Some people love to watch swans on the water. I can’t blame them, it’s a gorgeous sight. There, on the flat surface of a pond or lake, beautiful birds glide by, graceful and long-necked, pristine and white. They lift their wings more than flap. They don’t splash. There’s something perfect about the above-surface swan. Okay, but I like what makes it glide. Underneath that smooth surface, wide, waddling feet are peddling like mad to achieve what looks like effortless motion. The submerged part of the bird looks ungainly but it’s what makes the surface appearance work. That’s what I like about creative structure. Instead of the eye-capturing, realized vision, it’s the mechanism that made the imagined vision real. That mechanism is what Jack Viertel talks about in The Secret Life of the American Musical: How Broadway Shows Are Built. Like any other devotee of musical theatre, Mr. Viertel adores being swept away by a show and he’s been one of those lucky audience members for more than sixty years. He’s also been a theatrical critic, an artistic director, a producer, a dramaturg (Mr. Viertel explains a dramaturg is the “noodge” who asks questions about a developing theatrical piece that…
Who sees her as the bad guy? They’re two of the first terms you learn in the study of literature: protagonist and antagonist. The protagonist is the hero, the schnook at the center of the story, the innocent in the middle of a hurricane. It’s easy to sympathize with heroes. Everything seems to happen to them and they’re created to be someone you like. So it should be easy to guess who the antagonist is. That’s the “udder guy”, the heavy, the louse who antagonizes the hero. Actually, an antagonist is simply whatever force that opposes the hero but some opponents go out of their way to make the good guy’s life miserable. At any rate, it’s easy to see the tale from the hero’s point of view but when I was struggling with a story years ago I got some good advice from my husband. “Never forget” he said, looking over the rims of his glasses, “No one sees themselves as the villain.” Bertha Mason before she went to England..Doesn’t look crazy, does she? “No one sees themselves as the villain.” That observation holds incredible insight and it’s the mechanism that unlocked a horde of parallel novels based…
When I was a kid, I used to think Great Writers were also Great People. I mean, how could anyone with such a complete and tender understanding of the human race be anything other than nice? Then I read about Hemingway, Faulkner, Fitzgerald and O’Neill and revised my opinions downward. Great writers but flawed human beings. REALLY flawed. Worst Parent Ever level of flaws. And Lillian Hellman proved lady writers could be just as bad. I fell in love with Hunter S. Thompson’s style, nerve and humor. When I realized his gonzo behavior was a lifestyle instead of an act, I vowed to never go near him unless I was armed with a cattle prod. By the time I started this blog, I had done a 180 degree pivot from my childhood ideas and now assumed any writer worth admiring was really a rabid wolverine in human clothing. It took an unusual book to change my mind again. Meanwhile there are Letters… gives me reason to hope novelists will be allowed to rejoin the human race. It’s the story of two 20th century storytellers who seemed to be polar opposites. Eudora Welty was one the Southern Spinsters whose talent was recognized early…
My mother loved historical fiction. In the days when Erma Bombeck was the queen of domestic humor, and would be feminists felt caught between Betty Friedan (too serious) and Erica Jong (too randy) historical novels were a thinking woman’s guilty pleasure. More serious than Barbara Cartland’s frothy stories, less licentious than the bodice and pants-bursting tales of the “Sweet Savage” series and miles beyond the Harlequin romances, historical novels combined enough research and literary craft to create entertaining stories that someone wouldn’t be embarrassed to be seen reading. About half of the stories were based on historic figures; the other stories were based around historic places and events. The heroines weren’t always beautiful (at least they didn’t think they were) and while most of the stories still focused on a woman’s quest to achieve a happy home, husband and family, the traditional ending wasn’t guaranteed. Mama had a ton of these books and I ran through them all while I was a kid. At the time I thought they were terribly boring; I was in love with “the classics”. The world must have have agreed with my teenaged self , because I don’t see many historical novels these…
February is a hard month to love. Say all you want about the plucky groundhog, and rhapsodize on the romance of Cupid; remember the Chinese New Year, American Presidents and throw in a good word for Leap Year but the truth doesn’t change: February in the Northern Hemisphere is a difficult month to love. The Holiday Season disappeared ages ago and the pastel head of Spring is nowhere near to being seen on the horizon. We may be looking at wind or rain next month but right now the weatherman’s two favorite words are “freezing” and “snow” and the outside world almost seems drained of color. In February, it’s hard to avoid getting depressed. To keep the wraiths of February Depression at bay, may I suggest picking up a few books? In their own ways, each of the following stories helps me through these days of relentless cold. I hope they can help you too. If the rest of the world had to describe Jamaica in three words or less, their list would be: Poverty, Music, and Hot. Politics, Drugs and Religion make the next list but they seem to have grown out of a civilization where life…