My mother tried to raise kids who didn’t know fear. I think she must have experienced some very bad moments in her own childhood because she understood the nature of childhood terrors and did her best to keep me and my sister from everything scary. Our TV shows were monitored, our movie choices screened and Mom made sure that the books we read could never frighten or intimidate us. All of this careful planning had a funny result: we grew up scared of a lot of things and although my sis recovered fairly quickly, (she’s far braver than I am) it takes me some extra work to get past the terror on the screen and in fiction. I work at this because I don’t want to miss something good, just because it is disturbing but sometimes I have to ask (as my Mom must have before every Halloween and roller-coaster), “Why do we like to be scared?” The wish to be frightened is part of Halloween tradition but this goes back a lot further than a “Haunted-House-for-Charity” (think about this: these days, we get startled out of our wits in order to give money to a worthy cause. Must we…
There’s nothing like cleaning up a seldom-used room for turning up forgotten photographs. A small pile of candid shots were dislodged as I was re-shelving some books and drifted toward the rug. My husband picked up this one and handed it back to me with a smile saying, “Is there a reason I never see you read while you’re sitting in a chair? No, there probably isn’t except that after thirty years of marriage, he should know that reading isn’t a chair-limited activity to me. In fact, some of my best reading is in unlikely places. I am grateful no photos exist of me reading in the tub but that’s not from lack of opportunity. Tub-reading has always seemed like the height of luxury to me, since it combines words with relaxing in water. Of course it requires skill to keep the water-soluble print from the H2O (especially if shampoo is involved) but this is one I hone with regular practice. Outside of this, the only difficulty with tub-reading depends on the hot water supply. In a good scene, there is never enough. I have been known to read in the car although never as a driver while the vehicle was in motion. (That’s my story, Officer, and I’m…
Every art form has rules. Some forms, like the Elizabethan sonnet, specify the number and emphasis of beats in a line and lines in a verse. Other forms operate under dicta that (to borrow from the Pirates of the Caribbean script) function more like guidelines. I’m not sure how formalized the rules are in Revenge Stories but I can tell you one thing about Andrew Hilbert’s Death Thing. It has the elements of this genre down pat. A Recognizable Protagonist – Gilbert is one of life’s constant complainers, a fellow the rest of us have met and now try to avoid. He’s the self-satisfied old guy spouting opinions on every subject, and insults with every remark. If he’s your relative, you duck him at family gatherings and wonder on the way home why and how his wife stays in their marriage. Like many retirees, Gilbert has too much time on his hands and booze in his gut but the man does have a legitimate problem: vandals have been breaking into his car. Rather than keep his auto in the garage or take his valuables inside when he leaves, Gilbert opts to turn his car into a machine that will “teach”…
It’s no secret that I’m addicted to reading. I started staring at printed pages before I learned to walk and I was pulling the meaning from them before I could tie my shoes so reading was never hard. Want to hear a secret? Reading the Classics, those old, required plays and poems was hard for me, at first. My eyes, trained for the fast-paced, economic sentences of the twentieth century, stopped dead at Elizabethan verse and Middle English. Now, professors tend to look down on would-be English Majors who can’t discuss Shakespeare and Chaucer, so I had to resolve the issue. You could say I got a lot of help. I’d prefer to think of it as cheating. The Canterbury Tales Take enough English classes and eventually you’ll bump up against Chaucer’s famous tales. The premise is simple. A bunch of religious travelers meet at a pub and amuse each other through the evening by telling stories. The problem is, they’re speaking in Middle English, which has, at best, a nodding acquaintance with our type of palaver. As an example, I’ll give you the start of my favorite, The Miller’s Tale: Whilom ther was dwellynge at oxenford A riche gnof,…
It’s Banned Books Week again, that week cherished by bibliophiles and lovers of intellectual freedom, a time when the stupidity and bigotry of would-be censors is exposed to the light of day. Granted, a small part enjoying of BBW comes from a feeling of coalition; it’s nice to meet others who prize big ideas over small minds but the core of the celebration are the books themselves. Banned Books are some of the best stories in the world. When I first heard Americans were banning books, I was a teenager and my personal library was kept on one shelf. At the time, I was amazed that anyone in the USA endorsed censorship, especially after after WWII (why copy any policy approved of by Hitler?) The real surprise came when I read which books folks had wanted to ban: Alice In Wonderland? To Kill A Mockingbird? The Effect of Gamma Rays on Man-In-The-Moon Marigolds? Were they kidding? Almost every book on my shelf (and all of my favorites) had been a target for censorship at some point. I also noticed titles that were not on the list. One of families that I baby-sat for kept a collection of paperbacks in the living…