inspiredbyactualevents.com

Writing guides and handbooks fall into roughly two categories: Some are long, comprehensive, and, except for the extremely punctilious writer, unfathomable; a few are direct, useful, and ideal for serious writers who would rather write than spend hours finding the rules for semicolons. In the latter category falls Brandon Royal’s brilliant The Little Red Writing Book.

The articulate exposition of his twenty principles of writing and thirty rules of grammar fit neatly into 159 short, accessible pages, pages undoubtedly well-thumbed by thousands of grateful writers for years.  Built carefully and simply around the categories of structure, style, readability and grammar, Mr. Royal’s little book will satisfy both the sit-down-and-read-all-about-it reader and the frustrated-fly-by-and-check-something-quickly writer. 

I recommend this wonder to all my writing students; one day the writing committee with wise up and make this a primary text for all writing courses at my school.  I won’t hold my breath, but you could buy a copy now here anyway.

Tonight...I pulled my punches.

We went to a small piano concert. Four high school seniors, graduating this month, performed a small concert sponsored by their studio.  The show gets low marks for production values.  These amateur night extravaganzas insult the art they should celebrate. Nonetheless…

Four performers. One has a perfect ‘performer name’ - Ace Tardo.  Ace couldn’t play for...well...for shite, as the Brits say.  Cute kid, great smile, knots in his fingers.  But with a name like Ace Tardo, he’ll be a star one day, a star at something.  If he doesn’t want to use his name to become a star, I’ll take it.  Ace Tardo.  Wow.

Another performer could play better, but made the mistake of playing without a score, forgetting his notes, and resorting to opening the score to find his place.  His teacher should be shot for letting him play without his score before he was ready.

A third was a beautiful young woman who could play like a dream.  Her long expressive fingers deftly crossed the keys, leaping high, pouncing from phrase to phrase with the grace of a big cat.  She worked without a score since the music was part of her already.

Finally...and this is the point of this note....was Michael, the pianist we’d come to hear.  Michael’s mother works with my wife. Michael is, in a word, brilliant. He should be a concert pianist.  He, alone among his peers, felt the music, moved through it with ease and joy, a joy belying his awkward stage presence. (Someone MUST teach all these kids how to walk onstage and, for Christ’s sake, bow correctly - one hand on the piano, dip shoulders and head and DO NOT cross any arm over any waist anytime.)

Michael should study music performance.  Period.  He’s headed for college...pre-med.  I understand he can do this easily.  Smart, hardworking kid, Michael.  But...doctors are a dime a dozen.  Well… millions of dollars a dozen, I guess, but the point is how many dazzling concert pianists can my humble city produce?  I hope Michael, whose Chopin Etude moved his audience deeply in spite of the dreadful setting and whose sterling recovery after flubbing the middle of the Polonaise was an unappreciated display of profound professionalism, really wants to be a doctor.  Really want it a lot. 

If he is passing on becoming a pianist because being a concert pianist won’t pay the rent (which I suspect), he is cheating the world and, worse, himself.  And I, who know better than to let such a tragedy unfold sans comment, said nothing to Michael of how his playing moved me, nothing of my hope for his art. 

I may have another opportunity.  Here’s hoping I pull no more punches with the dazzling Michael and his golden fingers.

I may be the last person on the planet to have read Paulo Coelho’s The Alchemist. It’s sold a gazillion copies, I understand, in its 20 year run. I’m trying very hard to like it. The Alchemist is just not my kind of book.

It’s a fable, full of inspirational, follow-your-dream, pursue-your-Personal-Legend storytelling. It tells the pleasant story of Santiago, a poor Andalusian shepherd boy, who is told by an old man (Melchizedek, the King of Salem, believe it or not) to go to the pyramids to find his treasure. Santiago is perfectly happy being a poor Andalusian shepherd, but after several odd messengers encourage his quest, embarks to Egypt to find his treasure. He travels across north Africa, stopping in Tangiers, where he makes a bundle for himself and his employer selling crystal and turning the crystal shop into a smash success. He amasses enough gold to return to Spain a rich man, but is once again compelled to chase his Personal Legend.

Santiago and his caravan reach a popular oasis boasting “three hundred wells, fifty thousand date trees, and innumerable colored tents spread among them,” a welcome sight after long, dry weeks in the desert.
This oasis is also a safe haven for the many tribes warring in its environs. Santiago, since he is committed to his dream (still faithful, of course, to chasing his Personal Legend) becomes the oasis’ much needed spiritual guide and finally learns the secrets of the alchemist which I will not reveal here because I didn’t exactly understand them. In short, on his quest, Santiago finds material and spiritual wealth, overcomes daunting obstacles and impresses the hell out of everyone he meets. But...he must travel on, to the pyramids, to his treasure, to his Personal Legend.

Along the way, wise voices speak to Santiago, sharing truths, which he gradually understands, after considerable repetition. “No matter what one does, every person on earth places a central role in the history of the world.” “No heart has ever suffered when it goes in search of its dream.” “When you are loved you can do anything in creation.” And my favorite, “When a person really desires something, all the universe conspires to help that person realize his dream.” Cue Oprah.

Doubtless, you can hear my enthusiasm for paper-thin sentiments like these. Eventually Santiago finds his treasure, and I won’t spoil the end for you. You already know it. Really.

I liked The Alchemist. The characters are flat, the dialogue is biblical, and the themes are hardly challenging, but it’s well written, unpretentious (a rarity in profound-spiritual-truth books), and the story is engaging. The book’s Hallmark moments take on welcome weight with the unfolding of its simple and seductive narrative. It also has a quality often lacking in thematically-challenged books - it’s short. Take a few hours and read it. It’s better than a sharp stick in the eye.

Cliff is 60 years old, a farmer with a BA in literature, and poor, recently cheated off his farm in his divorce.  Cliff is traveling the country renaming the states and the birds of North America. No kidding.  He picks up a former student with a divine ass (Cliff was a high school teacher once) and she screws his brains out from Minnesota to Montana. She moves quickly from the fantasy category to the emotional burden category.

He visits his successful gay son (who pulls 300K in the film industry) in San Francisco and ends up pursued by his ex-wife who breaks up with the man she left Cliff for. This harridan (who, naturally, has a late-in-life real estate career) suddenly wants Cliff back in her life when she develops diabetes.  People with no boundaries surround Cliff and he lets them roam freely in his life at the very time he wants to carve out a private place. Eventually, he carves, but at a price that is just sad.

Cliff speaks with an honest voice, a voice that knows he must accept what he cannot change and can get on with his life, despite the insensitive whiners who repeatedly invade his life.  If you are a 60-ish man, you are Cliff and he speaks truth to you. I don’t know if he speaks truth to 35-year-old program analysts or 52-year-old corporate CEOs.  Cliff doesn’t speak FOR me, but he certainly speaks TO me and I am glad to be his friend and fellow sexagenarian.

Yesterday, I completed Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible and can’t write a review yet. I may need to read it again to see past my anger to the real importance of this outstanding novel. Now, I am simply angry.

Every patriotic American, and I am one, loves his country and the ideals it represents. Every patriot must guard his country and its ideals from the predations of greed and hubris. Unfortunately, no country in the world can match, even approach, the wealth and power of our country. Too often, the world’s greed and hubris involve American players.

The Poisonwood Bible is set in the Congo in 1959-60 (and later) and highlights that country’s painful move into independence. Well, into a simulacrum of independence. This novel, accurate in its historical detail, plays out its deeply personal story inside the chaos of the larger world, a world set on destroying the hope of a nation and murdering millions of its people.

After decades of exploitation by the Belgians, under the inspired leadership of Patrice Lumumba, the Congolese negotiated their independence. Lumumba was elected prime minister. Too bad Lumumba didn’t realize how serious Americans and Belgians were about controlling Congo’s resources. In less than two months, Katanga, the province with most of those resources, successfully seceded with the help of American money and personnel. Lumumba was arrested and eventually murdered, with the help of the American CIA. Twenty-six years of the murderous, puppet leadership of Joseph Mobutu followed, the Congo sunk deeper into poverty and ruin, and, to this day, is torn apart by greed and corruption.

Of course, the CIA knew how to do these things. In 1953, the American CIA engineered the overthrow of the elected prime minister of Iran, Mohammad Mossadeq, who had the temerity to claim Iran’s oil for Iranians. American is still paying in blood for foolishly crushing Mossadeq’s democratic and secular vision for Iran. America installed Reza Pahlavi, the Shah, to protect its oil and we’ve all seen how well that turned out.

But wait. There’s more. In 1970, Chile elected Salvador Allende to be its president. The unfortunate Allende used the magic get-yourself-killed-by-the-CIA word when he promised a transition to a socialist democracy. Within three years, America assured his assassination and the institution of decades of sadistic rule by Augusto Pinochet.

Then, there are Rafael Trujillo, Ngo Dinh Diem, Rene Schneider and who knows how many others, but, for fear of again killing the horse I beat, I’ll stop here.

My country is a great country with a bad habit. These examples of bad behavior are not all of what America is about, of course, but they indicate a willingness to act ruthlessly when our national greed and hubris run wild and we lose our sense of fairness and decency. We have done better. Mostly, we have done better. But not always.

OK. I’m not so angry now. Now I am just little sad.

So...read Barbara Kingsolver’s The Poisonwood Bible. It may not make you angry. But it may.

For documentation of many of the activities described above see the report of the Senate Select Committee to Study Governmental Operations with Respect to Intelligence Activities (commonly called the Church Committee), 1975-76.

For a simpler version with links to many other resources go here.

William James’ exploration of religious experience, primarily experience beyond the reach of reason, makes a great stab at defining fundamental (definitely not fundamentalist) nature. He almost makes one believe godless atheists can be religious too. Hell...he does make one believe godless atheists can be religious. In sum: humans experience life as imperfect and reach outside themselves looking for something like perfection or unity or transcendence. When they reach out, they find their higher self, likely hiding in their own subconscious. James was a psychologist after all. All else in religious practice, per James, is “over-belief,” the bells and whistles, some good, some devastatingly evil, added by countless institutional religions since way back. This review is a puny reduction of a expansive, hope-filled book. Read it in spite of my meager effort here.

Find the Kindle version of The Varieties of Religious Experience here

I’m now reading three books, more than I like to juggle at one time. One book in my head has always seemed enough for me, a simple reader who processes slowly.  But...if you have a hammer, you must find...and pound...a nail.

One book on my Kindle - The Alchemist.  One book on my MP3 player for reading on the walks with dogs - The Poisonwood Bible.  One book on paper...with a binding...and dustcover, you remember those, I’m sure - The Art Instinct.  I hope my one-brain head can handle assorted literature streaming at me simultaneously, channelled through three different media.

I could never do homework with the radio on.  Maybe I’ve changed.  Maybe Kindle and my MP3 have stretched me, stretched my brain. We’ll see.

Completeness seems to bother James Wood. His readerly affection for the silent parts of fiction gives his How Fiction Works a welcome portion of loosy-goosy admiration for the unround and the unresolved. I don’t know much about the range of contemporary literary criticism, but some critics, it seems, need their characters round and their resolutions complete. Piffle, says Wood.

We readers will find How Fiction Works a rich guide to the peculiarities (and conventions) of modern fiction. And it’s a helluva read. Honest. Wood has made litcrit compelling, giving us a page turner, a thriller-for-book-nerds filled with, if not exactly surprises, dozens of Aha! moments with flashing lights and clanging bells for the more excitable among us.

The cornerstone of Wood’s analysis is his discussion of what he calls the free indirect style, the third-person narrative style that enables the author to inhabit the voices of characters, shifting from an omniscient, external voice to the voice of the character, sometimes to the voice of the context in which the character lives. Wood notes other writer’s references to this style ("close third person;” “going into character;” “close writing") and provides plenty of examples from writers we know: Austen, Naipaul, Chekhov(of course), Updike. And others.

By using free indirect style, Woods observes, writers maintain their distance and inhabit their characters at the same time.

He looked at his wife. Yes, she was tirelessly unhappy, almost sick. What the hell should he say?

Only one part of this passage is strictly third person; the rest is the character speaking to us, or, rather, speaking to himself with the writer as intermediary. We can see an “objective” third-person view of the character, we can see what the character sees and we can hear the character address his problem. While not a exactly a new insight, Woods gives this style a thorough and useful treatment, at least one for us less academically endowed and encumbered.

Wood spends considerable energy and space discussing flat and round characters, frequently extolling the charms and virtues of the former. Traditionally, it seems, critics prefer round characters, at least for the big players in a work of fiction, over flat characters, who are OK and necessary to move the narrative or highlight the nature of the round characters. Round characters usually get considerable description, become rounder (I guess this is the term) as the story progresses, and sometimes change in significant ways, such change often being the core event of the novel.

Flat characters, on the other hand, get less authorial attention, rarely obtain more layers of human qualities as the novel progresses, and, since flat, have few human characteristics that could be transformed. On the other hand....

Flat characters are often reader favorites. Achilles. Polonius. Mr. Darcy (most Austen men, actually). Chauncey Gardiner. Flat characters often carry a key attribute or, even, a catchphrase, like Mrs. McCawber’s repeated avowal that she would never leave Mr. McCawber. An author’s repetition of this attribute or catchphrase turns flat characters into steady friends we often welcome as their rounder, more changeable, colleagues navigate a narrative’s twisty turns and slippery slopes.

Round characters are, of course, collections of many attributes and attitudes, skills and sensibilities. But these round characters are still not real since no novelist can represent all of what makes a person real.
The best round characters aren’t round at all and we all know it. They may be some sort of hard-to-measure geometrical shape, but they certainly aren’t, well, people.

Wood prefers the distinctions “transparent” and “opaque.” Some characters show more of themselves than others, and show more or less of themselves at different points in the story. Since fiction probably has something to do with truth or the nature of reality, these traits may be more helpful for writers and readers than the ubiquitous round/flat distinctions.

To frame the history of fictional character development, Wood traces the progression from religious, to theatrical, to fictive presentation; from prayer, to soliloquy, to free indirect style. He explores and explains much about detail, metaphor, voice, dialogue and, my favorite, language. He makes it clear that the best fiction, in falling short of answering all our questions, delivers the mysteries and the wobbly, uncertain world we need to be authentic characters ourselves.

Wood is a knowledgeable, thoughtful critic who has written a book that should help us handle, and love, the instability of the modern novel. Contemporary authors have found many ways to bring the uncertainty, ambiguity and richness of our lives into fiction. And we are better for it.

R3W

(Unfortunately, How Fiction Works is not available for our Kindles yet. I’m sure it’s just a simple oversight which will be corrected as soon as a few of us hit that button at Amazon that automatically harasses the fine folks at Farrar, Straus and Giroux.)

Ever enter one of those periods when, for some uncomfortable reason, you stop reading? Or, at least, significantly reduce the time you spend reading? I did. For several years.
This period came after I had some big surgery, the kind when you have it, the family gathers. Hell, I wasn’t worried; all I had was a shadow in my lung and an aneurysm in my aorta. I guessed, through the miracles of modern medicine, I’d be fine and I was. After a few months. Well, six months…

And after that, back to work for a couple years, then retirement, then move to warmth, like an old person, which I am definitely not...he said...defensively. I took and take coumidin to keep my blood from clotting around my St. Judes valve and a slew of other meds for a slew of quarrelsome maladies that can’t decide who should be #1.
Long story short - I know, too late - my coumidin failed one day and a little clot slipped through to my brain and I had a stroke, a small one, a mini-stroke really, a strokette. The effect was minor, but led to my period of reduced reading (Remember? That’s what I’m really writing about here.) I lost 30% of my field of vision; my left peripheral vision - poof! Gone. If you want to kill me, approach from the left and I am a dead man.

Reading is a strain. After a lifetime of seeing from left to right, I now see from center to right. Oh, you make adjustments, of course, and I still drive. I recommend friends avoid my neighborhood.
But, I have dogs. Who walk. And my docs tell me to walk to keep my heart healthy. And I tell me to walk to avoid the imminant threat of weighing 350 pounds. And we walk two to three hours a day.

On our walks I read. Three hours of reading a day, seven days a week, 363...er...5 days a year and you can read a lot. Since I’m semiretired (Don’t tell my students, they’ll expect me to finish grading their papers), I’ve launched the project I’ve been waiting for...to read all those books I told myself for 40 years I would read when I retired. Middlemarch. Bleak House. Return of the Native. Heart of Darkness. Origin of the Species. You know the ones. You have a list.

I’ve had time to read others, too, you know, the ones from the 20th and 21st centuries. More on these later. Of course, on our walks, I’m reading audiobooks, which are not exactly the same as traditional books, but, hey, we’re all about non-trad books here, aren’t we?
I bought my Kinkle 2 for one reason. You guessed it, right? Big type. Big type for every book I choose to read, for every issue of the Times, for all the free crap you can get for your Kindle and you do because you can and some of it is great. And big type for rereading In Search of Lost Time, which is never going to work as an audiobook, but works fabulously on my Kindle and I’ve just finished the first book, Swann’s Way, and Proust’s world is still there and lush.

My dogs got me to read again. My Kindle multiplies my reads. Life is good, ain’t it?

Finished reading How Fiction Works by James Wood this evening. I’ll do a review for the review section of this site and Amazon in the next day or two. Beginning The Art Instinct (Denis Dutton)tomorrow. Listened to Dutton interview on The Marketplace of Ideas podcast this AM in which Dutton addressed the surprising amount of enthusiasm, mostly positive, the book is receiving.

In the tradition of E.O. Wilson and his Sociobiology, which was scorned by academics everywhere when published a few decades ago, Dutton’s work may get a kinder reception. Perhaps society is ready to get past the knee-jerk, politically-correct reactions of the 70s and face the reality that evolution ain’t just about physical traits and behaviors.

After Dutton, The Alchemist. After that, back to In Search of Lost Time (on to The Guermantes Way), my 2009 major project.