Our culture celebrates accomplished people, especially accomplished creative artists. This means many celebrities have more of a “fish-bowl” kind of existence than a personal life and they often require a small army of helpers to meet all of their personal and professional obligations. These Assistants can start out as an artist’s devoted fans or followers but their work and the trust of their employer gives them a view behind the curtain others don’t get to see: they know the artist on and off stage, see the creative person as well as his/her public persona. Whether that is an advantage or disadvantage is explored in Lynn Cullen’s novel, Twain’s End. The book is a fictionalization of a real drama that occurred during the last year of Samuel Clemens’s (aka Mark Twain’s) life. Over the previous decade, the person who managed his correspondence and everyday responsibilities was a woman named Isabel Lyon. The writer relied on his secretary so much that Clemens had given her a house close his own and a bedroom in his estate, Stormfield. When Miss Lyon married the writer’s business manager in 1909, Mr. Clemens attended their wedding but before the newlyweds returned from their honeymoon, Clemens had…
Fall is unequivocally here, on the calendar and in the air. Daytime highs are comfortably lower, nights are longer and the primary religion here has changed to college football. The leaves are just beginning to turn and fall but there are some early spots of color. Everything is changing along with the books we’re choosing – there’s nothing quite like autumn reading. Perhaps it comes from the years we all spent in school, but autumn is the season when we reach for meaningful books, for stories that bring something with them besides primary characters and plot. History, both fictional and non-fiction, become more relevant in this season since autumn reminds us that time is passing. A new generation is starting school, while another has reached maturity and still another is passing on. After a summer of living in the moment, fall is a good time to reflect on life and to find your place in the scheme of things. That doesn’t mean autumn tales are lacking in story. The greatest holiday for stories, Halloween, is in the middle of fall and reams of words surround it. Everything about Halloween stirs the imagination from elaborate costumes (Come As You’re Not Parties)……
Teachers tell us we have to study the classics in order to understand literary forms. For tragedy, we look at the works of Shakespeare and the Greeks; for comedy, we read Wilde and Shaw. Fantasy readers get acquainted with Tolkein and SF fans get a background of Verne, Asimov, Heinlein and Clarke before moving on to the contemporary writers. All of this sounds like a waste of time to the student who equates “classic” with “boring” and confuses “subversive literature” with subversive political groups. The truth is that stories earn the “classic” distinction when they are so brilliant and memorable that they are enjoyed and understood by generations of people, and the purpose of subversive fiction is to persuade readers to rethink their assumptions. Combine those two concepts and you’ll find Agatha Christie’s Murder on the Orient Express. No “who-dun-it” has more twists in the tale. A bit of background for this classic “closed door” mystery, for anyone who needs it. The brilliant Belgian detective, Hercule Poirot is traveling from Istanbul to London on the fabulous Orient Express, a luxury passenger train service. On the morning after the train is stalled by a snow drift, the passenger berthed next…
People who read often get overwhelmed when they start to think about writing. A complete book is the result of such a long, massive effort that most would-be writers get discouraged and quit long before they do a lot of sustained writing. I understand that. I never knew how or why successful authors developed the story-telling tempo that could pull me so completely into a book until one of my English professors gave me the low-down on pitch points and pinch points. These are the spots in the plot that pull a story along and by using these as plot structure (not unlike poles in a circus tent) a writer can drape the line of whatever narrative he or she is writing and get the story-flow right. Let me explain what they are. Pitch points are the points in the story where circumstances cause the main character to change his or her usual pattern of responses which alters his or her ultimate destiny. Pitch points come (roughly) at the quarter point, half-way mark and three-quarter point of the story. Pinch points are when the protagonist (or the audience) gets reminded about how difficult it will be for the hero to…
Summer is complete again, for all intents and purposes, and school is back in session. People return to class schedules and assignments, semester projects and extracurricular activities and since school is such an important part of our lives, it’s not surprising that it serves as the setting for many books. However,no story captured the American teacher’s perspective of that universe quite like Up the Down Staircase. This “education of an educator” is more than fifty years old but in terms of what a teacher faces, it’s right on the mark. Most employees have one impossible party to please (retail clerks must please the customers; professional people must please their clients; government pleases itself.) but first-year teacher, Sylvia Barrett, is at the mercy of everyone: there’s the MIA Principal who pontificates via memo but wields the power to end her career; the petty tyrant in administration who dispense policies by the metric ton, supplies with an eye-dropper and no mercy whatsoever; the janitor who responds to every request for maintenance with the reply “nobody’s down here” and the students, all-knowing, all needy and mostly adverse to the concept of education. Sylvia’s opportunities to teach must be sandwiched between episodes of classroom umpiring…