Blind Read through: H.P. Lovecraft; Nathicana
I have to admit on this one, I wasn’t sure while reading through if these was some knowledge I needed to prepossess to understand what was going on here. I eventually went seeking some more information to see if my initial impressions were correct or if, in fact, I had some ignorance to the material Lovecraft was writing about. I’ll describe what my first impressions were and then talk about what I could find in a cursory search.
This is a very Poe’esque poem. Reminiscent of “Annabelle Lee” in it’s lyrical qualities and repetition; also in congruence with it’s macabre nature. We begin by viewing a purely Lovecraftian landscape, a very Romanesque place called Zais. There the narrator, through the mists of Yabon (the moon?), he sees the horrible beauty of Nathicana. This woman (Goddess?) is someone he is obsessed with, and strives to find her again, but soon comes the dreaded season of Dzannin (the sun?), that interferes, with it’s red light, the dreams where the narrator can see Nathicana. So he develops a “draught” that once he takes he can escape life and rejoin the “divine” Nathicana.
Seems fairly straight forward, the narrator sees a Goddess in his dreams and he can’t get back to her because his dreams are interfered with, so he drinks poison, to go beyond life and back into the realm of dreams to get back into the graces of his Goddess.
What I was confused about was the nomenclature. It may have been because I hadn’t read much Lovecraft before this project, but I hadn’t heard Dzannin, nor Yabon, Nor Nathicana for that matter. So I did a bit of searching on the old interwebs.
The most interesting quote I came across was in a letter that Lovecraft sent to Donald Wandrei. In it Lovecraft told Wandrei that the poem was a “parody on those stylistic excesses which really have no basic meaning.”
How very David Lynch of him.
I stick with my original feeling about the poem. Now while I am a bit underwhelmed by the poem, it does fit within this beginning time frame where his style is developing and transmogrifying into one of the Cthulhu Mythos and that of the Dreamlands.
Join me next week for a blind read through of “From Beyond”.
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; Hypnos
Welcome back to the creeping revision of H.P. Lovecraft’s work! This week I’m delving into Hypnos and it’s duality meaning.
The basic story is that the classic unreliable narrator meets a man who had a god-like face almost as ‘white as the marble of Pentelicus.’ The man had passed out in a train station, and our narrator went to him and when the man opened his eyes the narrator knew ‘he would be thenceforth my only friend.’ They discuss the universe and everything within it, and the narrator sculpts his friend. Our narrators new friend has a secret desire that he dare not speak of, to rule and go past the barriers of our known world. They experiment in drugs and try to get into the sleep world (which I can only imagine is a precursor, or even the beginnings of the dream-cycle pantheon). Then one one of these trips the friend (unnamed…for now), goes past an impassible barrier in the dream world, and comes back terrified and visibly aged. The two then vow to sleep as little as possible, also with the help of drugs. They age horribly and they pass their time in big groups and go to as many parties as possible, until one night as they are sleeping something strange happens as a light glows over his friends head and our narrator can see the disembodied face that looks as his friend once did before he went through the impassible barrier. The police come and gather the narrator and tell him that he has been alone, that all along he has been alone…that there was no friend. the only evidence is a bust of his friend with the name Hypnos.
There is an emerging theme that I had never known about from hearing about Lovecraft and that is the drugs. There have been many stories thus far eliciting that the narrators are using drugs to help them get past the barriers and see what is beyond. One cant help but think of the drug dreams of Irving Welch, and wonder if these are stories of fever dreams. It would be a provocative theory, though probably an unpopular one, but I would need to read more to see if the thread continues.
The connectors in the story are traced back to Greece. The narrator is a sculptor and he says he spends his free time sculpting his friend, who has a forehead as white as the marble of Pentelicus…a mountain in Athens known for it’s marble. Then at the end we find that the friends name was Hypnos, which was the Greek demi-god of sleep. So we come to a crossroads. The story is either telling us that the narrator finds this marble bust, and through his drug or fever dream, thinks that the bust opens its eyes and becomes his friend. Remember that the friend was found asleep in the train station, a place where it would make sense for a bust to be. Our narrator is lost in the HYPNOtic gaze of the bust, steals it and the drugs bring him through the adventures. The strange light over his friend at the end, is actually light over the bust and the cracking of the narrators reality. Remember that the idea was put there by drugs (one can only guess that it was a hallucinogenic), and he then stayed awake with the help of drugs. Sleep deprivation on top of a psychotic break will only deepen psychosis.
The other option, is that the events of the story are unfolded exactly how they are told, but frankly with the evidence that Lovecraft deposits throughout the story, this is not very likely. In any case, this was probably my favorite story thus far, right up there with The Tomb and The Tree.
Join me on Thursday this week (08/17) for one of Lovecraft’s Poems “Nathicana”. and if you want to read along with me I’m reading the Del Rey edition of “The Doom That Came to Sarnath”. ISBN: 0345331052
Blind Read Through, H.P. Lovecraft: Memory/What the Moon Brings
These two are merely vignettes, minute glimpses into the world that Lovecraft was in the process of creating; the strange and the cosmic.
“Memory” is a look forward and “What the Moon Brings” is a naval gaze of the apocalypse. Both are no more than 2 pages a piece, but both are full of meaning.
In Memory we are shown a shambles of a world. Ruins that are over run and the only inhabitants are apes. Two gods are having a discussion, and where one cant remember the past, asks the other “Daemon” about the beings who built the original ruins. The Daemon says that he is Memory and what he remembers is that they were insignificant and their deeds were forgotten as soon as they were preformed. They built the ruins and their name was Man.
The meaning behind the vignette is that, far in the future, the deeds and actions of humans are forgotten and the only thing that remains is earth. The gods themselves look over everything, but they forget as well, which makes them insignificant as well. The ultimate god, the ultimate truth is the earth. The land holds the longest memory and will outlive and outlast all.
What the Moon Brings flows into a similar vein. The narrator tells of their own death. He (due to Lovecraft’s sexism and racism, I assume that every narrator is a white man) describes what he can see from the light of the moon. The moon (a otherworldly being in and of itself that is the origin of many of Lovecraft’s creatures) shows the death of civilization through the reflection of the lake. He can also see creatures in the water. He decides at the end to go and join them, because he knows that the moon will continue to come and continue to bring the visions of what is coming. In his despair he walks into the waters and either drowns himself or lets the creatures have him.
It is intimated that he is the last of the population and is giving in to despair, as he gazes at the reflection of the “dead, dripping city”. The book I’m reading through (Del Rey 1971 ISBN: 0345331052) should have put them in reverse order, because What the Moon Brings, shows the decline and fall of civilization and Memory shows the aftermath.
What the Moon Brings is much less deep, but by far the creepiest of the stories thus far, because it is more direct (with the exception of The Tomb). Both a lot of fun, but I still feel as though these stories are merely setting up the mythos that are coming.
Blind Read through, H.P. Lovecraft; Beyond the Wall of Sleep
I’m going to start this one with a little rant. This is a blurb about this story from the back of the book: A crazed murderer blames his crime on beings from another dimension. Wild ravings from an insane man turn to prophecy when the Truth is revealed.
This is the problem with most writing. It isn’t the writing itself, but it’s marketing. The only thing about the above sentence that is true is the fact that the man (Joe Slater) is a murderer. Nothing else is true, and it begs the question if the person who wrote the blurb actually read the story. If they had, then it is a much greater crime to purposefully mislead the reader to try and get more sales, by outright fabricating the plot.
Slater never blames his crimes on beings of another dimension (in fact there are never beings, in plural, but ever only one being who “did him great wrong”). Then the author of the blurb deigns to use the buzz word “prophesy”. There is no prophesy. The ravings of the mad Joe Slater are heard by the narrator and the narrator has an interest in dreams, so to see what Joe is seeing, he hooks them both up with a skullcap to see what he is seeing. Which he does. That’s it.
Ok sorry. Now to the nitty gritty of the story.
This is one of Lovecraft’s earliest stories and supposedly has no correlation to the later works. I see quite a bit here that would lead to that however. Again we have these strange green northern lights. Again we have madness derived from exposure to a cosmic deity. Again we have the unreliable narrator. Again we have the remote local. And to top it all off we have Lovecraft’s trademark superiority complex (He names the madman’s neighbor Peter Slader, where the madman’s name is Joe Slater. He mentions many times that they are all backwoods yokels who have no knowledge and intimates that they inbreed. Only to verify that claim by naming the characters of the mountains with such close names as to subliminally castigate them).
Where this shows as an early work is that he actually shows his god. The narrator goes “Beyond the walls of sleep”, and into the cosmic realm that drove the simple Slater mad. the Narrator himself (though it is never discussed what he actually does, or how he acts) is offered a leave of absence, because he is “working too hard” after the experience he gained from Slater’s mind.
But perhaps the most provocative aspect of the story, is why the cosmic deity would come down and inhabit a backwards “white trash” (Yes. Lovecraft actually wrote the words “White Trash” in 1919) yokel, who doesn’t have any brains. Maybe because the idea was to make a transformation?
“His gross body could not undergo the needed adjustments between ethereal life and planet life.”
Meaning he was not intelligent enough to understand how to make the transition. But the narrator can ascend and we are left feeling slightly off kilter, as if this were not a choice, but now that the cosmic deity has found an appropriate zygote he will being his proliferation.
Blind Read Through; H.P. Lovecraft, The Tomb
This is supposedly the first story written by Lovecraft, and it flows perfectly into his predilection for madness. The story follows Jervas Dudley, the quintessential unreliable narrator, in his descent into madness.
Jervas states at the beginning of the story that he loves reading ancient tomes; books that no one else ever reads, who’s subject matter is strange and malignant. He has no social life and he derives much of what he understands about life from these convoluted books.
Then one day he happens upon a tomb. It is in the location of his neighbor’s (The Hydes) burned down house. He begins spending much of his time there, hiding out and sleeping in front of the partially ajar, padlocked tomb.
One day a voice from the tomb tells him to go to his attic, where he finds a key to the padlock and enters the tomb. He spends much of his time there, but at the same time, his father becomes concerned for his mental well being, so he sends a “spy” to watch over him. Listening in on the conversation, Jervas is confused to hear the spy tell his father that he spends all his time sleeping outside of the tomb, not inside as he knows to be true. He also develops a fear of lightning and storms, which is what destroyed the Hyde’s mansion in the first place.
Then while in the tomb he attends a party held by the Hyde’s and everyone seems so realistic and the mansion is back to its former glory, that is until Jervas’ Father and the spy grab him. In the struggle lightning started to flash and it exposed a box on the ground with the initials J.H. and inside was a statue of a young man with an uncanny resemblance to Jervas.
The story ends with one of the servants, supposedly going into the tomb and finding a coffin with the name Jervas on it.
This can be read in two different ways. The first is that the narrator, who is confined to a madhouse, has pushed his brain into thinking about the strange dealings of the netherworld by reading all those tomes instead of interacting with others. Then his half sleep for weeks on end in front of the tomb, his mind played games with him and he imagined everything.
It is easy to correlate that the Hyde’s were his ancestors, and once the mansion was destroyed the family built a new one close by. It stands to reason that during that time there was a young man by the name of Jervas Hyde (J.H.) who’s coffin the servant found at the end of the story. Because of this Jervas Dudley thinks everything is about him, because he has no other basis in reality.
The other way to read it (and the one I quite prefer) is that Jervas found something in the attic, that began to possess him. It made him desire to be with his ancestors, and the spirit of Jervas Hyde had somehow begun to merge with Jervas Dudley. They began to see and experience the same things. One could even conjecture that Jervas’ father knew this was happening, and that is why he was relegated to the asylum.
In either case, it was a fun read, though much shallower than the other Lovecraft I’ve read to date. This was supposedly in his straight horror days, which people say is uninspired, but it has a beautiful reminiscence to Poe and tales like “The Fall of the House of Usher”.
Blind Read Through: H.P. Lovecraft; The Other Gods
Sorry for the radio silence the past few months, but I’ve been head-down, grinding away at my Chapter Book Series “Elsie Jones Adventures”. To break up the monotony and stave off burn out, I’ve decided to take on a new project. Once a week (or so) I’m going to read through a H.P. Lovecraft story and give some insight and critical analysis. This is purely meant to be a fun project and I’d love for feedback or discussion surrounding it.
I’ve read very little Lovecraft, but I love the idea behind his stories and have even incorporated some into my own fiction. So, each story I will read and discuss will be brand new to me, which is why I’d love some discussion surrounding my thoughts. THERE WILL BE SPOILERS! Anyway, here it goes…
The Other Gods
This story seems to be told by an observer who goes to a village named Ulthar. This observer is obviously interested in the religions of this village, which is said to be based upon Earth’s Gods (which probably pertain to the Elder Gods, which were the benevolent Gods who have since left earth to return to the cosmos). Earth’s Gods had lived high upon a mountain peak called Hatheg-Kla, but as humans expanded thier knowledge of the world, Earth’s Gods recede to Kadath (which I believe is the Dreamworlds, but I’m sure we’ll get more information through future reading). This gives way to the Other Gods (Probably intending to mean the Ancient ones, or the malevolent gods) to take position on the peak of Hatheg-Kla.
The story holds two of the supposed staples of Lovecraftian stories. The lust for knowledge to understand the world and the fact that the cosmos are much larger and stranger than any human mind can possibly understand.
We follow the story of Barzai the Wise (Lovecraft’s choice of nomenclature calls back, purposefully, to ancient times. Babylonian and Arabian where all religions started. Whereas he himself was atheist, he somehow tapped into the idea that there was a reason that these locations were where religion started, but it seems that his idea was that the genesis of religion was based in Cosmic Deities, instead of the more terrestrial tied that we as a species associate with), and his apprentice Atal, as they climb to the peak of Hatheg-Kla. The climb becomes impossibly difficult, but the desire for knowledge is too strong in Barzai, and he reaches the strange peak to gaze upon the Earth Gods, only to be fooled and absconded by the Other Gods. To be tormented and become mad in the Presence of the Ancient Ones. Atal, could not make the journey, so he makes it back to Ulthar to tell the story, which is then related to the narrator, through the filter of the villagers.
It’s a great beginning to the mythos of Lovecraft I think, because it introduces all the themes we’d expect, and gives a glimpse into the burgeoning cannon that would become the Cthulhu Mythos.
There’s a ton in just a few pages, and it even introduces one of Lovecraft’s famous documents that many people for years (some still do) thought were real; the Pnakotic Mnuscripts. “…which were too ancient to be read.”
The Holidays and the regretful respect of Dickens
I cant believe it’s been over a month since the last post! It’s back into the busy times again, with work piling up, the mornings getting earlier and the evenings getting later. Still, despite all that, there is something truly wonderful about this time of year. There is a hum in the air, a mysticism floating on the wind. From Halloween through Christmas day there is a definitive nostalgia, and lately I’ve been wondering about what books to read to feed into this nostalgia.
The strange thing for me is that whenever I think of a Christmas read, I always come back to Dickens What’s surreal about this is I don’t even really like Dickens. To me it seems a shame that the man got paid by the word to write his novels in serial form, because invariably his books became droll and drawn out.
Even with this realization, we have have a trope named after the man, and there’s no better nomenclature for December other than Dickensian. It’s dreary, but somehow hopeful. Totally overwhelming, but somehow comforting. Completely serious, but somehow infused with whimsy.
I’m in the process of reading Bleak House by Dickens, and where the name is apropos, it is also completely ridiculous. This is something I’m finding more and more with Dickens the more of his work I read. As droll as he can be. As long winded. He still hits the notes he’s striving for.
This brings about the regretful respect, because I keep getting brought back to him. After every book I read of his (Bleak House will be my fifth), I think how bored and angered I am at his writing style. Then time passes and the only thing that sticks is those characters and events and the recollection of the rabbit holes he falls into disappear. What remains is the whimsy and pride and adventure infused within the pages.
This is why Dickens reminds me so much of the Holiday season. Though there may be hard times, there may be strife, there may be frustration, but once you’ve been through it, the only thing that sticks is the whimsy and the wonder.
Stories to put you in the mood for Halloween
This time of year is the best time of year. You move from the gaiety of Summer into the comfort of Fall. This is the time of year that people come together. This is the time of year that people gather around the kitchen table, or the fire place and talk and tell stories. This is the time of year for mystery and imagination. This is the time of year for ghosts, goblins, witches and ghouls, but it is also the time for wonder, love, and mystics.
So this list of recommendations is for Halloween. Bear in mind that Halloween is not about Horror, although that plays a part. Halloween is a celebration of the unknown. It is an aknowledgement of our fears and an accumulation of love for those close to us and those we have lost.
Halloween is Gothic. Halloween is mysterious. Halloween is horrifying. Halloween is fun.
So here is your list…enjoy…if you dare!
10. “An Occurrence at Owl Creek Bridge” by Ambrose Bierce
Set during the end of the Civil War, this decidedly Gothic tale follows a Confederate soldier who miraculously escapes his execution. Beautifully told, remarkably human and emotional, and yet powerfully cruel, this short story will put your brain in the right mindset for the coming holiday. With a brutal twist ending that will shock you.
This story was the only “Twilight Zone” episode filmed in Europe and one of the very, very few that were not written by Richard Matheson, nor Rod Serling.
9. “The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde” by Robert Louis Stevenson
Subtext abounds in this morality tale. More about the duality of human nature than an actual monster tale, but then again thats what Halloween is all about. Dressing up as something else to trick others. The real question in the book though is which one is the real person, is it Jekyll…or Hyde?
8. “The Picture of Dorian Gray” by Oscar Wilde
Another story about the masks we wear. Dark and absolutely Gothic, this book is beautifully told and very nearly asks to be read by candlelight. A faustian like tale that can spark the imagination, and with a full moon shining in through the window, you’ll get the full effect of Halloween.
7. “Hell House” By Richard Matheson
Matheson absolutely has to be on this list and I’ve chosen this one because horror is a staple of Halloween and this is the most terrifying book I’ve ever read. It follows a group of Scientists trying to debunk a haunted house. With a twist ending that will keep you up through Halloween, you have to read this book…but only if you aren’t feint of heart.
6. “The Haunting of Hill House” by Shirley Jackson
To follow up Matheson’s haunted house tale, is Shirley Jackson’s masterpiece. Beautifully told, this story is less a horror story and more of an American Gothic story. Dont get me wrong, there are still horror elements to the tale, but this one is much more subtle and a bit more haunting. This is the perfect book to read on Halloween night.
5. “Salems’ Lot” by Stephen King
I struggled with the idea of putting Stephen King on this list because it just seemed so obvious, but this is the book to be on a Halloween list if there ever was one. Everything takes place in the town and the horror just rises as the story progresses. It even has an expedition to a potentially haunted (though it was much more malicious than that) house, which, in my youth was a Halloween staple.
4. “Halloweenland” by Al Sarrantonio
This is actually the third book int he series of Detective Bill Grant, but it’s enough of a stand alone that I thought it more prudent here. This book has it all (though not as well written or produced as some of the other books on the list), A carnival, Halloween night, and Samhain himself (though under a different name). Just a fun way to get in the mood for Halloween.
3.”Dark Harvest” by Norman Partridge
The October Boy comes alive…This book is very short, but extremely fun. The winner of the Bram Stoker award in 2006, this book is about The October Boy, or a creature who rises from a pumpkin patch and tries to kill (He even has a jack-o-lantern head). The catch is the young men in the town are also trying to kill him. An excellent morality tale and a book which throws classic horror standards on their head.
2. “Something Wicked This Way Comes” by Ray Bradbury
There is nothing like a Carnival to bring you into the mood of Halloween. Especially a supernatural carnival. Another book which is beautifully written and does a spectacular job highlighting the mood for young people and for bringing the nostalgia of the wonder and imagination back to the adults who read it.
1. “October Dreams” edited by Richard Chizmar and Robert Morrish
The Ultimate Halloween book. This book has a number of short stories which are collected by Chizmar (The editor/operator of Cemetery Dance Magazine: http://www.cemeterydance.com), nostalgia and October dreamer extraordinaire. This book not only has short stories from the leaders in the horror genre, but it also has the favorite memories of some of these genre giants. Ever wonder what Ray Bradbury remembers best about Halloween? Here it is.
The art of cohesion
Currently, I’m in the middle of writing the tenth book in the Elsie Jones Adventures (The first of which will release in the spring of next year), and I’ve been thinking more and more about process. The closer I get to the fifteenth book (The concluding book of the series) , the more difficult it is to write the books because there is so much more that goes into them.
The first three were pure adventures. They each had a beginning middle and end, and for the fifteen book arc, I could act like a writer from the TV series Lost and make up anything I wanted to. Books four, five, and six got to explore the over all story arc while still being complete adventures, but I still didn’t have to bring things together. Then in books seven, eight, and nine, realizations began to take place and the over all story arc became clear. Now writing book ten I’m having trouble with a clear vision to the end.
My writers group, The Live Poets Society, contains a mixture of writing concepts. There are those that write only what’s on their mind at the time and then go back later and bring it all together, there are those that write from start to finish with an arc in mind, and then there’s me, who comes up with a complete outline before writing a single word in the story.
I know the main contention to writing an outline first. People tell me all the time.
“I don’t want to be contained. If I get into some good writing I don’t want to have to keep it to the outline.”
Believe me I felt the same way before I had a writing contract.
Writing an outline first is like doing your due diligence in a research project. The outline is the creative outlet. when you’re writing an outline, you get to come up with the plot line. You are not bound by having to deal with language or grammar, you are not bound by having to keep your own thoughts out of the text. You can do whatever you want to, then when you’re done, you have a complete story arc, not just a beginning, and end and some random scenes you really want to write.
When I first started writing Elsie Jones I wrote from the cuff. I had a vague idea of what I wanted and I wrote what came to me, flowing through my fingers onto the screen. Now I have the outline to make sure that things don’t get too screwy.
Do I always stick to the outline with zeal? No. Things always come up when you’re writing, but outlining is a great way to brainstorm and keep your thoughts linear. When you have a complicated subplot that ranges over fifteen books, but each book has to be a contained adventure all it’s own you get a bit bogged down in the minutia. The only way out of it is to outline.
Give it a shot. Do some outlining of your own. See how it strikes you. I guarantee your stories will be better and more cohesive.
The Rise of Literary Reading
I’ve recently read a couple of articles which have struck cords with me. The first was from the Washington Post (https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/09/07/the-long-steady-decline-of-literary-reading/) and the second was from a website called read it forward (https://www.readitforward.com/essay/article/list-books-saved-life/). The Washington post article was basically talking about how people don’t read literature anymore and the second article was how literature saved the authors life.
We’ve become such an interesting society that everything has to be an all or nothing. You have to either read literature or not. You have to like a political candidate or you have to hate them.
This is a topic which could go on for a long time, but I’m going to narrow the focus to follow along the lines of literature.
In my opinion, society needs literature, and I don’t say that because I’m a writer and I think that it’s survival is necessary to my survival as a writer, or because of some nostalgic feeling I have. Society needs literature because literature makes you think, and that is something that is seriously lacking in our culture at the moment.
We take things as people give them to us. You read an article from the Washington Post and all of the sudden you’re worried about books being in decline; and yes, at a quick glance it does seem disturbing that there are virtually no literary authors on the top money lists. HOWEVER, you must understand that the money lists which are written out by Forbes are entirely skewed.
The idea of a money-list is ridiculous, and also the idea of a books purchased list is equally absurd. The reason is availability and accessibility. You can say that literary reading is in decline since the 1800’s because no body reads those types of books anymore. That’s wrong for two reasons. 1. Dickens in his time was considered popular fiction…NOT literature, and 2. How many times do you walk into an airport and find Proust on the shelf?
Literary reading is on the rise, not the decline. Just look at Jonathan Franzen, who is holistically a literary author. When he wrote “The Corrections” and famously snubbed Oprah Winfrey, he was one of the top grossing authors of the year. The only reason he was however was because Oprah mentioned him and people ran out in droves to read it, that and the millions he won from literary awards.
The problem isn’t literature and its rise or fall, but in how the media perceives it. If the Washington Post came out with an article saying how more people than ever were reading literature and three titles were amongst the top (for my own edification I’ll say these three “Freedom” by Jonathan Franzen, “A Hologram for the King” by Dave Eggers, and “Cloud Atlas” by David Mitchell {runner up to “Art of Fielding” by Chad Harbach}) then those three titles would be best sellers.
Once that happened then more people would be writing articles like Jonathan Russell Clark wrote about how literature and reading saved his life. People would think more. People would analyze situations better. People wouldn’t be so trusting of one source, but they would look for the counter argument.
You heard it here first. Literature is on the rise. There is a reason Barnes and Noble is still around, years after E-readers saturated the market. I challenge you to read a literature title. One that makes you think. One that makes you analyze it’s meaning. One that makes you question your own reality.
A New Spring
“I don’t need to tell you that writers sometimes get ideas which practical-minded individuals regard as chimerical” – Henry Miller
I just finished reading “The Grapes of Wrath” for the first time (I know, I know, I’m way to old and love Steinbeck way too much not to have read this earlier, but bear with me), and while I was reading it people kept saying “Oh man, Steinbeck is SOOOOOO depressing!” Every-time this happened I would give a demure smile and a slight nod, because I half believed them. I love Steinbeck because of his readability, his tone, and his brief and wonderful, bright bursts of beautiful, insightful writing, but people don’t get this from him because of his content.
As my eyes scanned over the last few words of “The Grapes of Wrath” and I shut the book, my mind began to scan for potential meaning behind the final few pages. Were they depressing? Yes. Was the book dark and dreary? Probably. But there is an image which sticks in my mind, even now, hours after finishing it. It’s such a small thing that most people who read the book probably will focus on the death and uncertainty which is prevalent…and they wouldn’t be wrong. The Joads go through so much throughout this book, that I actually felt like each chapter was going to end in another heartbreak, another setback. Then there was that image right there at the end, which changed the tone of the entire book.
Ruthie found a flower.
That was it. Ruthie found a flower.
What stuck with me was the symbolism of it. Steinbeck writes this book alternating chapters between the story of the Joads and a social commentary, and the downer of this book comes to an end with that flower. The last couple of the lines of the last bit of the commentary are as follows: “And the women sighed with relief, for they knew it was all right-the break had not come;and the break would never come as long as fear could turn to wrath.
Tiny points of grass came through the earth, and in a few days the hills were pale green with the beginning year.”
Spring is a time of re-birth. The breaking of spirit would not come, because through the depths of despair comes the realization that you’re alive. Sometimes you have to hit rock bottom before you realize what you have in front of you. The harder the winter, the darker and colder it gets, the brighter the spring. The ground needs the snow and the cold to be able to have a re-birth, to bring about spring and spring is hope.
Sometimes horrible things happen to you. Sometimes life is depressing. Sometimes life is almost too much to overcome. But as long as there is determination, as long as there is hope; one day while you’re walking on the broken pieces of what you thought your life should be, you’ll find a flower, and a new spring will bloom.
Top Ten Autumn Books
I read these stupid posts, from these blog sites who want to be real news, and every time I think to myself, “I can compile a list so much better than that!” Half of the books seem to be listed because they’re popular, not because of the subject matter, and it seems as though the author of the article hasn’t even read them. And the other half seem to come out of left field.
So here is my foray into the world. It could be horrible, it could be insightful, I just hope it inspires people to read some books that they might not have read before.
I’m choosing my top ten books to get in the spirit of Fall, mostly because it’s my favorite time of year, but also because of the broad range of books that will fit. This is the time of changing seasons, of baseball, of melancholy, of the beginning of school. This is the time where you take that last trip to that browning mid-west field, that last trip to the tire swing at the lake, before it gets just too cold. This is the time of year for nostalgia. These ten books will have some or all of these qualities.
10. “West of Here” by Jonathan Evison
This is a beautifully written novel portraying a life of the town Port Bonita. There is some jumping around between time frames, but you get the feeling of a wonderful Autumnal read. Broad sweeping landscapes including everything from watermills and flumes, starting from people trying to live a life in the old west, to the modern time and how people just want to disappear. The novel drips with nostalgia, and is a perfect read for early September, to get you in the mood to sit next to the fire and dream of the soft, colorful, chilly fall.
9. “Lonesome Dove” by Larry McMurtry
I don’t think this list could be complete without this epic western. Every time I drive through the country of California and see the broad waves of grain and browning fields, this novel always comes to mind. It’s about a cattle drive to the north, which starts in the late summer and goes through fall and into winter. There is death and despair, there are shootouts and classic western dialog, but this novel won a Pulitzer for a reason; it is a perfect slice of life of Americana, and it will bring you into Autumn.
8. “The Book of Lost Things” by John Connelly
I personally have to have a book on this list which has a bit of magical realism and a bit of fairy tale. This is a slightly tragic tale of a young boy who takes solace in his books, so much so that he is brought into them; into a sort of fairy tale land and has adventures. My first instinct in creating this list was to include “The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe”, but I thought I could find a book that had that autumnal feel without going down an overused road, and “The Book of Lost Things” is it.
7. “Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil” by John Berendt
This is the only non-fiction book on here, and where there could be some which are better, I cant think of a better setting to move into October and the fall, than Savannah. There is old magic in Savannah and that is part of this books charm. There is even a scene where the narrator heads into a cemetery and interviews (or tries to at least) a “witch woman”. Filled with intrigue and dripping with atmosphere, you cant go wrong with this one.
6. “Needful Things” by Stephen King
Yep, there is a bit of horror on this list, though this one I wouldn’t really consider all that scary. This is the “last Castle Rock story”, where the devil comes to Castle Rock and opens up a curio shop. This story is another that you can really curl up by a fire and get into fall. It’s a small town feel, with incredible description and unforgettable characters, then you have the magic of a curio store called, yep you guessed it, “Needful Things”, and if there was ever a secondhand store that didn’t have a nostalgic feel, I don’t know what does.
5. “Water for Elephants” By Sara Gruen
Train jumping, The Dust Bowl, a traveling circus and a tragic love story. This isn’t much more you need for a good Autumn book. The atmosphere is all consuming and the characters are full and lush and the story is beautiful. You can actually (figuratively) see the changing of the leaves while reading this one.
4. “Bethany’s Sin” By Robert McCammon
This one piggy backs the King book. It is the last horror story on the list. This is the story of small town. It’s beautiful, socked in by trees, the neighbors are nice and come to your doorstep with pies. This is the quintessential small town nostalgia, perfect for fall. On top of that it has all the hidden secrets and horrors that a small town needs to have to be a good autumn book. It all starts with the sounds of horses hooves pounding through the town at night…
3. “Old School” by Tobias Wolff
The easiest comparison to this novella would be to “The Dead Poets Society”. This book takes place in a preparatory academy, and really, what is a list about autumnal books without having a book about going to school? This is a beautiful and literary book and will only take you an afternoon to read it, but just wonderful.
2. “For the Love of the Game” by Michael Shaara
So if an Autumn list isn’t complete without a book about school, then it really isn’t complete without a book about baseball. This is a wonderful novella told through the course of one game. It tells of a lifetime of ups and downs. A life time of love and loss. A lifetime of baseball, and where we head into October and the playoffs, I cant think of a better book to read.
1. “The Cider House Rules” by John Irving
This had to be my number one book for a seasonal book. Even though the book takes place over a much longer time period than one season, there is such feeling and melancholy layered in this book. Apples are finally ripe in the fall and this book centers around an orphanage and a cider house. You can see the colors while you’re reading through the book and on top of that Irving has such a deft pen, that you get to know these characters like no other. This book is the ultimate and will get you in the spirit of fall.
The stylizing of reading
I worked in a bookstore for a number of years and during that time I wondered what people bought books for. The conclusion I have drawn over all this time is that people read books for three reasons. The first is that they don’t want to miss out on what’s popular (a condition my wife lovingly calls a FOMO…fear of missing out. This is an oversimplification of the category, but I think you understand the meaning.), this is how such shlocky writing such as 50 Shades of Gray came into popularity. It wasn’t that it was original, nor was it good (or even OK writing, frankly the chapter I read was just plain, bad. Poor character construction, poor grammar, poor sentence construction, etc, etc.), but it was brought up on a morning talk show and it blew up in popularity.
The second reason people pick up books is the travel read. Though i call this the travel read, it’s real range is much farther. This is the book that people pick up to read on the airplane yes, but it’s also the book that people pick up as mindless entertainment (as much as reading can be mindless). This is the category for such authors as James Patterson. People pick him up because it’s easy to read, with super short chapters and simple language. This is the largest reading group, because it’s about simple entertainment. This is the reality TV category of reading. When you want to read, but you don’t want to think and just want the story to be laid out for you in a simple and entertaining fashion. Most times these books are flat but accessible. The characters are one note tropes (the detective that just has one last case before retiring, the ambitious journalist who just needs to get that story, etc.), and the dialog is trite and simple, but they hit all the right notes that the readers want. These are the definition of cookie cutter.
The last group is the serious reader. This is cut up into two categories. The first is the “Librarian reader” and the second is the “Academia reader”.
The Librarian reader is the reader who just loves to read. This is the person who prefers reading to watching TV. This is a person who is an indiscriminate reader. This person will read anything from the Twilight Series to “Huckleberry Finn”. From “The Girl on the Train” to “Little Women”. This is the category I fall under. It’s the category of person who just loves to read and partially studies the reading. It doesn’t really matter what the Genre is, this person will read anything. Personally I go so far as to finish everything. Even if I hate it. I look for anything redeeming about the book. I look for plot sub-devices, I look for character development and depth, I look for subsumed nuances in theme, I look for grammatical and paragraph structure acumen. This may seem strange to some people, but it’s because I love the medium so much. I love everything about reading and writing, and most times when I get to sit down and read or write, it’s the highlight of my day. I understand that I’m a strange subset of this Librarian reader because I straddle the line of the Academia reader.
To that end, the Academia reader is the person who studies the text. This is a person who reads only Philosophy (if you’re reading this you know someone like this); the person who looks down on James Patterson and abhors E.L. James. The person who studies the text and looks for extra nuance. The person who has read “Notes from the Underground” and “Atlas Shrugged” 42 times. This is a person who can quote text from Schopenhauer, Shakespeare and Cicero. They look less for the structure of the book and more for the meaning. They look at Grammar as subtext instead of an interesting way to structure. This person is a philosopher at heart and will stay with a book for a year at a time. They may not read a lot of books, but they know more about what they know than anyone.
So which is it? Which category do you fall under? What type of reader have you always wanted to be? What type of reader do you aspire to? And for all those writers and people who want to be writers, which is the category you think is the most important to be a writer?
I just can’t put it down!
It’s late in the day and with all the construction that’s been going on in my house, I’ve only now had a chance to sit down and write tonight. I thought I might pick a few genre’s and pick a book that I feel is a must read in that category. Disagree? Lets talk about it over twitter,Facebook, or Goodreads (or respond to the blog!)!
https://www.facebook.com/seanmmcbrideauthor/
https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/1553528.Sean_McBride
Literature: John Irving “A Prayer for Owen Meany”
I’m convinced that this is the best of Irving’s many works. Irving has an amazing capacity to make a character realistic, more so that any other author out there. What’s more amazing is that he makes you love them. His characters are always flawed (which is probably what makes them so real), but because of those flaws the characters become your friends. Owen Meany is no different, but what makes this book stand out is it’s structure. Like Chekhov said if there’s a gun in the first act it has to go off by act five. This book opened my eyes to what real literature should be. Read it.
Fantasy: Brandon Sanderson “Mistborn, The Final Empire”
This is the first book of a trilogy (and a much broader spectrum of books under the mantle of Mistborn), but you can read this one as a stand alone. What starts off as a heist book, evolves into something so unique, epic and beautiful that it’s hard to put down, even with its 500 plus pages. People talk all the time about book hangovers. Where you put the book down and you are so satisfied that you are actually a little depressed because you didn’t want it to be over. This is that book.
Horror: Richard Matheson “Hell House”
In a genre where things have gotten so trite and the writing so dime store, it has gotten very hard to find a good horror book (and believe me I try every October. I try to read 3 or 4 of them in that month in honor of Halloween). This, from the grandfather of horror, is probably the best written and the scariest. While reading it you want to put it in the freezer to hide it away like Joey from “Friends” does, but it’s so engrossing that you really cant stop. Matheson was the creator of the trope (He wrote for Twilight Zone which most of his short stories are produced on screen, and most of his books have been made into movies multiple times; the most recent being “I Am Legend”), giving a group of scientists a chance to try and disprove a haunted house. Get ready for a roller coaster.
Science Fiction: Orson Scott Card “Ender’s Game”
Many people have had to read this book in high school, and where I never had to I think it could have been a good addition. This is a fabulous coming of age book, in addition to a treatise on war and society. The Eponymous Ender is a brilliant Hero (I use a capital because he’s a Campbell mythic hero) who does what needs to be done to get farther in life. With teenage angst, pain of family and friends and more drive than many characters do in the genre. Another can’t put it down.
Classics: Fyodor Dostoevsky “The Gambler”
I wanted to add a classic that many people might not have read. This is a preamble to James Bond in both feel and character (James Bond in the Books that is). This is the story of a man who develops an addiction to gambling because of the influence of the young girl he’s chasing after (It’s a little ironic because Dostoevsky himself was a gambler and partially wrote this book to pay off gambling debts). It’s a great realistic tale. The characters a horribly flawed and they make realistic decisions. In the end the gambler finds his reason for being after being lost in the black hole of a gambling addiction and you see light at the end of the tunnel, but Dostoevsky weaves it so beautifully that there is reason to doubt. If you’d like to read a Russian classic (they are some of the best after all), but are daunted by Brothers Karamazov, Anna Karenina or War and Peace check this one out…might open some doors for you.
That’s all for now! What are your favorites in these genres?
JK Rowling and how to sell books
I just recently finished reading “A Casual Vacancy” by J.K. Rowling (if you want to read the review check out my goodreads page:
https://www.goodreads.com/review/show/1682813893?book_show_action=false)
and it got me to thinking about why certain things become famous and have a huge following and others do not.
Throughout my writing career I have always thought (and fought against) that if you wanted to be successful you needed to create a cookie cutter plot with predictable characters. One of those novels that appeals to the masses (think James Patterson, Dean Koontz, or anything in the romance section of Barnes and Noble), because they can get into a familiar mode and have a nice escape from the strain of their lives, but yet something that they don’t have to work to hard at.
“The Casual Vacancy” opened my eyes to a new reality.
In general the book was panned. People flocked to it, but not because it was critically received, more so because it was the next novel of the phenom who created Harry Potter. I experienced a wonderful, realistic novel. A novel where there was sex and violence and rape and drugs and expletives around every corner. A novel seeming so innocent (much like its characters), but with a sinister undertone which threatens the status quo and propriety.
What jumped out at me was the depth of character and place.
What made Harry Potter popular? Was it the fact that it was a young reader novel about a wizarding school? Was it because it followed the archetype of the Joseph Campbell hero? Was it timing? Did Rowling sell her soul to the devil for fame and fortune?
No.
It was her incredible ability to tell a story. It is her depth of character. It’s her ability to make the characters three dimensional, with quirks, flaws, and complexes. It’s her ability to make her characters just like your friend or neighbor, your mother or brother.
It’s also her use of language. She and another author, Stephen King, have the ability to tell a story. Not write a novel, not to tell a story of place, not to tell a story of a person, but to tell a tale. These two are the epitome of readability, because while your reading the books you can nearly see yourself sitting around a camp fire while they stood before a group and told their story. It’s the readability that they share and that makes them so popular.
This is a hard thing to pin point, because it’s not about how to place a verb, it’s not about how to construct a sentence. It’s about how everything flows off the page, and lights up in your mind like the TV screen.
It’s these two things that create popularity. Readability and realistic characters. And luck, a whole lotta luck. If you can get it into the hands of the right people and you have these characteristics you have that international bestseller.
The Construction of the Craft
I’ve been hard at work for approximately ten months now developing a children’s chapter book series called The Elsie Jones Adventures. I’m having a blast writing them, and coming up with the concepts for each individual book, however it is the hardest thing I’ve ever had to do, because everything in the series has to be cohesive. It’s a fifteen book series and each book is a stand alone (except for maybe the 15th), but each book also pushes the overall plot line forward for the series.
While I’ve been writing this series I’ve been continuing and completing a number of long running series of books. Most of these series are in the save vein, where they have stand alone books, but each volume pushes the larger story farther towards the completion of the series.
This is what’s scary, hard and, oddly enough, rewarding in both process of reading and writing a large series: Making sure that the whole story makes sense, and you eliminate continuity errors.
The first few books don’t seem to be that much of an issue because you can keep adding plot points, but as the series progresses, you need to begin to close the loopholes (creators of LOST didn’t understand this simple point).
So I’ve thought a lot of the process of all this over the past few years, and if anyone has any feedback regarding it, it would be fun to talk about.
My process has evolved over the past year, much more than it has in the ten years previous.
When I first started writing I would just sit down and let the story take over. This is a big argument within the writer community because nearly half of all writers do it this way, where the other half are outliners and planners. I thought I could be a free story writer, where the story and the characters told me where the story was going and the story would tell itself, however I have found over time that I get lost in the middle of the story and the characters and the plot lose their way.
I have become a planner because of this, and developing Elsie Jones, I’ve become a planner more and more.
The biggest contention to outlining that I’ve heard (and said) is that free writers feel as though they are trapped within the outline. However almost all writers know how the story begins, maybe a few plot points int he middle, and then how the story ends. This is nearly the same as outlining.
Just because you’ve created an outline doesn’t mean that you cant change it if the character comes alive and the outline no longer makes sense. You still will probably have the same ending, but the path to the ending is fluid (it’s like Game of Thrones. Weiss and Benioff don’t know the path Martin is going to take to get to the end, but they know the end. So the books and the show will diverge, more than likely from this point out, but they will end the same way). Then through subsequent drafts you can hone the story, tighten it up into a beautiful little story. If you consider yourself a free writer, try this. Sit down and have a brainstorm session and write it down. I even put in dialog and description of the events which are particularly vivid to me. Then the first draft can be about the construction of the book and developing the voice and life of the character instead of worrying about the path of the book.
The reason this is so particularly on my mind now is I’m in the middle of book 9 of The Elsie Jones Adventures (Take a look at my books page of this blog for more info) and I have quite a few plot points that I need to bring back together to finish up the story. I’ve had to go one step beyond the mere outlining and create diagrams and lists and character sketches. I’ve had to do this because if I just free wrote the rest of the books, I would leave a bunch of hanging loose ends and have plot points which didn’t make sense.
So I wonder at what other people think. I wonder how other people write. Lets start a dialog and improve the writing in the world.
Write What You Know
I read books from every genre and from every literary background, and I hope everyone else does too. The more I read, however, the more I think about the motivations to write in a specific way, or specific genre.
What is the draw to writing Horror? Why does creating a fantasy world appeal to some people? What is the difference between the two and what are the similarities?
The more I think about it, it comes down to drive, talent and interest.
There is a phrase in the writing community where you should always “write what you know”. I’ve always thought that was a strange concept, because many of the things that I was interested in growing up, and in fact still to this day, have no basis in reality, so what does that really mean?
Writing what you know to me doesn’t have anything to do with writing what happened to you today (though for some people, that’s exactly what that means), it means writing what your interest is.
Growing up and going to creative writing classes there is a great disdain for genre writing. (I was told many times, why didn’t I just write something real? Why was I wasting my time?) These people wanted to play with form and they wanted to be artistes (as Joyce would put it), but really unless you have incredible talent, at a high school level, or as a freshman in college you wouldn’t be able to produce anything of value anyway (look at Pynchon’s “Slow Learner”. The title says it all).
So I wrote what I knew. I wrote what I was interested in. What is amazing is how your abilities grow the more you use them. If you look at any of my earlier work, I am most definitely a slow learner, but writing is like woodworking, the more you do it the better you get. you start to notice pitfalls, you start to notice your own eccentricities.
To layer on that you need to study other’s works. The more you read the more you see how other authors have honed their craft. How they have perfected their voice. You take all this information and you mold it in your own work and eventually you get your own style.
So your interest gets you started and you can perfect your talent.
The only think left is drive.
One can go from being a genre hack to being a very respected author, whether they stay within their genre or not. Everything there comes down to drive. What is it that propels you into the writing world? Is it money? Is it fame? (Get a reality check if it’s either of these) or is it the love of telling stories?
If it’s money or fame, you’ll never progress beyond hack level (Palahniuk, I’m looking at you), but if it’s the love of telling stories you develop a drive. That drive gets stronger and stronger with every success that you have, because you begin to realize that others are willing to listen to your stories. You strive to do more, so you get better and better. You develop a specific voice. Those interests you once had broaden, and you start believing that everything you have is literature. You develop depth and passion. Your genre writing now can be read by anyone and it’ll be looked at as joining a club (just look at George R.R. Martin’s success…assuming he ever finishes his series).
So write what you know. Read everything and write every day. Have fun and don’t worry about what others think. You may write one story that people never see. You may write a thousand, but eventually you’ll write that one that’ll break the barrier and you’ll get to start sharing with the world.
What is talent?
“We are all apprentices in a craft where no one becomes a master.” Ernest Hemingway.
Six years ago I was working on my first book. It was a self published book of short stories and I got confirmation from the publisher before I had a definite idea of what I was going to actually do.
The was to be a book of short stories which I had written over the years. The problem was I had ten stories and four of those were just too horrible to publish. I was so dead set on publishing something, that i just decided to write like crazy and do all the things that I ever wanted to do to experiment with writing. I was writing a blog on Myspace at the time (can you believe that site is still around?) and I carried around a notebook in San Francisco, faking that I was a beat writer. I loved the glamour of it, but at the same time I understood I wasn’t very good. Then one day I was sitting outside of Java Beach Cafe and i wrote down this prose:
Why is there that dreadful despair?
That meandering distraction?
I think I could be good.
I think I have potential to be a good, if not great writer.
It’s such a difficult process, and yet
for many people it just flows,
As if their body excreted talent.
Art.
I have potential.
Many people have potential.
There are plenty of cases of first publish at first go.
There are also those who have no potential,
or to be frank,
people who don’t know what their doing.
I’m in a middle group,
between the ignorant and the talented.
I have potential.
I study art.
I’m no artist.
I contemplate it. I assimilate it. I gorge in it, and
I fake it.
To people with talent. It’s a drive.
It’s ever present, forceful.
It becomes deleterious in it’s absence.
The ignorant don’t understand at all.
they see a great piece of fiction
and they don’t know what it means.
It needs to be spelled out.
It is after all…work.
They don’t feel the drive so it doesn’t make sense.
It’s a wonderment.
I have potential. I study it. I see art.
I appreciate art. I love art.
I am not artistically inclined.
I do not have talent, I have potential.
I rambled on for a little while longer, but I think the idea is prevalent here. The idea that I didn’t elucidate here was the amount of work that you have to put in. NOthing in this field comes easily, and where there are people like Dickens, Proust, King, and Shakespeare, who apparently can just sit down and pour out their creativity, for most of us it’s work. We need to write, and re-write, and edit and re-write again. I finished off that prose-poem, by saying that I wanted to fool the world into thinking that I have talent. I think my talent has grown, but that’s because of the work that I’ve put in.
So for everyone out there who wants to be a writer? Just sit down and tell some stories. It doesn’t matter how good they are, how literary they are, how robust. As long as they come from your heart, you can continue and you too will develop that talent.
The Meaning
I recently watched a TED talk (I know, I know, but it was for my other job OK?) where the speaker (Simon Sinek) spoke about how leaders become leaders. How some people excel and how others don’t. Of course I immediately started to think about writing.
Mr. Sinek says in his talk, that people or groups fail because they talk about what they do. The people or groups who succeed talk about why they do it.
This is something I’ve always struggled with. When people ask what my book is about, or what I’m writing about, I ramble on about some such theme, or some kind of similarity to something else, to try and give them an understanding of what it’s about and if they think they’ll like it.
But all I’m doing is boring people with what I’m writing. What is going to make them pick up my book over someone else’s? What makes my Twilight Zone inspired short story collection unique from someone else’s Twilight Zone inspired short story collection? What makes my Children’s Chapter book series different from someone else’s? Content? Ability? Character?
No.
Marketing is always something I’ve struggled with because I’ve always thought about what I’m doing. I’ve always described what I was doing to people. I’ve never discussed why I did it.
This still isn’t a easy subject to broach, because for the most part, I’ve never thought about it myself. I’ve always said I write because I love to tell stories, but is this the truth? Is there something more?
The more I think about it, everything comes back to Belief.
I believe in myself. I believe in my writing. I believe in what writing stands for.
I believe that if I can write a children’s chapter book series about literature, than I will inspire a child to go out and read some of that literature.
I believe that that child will be once of the next leaders of the world.
I believe that by writing a science fiction story that pushes a character past the limits of their imagination, then the reader will believe that they can do something past their own.
I believe writing improves the world. That is the meaning behind what I do. I strive to make the world better one person at a time.
That is why I’ll succeed. Because I wont stop. I believe it too hard to give up.
Sean McBride 
You must be logged in to post a comment.