Some books are a hit for a day; some dominate the bestseller lists for a season. One or two books can be considered touchstones for the decade but very few make it to true classic status. But there is a work of fiction that seems like it never leaves the public consciousness. In 150 years it has never been out of print, but it’s been adapted into almost two dozen films, five comic books, countless plays and electronic media and it’s probably the most quoted work of fiction in literature. People either love it or hate it but everyone who reads knows there’s something special about Alice and her Adventures In Wonderland. They linger in the mind. The joke of it is, this book has been loved and read for so long that a lot of the material Lewis Carroll referred to in this classic (and its sequel, Through The Looking Glass,) is no longer available to the regular reader. We follow the serious-minded Alice through her nonsensical adventures and admire the imagination and poetry in the story so much we accept it without thoroughly understanding it. So, I suggest you take the journey one more time and re-read Lewis…
The Winter creates strong readers. While Spring and Summer weather go well with “light” stories that demand little focus, winter blizzards are perfect for stories that hold the reader’s attention. When the drifts are piling up outside and the thermometer plummets, I want a story with structure and design, one that commands my attention through the long, dark days. For the like-minded readers who have already read their way through Dickens and committed Austen to memory, I would like to make a suggestion. Stuff a copy of The Forsyte Saga into your pack of cold-weather emergency supplies. You’ll have a something good to read until June. The Forstyes are an English clan who define themselves through their upper-middle class status and an uncomfortable status that is. They’ve accumulated enough money to be preoccupied by it to but they lack the antecedents and Savior Faire needed for social success so every move of the first generation is ruled by two questions: 1) Will I profit (monetarily) from this action and 2) will this comport with propriety? If either answer is “No”, some Forsyte will veto the idea. When Jolyon Forsyte and his children start basing their decisions on happiness instead of…
Letters used to be gifts, rare and wonderful things. They came, hand-addressed, through the mail and you were supposed to answer them promptly. (I know because I rarely did.) A good letter might remind you of the writer through the distinctive handwriting or the stationary he/she chose but the the act of writing letter was most important: it meant the reader was meant so much to the writer that he/she was invited into a direct channel of the writer’s thoughts and feelings. From personal letters, we went to electronic mail which was quicker and easier as long as you knew how to type and you could, if necessary, address it to many people at once. After than came social media sites with ever-shortening messages to wider and wider groups of people and now we communicate by emojis, sharing news and opinions so quickly, we’re back to communicating through pictures. That’s progress and I’m thrilled because I’ve managed to reconnect with friends I’ve owed letters to for decades but there’s something missing in our e-correspondence that was present in in the old-fashioned letters. My mother, aunts and grandmothers could mark the stages of their lives with their correspondence. That’s what Lee…
Some say T. S. Eliot came up with the quote, “Good writers borrow; great ones steal.” Others say the line came from Oscar Wilde. Either way, every fiction writer knows that their finished work is based in part on the experiences and stories of others that they’ve heard about and read and the best way to avoid a copyright or invasion of privacy suit is to take the base material and then change it until it becomes something you can use for your story. Do a good job and you’ll win the lawsuit, (although you may not be forgiven). Do a great job and academic types will study your work and reverse engineer it to detect the roots of the story you wrote. That’s what James Shapiro has done in The Year of Lear: Shakespeare in 1606. Whether you like history or theatre, this fascinating book puts a great man’s work back in the context of his time. Shapiro points out the author and the play are not the the creations we assume we know. Younger Shakespeare is remembered for writing the comedies and historical plays that entertained Queen Elizabeth I but the times and the man have changed. The…
If you go to any college orientation, it’s easy to pick out the theatre major wannabes. While the business majors are making contacts and the proto-engineers are using their smartphones to game and/or calculate maximum spillage in their latest prank, the theatre majors are busy being theatrical. Other students wear clothes; the theatricals show up in layers. Layers and layers of rehearsal outfits which can be removed or rearranged as needed, along with an overly large carrier of some kind that also looks like a refugee from the consignment store. Once inside, it’s hard to get theatre majors out the door again. They aren’t friendly during interviews, they are effusive (or moribund, if they’re channeling a Method Actor). An English Major is ten minutes late for class; the Theatre Major appears just before he/she is declared dead. It’s the nature of the beast. And, concealed into the folds of rehearsal layers or tucked into the overlarge carrier are the proto-drama major’s tools of the trade: their Starbucks card, a few B&W headshots, a book on acting by Stella Adler (read), another by O’Neill on masks (not read) and Moss Hart’s autobiography, Act One. When you see one of these young and…