A friend and I have a running disagreement. We both adore reading but we disagree on taste. To him, the act of reading is everything, what is read is immaterial. I disagree. Yes, reading is better than illiteracy, but not all written works are equal. Quality is one reason why some works disappear why others are revered and reread for centuries. This isn’t due to an edict of teachers or a ruling from the some vicious, artsy elite. It’s because some stories are so well formed they become enduring works of art, works that instruct as well as entertain. They are the classics and there are good reasons to they should be read. Classics are the building blocks of literature. Willa Cather once wrote, “There are only two or three human stories and they go on repeating themselves as fiercely as if they’d never happened before.” If that’s true, those stories have also become the backbone of world literature but some versions are told so well, they become the standards other writers follow. For example, once The Odyssey and The Epic of Gilgamesh jointly created the perfect template for road stories, authors have been stealing from and writing variations on these…
Why do people continue to listen to and create new myths? What purpose do these stories serve? The ancient civilization made myths to explain the universe none of them could understand. That’s not to say they were stupid. These early civilizations laid the roots of our modern day culture and established the primary principals in law, math, science and medicine. We stand on the shoulders of their work. But advances in learning and technology have answered many of the ancient questions originally dealt with by myths. Thunder isn’t controlled some guy named Zeus or Indra or Thor. It’s the result of lightening heated air, impacting colder air. With that discovery we relegated tales of the Thunder Gods to English, Archaeology and Anthropology Majors. Nevertheless, we’ve continued to spin other stories with newer heroes, god and terrible villains. Want to debate me on this? Get set. First it seems like every emerging culture seems to have its own set of stories, right? The Greeks, the Romans, the Norse and lots of other cultures developed complex, interesting mythologies with gods that took an interest in the world of humans. Myths are the creations of a culture and the one I grew up…
Certain literary academic types like to search for the roots of stories. Get a bunch of them together and pretty soon you’ll start hearing terms like “origin myth” and “archetype” being bandied about. (Well, that’s what you hear when you serve them tea and coffee. Serve booze and you may get something entirely different) That’s because these thinkers spend a lot of their lives trying to understand humanity and culture through its literature and art. Stories and characters are created to answer needs in the human psyche and some needs are so deeply rooted we don’t completely understand how or why they exist. But because they exist, each generation makes up its own stories that revive or reinvent these characters and their adventures. The stories gain or lose shades of complexity that correspond to aspects of the era it was hatched in but certain characters (or archetypes) reappear from one generation to the next and in stories from very different cultures. Look anywhere in the pages World Literature and you’ll find the Wise Old Mentor or the terrifying Shade. You’ll also find my personal favorite there: the Trickster, the wildest, most entertaining Hero in the pack. Separating the Heroes…
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…