line “no...there is another”
means? Even <i>Return of the Jedi </i>barely answers that one,
and then doesn’t follow up on it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My
point being, that in this internet age, any movie can be picked to death like
dogs fighting over a chicken carcass in a dumpster. As a kid, I never
approached a movie as “what didn’t work,” but rather “what did I love?” If I
didn’t love very much, it wasn’t a good movie. I think as adults, we’re trained
to start mentally subtracting from the “bad” parts until only a modicum of
“good” is left—and even that’s not worth considering. Often, I’ve enjoyed a
movie so much that, when I go back and start subtracting as an adult, I can’t
figure out why I seemed to like it so much. Perhaps we watch too many movies,
or read too many reviews, or simply enjoy being armchair critics so much that
we’ve forgotten how to enjoy art on a visceral level. Or even worse, perhaps we
don’t want to let other people enjoy things that we can’t take pleasure in
ourselves. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Whatever
the reason, I entered the movie to see <i>The Last Jedi </i>with the sense of “if
it’s good, great, and if not, oh well, at least I saw a new <i>Star Wars </i>movie.” I knew it would
be good mere minutes into the film, when the bombers start their run on the
Dreadnaught. The image of these slow, hulking ships approaching that ungodly
monolith was so iconic and so <i>Star Wars</i>: it looked like something out of WWII translated
to the future “long, long ago, but far, far away.” That’s the essence of <i>Star Wars—</i>the past and the future
looped together in one artistic present. “Ah, they got it right—that’s exactly
how it should look,” I said to myself. Even the desperate attempt for the one
doomed pilot to climb down and press the button to release the bombs...that’s
totally out of 1943. A high tech world that comes down to a single, modest, and
forgotten act of heroism.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What
made me fall in love with the movie were moments like this. Naturally, the film
is writ large—massive visual expanses of space, planets, ships, and technology.
And yet it seemed like a backdrop rather than in the spotlight. In fact, my
biggest criticism of the Prequel films is exactly that: the entire movie is
cold and mechanical, a computer program rather than a story of individuals
facing impossible odds. Lucas once said that the technology—the ships, guns,
etc.—should be there, but only fleetingly. In the same way, we wouldn’t linger
over cars and cell phones in a contemporary movie; they would just flash by,
part of our world but not <i>the </i>world itself. Lucas forgot that motto in his next
trilogy, which gave us one <st1:stockticker>CGI</st1:stockticker> mash-up after another,
and worse still, robbed Yoda of his spark of life by demoting him to a
pixelized prison. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjOdX8BtS9oHQEt_LqP9aAs5r8bbKBt1hHXQMR0qxWI6NWU595OkcZNmswMOM58NL1DKhOSqcQ1wbSI_BLvjya_pw5lOaBTbN2XuUMyaU1faGAwgcampCxehSIbgo34IqsFPnHsHyfBQ/s1600/yoda-main.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="753" data-original-width="1600" height="187" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgVjOdX8BtS9oHQEt_LqP9aAs5r8bbKBt1hHXQMR0qxWI6NWU595OkcZNmswMOM58NL1DKhOSqcQ1wbSI_BLvjya_pw5lOaBTbN2XuUMyaU1faGAwgcampCxehSIbgo34IqsFPnHsHyfBQ/s400/yoda-main.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Last Jedi </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">avoids this mistake by making speak, move,
and talk to one another behind a fantastic backdrop. Some of my favorite scenes
were on Ahch-To Island, which had little more than Luke, Rey, and the odd </span><st1:stockticker style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">CGI</st1:stockticker><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> effect. These were
deeply human and emotional scenes, such as when Luke tosses his old lightsaber
over his head, or when Luke rubs Rey’s hand with a leaf and she thinks it’s the
Force, or even when the two have a brief sparring match over his history with
Kylo Ren. Only a true </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Star Wars </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">movie would do this, giving us characters learning
from one another rather than just blasting each other to smithereens. While
these moments echo </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Empire Strikes Back </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">in having Rey seek a
reclusive Jedi Master, they probe new depths by suggesting the Master’s
limitations and guilt. I love how she’s come all the distance expecting her
life to suddenly make sense, and the man she’s come to revere (as has half the
galaxy) just tells her to “go away,” and that “the Jedi have to end.” The man
she was expecting to instill her with hope has lost all hope and has nothing more
to offer. The end.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Again,
like <i>The Empire Strikes Back</i>, the new film is a story of the “losers.” The
Resistance is losing and in full retreat. The First Order is toying with them,
chasing them down cruelly and methodically—but much as a cat toys with a mouse.
Sure, they could have obliterated them at once, as some point out, but <i>why</i>? They want revenge for
all the indignities they’ve put the First Order through. Thus, they want to
pick them off ship by ship, giving them a thin thread of hope which they gradually
snip away. If that inevitably gives the Rebellion time to formulate a plan of
escape, so be it...isn’t that how <i>all these movies work? </i>You can’t blame <i>The Last
Jedi </i>for
playing on the conventions of the genre, can you? Of course, the film is clever
enough not to play them by the numbers. There are so many tricks and sleights
of hand that will confuse and mislead even the most avid <i>Star Wars </i>fan, and possibly
frustrate quite a few of them. But what do we want: a new film or the same old
film blow-by-blow? Are people disappointed because they secretly <i>wanted </i>another <i>Empire</i> and didn’t get it? Is
that what all this is about?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">To
me, the cleverest move of all concerns Rey. She doesn’t turn to the Dark Side.
She doesn’t turn Kylo Ren to the Light. She doesn’t have Skywalker parents, or
Palpantine heritage, or any Jedis to speak of. Her parents—if we can believe
Kylo Ren, and why not?—is that they were unremarkable, greedy traders who willingly
gave her up. I’ve always felt it a shame that Lucas had to make Luke and Leia
descended from Naboo and Force royalty. Why couldn’t Anakin just have been a
ne’er do well slave boy who had great force powers, and not a case of
immaculate conception (ick). Why couldn’t he have married a commoner who caught
his eye instead of a dethroned princess who acts like a two-bit Leia Organa? Well,
now that’s exactly what we get...Rey was a nobody, and even a nobody can change
the world. After all, most titled aristocrats were soldiers and cutthroats who
merely supported the right king. Nothing noble about that! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
scene where she and Kylo butcher Snoke and his guards is one of the highlights
of any <i>Star Wars </i>film, and to me, comes close to surpassing Darth Vader’s dramatic turn
of allegiance. Yet it’s more sinister, and therefore unexpected, in that he
doesn’t turn at all—he does it to become supreme leader himself along with his
‘queen,’ Rey (if only she would have accepted him, that is). Isn’t that the
story of every Sith Lord? Don’t they always betray and murder their masters? So
that’s all this was...we expected a dramatic change of heart (signaled when he
fails to kill his mother), but instead we get cold, hard ambition—as well as a
little love. He wants Rey’s affection and understanding. But quite predictably,
she’s repulsed. This will create a powerful wedge between the two and cause
some fascinating sparks in what I assume will be the final chapter of their
story (Episode IX). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qeIqVq3kKc2AzEa9PQaozuFkJjmmKQEfZRr3SaAyNyrxi2GpUHtctoW_5K0Kf4Hv0bgdLP6ZUdNsiikOOeGo3j2DEO0iuPQvXhgal5ceiIjW_gJn9jZMuqqRayVMrwT3MaLUrF1fGco/s1600/star-wars-portfolio-06-2017-ss05.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="616" data-original-width="900" height="273" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg8qeIqVq3kKc2AzEa9PQaozuFkJjmmKQEfZRr3SaAyNyrxi2GpUHtctoW_5K0Kf4Hv0bgdLP6ZUdNsiikOOeGo3j2DEO0iuPQvXhgal5ceiIjW_gJn9jZMuqqRayVMrwT3MaLUrF1fGco/s400/star-wars-portfolio-06-2017-ss05.jpg" width="400" /></a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">More
and more, <i>The Last Jedi </i>is a story of class struggle—not the people who make the decisions and
sit on the thrones, but the grunt pilots, the engineers, the soldiers, the
slaves. The scenes on Canto Bight have been criticized as a pointless
diversion, but only if the point of the film is to escape from the First Order.
Sure, that’s one plot strand, but not the overall theme of the movie. The
overarching theme is that the world needs to be swept clean of the Imperial rot
of the Old Order and re-imagined by a new generation. The scenes in this <i>casino
royale </i>are
beautiful in how they showcase the decadence and blind allegiance to profit
alone—ships sold to Rebels and Imperials alike, men who will help anyone for a
price, and betray them for nothing. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A
scene that resonates in my mind is Rose setting free the slave animals and
talking with the slave children—of which she, herself, was one before she
joined the Rebellion. We can’t just tell stories of space princesses and kings;
not in this age of war and corruption. We have to have new heroes, people truly
of the working class, even in our space operas and fantasy epics. It may seem
obvious, but it ties into the very roots of fantasy itself, which was born of
the Romantic imagination by figures such as Coleridge, Keats, Blake, and
Shelley (both of them—Percy and Mary). Trust in the human in all its forms,
whether slaves, or aliens, or droids—anything that can love can save the world.
Or, as Rose more fittingly says, “This is how we win. Not fighting what we
hate. Saving what we love.” Obvious? Perhaps, but how few films set in the
far-flung future seem to find our humanity hiding in the stars.</span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-18692539690106644932017-12-10T12:09:00.003-08:002017-12-10T12:11:05.655-08:00A Wattpad Review: Caitlin E. Jones’ Shoppe Walpurgis<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioR2mO26rWHsIEbZWhuyOH2oJKSTYphu4TY3DcHcBRt6yz0JaOZWfI9CrpYxHM-UW8JlVKELgTX4AIb0iwo9ThGhO1uopNakg6kzxqZTXm_q1IbEjLzNoY1eAbRocgjB673HF1JLYQ014/s1600/grimms-fairy-tales-9781604334982.in02.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="627" data-original-width="1200" height="207" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEioR2mO26rWHsIEbZWhuyOH2oJKSTYphu4TY3DcHcBRt6yz0JaOZWfI9CrpYxHM-UW8JlVKELgTX4AIb0iwo9ThGhO1uopNakg6kzxqZTXm_q1IbEjLzNoY1eAbRocgjB673HF1JLYQ014/s400/grimms-fairy-tales-9781604334982.in02.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One
of the fasting-growing subgenres of fantasy is the fairy-tale retelling, which
has spawned a number of popular books and a slew of indie fiction. One of the biggest
criticisms of these stories, however, is how little is left to tell: since
everyone knows the story, there’s no real surprise left to uncover for the
readers (and isn’t narrative drama one of the true hallmarks of the novel?). To
make it work, an author has to take a familiar story and treat it like a myth
that can be transported to different characters and lands and help us see
something about our own world through the ‘old’ frame. Most re-tellings,
frankly, feel a bit like literary exercises, a chance for the author to stretch
their wings even though they have nowhere in particular to go. We might even
enjoy the trip, but once we’re there, the book is instantly forgotten and we
can only remember the original tale—which, frankly, taught us a lot more to
begin with.</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Such
is </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">not
</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">the
case with the most recent and exciting fairy tale re-telling I came across this
month, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Shoppe Walpurgis</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">. Sadly, you can only find it right now on Wattpad,
which isn’t exactly synonymous with quality or talent; but Caitlin E. Jones
proves that a good story can blossom in any soil, and here is the story that
makes you think twice both about fairy tale-retellings and about Wattpad
itself. Jones’ story dips into the seemingly bottomless waters of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Grimms’
Fairy Tales</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> to find the storybook classic, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Hansel and Gretel</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, famous for its encounter
with a witch in a gingerbread house. On the surface, this is one of the hardest
stories to re-tell, since the story doesn’t translate into a modern setting
very well (who lives in an edible house?). Jones side-stepped this issue by
updating the story but keeping it in the past: in this case, in
turn-of-the—last-century Berlin, circa 1900, where the technology of the
modernity is slowly encroaching upon the mysteries and magic of the ancient
world.</span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
title itself captures the balancing act of the story: <i>Shoppe </i>suggesting the old-time
stores still found in quaint European villages, and <i>Walpurgis </i>suggesting the pagan <i>Walpgurgis
Night </i>(famous
from Goethe’s <i>Faust</i>) when witches meet on the highest hill in the land
to practice their unholy rites. In the story, Hansel and Gretel are replaced by
<st1:city><st1:place>Adelaide</st1:place></st1:city> (or <st1:city><st1:place>Ada</st1:place></st1:city>) and Alaric, orphans on
the streets of <st1:state><st1:place>Berlin</st1:place></st1:state>, who take up with a
clan of child-thieves for protection. <st1:city><st1:place>Adelaide</st1:place></st1:city> begins the story by
breaking the clan’s truce with the local baker, who gives them stale bread out
of charity; dazzled by the sweets in his shop, she steals a cake and gobbles it
up on the spot, a sin that would earn her divine retribution in the original
stories. Here, however, her brother steps in to save her, since he knows about
a secret source of charity hidden deep within the tunnels of the U-Bahn: a
kindly, if cryptic, old woman who doles out sweets to the poor urchins of the
city. The woman requires no payment until the fateful <i>Walpurgis </i>night which is right
around the corner...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When
<st1:city><st1:place>Ada</st1:place></st1:city> begins dreaming of the woman and her terrible
voice, she realizes that this was no act of kindness—all the more so, as her
dead mother begins warning her of the coming <i>Walpurgisnacht</i>. As Jones writes, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Faster
than horses, <st1:city><st1:place>Adelaide</st1:place></st1:city> was out of bed. She did
not bother checking the rest of the hideout, shuffling into her boat, boots,
and other warm things. She passed the central room and saw the sack Alaric had
come in with, now emptied save for a few smears of icing. The other children
slept around the room in a sugary stupor, as though spellbound. This was odd,
since Jakob sent them out so early most days. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><i>But those weren’t normal sweets</i>...She could still feel
sweet stickiness all over her apron, sick with herself. The woman in the wall
haunted the corners of her mind against the rush—no, this was no woman. There
was a name for this monster in the world outside of <st1:state><st1:place>Berlin</st1:place></st1:state>. A witch.” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
story clever juxtaposes the childrens’ Northern/country upbringing with the
cynical polish of the city, as represented by Jakob, the leader of the gang.
While he continually puts down their provincial ways, it is this very sense of
tradition which makes <st1:city><st1:place>Ada</st1:place></st1:city> aware of the witch and
the terrible price she will exact for her goods (which, if you know the story,
you can easily figure out). But in the modern world, such terrors no longer
exist; indeed, modern man only fears two things—not making enough money and not
having a fashionable enough address. Jakob is clearly someone moving up in the
world, a future politician once he shakes off the soot of the streets. Even her
brother, eager to make his way in the world, becomes blind to the woman’s
age-old tricks and becomes her captive. It is up to <st1:city><st1:place>Ada</st1:place></st1:city> to find a way to rescue
him and maintain their innocence in the face of the city’s bitter “experience.”<o:p></o:p></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What
makes this story more than a tired retelling is how well Jones understands the
historical period. Placing the story circa 1900 is no accident or concession to
gaslamp fantasy: rather, it plays with the crucial shift between new and old,
which the <i>fin de sicle </i>(turn of the century) truly embodied. Once we enter a world of subways
and electric lights and radios, how can we return to a world of innocence and
family and wisdom? The Romantic poets of the previous century were obsessed
with these theme, seeing the Industrial Revolution as the end of pastoral <st1:country-region><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country-region> and all its charms. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">A
hundred years later, many writers were up in arms about the same themes—notably
Tolkein, who in his famous <i>Lord of the Rings </i>trilogy imagined the
terrible cost of enslaving our souls to technology. Something of this theme echoes
in <i>Shoppe
Walpurgis</i>,
though in an ironic way; here, the witch merely finds a way to sell her wares
in the city more expeditiously. After all, with so many desperate souls
crowding the city from the provinces, all of them eager for a taste of city life,
she only needs to set up shop and tell them to take a number! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Jones
is quite alive to this friction between new and old, and how ancient evils
merely adapt themselves to modern vices. Because of this, the story has an
old-world quality itself, reading like an affectionate cross between Dickens
and Bronte. The prose is quick and inviting, able to create loving detail but
never luxuriating in it (unlike her 19th century predecessors). If anything,
the story ends far too quickly and you’re left wanting more, and imagining a
future book full of chapter after chapter of such retellings, or perhaps a
story where </span><st1:city style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:place>Adelaide</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> and Alaric skip from
one </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Grimms’
Tale</i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> to
the next. Keep watching Wattpad for future installments of this and her other
excellent fiction!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here’s
a link to her work on Wattpad: <a href="https://www.wattpad.com/user/CaitlinEJones" target="_blank">https://www.wattpad.com/user/CaitlinEJones</a></span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-38042398846243367652017-12-06T17:34:00.002-08:002017-12-06T17:36:09.281-08:00Fanny Price--Austen's Greatest Heroine? (a re-reading of Mansfield Park) <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnJhWe57eVv5680qxZ8bBvlGRq_FzvasTUT9hh5ZYLJpYzthThpgrj923yZ6d_c3Qg0PdhvGDgdQOvR1sbJNrYsH-jCHURpSlwc1aWzEGtsBy0m4RuXSvJZGEYurGqrDtYSsYw8X8a4k/s1600/51jf28Cg4VL.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="960" data-original-width="947" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqnJhWe57eVv5680qxZ8bBvlGRq_FzvasTUT9hh5ZYLJpYzthThpgrj923yZ6d_c3Qg0PdhvGDgdQOvR1sbJNrYsH-jCHURpSlwc1aWzEGtsBy0m4RuXSvJZGEYurGqrDtYSsYw8X8a4k/s400/51jf28Cg4VL.jpg" width="393" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of all of Austen’s novels,
</span><st1:place style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:placename><i>Mansfield</i></st1:placename><i> </i><st1:placetype><i>Park</i></st1:placetype></st1:place><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </i><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(1814) gets precious little attention—and far too
little love. Why? Actually, I’m somewhat at a loss myself, since I’ve always
loved this novel and decided to re-read it after 8 or so years to make sure my
judgment is sound. In fact, I recently re-read all of her novels, and taught
most of them, too, with unparalleled delight. Nothing is more fun that taking a
group of college students through the wonders of Jane Austen’s quicksilver
prose,</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">her devastating yet subtle
satire, and her effortlessly character arcs. But I had never taught </span><st1:place style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:placename><i>Mansfield</i></st1:placename><i> </i><st1:placetype><i>Park</i></st1:placetype></st1:place><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">, largely because it’s on the longer side for a
novel most people seem to dislike. Yet if you take a step back and look at some
of the basic elements of the novel, you can’t help but wonder why this isn’t
hailed as her greatest novel, or at least the most beloved.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">[Spoilers ahead…]</span><span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Take the story itself for
starters: Fanny Price, a poor cousin of a great family, is taken in as a pity
project by the Bertrams who live at <st1:place><st1:placename>Mansfield</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Park</st1:placetype></st1:place>. No one asks Fanny if she wants to come, and even the person who
suggests it (the deliciously horrific Mrs. Norris) wants nothing to do with
her. So she remains a kind of hanger-on of the house, tolerated but not
educated, and left to shift as she will in an attic room without a fire. Only
Edmund, her older cousin, takes an interest in her and encourages her reading
and moral outlook. Fanny grows up devoted to only two men: Edmund and her
brother, William, left behind to do the only thing a poor brother in the early
19<sup>th</sup> century can: join the navy. As she grows up, the family
receives a shock when the local vicarage is taken up by the Grants, and Grant’s
wife summons her sister and half-brother from <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city>—Henry and Mary. Henry quickly begins flirting with
both Bertram sisters, while Edmund falls head-over-heels for Mary, and she for
him. And Fanny…well, Fanny watches in silence. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Things come to a head when
Sir Thomas Bertram is called away to his estates in Antigua, leaving the young
people all alone under the watchful eye of Lady Bertram (who only has eyes for
her pug), and Mrs. Norris, who still thinks herself a girl of eighteen. They
decide to put on a play for their own amusement, all the better to speak love
to one another and play one amorous scene after another. Fanny strongly objects
but no one listens, and hearts are broken as Henry courts Julia Bertram and
then turns his attention to Mary Bertram, who is engaged to Mr. Rushworth, a
poor buffoon who can only watch in impotent rage. Mary is in danger of doing
something quite scandalous, and even Edmund, flirting shamelessly with Mary, is
oblivious to the danger—no matter how many times Fanny points it out to him.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Disaster is averted when
Sir Thomas returns and demands all such merrymaking be dissolved at once. Mary
is married off to Rushworth and dispatched with Julia to London, leaving the
annoyed Henry Crawford with nothing to do…except begin flirting with Fanny, a
woman he would love to make madly in love with him (despite her obvious and
intense disinterest). Here the second part of the novel ensues, since Henry’s
vanity soon gives way to surprise and admiration as Fanny rejects him time and again;
and Sir Thomas, newly returned from <st1:place>Antigua</st1:place>, finds
Fanny much more beautiful and sensible than he thought. He encourages Fanny to
make an advantageous match with Henry, and Henry, for his part, does everything
he can do win her affections without his usual tricks. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And Edmund, pining as he
is for Mary, encourages the suit as well, completely oblivious that Fanny can
only love and admire him (even if he <i>is</i>
taken in by the relatively frivolous and cavalier Mary Crawford). To give her
time to reflect, Sir Thomas sends her back home among her poor mother and
father to see life on the “other side.” Yet this makes her even more confirmed
to repulse Henry, though he visits her there and uses his influence to get
William promoted to a Lieutenant in the navy. Maybe he has changed after all?
(but don’t tell that to Fanny!).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">I
won’t give away the ending, though it’s surprising and shocking for many modern
readers, and should I add, unsatisfying. Why would Austen write a novel that
ends in a less-than-romantic union when she previously envisioned Elizabeth and
Darcy, and there was still Anne and Wentworth to come? What delights me about
this novel is the one thing that frustrates many casual readers of Austen:
Fanny Price. She’s such an Austenian heroine, but also goes against the grain
of what you might expect. She’s self-educated, perhaps haphazardly so, and is
something of a moral stickler (some call her a prude). Yet as someone who has
only a precarious existence in a great family, she has to be beyond reproach:
it would take very little for them to toss her out like yesterday’s fashion
(after all, nothing ages so poorly as good intentions). Also, she admires
Edmund—destined to be a country parson—and strives to be worthy of his
friendship and, in her wildest dreams, love. In short, this is a woman
completely unlike Elizabeth Bennet, since the latter knows she is a gentleman’s
daughter and as such deserves even Mr. Darcy’s respect (he wouldn’t even bother
to look down upon Fanny!). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet
despite this, she still holds herself to high standards and is not above
holding her superiors in quiet contempt when they fail to do the same. She
sneers at her silly-minded cousins who throw themselves at men and become one
another’s rival; at Mary Crawford, who makes vulgar jokes and assumes her
opinion is the only one in the room; and definitely at Henry, who think that
his charm entitles him to exist in a moral vacuum. Her only match in the novel
is Edmund, but he also falls short in his admiration for a woman who has wit but
not taste or discernment (though ironically, he admires Fanny for exactly
that).<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">One
of the most powerful scenes in the novel is when Edmund tries to convince her
to marry Henry, which is such a betrayal to Fanny. The man she loves trying to
convince her that an utter scoundrel (in her eyes) is possibly her equal—or
his! As he tells her, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“But
(with an affectionate smile), let him succeed at last, Fanny, let him succeed
at last. You have proved yourself upright and disinterested, prove yourself
grateful and tender-hearted; and then you will be the perfect model of a woman,
which I have always believed you born for” (Penguin 322). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Can
you imagine having the love of your life tell you that you must <i>prove </i>yourself
to him—and to the world—by marrying against your will? That you are destined to
become “the perfect model of a woman”? According to whom? He takes this a step
further a page or two later when he suggests, “He will make you happy, Fanny, I
know he will make you happy; but you will make him every thing” (Penguin 325). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">This
is Austen’s most searing indictment of marriage (and contrary to popular
belief, she did not find it the culmination of a woman’s hopes and dreams): in
this passage, Edmund says that it is her job, her duty, to <i>make </i>a man
into something better. Not to make herself, or to choose for herself; these are
merely qualities that make her eligible for the greatest gift of all—to
‘ennoble’ a man with your self-sacrifice. Even sadder is Edmund’s incredible
hypocrisy here, since he is not speaking of Henry Crawford as much as Mary: he
wants to marry her, therefore promoting her brother’s cause is paramount. And
she calls him on it. To his credit, he doesn’t deny it, but admits that Mary
finds it puzzling that she—a girl of no title, no wealth, no anything—could
possibly turn down Henry with all his gifts and charms! Her response is
devastating and stands out even among so many powerful and immortal speeches in
Austen:<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“I
<i>should </i>have thought…that every woman must have felt the possibility of a
man’s not being approved, not being loved by someone of her sex, at least, let
him be ever so generally agreeable. Let him have all the perfections in the
world, I think it ought not to be set down as certain, that a man must be
acceptable to every woman he may happen to like himself” (Penguin 327). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
other words, shouldn’t a woman sympathize with the pain of having a man assume
his suit will be crowned with a “yes” or an “oh, thank you!” Is class alone the
requirement to make love to a woman? Or is it just being of the opposite sex?
Even Edmund seems to think so, by telling Fanny, enough is enough—now marry the
bloke! Fanny, though dismissed by too many as a prude, refuses to be prudish:
she sticks to her guns and refuses to marry just because it’s the “right thing”
to do. Any other woman would have; thousands did. But she tells him over and
over that he’s not serious enough, that he trifles with people’s affections,
and that they simply have nothing in common. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
a later passage of the novel, she scolds Edmund from afar by saying “Edmund,
you do not know <i>me”</i> (Penguin 394). This is a powerful admission, since
Edmund is the only man she cares to know, and aside from her brother, the only
man she admires. But in her world, no one truly cares to know her—only to tell
her her duty. In Austen’s <st1:country-region><st1:place>England</st1:place></st1:country-region>, a woman <i>was </i>her
duty and little more; ideas and values were merely decoration to make doing it
more attractive. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Another
triumph of the novel is that Fanny disagrees with the reader, just as Austen
knew she would. For most of us, we also want Fanny to give Henry a chance. To
be fair, Henry comes a long way in the novel, and is the only person to really <i>see
</i>Fanny for who she is, and more importantly, to see her as a <i>woman</i>. To that end, Henry
sees to the promotion of her brother, wines and dines her poor parents in
Porstmouth, and even offers to fetch her home to <st1:place><st1:placename>Mansfield</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Park</st1:placetype></st1:place> when her family more or
less abandons her. But is it enough? At times, Fanny weakens and admits that he
<i>does </i>have some admirable qualities (he reads Shakespeare very well), but
doubts that he can truly change, or ever stop toying with people’s lives. As she reflects, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Here
was again a want of delicacy and regard for others which had formerly so struck
and disgusted her. Here was again a something of the same Mr. Crawford whom she
had so reprobated before. How evidently was there a gross want of feeling and
humanity where his own pleasure was concerned—And, alas! How always known no
principle to supply as a duty what the heart was deficient in. Had her own
affections been as free—as perhaps they ought to have been—he never could have
engaged them” (Penguin 303-304). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In
short, he sees everyone in relation to himself; even in assisting Fanny, he is
still thinking of how <i>he </i>will be viewed as her savior, lover, friend,
admirer, etc. She may be wrong in loving Edmund (since Sir Thomas would never
allow it), but she is right in the knowledge that marrying Henry will change
nothing: it will merely create an even bigger scandal when he commits another
social taboo—as she inevitably does (whoops!). Nevertheless, we often think
Fanny is wrong and is being too judgmental and defiant. Can’t a man change and
put his unfortunate past behind him? Couldn’t she help him do so if she truly
loved him? And could she, just possibly, be starting to do just that? It’s hard
to tell, and that’s what makes the novel so much fun—trying to see through
Fanny’s icy exterior to the passionate heart that we know burns deep within (as
she several times exhibits during William’s visits or her drives through the
country). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Fanny
aside, the book is one of her wittiest in terms of sly remarks and a consummate
command of understated prose. Austen’s narrator is constantly cutting down this
or that character, or making arch comments about a situation that others are
too blind to see. In one hilarious passage, Mrs. Norris is boasting of how much
pocket money she has given William on his return to the navy—which, knowing
her, was very little indeed. As she boasts, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“She
was very glad indeed that it had been in her power, without material
inconvenience, just at that time, to give him something rather considerable;
that is, for <i>her</i>, with <i>her </i>limited means, for now it would all be useful in
helping to fit up his cabin...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“I’m
glad you gave him something considerable,” said Lady Bertram, with most
unsuspicious calmness—“for<i> I </i>gave him only ten pounds.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Indeed!”
cried Mrs. Norris, reddening. “Upon my word, he must have gone off with his
pockets well lined! and at no expense for his journey to <st1:city><st1:place>London</st1:place></st1:city> either!” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Sir
Thomas told me ten pounds would be enough.”<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Mrs.
Norris being not at all inclined to question its sufficiency, began to take the
matter in another point. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“It
is amazing,” said she, “how much young people cost their friends, what with
brining them up and putting them out in the world!”... (Penguin 281). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">What
we learn from this passage is that Mrs. Norris patted herself on the back for
giving a mere nothing—much less than ten pounds, which in itself is a nothing
gift. Austen later told a friend that the sum was actually a single pound,
which is miserly in the extreme; but Mrs. Norris loves the myth of being a
benefactor to the young—as long as it costs her nothing. The narrator slyly
bring this out through the innocent interaction with Lady Bertram, who little
suspects Mrs. Norris’ tight-fisted charity. Predictably, Norris turns on
William and scolds him for costing his benefactors too much money and not
thanking them for their pains. This sour grapes attitude is typical of her and
her class, and we can almost hear the narrator chuckling behind this speech as
she fumes and fumes. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">But the
narrator knows when to reign in the satire and offer us an unalloyed
portrait of passion. Not the passion common to romance novels that has two characters
ripping each other’s clothes so they can devour each other. Instead, befitting
the mores of the early 19th century, it is the reserved, intimate passion that
rarely speaks in words but is manifested in quiet thoughts and glances. Case in
point, a beautiful scene where Edmund gives her a necklace so she can display
an amber cross William gave her for her first ball. Though Henry has already
given her a necklace to use, she much prefer Edmund’s simpler, less ostentatious offering, all the more so because it comes from the heart. He writes her a
short letter to beg acceptance of this gift, and the letter, even more than the
necklace, is dear to her. As she reflects,<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">“Two
lines more prized had never fallen from the pen of the most distinguished
author—never more completely blessed the researches of the fondest
biographer’s. To her, the hand-writing itself, independent of any thing it may
convey, is a blessedness. Never were such characters cut by any other human
being, as Edmund’s commonest hand-writing gave! This specimen, written in haste
as it was, had not a fault; and there was a felicity in the flow of the first
four words, in the arrangement of “My very dear Fanny,” which she could have
looked at for ever” (Penguin 245). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The
ability of Austen to help us see what a simple letter could mean to someone
like Fanny, who had never received such a letter in her life, is simply magic.
Because we’ve all squirreled away such lines, or something relatively
thoughtless as the dearest possession of our lives (a napkin, a hair band, even
a pen). Passages like these remind us that Fanny is no mere abstraction or
moral cipher, but a true flesh and blood woman; passionate, but not
perfunctory. She won’t act the way we expect or come to the same conclusions as
we do, for the sole reason that she’s her own person, and see the world through
her own eyes, however distorted they appear to Austen’s admirers. I encourage
anyone to give the book another read (or a first read) with open eyes and a
willing heart, and perhaps it will become, like Edmund’s letter, a thing of
beauty you can look on forever and always find fresh wonders as I do. </span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-82616537988782251322017-11-13T06:41:00.000-08:002017-11-13T06:41:38.149-08:00Writing is Writing it Over Again<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUKVwCEqrQChU9Yz2QaWEAv4K88UPmwWfXgqHsr7WLhfFh_rMlM1Jwm4Dw1jw-AcHEktTycQw_kEyVwbVmiz_Q5ruKgz1J9FimAEKXg_Qez09LNVkrCgxA9gpIIwM4y_jZxUIBFmP1NQ/s1600/stranger-things-netflix-original.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="464" data-original-width="825" height="223" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjxUKVwCEqrQChU9Yz2QaWEAv4K88UPmwWfXgqHsr7WLhfFh_rMlM1Jwm4Dw1jw-AcHEktTycQw_kEyVwbVmiz_Q5ruKgz1J9FimAEKXg_Qez09LNVkrCgxA9gpIIwM4y_jZxUIBFmP1NQ/s400/stranger-things-netflix-original.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Every
writer—if you’ve written long enough—knows this moment: the moment where you’re
watching a movie, or perhaps just reading a book, and there it is. <i>Your
story. Your idea. Your character. Your dialogue</i>. Not that it’s been
stolen from you, but you both lucked on the same source of inspiration; they
just beat you to it. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For
me, it was a situation—a humorous moment that two characters found themselves
in, which led to very awkward dialogue that made the situation even funnier.
And I had imagined it all. Some contextual details aside, it was more or less
the same scene, with quite similar dialogue, though with a slightly different
conclusion. My story—almost my words. And now I couldn’t use them. Or I could,
but it would forever be in the shadow of the previous work, which would lead to
a profoundly guilty conscience.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"></span></div>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Even
if I did pass it off as my own, the internet is keen to point out unoriginal
premises, such as when a recent (and very clever) episode of <i>The
Orville </i>borrowed
an idea from the show <i>Black Mirror</i>. Comment after comment accused the show of
plagiarism, of being derivative, of how much better the “original” was...though,
sadly, that idea was not coined by the writers of <i>Black Mirror</i>, and must have been
used in countless science fiction stories over the years (for those interested,
check out <i>The Orville, Season 1, Episode 7, “Majority Rule</i>”). Indeed, with the encyclopedic knowledge of the
average fan, as well as the endless database that is the internet, why would
anyone want to risk writing a story that might be—that will be—that already is
a copy of a copy of a copy? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But
<i>is
</i>it a
copy if you’ve never seen the original? Certainly it’s not plagiarism, but if
you luck on a story that borrows ideas and twists from another show, or a story
now out of print for 60 years, should you hastily withdraw from the scene with
a desperate <i>mea culpa</i>? If so, then where would the apologies end? The
simple truth is that every story is an act of unconscious plagiarism, borrowing
the essence of a thousand stories that preceded it. Characters are traded like faded
playing cards used year after year in a kindergarten classroom. And plots—well,
they’re like faces, which repeat in an endless loop, <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">making
a hundred year-old photograph or a five hundred year-old painting look like
your best friend’s mother. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Let’s
face it, the very act of writing is derivative, since self-expression goes back
to the very idea of history itself. We tell stories to be remembered, and to
remember ourselves. In general, we all want to remember the same things: acts
of love and heroism, moments of greed and sacrifice, and the five or six dick
jokes that never get old (even Shakespeare enjoyed them). With so many books
telling so many stories, most of them more or less the same, is there really
any reason to keep going? In the past, when books vanished through war or were
devoured by time, it made more sense: books had to be replaced, stories needed
to be retold, particularly when so much literature only existed in the mind’s
and voices of nomadic storytellers. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In
the 21st century, however, nothing gets lost: a hundred years of books are
jockeying for space in used bookstores, while a hundred million more are
waiting to be downloaded, with new ones published by the second (or milisecond).
It is the nature of literature to help us remember, but how many reminders do
we truly need? Aren’t a hundred thousand—even a million—books sufficient to jar
our memory of the basics: that we’re human, we’re flawed, we’re capable of the
greatest evils and the greatest triumphs, and we love a good dick and fart joke?
<o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
same question has been asked throughout history; no doubt the Sumerians (who
invented pretty much everything known to man) asked themselves, “haven’t all
the songs been sung? What more could any human say about his or her adventures?”
After all, Gilgamesh not only fought all the monsters on earth but also stormed
the Underworld to rescue his best friend from the jaws of death. What more
could you conjure up for a sequel? So if we drained the well a good five or six
thousand years ago, shouldn’t we throw in the towel? It’s not like we’ll ever
be at a loss for good books, and there’s more authors than we could ever
discover or five or six lifetimes devoted solely, and slavishly, to reading. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
answer is a surprisingly simple one: storytelling is an art. And all art is a
language, something that must grow and develop through speech and intercourse
with the world. If we stopped writing words themselves would grind to a halt.
We would probably stop reading, too. Once books become museum pieces, something
we once did when we had more to say, they will no longer seem relevant. The
beauty of art is that it’s a living conversation: we all add to it, even by
reading and discussing it with others (particularly those of us in college,
since college is an embodiment—even a metaphor—of the process of art). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
struggle of art is to find new ways to keep it relevant and meaningful to a new
generation. We do that, largely, by writing new books on old themes; old
characters in new worlds; timeless love affairs with modern mores. The story
remains the same, but the readers are ever-changing. Even to read a book
changes what it was, since every new generation reads with fresh eyes and
different voices in their heads. Writing a new book based on a timeless folktale
makes us read the original anew. We see how the modern author interprets it,
and writes it into existence by a careful act of addition and subtraction. This
doesn’t negate the original or exalt the revision. They exist together, like
father and son, mother and daughter, or better yet, siblings; they both share
the same <st1:stockticker>DNA</st1:stockticker>, even if it speaks a different language. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In
fact, one work can help us translate the other—and we can go in either
direction. Too often, we’re taught to see works as existing in a vacuum, each
one “original” or “derivative,” and the greatest works betray the greatest
originality. But this isn’t necessarily the case. Both Shakespeare and Chaucer
pilfered nearly all their plots, carefully cherry-picking through the annals of
Greek and Italian literature for the ripest fruits. To be sure, they took these
threadbare plots (some of them very homely) and built them into towers that
could be seen for a thousand generations. Even Chaucer’s most original
creation, The Wife of Bath, tells a story of King Arthur that was second-hand
in the 14th century. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">At
its heart, writing is more a response than an act of creation, so the more you
know the conversation, the easier it is to write. Shakespeare wanted to write
poetry, to create dialogue, to make audiences laugh; why waste time concocting
an original plot that might do none of these things, when he had Boccaccio or
Ovid for inspiration? In this sense, we’re the luckiest generation of writers:
for we have <i>everything </i>to draw from. Every writer who ever drew
breath, every story, every poem, every play, every biography. All we have to do
is find the best ones (and they’ve been carefully curated for us by generations
of scholars and critics) and write a love letter in response. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The
best works, after all, are affairs of the heart, written not to this or that
person, but to the works we first fell in love with. Look at the recent Netflix
smash, <i>Stranger Things</i>, which is almost scholarly in its homages to every great 80’s horror
and science fiction film large and small. To me, nothing is more Shakespearean:
give the audience what it wants, but remind us <i>why </i>we want it. Once you
figure that out, the rest is just taking dictation. But be warned: taking
something apart is much easier than putting it back together. We can easily see
how a Shakespeare play is composed of iambic pentameter and a plot of mistaken
identities; but trying to make it sing is alchemy of a higher order. Perhaps
that’s the real reason we keep writing in defiance of time and an increasing
volume of books: to convince us that it can actually <i>be done</i>, by mere mortals,
writing against time and advancing senility.</span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-11184082913394962742017-10-30T16:32:00.002-07:002017-10-30T16:33:07.237-07:00Is Genre a Four-Letter Word?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzS6Kzr5I01mMh8AiRvcq8t-wqK3MT6SbiOBiknmt4qkBLswQBP1-2L2en9trHyMa7QOmU_GeoJvZGnD7RqWwNdLrn2TCTy3YspvWGiTBKH3wf_dXHQ-Db1Ypfky2g2bRrOSVNQloSXgw/s1600/blap2016001_final-1_wide-ac446880dede5fd5e8469b053101592f9ce67c3f.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="900" data-original-width="1171" height="306" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhzS6Kzr5I01mMh8AiRvcq8t-wqK3MT6SbiOBiknmt4qkBLswQBP1-2L2en9trHyMa7QOmU_GeoJvZGnD7RqWwNdLrn2TCTy3YspvWGiTBKH3wf_dXHQ-Db1Ypfky2g2bRrOSVNQloSXgw/s400/blap2016001_final-1_wide-ac446880dede5fd5e8469b053101592f9ce67c3f.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Here are the plots to
three novels: can you tell which are fantasy novels?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">* The son of a twisted
duke is killed in a bizarre accident, and his innocent fiancée finds herself a
prisoner of a haunted castle, pursued by the duke himself. Only the strange,
twisting corridors of Otranto can save her now, where statues cry bloody tears
and giant helmets exact their unholy revenge.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">* A sailor is shipwrecked
on an island and wakes up to find that ant-sized people have captured him. They
dub him the “<st1:place><st1:placename>Man</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>” and force him to do various menial tasks (like saving the entire
kingdom with his own urine), until, terrified by his potential power, decide to
kill him and parcel off his body to various parts of the kingdom. But the “<st1:place><st1:placename>Man</st1:placename> <st1:placetype>Mountain</st1:placetype></st1:place>” has other ideas...<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">* Two knights are captured
in battle and thrown into a dungeon for life. Through the bars, they glimpse a
garden outside tended by a beautiful woman: both of them fall madly in love
with her, and vow eternal hatred on the other, since only one can lay claim to her
heart. Eventually, one night is pardoned while the other manages through
subterfuge to escape. Once free, the second knight prays to Mars to assure him
victory, while the other prays to Venus; both god and goddess grant each one
success in love and battle. This causes quite a debate in <st1:place>Olympus</st1:place>, and Jupiter has to stand in judgment as to which lover will live
with the maiden—and which will die in defeat. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"></span></div>
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"></span><br />
<a name='more'></a><br />
<span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">So which are the fantasy
novels? The answer is simple: </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">none of them</i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">. Each one is a work of
“classic literature” published by academic presses and used in tens of
thousands of high school and college classrooms each year. The first one, and
the trickiest, comes from </span><st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:place>Walpole</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">’s
early gothic novel, </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Castle of Otranto </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(1764). The second, a little
more familiar to most, is from Swift’s </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">Gulliver’s Travels </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(1726). And
the final one, a plot which the author borrowed, and which Shakespeare also
stole for a very late play, is from “The Knight’s Tale,” the very first
installment of </span><i style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">The Canterbury Tales </i><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;">(1476). So search as you will
through the fantasy and science fiction section of the bookstore (or clicking
through the same section in Amazon), you won’t find a single copy of these
books. They’re all great literature, classics, poetry, or the more popular
term, literary fiction.</span><br />
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And yet, if someone
borrowed one of those plots today to weave together a novel where an astronaut
lands on a strange planet of tiny aliens who abduct him, would that also be literary
fiction? Or even just “fiction”? No, it would be science fiction, genre
fiction, and to some people, merely “pulp fiction.” The same is true for any
number of books with knights, haunted castles, shipwrecked sailors, or indeed,
most works set in the ancient past. Fantasy. Juvenile literature. Maybe Young
Adult at best. The implication is that these plots aren’t sufficiently literary
to engage our minds or to make us think, feel, and examine the “human drama”
that continues to be enacted. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Unless, of course, a book
sells particularly well...then people start hedging their bets. The <i>Harry
Potter </i>books, for example, have always held a respected place in the
fantasy section...though you can also find them in Young Adult <i>and </i>mainstream
fiction (depending on the bookstore). Or what about <i>The Martian</i>?
Basically <i>Robinson Crusoe </i>(which reads like fantasy) set on Mars...yet
you will rarely find it in the science fiction section. No, it’s “fiction”
through and through. Why? Simply because it sells well and people like it—and
that goes for people who have never watched an episode of <i>Star Trek </i>or read
ten pages of <i>Dune</i>. So if a plot doesn’t doom a novel to a specific
genre, why is that so often the case in traditional publishing? Why isn’t Frank
Herbert (who wrote the <i>Dune </i>books) also found in fiction, when his books
are quite more complex and interesting than <i>The Martian</i>, and why does
J.K. Rowling get the literary mantle when it is forever denied to someone like
Clifford Simak or Robert E. Howard (both of whom have sold countless books
themselves)? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In the end, the problem
lies with the bugbear of “realism,” which is hilarious given that we’re talking
about fiction. If a book isn’t sufficiently realistic then it is seen as less
important, or less serious, than the more “sensible” books in the market. Even
among the science fiction community, there is often great snobbery about books
that don’t pay tribute to hard science and instead fall back on the softer
science of <i>Star Wars</i> (I’ve heard day-long debates on whether or not
‘parsecs’ is a measurement of speed or distance—as in Han’s comment, “it made
the Kessel Run in less than 5 parsecs”). <i>The Martian </i>is given a pass
since it’s composed of wall-to-wall hard science—and very impressively, too.
Yet <i>Dune</i>, which is far less technical when it comes to “folding space”
is seen as a talky space opera which is more suitable for nerdy preteens than
your local biology professor. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of course, fantasy is also
expected to worship at the altar of realism—we need psychologically believable
characters who are always consistent and plausible (and preferably,
anti-heroes). With realism goes an expectation of defying the conventional
tropes, even if doing so <i>becomes </i>a convention in itself: every heroine
is a badass, basically usurping the ‘male’ role and saving the day. Wonderful
on the face of it, but what about a novel that goes back to older traditions
and stories? The beauty of folklore and fairy tales is their defiant refusal to
make sense: characters act strangely, as in a dream; events appear and
disappear following their own logic, and it’s the work of the reader to stitch
them together. God help the modern novelist who attempts such innovation! Surely
there are some women who long to be princesses, or who would rather be magic
users, or bards, or scholars? Does ever hero or heroine have to wield a sword
to be “heroic”? Is kicking ass the only way to “kick ass”? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Worse still, if you use
magic, it had better <i>work like science</i>! The idea that magic should
follow strict rules and laws probably comes from role playing games, where it
does by necessity...but this is storytelling! In the Arthurian Legends, does
Merlin explain the logistics of his spellcraft? What about Circe? Do we see the
actual recipe that goes into her spells transforming men into beasts? Of course
not. It’s fiction, fantasy, make-believe. The sense of wonder and mystery that
surrounds it is half the fun, and all the author’s intention (whoever they
were). If magic existed, I imagine it would work differently for each person,
much the way writing does. No one writes the same way, or understands exactly
how it works. It just <i>does</i>. That’s why there are so many self-help books
for authors, most of them contradicting each other. Would it be any different
for magic and magicians? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While we all like to read
a story and believe in it—Coleridge called it the “willing suspension of
disbelief”—we can also take it too far. An agent once told me that Young Adult
readers will only read a heroine that is the same age as they are, more or
less. They want to see <i>themselves </i>in the novel, like wearing a costume
and playing make-believe. I couldn’t disagree more. I never read to wear
borrowed clothes. I read to be a spy—I want to peek on a world of wonders that
I don’t personally take part in, and that looks <i>nothing </i>like myself. I
don’t need to see myself writ large (or small) in a novel; I just want to
experience something mysterious and divine, or else see the mysterious and
divine in the world around me. Either one will do, but I’m not a literary
narcissist; I want to read beyond and outside myself. And I don’t demand that
the books make sense or follow the rules of my own world. I only ask for one
thing and even that is negotiable: make me never want to close the book. Keep
me turning the pages in wonder, delight, confusion, anger, and frustration. Any
story that does that, in any genre, has done its work. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">In conclusion, I will
admit that works of fantasy and science fiction (even if they’re not classified
as such) tend to keep me turning the pages more than others. I read widely and
in every possible style and genre, but nothing excites me more than a story set
in the distant past or the far-flung future. These are stories that simply
delight me. Even when they’re old, they seem brand new. Even the cover of a
castle enveloped by mist with twin moons on the horizon makes me eager to crack
open the book and get lost in the pages. I wager that a lot of people would
feel the same if we removed the stigma of genre of “fantasy” (or whatever other
genre). Look at the run-away popularity of the <i>Lord of the Rings </i>movies;
everyone seemed to love them, even people who would have gagged at the very
sight of a hard bound copy of <i>The Simarillion</i>. Why? Because films are
almost genre neutral, as we also see with superhero films (how many fans of
Wolverine actually own any X-Men comics?); the point being, that when we look
at books as books, and fiction as fiction, we expand our horizons. We look at <i>stories</i>,
and not types or genres or categories. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:place><br /></st1:place></st1:city>
<st1:city style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"><st1:place>Reading</st1:place></st1:city><span style="font-family: verdana, sans-serif;"> is fun. It makes life worth living. So why reduce
it to a dry set of analytics or algorithms? Only a complete idiot thinks that
numbers can encompass the diverse reasons that we read and value art. Or not
“idiots”—that’s too strong a term. Let’s call them “people who don’t read
books.” </span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-60044284935149636572017-10-24T17:17:00.001-07:002017-10-24T17:17:32.595-07:00Sam Reeves Reads The Dark Backward!<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4S1xvtazuzPq61gMbBPYvX9GwM6ohJtE4pYjvcvWG5aYdbOM8S9_UW9wrUG8Om24YBDMAAXzL9_Zq58neBOhijVOQz2QqLyxueEwS4IMNR6vdLpH2cunfR2q5v8dqDVCE0uHzg0OGfA/s1600/The+Dark+Backward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhX4S1xvtazuzPq61gMbBPYvX9GwM6ohJtE4pYjvcvWG5aYdbOM8S9_UW9wrUG8Om24YBDMAAXzL9_Zq58neBOhijVOQz2QqLyxueEwS4IMNR6vdLpH2cunfR2q5v8dqDVCE0uHzg0OGfA/s400/The+Dark+Backward.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Check out Sam Reeves reading Chapter One of </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Dark Backward</i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> (my new book) on his You Tube channel. Sam is known for being the voice and brains behind </span><i style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The Rabid Bookworm </i><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">which not only reviews books but often performs them for his viewers. Today, he took time to read the first chapter of my book, allowing Hildigrim Blackbeard to finally speak out in a clear, bold voice. Thanks so much for honoring my book, Sam!</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
<div>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Click on the link to watch (it's about 9 minutes): <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlKLtGcISA&feature=share" target="_blank">https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TNlKLtGcISA&feature=share</a></span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-71142484959268402272017-10-19T07:58:00.002-07:002017-10-19T07:58:54.035-07:00When We Fall Out of Love With Writing...<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiqXo_ZWcqpb0VfV5c5UNAGKLX3ZUn4-EqfbUUtN_VyLdNyEgA9sxjbqcYt77nn-Bi054x9eraylV4ptKU86qiq56xZVTOgg9drqGM6cOK-lwIBXB-TBiyO_ULW_sSfWNKe8MYSed5n4M/s1600/12Night-PR-2-smaller-002.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="500" data-original-width="381" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiiqXo_ZWcqpb0VfV5c5UNAGKLX3ZUn4-EqfbUUtN_VyLdNyEgA9sxjbqcYt77nn-Bi054x9eraylV4ptKU86qiq56xZVTOgg9drqGM6cOK-lwIBXB-TBiyO_ULW_sSfWNKe8MYSed5n4M/s400/12Night-PR-2-smaller-002.jpg" width="303" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">The romance of writing is
that sudden flush of inspiration, when a story, character, or idea grabs hold
of your entire soul until you have to rush to your paper or keyboard and write
it down. “Romance” is the correct word to use, too, since it’s not hyperbolic
to call it a love affair. Sometimes it’s merely a crush, but at other times
it’s truly love at first sight: a woman whose eyes make you dream of being
better than you are, or a man whose voice gives you goosebumps when you imagine
him speaking your name. Anyone who writes can relate to that feeling, after
having written five or six pages in white-heat, when you look up from the page
and think, “my god, I’m actually a writer! I’m in the middle of writing a
book!” The whole world makes sense, or at least <i>you </i>do, as you float
through it, no longer seeing a distinction between the world outside your door
and the one in your mind. It’s all grist for the mill, raw material to
construct the elaborate castles and cathedrals of your imagination to stand for
all time.</span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"> </span></div>
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<a name='more'></a><br />
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">And then it stops. You run
out of ideas. Or the scene no longer makes sense. Or the characters stop
talking to you. Somehow, inspiration drops off, like a lover who will no longer
return your calls. You look, anxiously, at the phone to see if a new message
has appeared or better yet, if the cryptic “. . . “ is hovering by the person’s
face. But waiting alone will never bring back the Muse. Once the well runs dry,
you can sit and wait in vain, but the words will never come. Not until you make
them start writing again. And that takes excruciating, often mind-altering
resolve which is beset by doubt and self-recrimination at every turn. No writer
has satisfactorily answered the question, <i>how do you keep writing after
you’ve lost the inspiration to write</i>?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For this is what truly
makes a writer. Everyone knows someone who “wrote” at some point. They have the
beginning of a novel. A few short stories. An unfinished screenplay. The rough
draft of a book which they haven’t glanced at in years (though they’re going
to, any day now). When you ask them why they haven’t finished it, the answer is
usually, “I just forgot about it,” or “I lost interest,” or “I just don’t have
time anymore.” Funny how all these statements can equally be said about a
failed relationship: “We just didn’t have time to spend together anymore, our
lives are too busy...I started taking him/her for granted...the magic just left
our relationship.” A serial monogamist is someone who simply can’t make the
time for a relationship, who doesn’t want to believe that love is as much
mundane as it is magical. For every day of beauty you have ten days of
drudgery. Some days you don’t even like your partner; some days he/she
completely despises you. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">But a relationship isn’t
measured in single days or temporary failures. After fifteen years, if you can
look back and see the things you’ve built together, the tragedies you’ve
endured together, and have someone who despite it all is still there, still
willing to give you a hand, then <i>that </i>is a work of art. And the same is
true of writing. Some days you can’t write, some days the art seems too much
like toil, and you have to throw up your hands. Eventually, however, you have
to find your way back, a way to remember why you fell in love in the first
place, and who this mysterious person staring back at you like a stranger truly
is. What works, what ideas, what dreams, and what delusions first besotted your
thoughts? Love might be an illusion, but it’s an illusion that works—and the same
is true of writing. It creates a fiction that looks and functions the same as
reality, to the point that we often ask the question, does art imitate life or
life imitate art? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In Orhan Pamuk’s essay,
“The Implied Author,” he writes of the ease of losing touch with your work and
watching it slink out of your grasp. As he explains, “<i>It is not difficult to
dream a book. I do this a lot, just as I spend a great deal of time imagining
myself as someone else. The difficult thing is to become your book’s implied
author. Perhaps all the more so in my case because I only want to write big,
thick, ambitious novels, and because I write so very slowly.</i>” <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<br /></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">What he means by this is
that when you start writing a work, you are the <i>implied author</i>, the
person who is ideally suited to write this book or story. However, life gets in
the way: you pay bills, you go to work or school, you have arguments, you watch
movies, you read other books. In short, you forget who you were when you
started writing. And just like love, you suddenly find yourself five years into
a relationship that neither party seems to have time for. So who were you when
you were the ideal, the perfect, the implied partner for that book? That’s how
you find your way back to inspiration—remembering the circumstances and
situations that first threw you together in the first place. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For me, the implied author
of my books is usually the person I am in the summer. For most of the year, I’m
the implied professor: I teach, I grade, I read, I plan future classes. Writing
comes in fits and starts, and it’s hard to enter fully into the world of play
and make-believe required of a serious novelist. Only when the classes fall
away and I lose my identity as a teacher can I begin to recall who I was—or who
I am—as a writer. When the sun becomes a bit more intense and the skies darken
to that pitiless shade of blue, then I can remember what it means to write a
book without ego or distractions. That’s when the book most calls to me, and I
am able to lose myself in characters and plots and metaphors. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Until then, I’m often
doomed to gaze at the work between panes of glass, seeing without touching,
learning without feeling. It all feels curiously abstract and distant. But of
course, that’s the best time to start hammering a work into shape—when you
don’t care for it at all. Perhaps that’s why we lose inspiration and fall out
of love with a work...so we can learn to love it all over again?</span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-27869986041368440112017-10-11T12:41:00.001-07:002017-10-11T12:41:02.954-07:00Kill the Cutpurse! is Free to Download this Wed-Thur on Amazon<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEAUkNN3NM0YFZ3PzKMO2bEL4Qnihq9W64dmQp71KRxG7gfZ11mZ8B1uc1bmQZiEn_7azTiV0mFSfhNDTXsRllZ2sXOBBz4fV-Uk7n3EYDAN__SYLrl4eBKNkeC0SsU-aC6zLatDJGns/s1600/international+best+selling+author.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1003" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgDEAUkNN3NM0YFZ3PzKMO2bEL4Qnihq9W64dmQp71KRxG7gfZ11mZ8B1uc1bmQZiEn_7azTiV0mFSfhNDTXsRllZ2sXOBBz4fV-Uk7n3EYDAN__SYLrl4eBKNkeC0SsU-aC6zLatDJGns/s400/international+best+selling+author.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can download my first (and newly revised) novel, <i>Kill the Cutpurse</i>! on Amazon today and Thursday. All you need is a Kindle or a free Kindle app to read a short, fast-paced novel of humorous epic fantasy centering on a trio of thieves who are comissioned to steal the largest clock hand in the kingdom...and end up dismantling the very gears of the thieving community! Check it out in the link below:</span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><a href="https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Cutpurse-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B01ETWWL0G/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Kill-Cutpurse-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B01ETWWL0G/ref=asap_bc?ie=UTF8</a></span><br />
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;"><br /></span>Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-18880259936816658122017-10-08T20:34:00.001-07:002017-10-08T20:34:59.035-07:00The Technology of Storytelling<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3tK2YMU1mkDF2MPRmFbBJhP7Mhm_fJxEEZb6az_0P6TCQZBWHRMShi12qWOf8jvE37JVrzlXIoUCFF9Heu-l8XHm-nuREkziKa3x65BsS05LWQx7B6Ubk_u99XkiFRHiylO0LQwkshA/s1600/th+%25281%2529.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="203" data-original-width="300" height="270" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB3tK2YMU1mkDF2MPRmFbBJhP7Mhm_fJxEEZb6az_0P6TCQZBWHRMShi12qWOf8jvE37JVrzlXIoUCFF9Heu-l8XHm-nuREkziKa3x65BsS05LWQx7B6Ubk_u99XkiFRHiylO0LQwkshA/s400/th+%25281%2529.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Writing is a form of technology: the book is a tool which
more accurately (or perhaps, definitively) records a story for all time and
space. Before writing, we still told stories, and these stories changed every
time they were spoken, since a good storyteller would take the ‘frame’ of the
tale and embellish it like a literary game of Telephone. The oral works which
have come down to us in writing, such as those by Homer, or <i>Beowulf</i>, or
any number of myths and religious texts, represent the oldest technology in
existence: a thousand tale-tellers and their dreams kept the stories alive
through sheer force of will, telling stories over and over again lest they fade
into the twilight (as many stories undoubtedly did; we’ve probably lost more
stories than we preserved). With the advent of writing we discovered new tool
that would preserve a story, intact, for all time the second the ink dried on
the page. Some feared it would make us lazy; perhaps we wouldn’t see the need
to tell stories at all. After all, once we wrote them down, couldn’t we just
read them over and over again? What need to keep making up new ones?</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">And yet, we did. In fact, we’ve probably written more in the
past 50 years than was written in the past 500 (though I can’t speak for the
quality!). We even invented a new kind of book which has since become
ubiquitous with books themselves: the novel. Indeed, it’s hard to imagine that
this “new” style of writing was once exactly that—a brand new technology. The
glut of novels that followed—fueled by a rising middle class and affluent women
with time on their hands—promised new and exciting diversions: romance,
certainly, but also gothic horror, scandalous satire, and exotic adventure. Imagine
being the first person to cut the pages (old books had to be literally cut
open) of <i>Frankenstein</i>, not knowing the work was destined to become a
classic. Or browsing the local library one day and stumbling across something
by a fellow called Dickens. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">While all of these authors did their share of
borrowing, they were still pioneers, boldly creating new forms and genres.
Books like <i>Oliver Twist</i> and <st1:place><st1:placename><i>Wuthering</i></st1:placename><i>
</i><st1:placetype><i>Heights</i></st1:placetype></st1:place> passionately,
sometimes clumsily, created the molds we continue to follow 200 years later.
Even a recent bestseller like Andy Weir’s <i>The Martian</i> dutifully follows
the Dickensian paradigm so faithfully that any 19th century reader would feel
right at home (except for the colorful language, perhaps!). In essence, to
write a novel is an act of historical preservation, as the age-old form is
carefully taken out of mothballs and made to breathe our 21st century air.
Remarkably, the breaths come deep and strong—it’s the same air, after all—and
stories of outer space and zombie apocalypses are rattled off in a narrative
that still retains a trace of a British accent. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Of course, this begs the question: if our ‘technology’ is
more or less unchanged since the 19th century, what about the stories we tell?
Aren’t we repeating the same stories over and over again? Even if we replace a
story of doomed love on the moors with one on Titan, aren’t we still in
Bronte’s <st1:country-region>England</st1:country-region>?
Does changing the time or setting really change the story? This becomes even
more distressing if we take genre fiction into account, which has largely
replaced so-called ‘literary’ fiction in the marketplace. While every work of
genre fiction, from romance to science fiction has its origins in the recent or
ancient past, these works have become even more self-referential, a seemingly
endless series of variations on themes from the latest bestseller. So what does
it mean to be an author in the 21st century, when all the characters have been
introduced, all the plots laid bare? Have we been reduced to being a copy of a
copy of a copy, a fiction made of fun house mirrors that reduce the original to
a grotesque caricature? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Going back several hundred years, the 14th century Indian
poet, Kabir, once wrote: <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Accomplish one thing and you accomplish all,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">seek to do all and you lose the one vital thing.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">When you water the root of a plant,</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">it flowers and bears fruit to satisfaction.</span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">(Aphorism 37, translated by Vinay Dharwadker) <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Okay, so he probably wasn’t writing about the writing <i>per
se</i>, yet the shoe clearly fits. When writing every author faces the dreaded
“anxiety of influence,” feeling the tread of his or her predecessors behind
every keystroke. How can anyone write a horror novel after <i>Dracula</i> or <i>The
Shining</i>? Contemplate science fiction after <i>1984</i> or <i>2001</i>? And
fantasy after Tolkein? The fear of not being original forces a writer to jump
through torturous hoops, trying to extinguish one too many fears in the pursuit
of a “novel” experience. Or take the recent craze for “world building,”
prompting authors to create entire continents and planets from scratch,
complete with strange beings and their arcane tongues—however much they
ultimately sound like Elvish. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Yet instead of all this, why not accomplish that “one thing”
which is at the root of all good writing: story...plot...character...emotion...belief.
Attempting even one of these—even if a writer inevitably falls short, as we
often do—is a miraculous feat. For as much as we admire Tolkein’s linguistic
abilities, <i>The Lord of the Rings </i>saga isn’t a work of dry scholarship:
it’s a story of heroes, of friends, of the small things of the world showing
themselves the equal of the great. That’s why people come back to his story
generation after generation, to imagine themselves heroes in such a world (and
heck, I still can’t speak a world of Elvish). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">Tolkein never lost sight of the “one vital thing” which too
many authors forget in their scramble to be the “next big thing,” or more
simply, to be “novel.” The novel is already novel, and we’re already dressing
in borrowed clothes. Every reader who picks up a book is already sold; they
already want to believe that your characters can defy death and race across the
universe. All you have to do is accomplish one thing—whatever you want that one
thing to be—and place your trust in that. The pioneers of storytelling gave us
the tools, and they work remarkably well; perhaps one day we’ll toss them aside
for something better, but for now we only need to water the plant. If we take
care of the roots, to use Kabir’s phrase, the flower will “bear fruit to
satisfaction,” meaning that it will bear the weight of both your story and the
reader’s expectations. </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">We’re not original, but we don’t have to be: creating one
good character makes us believe in storytelling again...it makes us want to
read more. And as long as we keep reading, the stories will never end—and
that’s the “one vital thing” every writer agrees on. We always want a sequel. </span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-80364492683253217482017-09-18T19:51:00.002-07:002017-09-18T19:51:42.760-07:00Collaborating With the Dead <div class="MsoNormal">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpITl8xaH4570UGwCBz4G46X6ygpfsTEwAwKpwJhZkxWoxBdxITCAPtrRDO27lxYqL3RBnQYM4OrqFJPHcoRjgKBxEXhIyQ6KC1moAgzxucAtcschrZ5CK0My54Y6xzknIQ5VyuiwWOAE/s1600/1102415-12-20170125162602.jpeg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1473" data-original-width="1080" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhpITl8xaH4570UGwCBz4G46X6ygpfsTEwAwKpwJhZkxWoxBdxITCAPtrRDO27lxYqL3RBnQYM4OrqFJPHcoRjgKBxEXhIyQ6KC1moAgzxucAtcschrZ5CK0My54Y6xzknIQ5VyuiwWOAE/s400/1102415-12-20170125162602.jpeg" width="292" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Early this month, <i>The
New Yorker</i> published an article entitled, “The Complicated Backstory To a
New Children’s Book by Mark Twain.” The book in question has the rather
unwieldy—but very 19th century—title, <i>The Purloining of Prince Oleomargarine</i>
(c.1879). Now before you get too excited, expecting something along the lines
of <i>Tom Sawyer </i>or <i>The Prince and the Pauper</i>, here are the facts:
sixteen pages of notes were unearthed by a scholar at the Bancroft Library in
Berkeley, notes which were <i>not </i>a finished story but a mere outline of a
tale Twain used to entertain his daughters. Worse yet, the outline was
unfinished. The scholar who uncovered it, John Bird, stood face-to-face with
the find of a career. But what should he do with it? Publish it as is, perhaps
in a journal article with contextual notes about the circumstances of its
composition, its relation to other stories in his canon, etc.? Or actually
complete and flesh out the sketch, so that everyone could enjoy a forgotten
piece of the Twain puzzle—incomplete and insubstantial though it is?</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Bird decided to draft his
own ending to the piece, carefully imagining what Twain would write—and what he
had already written. Like an Egyptologist stumbling upon a fractured but
otherwise unblemished tomb, Bird wanted to preserve what history had abandoned,
so we could appreciate a promising first draft rather than an accomplished
revision. Together with the Mark Twain House, Bird found a publisher and hoped
the sales could benefit the House and further support Twain’s legacy (you see
why we need scholars in the world!). Instead, the publisher (Random House)
pulled an about face and gave the manuscript to a husband-and-wife team,
commissioning them to make their own version: not just a realization of some
sketches and notes, but a <i>bona fide </i>children’s novel of 100+ pages with
new characters, incidents, and a pulled-out-of-nowhere African American
protagonist. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">As one of the authors
remarked, “If you start delving too far into his
catalogue...it doesn’t take you long to start getting the heebie-jeebies about
something that he’ll have said. He can, on one page, seem progressive well
beyond his years—he can seem like he’s talking right out of 2017, or 2050,
even—and then the very next page he’ll say something that makes you smack
yourself on the forehead and say, ‘I can’t work with this guy.’ ” Hmm. This quote
begs the question, <i>why DID you work with this guy</i>? Why would Random
House remove the scholar/steward of Twain’s legacy and hand it off to someone still
groping their way to an understanding of Twain’s views and voice? Wouldn’t this
project be better served by someone who could position in within his previous
works, restoring something of his authentic voice and probable intentions? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Instead, both
Random House and the authors decided to fashion a <i>bagatelle </i>into a boulder. Since
children’s literature is still predominantly white and European, why publish
yet another European fairy tale along the lines of George MacDonald or Hans Christian
Andersen (which Twain was clearly channeling). The story was created to amuse
his daughters, without meaning to tickle the fancy of posterity—and certainly
not to challenge the arbiters of political correctness. However, the fact
remains that a book by Twain, even a very minor one, will command worldwide
attention. People will buy it, read it, comment on it—even if those comments
reflect dismay and disappointment. In a way, it’s the ultimate subversive act,
to ‘steal’ the work of a canonical white author and make him speak your
language (after all, he’s not around to object). <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">And there’s
the rub: in a collaboration with the dead, how much do you owe to the author’s
persona? Writers are always finishing the unfinished projects of long-dead
writers: works by Jane Austen, Emily Bronte, and Charles Dickens, to name a
few, are expanded, completed, and restored for an eager book-buying public. In
general, the response is muted: no one hails such a reconstruction as a
masterpiece, and none have entered the canon of accepted works or received the
imprimatur of an academic press. So what do we make of a work that adds much
more than an ending or a few missing pages, but an entire story, an entire cast
of characters, and a complete modern philosophy entirely absent in the
original? Is that a collaboration...or a renunciation of Twain’s beliefs? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In the early
20th century, the Russian writer Sasa Preis decided to finish a very incomplete
Gogol play, <i>St. Vladimir Third Grade</i>. However, as a true scholar and
devotee of Gogol’s work. Preis decided to scour Gogol’s published works and
lift actual words and phrases for the necessary additions. Everything had to
sound “Gogol,” even if the end product inevitably fell short of his genius. Preis
was not one to smack himself on the forehead because Gogol might reflect a
belief that didn’t jive with his own—or his century’s. No, he had to write a
work that Gogol might have written, true to his own sensibility and language.
Otherwise, why use Gogol’s name? Why not simply use your own?<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">To me, that’s
where the error lies. Not that we shouldn’t collaborate with dead authors or
sully their works. Why not? They won’t mind. However, this is only possible if
we start with the <i>actual </i>work of the author. To hide behind an author’s
name to advance one’s own agenda, or to bow to the mores of popular taste is,
quite frankly, in very poor taste. What will we learn from such a work? Will it
offer us joy and insight? Or is it simply just another children’s book and just
another notch in the belt of a pair of already-successful authors? The dead can
no longer speak to offer their opinion, but knowing Twain’s bent for satire and
cynicism, he would no doubt find this story highly amusing. In fact, it makes a
much <i>better </i>story than the one that actually got published. Now we just
need someone to write that one...time to head back to the archives! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-46018786229570581012017-09-15T06:37:00.002-07:002017-09-15T06:38:33.527-07:00Download Two Kindle Books for the Price of None! <div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSr5F1aWGbqL3fTjEPQkF6Rtez0ZGVwNXqXo1crjsfe5gLi9tp3oUPA6NeluwxC7-kgrbH6KWfomeVeI6qhn3Y_w6ctSSlSMKI8WqkfUgEuyy_DY8iu5SZVzgBBzEOMlFQQY59ybY0DIw/s1600/The+Dark+Backward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="800" data-original-width="512" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSr5F1aWGbqL3fTjEPQkF6Rtez0ZGVwNXqXo1crjsfe5gLi9tp3oUPA6NeluwxC7-kgrbH6KWfomeVeI6qhn3Y_w6ctSSlSMKI8WqkfUgEuyy_DY8iu5SZVzgBBzEOMlFQQY59ybY0DIw/s400/The+Dark+Backward.jpg" width="255" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">My two novels, <i>The Dark Backward </i>and <i>The Winged Turban </i>are free to download today (Friday) for all Kindles or with a free Kindle app. The links and blurbs for each book follow...</span><br />
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;"><br /></span>
<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Dark Backward: "A cynical thief has to apprentice herself to a sly magician, but the thief doesn't believe in magic...and the magician is already dead." <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Backward-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B0756526L5/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VH9EY825B43YZE51B0R3" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Backward-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B0756526L5/ref=pd_sim_351_1?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=VH9EY825B43YZE51B0R3</a></span><br />
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<span style="font-family: "verdana" , sans-serif;">The Winged Turban: "The young Countess of Cinquefoil is haunted by a painting of a strange woman in a turban: the former mistress of the house? Or her own self-portrait lost for two hundred years?" <a href="https://www.amazon.com/Winged-Turban-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B015DQEHMW/ref=pd_sim_351_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EJ3J5FZC2N8GHXF52S8C" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/Winged-Turban-Joshua-Grasso-ebook/dp/B015DQEHMW/ref=pd_sim_351_4?_encoding=UTF8&psc=1&refRID=EJ3J5FZC2N8GHXF52S8C</a></span>Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-24735912783088334252017-09-03T15:16:00.001-07:002017-09-03T15:16:24.082-07:00The Myth of Posterity<div class="MsoNormal" style="margin-bottom: .0001pt; margin-bottom: 0in;">
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<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqXxhvBa0h78HTqFad-iSuQF8sxjN6QSM8NKgD-Hi5aURf_VvnMe19yrlbH-PuWI0E5DiT-sfdR8gTtFcVuQAra8S_TtB0UDSzth7mGBaSdqBugtaCyHjDnJk02JLcQ9YlS2crrsKVTg/s1600/61V8e00GoNL._AC_US218_.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="824" data-original-width="1024" height="321" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjqqXxhvBa0h78HTqFad-iSuQF8sxjN6QSM8NKgD-Hi5aURf_VvnMe19yrlbH-PuWI0E5DiT-sfdR8gTtFcVuQAra8S_TtB0UDSzth7mGBaSdqBugtaCyHjDnJk02JLcQ9YlS2crrsKVTg/s400/61V8e00GoNL._AC_US218_.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In 1945, the
great Finnish composer Jean Sibelius prepared a major bonfire of several of his
unpublished works, including his still-incomplete Eighth Symphony (which he had
promised to a variety of American orchestras for well over a decade). It was a
major loss for music, since Sibelius remains one of the most innovative 20th
century composers and symphonists. However, some sketches and possibly even a
complete score of the Eighth remained—glimpsed by some—on his bookshelf. But he
consigned this to secrecy and made his family promise never to release it to
the public. He died in 1957, and no mention of the symphony or any subsequent
material appeared, despite repeated requests to his estate. Some rumored that
at the turn of the 21st century new works would materialize, but other than
some found sketches among his published papers and notes, no discovery was
forthcoming. Today we only have 3 minutes of music that may have been intended
for the Eighth Symphony.</span></span><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif; font-size: 12pt;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">On the one hand,
who cares? A composer, or an author, writes or composes X number of works in
his or her life, and that’s the best we can hope for. How dare we demand even
more from them, such as the voyeuristic desire to pour over every sketch and
aborted novel? If an author, say, wants to bury a work for eternity, he or she
certainly has the right to do so. And many have. So many works, hinted at in
letters or through word-of-mouth, have disappeared, buried in vaults or
libraries—or destroyed outright. Even Jane Austen’s family systematically
suppressed all her teenage writings and incomplete novels lest posterity judge
her for being too frivolous (or vulgar). Jane, herself, may have wanted these
works hidden from the public, considering that she extensively revised <i>First
Impressions </i>(an epistolary novel, from reports) into the more modern <i>Pride
and Prejudice</i>. <o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Luckily for us,
these works gradually passed into print when her controlling nieces and nephews
died off and other family members, who didn’t know Jane personally, abandoned
their scruples. And thank goodness! For what we gained was more than a few
curiosities, but glimpses of the master at work: incomplete gems such as <i>Catherine,
Love and Friendship, The Watsons, </i>and <i>Sanditon </i>spoke with Austen’s
unique voice, some of them showing paths not fully pursued, or abandoned in an
attempt to change with changing times. Without these works, we wouldn’t
completely understand who Jane Austen was as a writer, where she had come from,
and where she wanted to go. Some of the works are much more raw as well,
showing a strain of satirical nastiness only glimpsed in a few of her letters
(since many of those were destroyed, too) or an autobiographical melancholy
that she carefully hid from view elsewhere. Should these have remain hidden
from a prying public? Should we have destroyed them in concordance with the
family’s wishes—even at the expense of closing the book on a fuller
appreciation of Austen’s life?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">In a word, no.
The very last thing we should honor is an artist’s dying wishes. Artists are by
nature paranoid, egotistical, and vain to the last degree. A dying artist is
even worse. Dying artists think about their legacy, about why no one loves
them, about who will love them a hundred years hence (Sibelius certainly did).
They fear being forgotten—or worse, remembered for the wrong reasons (<i>a
has-been, a washed-out talent, a hack, an anachronism</i>). The last work an
artist turns to in his or her old age is usually <i>themselves</i>. They try to
ruthlessly preserve a persona as if, with the right additions and deletions,
they can preserve it from beyond the grave. It puts me in mind of the pharaohs
instructing their priests to built vast sarcophagi in stone to preserve their <i>ka
</i>for eternity...when they might have fed the people dying at their feet. Why
think of posterity at one’s death? Why not simply sacrifice one’s scruples by
offering the public everything it wants—everything you’ve withheld like a
dragon guarding its treasure horde?<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">For a writer
doesn’t ultimately own his or her works. At best, a writer is an amanuensis,
channeling inspiration and art and craft into something that just might survive
the age. Yet to focus these powers does not mean you invented them, or even
breathed them into existence. In a sense, the work was always here...the artist
just helps us see it. For example, many parents beat their children out of a
cockeyed notion that they <i>created </i>them. The only creation involved was
simple biology. It came through us, but it was by no divine act of our own.
Even my own children are not <i>my creation: </i>they’re both too pure, too
unique, too amazing for me to have dreamed them up. The great things of this
word pass through us, can be guided and shaped by us, but do not leap
fully-formed from our brains. To claim otherwise is a tremendous act of hubris
and a willful self-deception that leads to acts of misguided confusion—such as creating
a bonfire of your unpublished works.<o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
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<span style="font-size: 12pt; line-height: 115%;"><span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I entreat authors
to jealously guard their works in their lifetime; let nothing you think beneath
you see the light of day. But don’t destroy it. Don’t make grand pronouncements
on the fate of your works like an Assyrian despot. Instead, build up your
hidden treasures and store them away, less a horde than a future ‘dig’ for
budding literary archeologists. Let them find one of these hidden works and
bear it off happily to an excited public. What’s the harm in that? I imagine
that when this world is nothing more than a memory, the vague notion of a
legacy will no longer stir your blood. Even your very works will seem like a
shadow that someone else invented, in another time, in another existence. But
the thought that you made someone happy in that far-away world might—just
might—bring a smile to whatever remains of your fabled lips. </span><span style="font-family: Georgia;"><o:p></o:p></span></span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-37816203241973788372017-08-28T20:07:00.000-07:002017-08-28T20:07:01.670-07:00Download My New Fantasy Novel from Amazon: The Dark Backward<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgatSG7A_Bn4vgSva08A4C-Qcr5oPPzc4zcdeEcYZqDPbFFG3MJPFxkrASTk9pvjOgG0-Ck9PcERu8UTEA3PyYKQoJczsyUcoE2a9ZhYynoe9tYw1oQs-CSm4E7grmiWIvvJRnSqoedlzM/s1600/TheDark+Backward.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="1600" data-original-width="1003" height="400" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgatSG7A_Bn4vgSva08A4C-Qcr5oPPzc4zcdeEcYZqDPbFFG3MJPFxkrASTk9pvjOgG0-Ck9PcERu8UTEA3PyYKQoJczsyUcoE2a9ZhYynoe9tYw1oQs-CSm4E7grmiWIvvJRnSqoedlzM/s400/TheDark+Backward.jpg" width="250" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">I just released my fourth fantasy novel, <i>The Dark Backward,</i> as a Kindle e-book on Amazon (sorry, no print yet) for 99 cents. I like to call my novels the fantasy novels that Jane Austen would have written if she had lived long enough to read Tolkein and Rowling (and maybe Lovecraft, as well). I try to combine period detail (the 17th/18th centuries) with classic fantasy often verging on the pulp--I love stories of enchanted books, bottomless chests, and wizards from other worlds and dimensions. Silly stuff, but if you treat it properly--and aren't afraid to laugh at yourself--it sort of works. Maybe? </span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Though this is my fourth novel, it's not the fourth in a series, but is set in the same world as my other three books, and shares one of the main characters--the wise, yet duplicious sorcerer, Hildigrim Blackbeard, whose ambitions always get the best of him (and those who trust him). It's a loose sequel to my first book, <i>The Count of the Living Death</i>, as it showcases the two main characters, Leopold and Mary, much later in life, though you certainly don't need to read the earlier book to read or appreciate this one.</span><div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">You can find the novel here, along with a brief synopsis and 7 sample chapters: <a href="https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756526L5/ref=la_B00FQLZER2_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503975241&sr=1-4" target="_blank">https://www.amazon.com/dp/B0756526L5/ref=la_B00FQLZER2_1_4?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1503975241&sr=1-4</a></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana, sans-serif;">Remember that even if you don't have a Kindle, you can download a free Kindle reading app for your phone or computer. If you read it, please leave a review, even the most cursory one, since the more reviews, the more traction my novel gets. Thanks for checking it out! </span></div>
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Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4983456639903939161.post-59904555495582481832017-08-27T10:28:00.003-07:002017-08-27T10:28:31.949-07:00Authors and Writers: One and the Same?<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOg-QDRTm5MRwvUn07camljM251UcPywwFjlGWXBDDQKpEMNWjKpj3mAo8Y81rs3-9Z29G15aY7TNzLuSMd-CQBKhl4LYzbWZmYBnIa8rHUPDqHbk8HAD1YA-m9OLHG6xF-nk-QgVbUtU/s1600/old-books-glasses-2-for-blog.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" data-original-height="436" data-original-width="650" height="267" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgOg-QDRTm5MRwvUn07camljM251UcPywwFjlGWXBDDQKpEMNWjKpj3mAo8Y81rs3-9Z29G15aY7TNzLuSMd-CQBKhl4LYzbWZmYBnIa8rHUPDqHbk8HAD1YA-m9OLHG6xF-nk-QgVbUtU/s400/old-books-glasses-2-for-blog.jpg" width="400" /></a></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">When I first started
teaching in 2000, I didn’t have the foggiest idea how to do the very thing I
was being paid to do: teach college-level writing. It was my first year of
graduate school, and as part of my assistantship, I had to teach two classes a
semester, for which I would be paid a small stipend—enough to keep me alive
until next semester. Being ambitious and curious, I opted to teach two sections
of non-native composition, meaning the students had all come from other
countries (in this university, mostly South America and the Middle East) and
had a fair command of the language. I vividly recall the first day of
teaching...once I mustered up the strength to ascend the stairs to the third
floor and actually enter the classroom, I met a sea of faces who stared back at
me with equal trepidation. Somehow, I muddled through, reading the syllabus,
taking roll, offering some insights for how to do well in the course. By the
time it ended, I felt elated, relieved, confused, excited; after all, now I was
<i>a teacher</i>! Or was I?</span><span style="font-family: Verdana;"> </span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">The university called me
an “instructor” from the day I walked through the door; my students called me
everything from instructor to professor to “Dr. Professor Sir.” When I
corrected one of them, saying “oh, I’m just a graduate student,” she responded,
“but you are getting paid for this, yes? Then you are a professor.” At the
time, I said to myself, <i>you know, you’re right—I’m getting paid, therefore
I’m a professional instructor. Simple as that. </i>To make things worse, I won
a teaching award after my very first year of teaching, which really made me
think I knew what was up. Fast forward seventeen years to 2017. Even today, as
a full professor of English with tenure at a small regional university, I
hesitate to call myself a “professor.” I know I am, and that I’ve earned the
distinction over many long years of trial and error, but still...<i>do I really
know what I’m doing</i>? And if I have reservations now, seventeen years later,
what the hell did I know in 2000 that I <i>dared </i>to call myself an
instructor?! <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">Of course, the simple
truth is that yes, I was an instructor in 2000. An instructor <i>and </i>a
beginner. I was still learning, even more of a student than my students. I took
notes from them every single day, and passed a thousand self-administered
quizzes on everything from classroom management to grading assignments. I
clearly had a long way to go, even though I was being paid, even though I was
by most people’s definition “a professional.” I think this analogy applies to
writing as well, which is why I spent so much time setting it up. Anyone can
pretty much write a book and publish it these days: there are programs to help
you outline, invent plot, flesh out characters, even do research. And once you
have the book written, it only takes a few mouse clicks and you’re published on
Amazon KDP, or Smashwords, or whatever platform you prefer. And that makes
you...what? An author? A writer? Both? <i>Neither</i>? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I’ve been writing even
longer than I’ve been teaching, probably since 1991, though I pecked away at
stories as early as the mid-80’s, when I was still in grade school. I wrote my
first novel in 1993, and though it’s long since destroyed, it started a journey
of writing that has continued, unbroken, to the present. So what do I call
myself today? This is somewhat tricky, since I’ve never traditionally published
a novel or short story and certainly don’t make my living at it. However, since
2007 I’ve been publishing academic articles—21 to date, from journal articles
to book chapters—and many of them have paid me good money. So in that sense, I <i>am</i>
a professional, though none of this impresses literary agents who consider me
to have “zero writing cred.” So again, what the hell am I? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">I think every would-be
writer should consider the difference between the words “writer” and “author.”
In a sense, the modern world has given everyone the ability to blink and become
an author. After all, once you publish a book on-line and your best friend buys
it, you’re an author—a professional, in a sense. But on the same hand, you can
be a professional and have <i>no earthly idea what you’re doing</i>. That was
certainly the case with me for my first 5 or 6 years as a professor. So what
does it mean to be a “writer”? Can anyone do that, too? And if so, how long
does it take? Six months? A year? A lifetime??? <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">In a sense, yes, I think a
writer is a life-long vocation. You can’t be a writer overnight, or in a year,
or maybe even in two. It takes different times for different people, but you
know you’ve become a writer when it’s an obsession. When everything you see and
read and think becomes fodder for a future novel, or story, or poem. When you
simply want to write things down to get a feel for the words, or even to hear a
good sentence. Have you ever experienced that—the pure joy of writing a single
perfectly-balanced, cleverly-worded sentence? Do you read with a pencil or pen
in hand, looking for great descriptions, great phrases, or anything that will
inspire you in years to come? I think you also become a writer when you write
something <i>better </i>than what you initially imagined. I used to always be
so disappointed when I had these great ideas that never really panned out.
Nowadays, my ideas seem childish and stupid <i>until </i>the writing gets
underway. Then I see how good it should have been all along.<o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">However, I think you
really become a writer when you <i>don’t </i>do it for the money at all. When
you’re not trying to become an author or someone famous or to sell books or to
see your name on some damn list or someone’s blog. You have to want to write
for yourself, for your own enjoyment, for your own peace of mind. If writing
makes you sane, and not writing makes you lose your mind, then you’ve probably
become a writer. That kind of transformation takes time to achieve, since most
of us start writing for all the wrong reasons. Even now, most of us still want
to be famous, to be read by a million people whenever we publish a book. But
even if that doesn’t happen—and hell, it’s probably not going to happen—we
don’t stop writing. We keep going because we don’t know how to do anything
else. It’s become like breathing and eating and watching our favorite movie;
part of the beauty of life itself. <o:p></o:p></span></div>
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<span style="font-family: Verdana;">After my first semester of
teaching, a student wrote on my class evaluation: “he’s very enthusiastic but a
little disorganized. But that’s okay, he’s still young, so he can learn.”
That’s the best advice I’ve ever been given about teaching—</span><i style="font-family: Verdana;">you can still
learn</i><span style="font-family: Verdana;">. So even if you’re not a writer right now, or tomorrow, you can still
learn to be one. Even if you’ve already become an author and don’t know how to
write that second book. After all, it takes more than one book to make a
writer...but hopefully not as many as Steven King. I think we need an entirely
new name for whatever </span><i style="font-family: Verdana;">he </i><span style="font-family: Verdana;">is! </span></div>
Joshua Grassohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18044499439462324420noreply@blogger.com0