How to be a Productive and Valued Member of a Writers' Group

How to be a Productive and Valued Member of a Writers' Group

I may not be a bestselling author, but I do know what it takes to be a great member of a writing group. It takes a combination of practice, empathy, and resilience. In fact, it takes much of what it does to be a great writer. Here are some tips. 

1. Read. 
2. So what if you don't like post-modern horror.Read outside your comfort zone. Challenge yourself to learn from and enjoy reading books and stories that you normally would avoid. There are lists of great books of every possible type all over the place. Choose a few. Read them. Just fucking read already. 
3. Did I say anything about reading? Read everything from the back of the cereal box to Tolstoy.
4. But the new James Bond is opening tonight...Show up as often as you can. If you only show up when your own work is being critiqued, you will quickly fall out of favor with the group. 
5. Was that middle, end, beginning? Learn the rules of storytelling. You can do this by reading. Yes reading. Did I mention reading?
6. Orange you glad I didn't say banana? Does the hero always have to reluctant? Do we always have to like the point of view? Once you learn the rules, break them. At least once. (Oh wait, that was a writing tip...Oh well.)

9 Tips for Critiquing Others

1. Why do you keep harping on reading? Have you been reading? Because if you haven’t, you have no business critiquing.
2. Share the love. Be generous. Your critique is important, but your generosity and encouragement as a fellow writer and reader are even more so. Help the other members of your group become better writers by praising what they do well and pointing out what could be better. 
3. Establish trust. This might mean restraining your wildly inventive and brilliant ideas for a session or two while you get to know the group and how they communicate. But there will be time for you to shine as you become a valued member of the group.
4. Nice is as nice does. Nice doesn’t make for good critique. Once you have established trust in the group, you can become more critical. 
5. Lock up your inner snark. Zingers aren’t critique.
6. It's not your story. When you critique, remember the writer may not be writing for you. She may be addressing someone else. It’s your job to make her more successful in her storytelling. It isn’t your job to change the writing into something you would prefer.
7. Know your limitations. If you’ve been reading, then you know what you like and what you don’t like. If a book has been read and loved by many and you can’t stand it, then  that is something worth noting. Why don’t you like it? A little self awareness will help you become better at critiquing work you don’t like.
8. They heard you the first time. When you find yourself (and you will) in the position of trying to convince the other critical readers of your take on the piece under review, stop before it becomes an endless loop. Say your piece, trust that the writer has heard it, and move on. Trust me, that's easier to write than to do. (For me, at least.)
9. Lose the red pen. Critique groups are not editorial groups. There are times when you just cannot avoid picking up the red pen and rearranging words, fixing punctuation, and rewriting sentences. This should never be done for more than a few paragraphs. You are not an editor. You are there to engage with the writing in a meaningful and careful manner that goes beyond fixing poor grammar or a misshapen sentence. This can be extremely difficult. I find the group helps me formalize my critique. So do time and practice.

8 Tips for Getting Critique

1. Mirror mirror on the wall... If what you want from a critique group is an affirmation of your talent, then get an agent and be done with it. Don’t burden the group with your easily bruised ego.
2. How do you keep your armor so shiny? Try to drop your defensive posture. When you have a chance to respond to the critique, use that time to ask questions and get more out of the group. (Hat tip to Eric for pointing this out in his comment.)
3. Know when you need critique and when you need editing. If you don’t want to change your work, then don’t submit it. Give it to an editor.
4. Set expectations for the group. Tell them what you want to learn. Give them guidelines. Every submission you make to the group should be accompanied by 3 questions you want your critical readers to think about. 
5. Don’t wait for something to be perfect. You joined the group for their help. Let them help. Don’t try to impress them with your expertise. 
6. I can't stand up for falling down. Sometimes the best way to succeed is to fail. It’s often easier to make a horrid piece of storytelling great than to improve a mediocre one. 
7. Stand up for yourself. Avoid the critiqued-to-death story. You need to have enough confidence in your story to take the critique that improves your work and leave the other stuff behind. 
8. Remember a project is never finished. It’s abandoned. There is only so close to perfect you can get.

(UPDATE: Thanks to Jackie for advice on the lead ins... and for the best ones.)

Cringeworthy (part 3 of 3)

What is it about writing so powerful that it evokes a physical reaction from the reader?  Beyond cringing, the best and most memorable writing made me exhibit other physical effects that I began classifying in my previous entry and will conclude here:

Plaatsvervangende schaamte

The above mouthful is actually wonderful Dutch term that means literally "place-replacing shame." It's an intense feeling of embarrassment for someone else, usually someone who has no idea how shameful or embarrassing they're behaving. It normally occurrs during 16 and Pregnant, Jersey Shore or any talent show variation of Britain's Got Talent or Voice of Holland, symptoms include: shifting in one's seat, groaning, covering one's eyes, or covering the ears then squeezing the eyes shut and shouting "la-la-la-la-la!" at full volume until the sensation subsides.

The talent shows require lots of work to bring to our screens - including casting calls and pre-auditions before they even get to the screen. And the thing is, what takes a cast of shameless individuals and a television production crew months to achieve, Jonathan Franzen is able to accomplish with a few pages of prose.

In many ways, Franzen is the most subtle entry on my Cringeworthy list: no psychopaths, no drug abuse (well, maybe a little), and no alternate universes - just a well-developed character, who has rock bottom. The most cringeworthy example is found in The Corrections, where the character not only hits rock bottom, but he falls through the floor to continue his ignominious plunge. That character Chip Lambert, the middle child of a fractured Midwestern family. The family is dealing no tonly their own individual troubles, but the rapidly declining health of the family patriarch/bully that brings them altogether for one last Christmas.

While each character in The Corrections has his or her own unique set of troubles, it's Chip's that's the most capricious and outrageous of the bunch. We meet him in New York City, tenuously hanging onto his identity as a "alternative" writer type. It's an identity that firmly rejects his Midwestern past and consequently - his parents. This is not his first attempt at such self actualization. He was already a middling professor of literature at a liberal private college - until he realized he wouldn't get tenure, and decided the best way to deal with it was to take some MDMA and have sex with (and eventually obsess over) one of his students.

Chip escapes to New York City to remake himself, but when we first meet him, this latest iteration of a life is also unravelling: he's flailing over a movie script (which you can sense is even more middling than his not-so-mad skillz as a college docent), his girlfriend is dumping his ass, and the aforementioned ass is flat broke. As if that's not bad enough, his annoying parents are visiting him. He's got to feed and entertain them and never ever let them know that he's not successful. So he goes to Whole Foods filling a basket full of groceries he can't afford. He ends up stuffing a prime piece of salmon down his pants. It's ice cold and he's got to get the fuck out of there, but now he's stuck chatting to the husband of of the woman who can potentially make-or-break his film script. The guy still thinks Chip is cool, so Chip is forced to humor him while the fish starts melting down his crotch...

It was at this point I threw the book down, squeezed my eyes shut and started shouting "la-la-la-la-la!" I can deal with rock bottom, but I can't deal with people who don't realize they're at rock bottom and continue digging - a key theme in the book. Chip Lambert expends so much energy keeping up his various facades, that he has to wait until he's broke, jobless, and jacket-less on a country road in Latvia before he begins reflecting and redeeming himself. It's no surprise that this literary novel has garnered so much recognition. Franzen doesn't need fantastical devices or outlandish settings to make me twist and turn in my seat: "real life" and the real world are clearly outrageous enough.

- Chris

The Speech Squeeze

My most recent peace on Iran commissioned by Article 19:

Learning the language of self-censorship


Poker. Rumi. The US Postal Service motto: Neither snow nor rain nor heat…Serendipity. All have their roots in ancient Persia. No matter how much you think you know about Iran, there’s always more. It’s no surprise, then, that you know so little before boarding a plane to take you to Tehran.

Maybe you’re nervous. Pulling the unfamiliar scarf close around your head. Tucking in loose strands as the plane rattles over the Alborz mountains for its landing. You expect prying eyes, secrecy, and suspicion. What you don’t expect is the friendly welcome from strangers and family, the chaos at the airport, the sheer number of women in black hijab everywhere you look.

The first week you are in Iran is a revelation. Everyone you meet speaks to you. Strangers try out a few words of English, speak to you in simple Persian. They express opinions. Slam the government. Make jokes about clerics. Shout out: We love you miss, in heavily accented English.

There are people and cars everywhere. You see women in sheer headscarves braving the treacherous pavement in high heels and challenging the limits of acceptable hijab. You see daredevil teenagers roller blading in and out of traffic and up and down the cement steps in Tehran’s largest park.

Read more at Article 19.

Cringeworthy (part 2 of 3)

Close up of Marching through Georgia, by S.M. Stirling

What is it about writing so powerful that it evokes a physical reaction from the reader?  Beyond cringing, the best and most memorable writing made me exhibit other physical effects that I began classifying in my previous entry and have continued here:

Insomnia

SF, fantasy, and alt history author S.M. Stirling wrote a trilogy of books in the 1980 and 90s that are now referred to as the Domination saga - a dystopian alternate history where a militaristic, slave-holding "anti-America" in an industrialized Africa conquers Europe, Asia, and finally - the world.

In Stirling's books, the British Cape Colony of Drakia (our South Africa) absorbed far more Loyalist refugees that in our world after the American Revolution, as well countless refugees from the Confederacy during America's Civil War. Culturally embittered by this defeat, the descendants of these settlers begin their systematic conquest, enslavement, and industrialization of Africa.

When the first book, Marching Through Georgia begins, The Colony of Drakia has become "The Domination of the Draka" - a society based on conquest now in pursuit of territory and resources during the "Eurasian War" (their world's version World War II). What ensues in this first book is a graphic account of small-unit combat between elite Draka airborne soldiers (male and female) accompanied by an American journalist, against armored regiment of German Waffen-SS in the Caucasus - with the occasional Soviet partisan thrown in.

Don't let the cover fool you. Yes, this is pulpy military fiction, but what's riveting is the fascinating and horrific world Stirling has created. He has given us the Confederate States of America that could have been: a world of lush plantations and dehumanizing factory towns; a refined ruling class that preserve natural beauty even as their mines dispose of broken workers as they do slurry. Stirling has taken great pains to describe this civilization, economy, social mores, history, and a culture influenced by European immigrants such as Nietzsche (when the Draka still accepted outsiders). Stirling even creates a dialect of English embossed by Confederate descendants.

In the second book, Under the Yoke, the Domination has gained control of Eurasia from the English Channel to the East China Sea. While ostensibly a Le Carre-style story of an OSS man on a mission behind enemy lines, Under the Yoke is really a study of the society the Draka begin establishing in Europe. The picture he paints isn't a pretty one. On a broad level, European institutions, moral leadership, and education are wiped out. On the ground level, the reader must witness the awful repercussions of warfare since ancient times wreaked on the protagonists - destruction, rape, pillage, torture - not as some tragic byproduct of Draka conquest, but as a cornerstone of Draka policy. Their culture is conquest, and they've turned domination into a science. The hapless Europeans (foremost among them a Polish nun, who's forced into servitude as a clerk on a new plantation) stand no chance. The remaining free people on earth realize too late that the rules of warfare, decency or simply mercy do not apply to Stirling's Draka. They are unconquerable Spartans. They are the Roman Empire at its peak, but unlike the Romans, they're not going to fall. Once they master genetic engineering in the third book The Stone Dogs, they become the true Supermen of Nietzsche's dreams.

Seeing the yoke applied so personally, step-by-painful-step in Under the Yoke and the third book The Stone Dogs, was physically exhausting. There is simply no hope, and it's awful watching one protagonist after another fail and perish. I found myself wide awake at night, poking holes in Stirling's assumptions and postulations: how could their weapons development be so much better than America's? How could they have conquered Afghanistan and China when no one else has done so (and successfully held it)? How could they not fall apart from within? How could they be so bereft of mercy or human decency?

Although Stirling does answer some of these within the books (and other authors tackle them in the anthology entitled Drakas!) the author has taken great pains to point out that it is - after all - a dystopia. This is the story where everything does go wrong for the good guys. It says it right there on the cover "You don't know how lucky you are boys." Perhaps that's the source of my insomnia: the darkest dreams alway bear a frightening resemblance to waking reality.

To make it worse, Stone Dogs and the Drakas! anthology (and a fourth throwaway SF book called Drakon) explain how the Draka have also mastered inter-dimensional travel. The authors don't playfully suggest that the Draka might leap out of a wormhole into our world; they warn us that they're already here.

As if I didn't already have enough trouble sleeping.

- Chris


Next entry: plaatsvervangende schaamte thanks to Jonathan Franzen.

Cringeworthy (Part 1 of 3)

American Psycho, by Brett Easton Ellis (UK 1st edition)

What is it about writing so powerful that it evokes a physical reaction from the reader? I don't refer to the cheap thrills of an airport purchase or arousal from a dime store bodice ripper, I mean fiction that pulls you in and doesn't let go. I mean writing that sets up a character, a scene, and a plot that is so convincing,  so effective, that you cringed while reading. Okay, maybe you didn't cringe, but perhaps you had to take a deep breath before continuing, or maybe you put it down and walked away. I've cringed, but amongst the best writing I've exhibited a number of physical effects beyond cringing. I've finally decided to classify my symptoms along with the authors who caused my distress:

Nausea, cold sweat, vertigo

When the blade and the blood first appear in American Psycho, by Bret Easton Ellis, it's only after you've been lulled by the first 100 or so pages of the glamorous-yet-rote life of a yuppie investment banker in 1980s Manhattan. Patrick Bateman seems to have it all: a cushy, high-profile job, a string of girlfriends, and a fine apartment on the Upper West Side. In reality he's miserable, in a cutthroat race with his peers to have the finest business cards, the newest electronic equipment, and the hottest reservations in town. As with any race for consumption, Patrick is destined to lose. He seems to know this, and his anguish, fears, and frustration regularly erupt in fits of predatory violence.

He starts by spontaneously victimizing a homeless man and his dog. From there, the violence - mostly premeditated - escalates in quantity, intensity, and sadism. There's usually a pause in between each orgy of butchery - perhaps a visit to a new restaurant, or a work out session - but then the body count resumes its climb: street walkers, high-end call girls, prep school girlfriends (Bateman conflates all the three), yuppie competitors, an unfortunate jellyfish, and even the occasional cop.

Nothing is left to the imagination here. To paraphrase Scott McCloud, the reader is not a silent accomplice to crimes happening "off-camera," instead the reader is a silent witness, helpless while reading very clinical descriptions of torture and finally murder. While it's possible to make it unscathed through a singular scene, the pointless - and apparently plotless (at least at the outset) - violence is unrelenting, and has a cumulative effect on the stomach and psyche. For me, there was no fighting the urge to put the book down, get some fresh air, talk to other people, and tell myself everything was gonna be all right.

The consume-brag-dismay-kill zoetrope plays over and over, until you realize that it's Bateman's tacit, reluctant acceptance of his life that is the story. Despite his despicable nature, it was difficult for me to completey hate Patrick Bateman. Perhaps it's the alienation he suffers as an anti-God. Perhaps it's the remote chance that he hasn't committed these killings at all - except in his head. That you can somehow sympathize with a creature who lashes out (consequence-free) at a world he's seemingly trapped in is a tribute to Ellis' writing.

I may read it again one day, to determine if he really kills or not. It may be a while, though. Years later, it's still hard for me to look at German brushed steel kitchen appliances or high thread count luxury bed sheets once the mind's eye has seen them with splattered human fat and dripping, atramentous ichor.

Chronic itchiness / sensation of bugs crawling on your skin

Basically, anything written by Irvine Welsh is enough to make you shift in you seat as if you've got crotch rot. Trainspotting is the obvious top contender for its detailed explanations of the ins-and-outs of heroin use. Do you know what kinds of scabs and abscesses can form on the skin when you shoot too long and too often in the same spot on your arm? Or between your toes? Or on your penis? Aficionados of Welsh will demand places on the podium for the necrophilia and bestiality in Acid House, the terrible skin and colonic conditions of the dirty cop in Filth, or the pub porn and rape in Porno.

Heroin. Coke. Ecstasy. Sex. Power. No matter the drug of choice in his novels, novellas, and short stories, Irvine Welsh's true talent lies in his ability to give you a colorful character who's life is a runaway train headed for the buffers. His stories have forced me to laugh and cringe on a number of levels. The gun that goes off at the end of each story is right there in plain sight - one last score that can't go wrong, one last drink, or a chance for revenge - and I itch like mad waiting for the self-destructive protagonist to reach for it. When it finally goes off with its usual disastrous consequences, the character gives a figurative shrug of the shoulders. They may be dead, widowed, dismembered, banished, or incarcerated, but they "didnae gie a fuck" in the first place. "Ye ken?"

In his 2009 anthology, Reheated Cabbage, Welsh dials it back a bit, but he still can't let Trainspotting favorite Francis Begbie get through Christmas lunch without chinning his sister's boyfriend. (I laughed aloud at that one; it was like a high school reunion where the crazy kid shows up and is still reliably crazy.) He does grant reprieve to two other recurring characters in the short story "I am Miami." Oh sure, they're still self-destructive - what with their drink and drug abuse - but the repercussions at the climax of the story (during a rave) are buffeted by a sensible girlfriend and their fearsome grammar school teacher - Albert Black, who's inadvertantly come along for the ride. Perhaps even Irvine Welsh himself has become exhausted by nihilism, and finally made a little room for redemption?

Next entry: Insomnia with S.M. Stirling and plaatsvervangende schaamte thanks to Jonathan Franzen.

- Chris

The Brussels Sprouts of Science Fiction

Don't worry. This isn't a post about Killer Tomatoes or their equivalent. (Not that there's anything wrong with loving B-films. Killer Tomatoes have their place.)

I sometimes like to think of sci-fi books as food, since they are, in essence, food for the brain (or food for thought, if you will). Things like comic books and Star Trek novelettes and quirky/kitchy anthologies organized around a central hokey theme are fun. They are the pop tarts and candy bars of the sci-fi world. My unrefined brain-palate could graze on these all day and never tire (It's true. There have definitely been days I have spent in bed or on park benches just devouring this stuff.)

But my problem is that I have super-smart friends. The kind of friends with discriminating tastes. They only consume the pineapple-glazed seitan cutlets and brussels sprouts of science fiction. They know their Assimov from their Bova, and have memorized passages of Ursula Le Guin just because they liked the way the words fit together to describe a concept. Every now and then we chat Lovecraft (for he's one of the rare writers who is both pop tart and brussels sprout), but by and large I embarass them with my geeky love for sci fi with questionable literary merit.

And when the embarassment gets to be too bad, I am punished with a brussels sprouts assignmnet. I promised a friend I would read any book they thought I really couldn't afford to be without.

My friend chose Robert Heinlein's 1966 novel The Moon is a Harsh Mistress. And I did it. While I can tear through several books of pop tart sci-fi in a day if left to my own devices, this book took me two weeks to complete. It's a hard book. The people of the lunar colony Heinlein writes about have their own Loony language, who use it in unique ways, kind of like how the characters in A Clockwork Orange did. This, plus the super-detailed and slow-moving plot meant that  my brain had to engage with this sci-fi in a whole new way.

But you know what? Like brussels sprouts, it was good for me. The slow pace allowed me the time to digest the complications in plot and character, and to think about the core tenets of sci-fi. By the time I finished the book, I had a new found appreciation for the grandfathers of the genre. They are the ones who created the tropes and set the parameters and showed writers that we could demand more from their works, and readers that we could demand more from the work of others.

Having read Heinlein, I feel that I have a better understanding of how the genre has developed throughout history, and I think this will make me a better sci-fi writer. Just like how modern philosophers have to start off with The Allegory of the Cave, so do modern sci-fi writers have to pay their dues and understand how it began in order to take it into new and uncharted territory.

The Balkans: the Original Ground Zero

In the aftermath of 9/11, sales of the Koran in the United States increased dramatically. While perhaps signifying a positive and peaceful attempt at understanding, it's a laborious path if not a misguided one.  Absent the history, absent the political and cultural context, reading rote excerpts of the Koran likely won't likely tell you too much about Muslims in Indonesia, Albania, and North America anymore than reading Leviticus chapter 20 will deliver the Christian world's homogenous views on homosexuality.

A better approach would be to study part of the world where the two religions lived side-by-side - or at least on top of one another: the Balkans. The Bridge on the Drina, by Ivo Andric takes geo-politics down to the Google street view- to the Mehmed Pasa Sokolovic Bridge over the Drina river - to effectively document the history and emotion of 400 years of religious coexistence and conflict.

Andric takes us through a deceptively leisurely journey through the centuries, from the bridges construction in the 1500s to the onset of the Great War. The deception is that every vignette, every detail is not casual or leisurely, but absolutely deliberate in that it conveys the history, political context, and cultural context that all those new Koran reader sought - along with humanity and emotion and a story.

Andric paints a seemingly incongruous picture of Turkish rule, magnanimity punctuated by absolute brutality viz. the seemingly rote description of the sentence of impalement carried out on the bridge. Despite the despotism and some last-minute Oriental cruelty (nailing someone to the bridge by their ear) as the Austro-Hungarian army approaches, the end of Turkish rule is depicted almost ruefully by the narrator:

"About midday, [the Austrians] fired a few shells from the shelter of a little wood at the deserted caravanserai. They damaged the already ruined han and destroyed those exceptionally fine window grilles, each cut from a single piece of soft stone."

Perhaps change is rued simply because the Balkans are a part of the world where conflict appears to be the only measure of progress, where religion is just another manner of tribal affiliation.

Boiling down so much complexity into the happenings on this bridge, Andric captures a fundamental moment of transition from Eastern to Western rule, including a meeting between the town 'notables' (representatives of the Muslim, Christian, and Jewish communities as well as an academic) and the Austro-Hungarian army colonel (derogatorily referred to as "Schwabes," which is amusing if you speak German). An excerpt from the proceeding chapter as the mechanisms of the new empire are slowly put in place:

"What most astonished the people of the town and filled them with wonder and distrust was not so much their numbers as their immense and incomprehensible plans, their untiring industry and the perseverance with which they proceeded to the realisation of those plans. The newcomers were never at peace; and they allowed no one else to live in peace. It seemed that they were resolved with their impalpable yet ever more noticeable web of laws, regulations and orders to embrace all forms of life, men, beasts and things, and to change and alter everything, both the outward appearance of the town and the customs and habits of men from the cradle to the grave..."

As the Turks (and the Serbs) still living in town attempt to unsuccessfully withdraw themselves from the encroaching bureaucracy that mercilessly governs the length and width of market stalls, what they hunt, and which trees they chop down, the bright shining lines still between East and West, between the rule of tradition and the rule of law, between passion and calculation, and between mysticism and corporate efficiency - is illuminated.

The Bible and Literature - Writing Prompts

I regularly wonder about the possibilities for integrating the Bible and Literature. Specifically, I've often thought that there are a number of Biblical elements just waiting to be used as literary allusions (though, of course it's possible that they already have been used as such, and I just haven't been exposed to them yet). In my mind, some of the Bible's relatively obscure phrases or figures are so poignant and powerful that a modern-day adaptation is just begging to be written!

Just for the fun of it, I thought I would share some of the words and images which I consider to offer excellent potential for powerful story-telling. If any of you students of Literature would want to take any of these "writing prompts" and run with them, I welcome you to do so (even though I realzie that I run the risk of losing out on my own Pulitzer or Nobel prize, by giving away these gems). And if any of you students of the Bible have items to add to my little list, I would love to hear them. Here are some of the ones that stand out to me:

"My father! My father! The chariots and horsemen of Israel!" 

This is a quote from the prophet Elisha, as cited in the story of Elisha's mentor Elijah being carried up to heaven in a firestorm (see 2 Kings chapter 2). To me, this line has a sort of inherrent power to it, much along the line of "Absalom! Absalom!" which William Faulkner used so effectively -- but, like "Absalom! Absalom!," the line also has a great story behind it, which makes the words themselves that much stronger. In the case of Elisah's quote, there are strong themes of perseverance, coming-of-age, grief, and fulfillment that can be drawn from the story around this quote. Seriously: a Nobel Prize for Literature just waiting to be won...

Mephibosheth.

Mephibosheth is a minor figure from the story of King David -- but aside from just having a cool and quirky name, he also represents a beautiful story of love, loyalty, and forgiveness. You can read more of Mephibosheth's story in the 4th and 9th chapters of 2 Samuel -- though you'd also have to look into the stories of David and Jonathan, to get the full effect -- but basically, the idea is that Mephibosheth comes from the line of Saul who is supposedly in stark opposition to the line of David, Saul's royal successor. But instead of having the last, crippled remnant of Saul's line killed, David gives him a place of honor at the royal table out of loyalty to Mephibosheth's father, Jonathan. I think any story about love, loyalty, and forgiveness would be greatly enhanced by including a character named and/or modeled after Mephibosheth...

"This man declared to Ithiel, to Ithiel and to Ucal." 

This is a reference to Proverbs 30:1, and I think it's cool because it's basically just a "coded" reference to exhaustion. From what I understand, this quote is a direct translation of the Hebrew in the original Masoretic text -- but if a slightly different word division of the Hebrew is used, the same text can be translated "I am weary, O God; I am weary, O God, and faint." Maybe it's just me (because this is a pretty obscure reference), but I think this phrase -- and/or the names Ithiel, Ucal, and Agur (the one who is doing the declaring in this quote) -- would be great allusions in any work about exhaustion, weariness, and hopelessness...

"Skin for skin!" 

This is a quote from the mouth of Satan himself, as cited in the second chapter of Job. Believe it or not, there are not actually that many direct quotes from Satan in the Bible -- but this is one of them, and I think it's an interesting take on the classic, "eye for an eye, and tooth for a tooth" dictum. The context of this passage shows that it's about causing someone physical harm for the sake of testing him. On a broader literary level, I believe this phrase could be used as an allusion in any situation involving temptation, testing, or suffering...

Does anyone else know of any other Biblical phrases or figures that are just waiting to be developed into a Biblical allusion? This, of course, is not the primary purpose behind our reading of the Bible -- just to gather up clever quotes and allusions -- but it is a cool peripheral benefit. Also, if anyone ends up using any of these "writing prompts" (or finds them somewhere else within the greater body of Literature), please let me know!

When East met West: Ronin and the emergence of the comic-as-literature

 

If you’re a reader of Neal Stephenson or William Gibson or any of their disciples, you're undoubtedly accustomed to their fusing of Eastern history, philosophy, and martial arts with Western characters in Western settings. If you got in early enough, you were even able to look down your nose at Keanu Reeves’ virtual ninjitsu in The Matrix because you’d already been reading about it, like, a decade ago.  But before Keanu, before Hiro Protagonist, before the heady days of the “street samurai,” East rarely ever met and West in science fiction. This changed in 1983 around the time Frank Miller’s Ronin was published.

1983 was an exciting time to be a young nerd. I was still high as a kite from the conclusion of the Star Wars trilogy, and in the absence of jedi knights, New York movie theaters were chock full of barbarians and ninjas. I’d graduated from Basic Dungeons & Dragons to Advanced D&D, from the “Choose Your Own Adventure” series and Tin Tin books to Edgar Rice Burroughs (Tarzan and John Carter series), Harry Harrison (the Stainless Steel Rat series), and Piers Anthony (anything Xanth), and although still into comic books, I’d deserted costumed super-heroes, looking for something deeper, darker, and more vital.

I didn’t know it, but I wasn’t the only reader bored by the duopoly of DC Comics (publisher of all Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman, and Green Lantern titles) and Marvel (Spider Man, Fantastic Four, Hulk).  Frank Miller summed it up best

“…comics have reached the point where there are so many damn superheroes and so damn much superpower flying around that there’s no room left for anything human, and the only way to make the genre seem interesting is to wildly escalate the powers, the numbers, the quantity of planets that can be demolished per panel.”

Writers recognized that something was missing, and like Mao’s hundred flowers, the comic book shops in 1983 quickly blossomed with new writer/artist-owned titles and characters. These stories featured - among other things - elves, sea- andspace-farers, post-apocalyptic encyclopedia salesmen, and Robert Crumb-inspired weirdness.

It was in these conditions that the seeds were planted for comic books to develop into literature. My eyes were opened and I was enthralled. Three things struck me:

1. The absence of capes and tights (and when they did appear, the “heroes” were  usually homicidal or mentally ill).
2. This was adult stuff, and I don't mean nudity and violence (though there was plenty of that).
3. Unburdened by years of convention, formula, and character continuity, these were fresh, original, complex characters.

Most seeds took a long time to germinate. Not far from my family’s apartment, Art Spiegelman was still busy serializing Maus - a decade away from the Pulitzer it would eventually earn. Across the Atlantic, Alan Moore was serializing V for Vendetta; the Watchmen (listed in Time magazine’s “All-TIME 100 Greatest Novels") was still four years off. So while these best known examples of comics-as-literature still incubated, it was DC comics (in response to the upstart competition) publication of Ronin issue #1 that can rightly claim the comic-as-literature "firstie." They are also to blame for pushing me into full-on Nerd-dom - ensuring I would never kiss a girl until I was 16 (okay 17).

So what was it about Ronin that pushed me into teenage celibacy? Initially, I wasn’t floored; the artwork struck me as clumpy and uneven, but the prologue featured samurais versus ninjas, so I pressed on. Then the demon Agat murdered Lord Ozaki for stealing the blood sword, forcing Ozaki’s student - the Ronin - to flee across feudal Japan with the sword in hand. When the story flung me forward 400 years to a post-apocalyptic New York, I was hooked. My hometown was a nightmare, where Virgo, a sentient, self-propagating computer appeared to be the city’s only hope. Miller effectively creates two worlds, and then crashes them violently together when Agat pursues Ronin across time and space, hunting for the blood sword.



So we’ve got samurais, ninjas, demons, sentient super computers, the high-tech weapons of the Aquarius Corporation (who think they own Virgo), all in an Escape from New York setting. And he’s only getting started. New York is revealed to both reader and Ronin as he hunts Agat and is hunted by Virgo. As entertaining as this was on its own, Miller didn’t let it stay a violent but typical “fish out of water” story. There is something ominous about Virgo's matronly omniscience, like a biotech Nurse Ratched. And what exactly is her interest in the Ronin and Agat?



To find these answers, Miller gives us the Aquarius Complex’s Head of Security, Casey McKenna. Casey is a she, and she is bi-racial. I don’t know why that’s important, except I’d rarely (if ever) encountered either before. Casey is strong, capable, kick-ass, and determined to apprehend the Ronin.

As the story evolves seamlessly from one thread to the next, the cast of characters evolves with it. Ronin can bring all kinds of whup-ass, but he’s also sensitive, just, traditional, and even romantic. Casey McKenna is tough as nails, but is burdened managing complicated relationships with her wimpy (at the outset) husband, her staff, and the Ronin. Miller doesn’t even allow his supporting cast (Casey’s husband, the Aquarius CEO, Ronin’s hippie side kick) to stay static. In short, it was literary. The only cipher in all this is Agat himself, and the reasons for this are the greatest trick of all that Miller plays on his reader.

Are the story elements of Ronin original? Well, no. The cannibalistic humanoid underground dwellers in Ronin are the "mashed potato people" (using the parlance from the novelized version) from Escape from New York. Apart from this, there are elements and tropes lifted from a number of films (the art has a cinematic quality to it) and books (including the Bible) that are immediately recognizable. These same influences also touched William Gibson's work, and that of dozens of other writers.

Because of this, it’s not fair or accurate to say Frank Miller’s Ronin was the nexus of Western and Eastern thought in science fiction on top of its comics-as-literature firstie, but it is among the remains among the best. It functions as a lens through which we can view a time and a place where so many great ideas came together so effectively, creating a little bit of literary and pop cultural history in the process. Q.E.D.:

           

Above are the covers of Ronin issue #1 and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles#1, published two years later. The Turtles were originally a send-up/encomium for Ronin and Miller's work on Daredevil and Wolverine. The rest is merchandising history. Ronin also set the stage for Miller's re-imagination of Batman in The Dark Knight Returns, which has been cribbed heavily for the Christian Bale Batman movies. This bridge between East and West traveled two ways, too; pick up any Battle Angel: Alita manga to read about another sensitive, yet highly dangerous, cybernetic fish out of water, and you'll easily spot imagery from Ronin (not to mention a dozen other Western books and movies).

So read it and judge for yourself if this is really the first comic-as-literature. At the very least, when the movie gets made (all indications are it eventually will), you’ll be able to look down your nose at it, because you’d already read it, like, a decade ago.

- Chris

Gone, But Not Forgotten: Vintage Books For Hipsters And The Rest Of Us

I'm the member of the Zolder Writers who moved from the Netherlands to Nashville. I left behind my fabulous critique group (along with wheels of cheese larger than my head and beautiful coffee shops where everyone can be a stoner with style) for the land of rhinestone cowboys and Ke$ha. A fair trade, but I still long for the old country... and for, in fact, anything old.

While I write all forms of fantasy (magical realism, interplanetary, fairy tale, you name it, I've written it), my first love is history. History shows us where we as a collective species have been, and lets me judge better where we're going. But I'm not talking about historical fiction, which is fun but pain in the you-know-where to write (take it from me - I have a two-part historical fiction novel moldering on my hard drive), but the fiction of history.

Let me confess-- I'm the 20-something girl with huge-framed glasses and a quirky haircut who liked vintage books before they were cool. Well okay, that's a lie. They aren't cool. I don't think they ever will be cool - that's why you can buy 20 of them for a dollar at most used book stores, yard sales, and on Ebay.  Which "them" am I talking about? The genre I would have never learned about in school: the vintage Gothic novel, which is really three genres in one, as each of these is a mystery/suspense with elements of old-school horror, and contains the obligatory romance. I don't mean books like Wuthering Heights (though I have no doubt it is the book that has inspired this genre) or Frankenstein (though that book is awesome. If you haven't read it, it's nothing like it is portrayed/parodied in Scooby Doo, it's a very complex and creepy book that questions the core of humanity. Get in there!). I mean the yellow-paged  soft cover cheap pseudo-mysteries my grannies might have read.

You can immediately identify these books by the bad artwork on the cover. There is always a beautiful young woman in a position of peril, and often a sinister brooding mostly dark-haired Heathcliff-type man somewhere on the cover. Whatever is happening on the cover  usually happens under the moon, or in a dark creepy house at nighttime, or in some deserted and precarious countryside.  The edges of each page are usually painted, sometimes red, green, or even gold. On occasion Reader's Digest has condensed several of these novels into one thick hardback treasure trove. If you find anything written by Victoria Holt (the undisputed Queen of this genre), or Dorothy Eden (my personal favorite), or Madeleine Brent (also very dramatic, though she was  actually the cover for a man named Peter O'Donnell), snap it up without thinking. Seriously. Go to your library's book swap shelf and find them. Go to the used bookstore's 99cent/pence shelf and snatch them. If you read one, you'll want to read all of them.

These books were big sellers in the 1950s, 60s, and 70s, though publishers continued to churn these out well into the 80s. They were written by women who grew up in the oppressive postwar 1940s and 50s, and then tried to reconcile the way they were raised with the wave of upcoming feminism in the 1960s. Their books are a fascinating insight into the mind of women struggling to find their place, and how to relate with men in light of how their own past meshes with women's lib.

Many of these vintage Gothic books are also historical novels, meaning that they were written about an earlier era than the publication date. Reading them now, 40-70 years later, is like reading double the history. There's nothing like seeing how a woman from the 60s with her mores envisioned gender relations in the past. In the case of men like Peter O'Donnell writing under a female pseudonym it becomes even more interesting - how would a man writing as a woman of the 50s and 60s  perceive of gender in the past? 

Beyond gender the themes of colonialism and empire are also strong. Many of these books, like Moonraker's Bride, by Madeline Brent (Peter O'Donnell) deal with Britain's colonial heritage and how it influences gender. In this gripping tale, English narrator Lucy Waring grows up in a Chinese Orphanage on the eve of the Boxer Rebellion. At age 17 she is sent to England for safety, and is plunged into the familiar vintage Gothic romance/mystery setting of a creepy mansion filled with double-crossing distant relations with a sordid past and surprising ties to the events unfolding abroad, fighting over an uncertain fortune. While the young narrator must sort through all the lies to find the truth, she must figure out which of her relatives are the double crossers, and choose between potential suitors. But can she listen to her heart when one of these said suitors wants to plunge a dagger into it? Maybe the people she knew in the Chinese orphanage hold the key to the answers she seeks. (Not Maybe, definitely. They definitely hold the key to the answers - that's how these novels work.)

These books are like serious crack to my soul. I love them more than hipsters love PBR. Most of them stick closely to the formula, and even those written in the author's present-day time period often involve a foreign theme. What's most important, is that the narrator be plunged into an entirely new situation - new country, new relatives,  and a new creepy formerly-bustling manor now desolate and in a state of decay and disrepair. And the details! The details are what make it. For example, in Moonraker's Bride, the mansion is named "Moonrakers" because it was once inhabited by some batshit-crazy relatives who would see the reflection of the full moon in the inky waters of the lake on the estate and one of them drowned using a rake trying to capture it. And this becomes the heritage of the people with whom our Lucy Waring deals. Every single person in that book spoons liberal portions of the insanity- flavored porridge for breakfast, and it's undeniably engrossing.

Most Gothic romance/mystery/suspense/horror stories written in the mid to late 20th century also feature an implied supernatural element. Sometimes it is a ghost which throws visions (sometimes helpful, other times deceptive) into the mix. Sometimes this supernatural manifests itself in the form of a crying baby, or loud footsteps in a fog-shrouded ruin at the edge of the moor. At other times, the supernatural element belongs to the colonized culture of which the heroin is entwined and tries to help her, only she is unable to understand the cultural significance of what this Othered ghost is trying to tell her. Another popular form of the supernatural is when it masquerades in the form of a rogue demonic adventurer, sexy dangerous pirate, or, as in the case of Barbara Michaels' Wings of the Falcon, a Zorro-like masked Italian revolutionary (called "The Falcon," of course)  with a reputation for supernatural abilities. 

And all of these clichés wrapped into one book are incredibly satisfying because the books are so cut and dried. The main character gets terrified, finds her courage, and figures it all out in time to have a satisfying relationship with a broody dark man (bonus points if this man is a sexy sailor like Captain Rex Crediton of Victoria Holt's The Secret Woman, because... yeah). The evil man who  deceptively gained our protagonist's affections in order to find out what she really knows, or worked to scam the inheritance of which she was unaware, or tried to gaslight our protagonist for personal gain, gets the most poetically just death possible without tingeing the protagonist with guilt. (And I mean the most - we have villains being weighed down and drowning due to the weight of  the inheritance they tried to steal from the protagonist, we see baddies being catapulted over the edge of cliffs onto the insanely sharp rocks below during a scuffle with our heroine, and there's plenty of accidental drinking of the poisoned cup meant for our protagonist).  The hysteric best friend/caretaker/creepy old lady in the tower turns out to be either a distant relative to the main character who was faking it and gets to live out her life with her in the big castle, or turns out to have been plotting against the protagonist all along and gets some gristly and well-earned comeuppance. Everything else gets explained away neatly, and by the end you feel that either the supernatural element has come to accept the protagonist as the new rightful ruler of the land, or goes back to whichever hell spawned it with the souls of the evil characters in tow.

This sort of neatly-wrapped ending is totally taboo in today's novels. Nothing is allowed to be neat. We aren't allowed proper happy endings anymore. All endings now have to be unsatisfactory or tinged with bittersweet. No antagonists are allowed to be unremorsefully evil - they always have to be complex. We always get to see what made them evil, and we sympathise because we know we ourselves might have been made evil under those circumstances.  A compelling villain is one whose good motives led them down dark paths, and who therefore still have the potential to be redeemed right up to the very end of the book. In the vintage Gothic novels, however, evil is purely selfish evil, only masquerading as good. And evil gets what it deserves. It's simplistic and wholly satisfying on a whole other level. I could never write something like this, but don't judge me for devouring it until you've tried a few yourself.

The Bible and Literature

My "day job" is church leadership. I'm the pastor of a church called Amsterdam50. As such, I thoroughly enjoyed T. David Gordon's Why Johnny Can't Preach. It was recommended highly by a good friend, and indeed it's a fascinating book about communications and ministry. One of its most significant points is that most ministers today preach ineffectively because they are poor students of written communication: literature and textual criticism in particular. In effect, Gordon argues that one's study of the Bible is considerably enhanced by one's experience with studying the sonnets of Shakespeare or other great works of literature, which must be digested slowly and deliberately (as opposed to the more immediate and more practical forms of electronic communication that are more widely used today). I don't know if I agree with everything that Gordon has to say, but it is certainly some noteworthy food for thought: namely, that a thorough understanding and appreciation of great Literature enhances our study of the Bible.

I happen to agree with this particular assertion, but it also intrigues me because I've recently been considering the fact that to be an effective student (or a producer/writer) of Literature, a significant level of appreciation for the Bible is essential. In short: appreciation of the Bible and appreciation of great Literature go hand in hand.

I remember sitting in a 300-level English literature course at Bowling Green State University, examining at a cross-section of early-American literature in which repeated references were made to some place called "Pisgah." Despite the professor's leading questions -- indicating that these "Pisgah" references were an important key to understanding the overall message of the narrative passages -- the lecture hall sat in silent confusion as to the significance of what that word meant. Eventually, the professor revealed that "Pisgah" was a Biblical allusion, referring to Moses viewing of the Promised Land that he would never be privileged to enter, described in Deuteronomy 3:21-29. And indeed, when I went back to my dorm room and read the Biblical account for myself later, the early-American literature made so much more sense and carried a significantly greater emotional weight.

Ever since that discovery, I've been captivated by the literary power of Biblical allusion.

The Literary Power of Biblical Allusion

Some Biblical allusions have been so widely used that they now border on being clichéed: phrases such as "milk and honey" (referring to an idealistic description of the Israelites' Promised Land, as described in Exodus 3:7-8 and numerous other sections of the Old Testament of the Bible) or "loaves and fishes" (referring to the miracle in which Jesus' provided food for 5000 people from just five loaves of bread and two fishes, recorded in Mark 6:30-44). It's astonishing, really, to realize how many of our casual turns-of-language find their roots in the Bible. Still other examples of these common Biblical allusions include "an eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth," or "turn the other cheek," or "the extra mile" (all three of which can be found in Matthew 5:38-42). These types of phrases are peppered throughout the English language (and, I would wager, also throughout other languages of the Western Hemisphere). However, the power of Biblical allusion runs much deeper than these standard references.

Consider, for example, two of the greatest American novelists of all time, who clearly understood the power of Biblical allusion: John Steinbeck and William Faulkner. John Steinbeck's East of Eden -- which the author considered to be his greatest work -- drew heavily upon the stories of deception, disobedience, hatred, and murder found in the Biblial accounts of Adam and Eve, and Cain and Abel, as found in Genesis 1-4. Likewise, William Faulkner's Absalom, Absalom! -- often cited as the greatest novel ever written about the American South -- drew its title and its inspiration from the story of King David and his rebellious son Absalom, as found in 2 Samuel 15-18. Both of these works of literature are rooted in the great (though perhaps somewhat obscure) stories of the Bible, and they alone make a strong case for the serious student of Literature to also become a serious student of the Bible. But truthfully, Steinbeck and Faulkner are just two small examples of countless other great writers who have drawn heavily upon the narrative history of the Bible to provide their books with multiple layers of meaning. William Shakespeare, Leo Tolstoy, Alexander Solzhenitsyn, C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkein, George Bernard Shaw, Toni Morrison... the list goes on and on and on. Probably half of the writers who have been awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature have included significant elements of Biblical allusion in their most significant and celebrated works!

So indeed, I believe that appreciation of the Bible and appreciation of great Literature go hand in hand.

What's odd, however, is that my natural impression -- from knowing people who are serious students of the Bible and knowing people who are serious students of Literature -- indicates these two realms of study are often viewed as being mutually exclusive. As I've previously noted on my own website, most contemporary Christians tend to look down on fiction as being frivilous, insubstantial, and a waste of time. But it's not just the Christians who miss the boat on this one. Similarly, most contemporary enthousiasts of Literature look down on the Bible as being dogmatic, irrelevant, and boring. If you'll allow me to use yet another Biblical allusion, it's as if the right hand doesn't know what the left hand is doing (see Matthew 6:1-4). So how can these two disciplines be brought into more meaningful interaction?!? I wish I knew! I certainly feel challenged to step up both my study of the Bible and my study of great works of Literature; but until my Christian friends and literary friends take similar steps, I fear that I will always be looking down at the world from the vantagepoint of Pisgah...

Making Ghelye Mahi in Amsterdam

A bit off topic, but I still wanted to share my first article about cooking featuring an actual, if inexact recipe. I look forward to comments.

The piece is up now at Tehran Bureau. It's for one of my favorite dishes, Ghelye Mahi. Please go read it, and if you make the dish let me know how it turns out.

Every time we had people over for dinner, my husband would say to me, "Tori, we didn't make enough food."
"How can that be?" I'd ask. "There are leftovers." It wasn't until we moved to Iran in 2003 for a four-year stay that I understood what he meant. A chicken leg or two is not leftovers. It's ta'rof -- good manners. It's what the guests leave behind so you won't think you served them insufficiently. "Enough food" means that another party can be fed with what is left over at the end of the evening.

The first time we were invited out in Iran, we were served omelets, fish, whole roasted chicken, yogurt and cucumbers, yogurt and spinach, tomato, cucumber, and onion salad, salad with iceberg lettuce and Thousand Island dressing, spring chicken kebabs, and chopped lamb kebabs. All of this was brought to the table just before midnight. Kamran whispered, "Do they think we're cows?"

I tell you this so you won't balk at the amount of food my friend Zohreh Sanaseri (pictured) prepared for our dinner of ghelye (ghalieh) mahi -- a stew of fish, herbs, and tamarind paste. She invited three others to share the stew with us, but made enough for at least ten people.

In four years of living in Iran, I never once encountered ghelye mahi. In fact, it wasn't until a night out at a Persian restaurant in Amsterdam that I ate it for the first time. The flavor was surprising: sharp, sour, sweet, and fishy all at once. It was made with many of the ingredients found in other stews I'd eaten in Iran, but tasted nothing like them. I searched for recipes and tried making it a few times before giving up. None was as good as my first time...

And then I ate ghelye mahi at the home of my friend Zohreh, who hails from the city of Abadan in southwestern Iran. "It was the Paris of Iran," the eldest of her two daughters, who were born in the Netherlands, tells me. "Was," Zohreh emphasizes. "Before the war."

It was the war with Iraq that drove Zohreh and her family out of Iran. She settled in the Netherlands with her husband when she was just 25. "I had never cooked before in my life," she says. "I learned everything here."

"My father tells us she used to burn food all the time and that her cooking was awful," her daughter adds. This seems impossible now because Zohreh's "cooking hand" (dast pocht) is renowned among friends and family. Like many migrants, she learned cooking by calling her mother long-distance and working at her side during extended visits. "For me, ghelye mahi is the most important dish. This is our dish. It is the dish of Abadan and the one food that makes me feel connected to my family and my city."

Read more: http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/tehranbureau/2012/04/cuisine-too-much-is-never-enough-making-ghelye-mahi.html#ixzz1tA6yDWC8

A Return to Story-Telling

I've long been a lover of story-telling.  I think I really got into it when I was in the 7th grade -- about 13 years old -- in Mrs. Ream's English class.  Back then, it was stupid stories about action heroes who battled and belittled a popular boy-band of the era (the New Kids on the Block).  But it was a start.

In college, I majoried in Communications and minored in Creative Writing.  And even when I wasn't studying, I really enjoyed videography as an avenue for story-telling (the Roving Paramedics being the prime example of this phenomenon).  Story-telling just seemed to be in my genetic make-up.

But then I went into full-time Christian ministry.

A Wasted Education in Story-Telling?

In the late 1990s, when this career transition happened for me, I felt like all Christians (and especially Christian workers) were categorically disinclined towards reading (or writing) fiction.  It was seen to be a waste of time.  The books that most Christians seemed to like reading were case studies in apologetics, like Lee Strobel's "Case for Christ" or "Case for Faith"... Or they were books about self-discovery, like Rick Warren's "Purpose-Driven Life" or John Eldridge's "Wild at Heart."  To a smaller degree, some Christians were into sociological- or anthropological studies, like Leonard Sweet's "Soul Tsunami" or Robert E. Webber's "Younger Evangelicals"... Or of course, there were (and have always been) books about the best theories for starting or growing churches (I could probably name off a couple dozen books in this category).  I read all these different kinds of books -- and I genuinely benefitted from what they had to share -- but I always felt kind of guilty because I didn't seem to naturally soak up that kind of reading as much as my colleagues and contemporaries did.  I read those types of books as a type of "continuing education," but I enjoyed them about as much as I enjoyed my academic textbooks from my university years.

If it was up to me, I much preferred the latest novel by Douglas Coupland or a nice collection of short stories by various authors.  These felt more entertaining to me -- but also more inspiring, and I might even say more instructive.  But as someone working in full-time Christian ministry, I always felt kind of sheepish about these preferences.  And over time, I even came to feel embarrassed that I had "only" studied Communications and Creative Writing.  Like these had nothing to do with Christian ministry, and I could have just as easily trained to become a zoo-keeper.


Reclaiming the Power of Story

For whatever reason, I've been noticing a cultural trend within Christendom over the last couple of years:  a sort of return to story-telling.  Actually, I think it's happening in the culture at large, too.  Have you noticed it?  Have you picked up on any kind of a return to story-telling?

For whatever reason, a number of different external sources have stimulated my awareness of this phenomenon. One of these was Douglas Coupland's book: Generation A, which "champions the act of reading and storytelling as one of the few defenses we still have against the constant bombardment of the senses in a digital world." I might add that the book does this in a really interesting and provocative way.  Around the same time that I was finishing with Coupland's novel, I read something that Amber van Schooneveld posted about story-telling, literary critique, and "children's books." She makes a brilliant case for story-telling that jives very much with what I've been noticing and what was brought up in Coupland's book. And then, just an hour after reading the piece from Amber van Schooneveld, I stumbled across a beautiful description of the story-telling powers of the Bible, written by Gerard Kelly.  And through all of these stories about stories, my enthusiasm has continued to build and build.

I still don't know exactly what to do with these observations or these enthusiastic feelings.  Of course, I can keep delighting in the story of the Bible.  I can use my church's pulpit as a forum for biblical story-telling (while not neglecting other important parts of preaching, of course).  And I can keep tinkering around with my own stories here on the internet (and hopefully soon in more widely-published places).

For now, though, more than anything I'm just thinking, wondering, and feeling... almost like I'm back in Mrs. Ream's 7th grade English class.

Did It Really?

A journalist friend swore she couldn’t write fiction: she couldn’t write a story that wasn’t true. A novelist confessed he was a liar: he couldn’t write anything true.

Most writing falls someplace in between. In the nebulous zone between actual events, people, locations, emotional experience--and imagination.

I just finished reading “The Chimney Sweeper’s Boy” by Barbara Vine, which deals with the parallels between the life of a writer and his writing. In this novel, Gerald Candless, a bestselling author, dies unexpectedly. His publisher asks the daughter to write her father’s memoir. She makes an enthusiastic start, but soon discovers Gerald Candless doesn’t exist prior to the age of twenty-five when he changed both his name and identity. Through research and interviews the daughter finds out part of the truth. She discovers the facts but not the motives. The why and the emotional anguish can only be revealed in the novels he wrote.

Upon reading a published novel written by a friend, I was surprised to find some of the things I had said to the author repeated verbatim in the dialogue. While the character who spoke them resembled me in some small ways, she was definitely not me as a whole. She was a creation sprung from the nebulous zone.

We all draw on our own lives and those that touch ours when we create stories. Who in the critique group reading someone’s piece hasn’t wondered… Did that really happen? Is that him? His girl friend? Me?

Pierre Menard Covers The Quixote as Nick Cave Gets it On with Leonard Cohen

Writers steal. We steal ideas, dreams, and thoughts. We record the misremembered and misheard and misunderstood. That’s how we cover. Yet, plagiarism is the greatest sin a writer can commit. It will damn you to whatever ring of hell is reserved for betrayers, traitors, and liars. Despicable.

But isn’t there anything to learn from “covering” great writers? Can’t we be a bit like musicians every once in awhile and cover another’s work rather than steal it? I can’t write this without thinking of the Jorge Luis Borges piece:
Pierre Menard Author of the Quixote. I’ll let an excerpt speak for itself:


It is a revelation to compare Menard’s Don Quixote with Cervantes’. The latter, for example, wrote (part one, chapter nine):
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor. Written in the seventeenth century, written by the “lay genius” Cervantes, this enumeration is a mere rhetorical praise of history. Menard, on the other hand, writes:
. . . truth, whose mother is history, rival of time, depository of deeds, witness of the past, exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor.
 
History, the mother of truth: the idea is astounding. Menard, a contemporary of William James, does not define history as an inquiry into reality but as its origin. Historical truth, for him, is not what has happened; it is what we judge to have happened. The final phrases—exemplar and adviser to the present, and the future’s counselor —are brazenly pragmatic. 

The contrast in style is also vivid. The archaic style of Menard—quite foreign, after all—suffers from a certain affectation. Not so that of his forerunner, who handles with ease the current Spanish of his time.

In the spirit of covers, I offer you this post, which is a cover of one I wrote for the Mezrab Blog earlier in the week. It offers a number of covers by artists who have so re-imagined the originals that they are transformed and surprising. For starters, I offer you Hit ‘Em Up Style from the Carolina Chocolate Drops. Their version of the song made popular by Blu Cantrell is picked clean, sharper than the original, and infused with righteous anger:



When Leonard Cohen sings I’m Your Man, I think, “Someone to cuddle up with and depend on when I need him… What could be nicer?” When Nick Cave sings it though -- well, that’s something else. It’s erotic and explicit, sweaty and visceral. It makes my heart palpitate and my mouth water. I love you, Leonard Cohen, but it’s Nick Cave I want.




Like many people who were young in the 80s, I am a huge Clash fan. I saw them live in the Aragon ballroom in Chicago sometime or another before they stopped touring. There were no seats, and we danced with a kind of rage and energy that can only be experienced in a hall full of people keyed into the vibe, angry at the world, and filled with a drive to change reality. When I listen to them now, their songs sound surprisingly mild and melodic. They’re like lullabies. Nouvelle Vague has done some breathtaking covers of the Clash (Guns of Brixton comes to mind ) and Lily Allen’s version of Straight to Hell deserves a good listen, but in the spirit of the times, I want to highlight Rachid Taha’s version of Rock the Casbah. It just seems like great timing for a rebirth of this song, and Rachid Taha really brings it home.



My final recommendation for today is Ramblin’ Man from the Residents. It wasn’t until I listened to the Residents perform the Hank Williams classic that I understood just how dark the original really was. It can be found here: . Listen to both… isn’t it clear the ramblin man just killed some woman who may or may not have been his girlfriend and buried her in the woods? Tell me you don’t hear it too.



I leave all you readers with one final question: is it possible for writers to cover the works of other writers the way musicians do? I sure hope so.

Guidelines for the Zolder Writing Group

For the past few years, I've had the privilege of helping to facilitate a fabulous “fiction critique group” with a literary organization here in Amsterdam called WordsInHere. We've learned a lot from each other along the way, and we continue to grow and develop both as persons and as writers. At one point in the early stages of our group's development, we had to deal with some ethical issues within the group -- and as we worked through things, we realized that we didn't have anything in the way of official guidelines to help us work through the process.  We even tried doing some research on-line, to see how other similar writing groups might handle sticky situations like what we were experiencing...

In the end, though, we decided to write our own guidelines.  And since there seems to be such a relative paucity of information on the internet about guidelines for a writing group, it seems like it might be useful to increase the "public knowledge" by posting what we came up with, for whatever it's worth (special credit goes to Chris, by the way, for his work in putting our group conversations down in written form, way back in the day). So anyway, here are the guidelines that we've developed:

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The Zolder Writers Group - Who we are

We are a group of serious writers - some of us published, some of us not published yet. The Zolder Writers' Group provides us with:

1. A valuable forum for literary critique,
2. Encouragement to reach new heights with our work, and
3. A real "writer's community".

The Writer's Group serves many purposes, but the primary purpose is to be a critique circle: reading each other's literary work as writers and providing feedback about story, character and craft (as requested by the submitting writer). We are of diverse backgrounds - both culturally and literately - and receive inspiration for our work from outside the group, but we can inspire and motivate each other by providing helpful critique to our fellow writers.

How we treat each other's work

The primary requirement of a well-functioning writer's group is trust. In order for writers to feel safe circulating their intellectual property in the group, readers commit to returning all hard copies to the submitter and deleting any soft copies following critique. Plagiarism (the use or close imitation of the language and ideas of another author and representation of them as one's own original work) will not be tolerated. Anyone who is "inspired" by another writer's work in the Group should confer with that writer before undertaking an endeavor that could possibly be construed as plagiaristic. When in doubt: ask.

How we treat each other

We are not only writers, but human beings. All communication (oral and written) amongst group members should be respectful. During critique sessions, criticism will be focused on the work, and not the individual. All writers in the critique circle must be given the opportunity to share their thoughts and criticism on the submitted work; as a diverse group of writers, critique might be focused on divergent aspects of the work, so it's important that the submitting writer has the opportunity to ingest and respond to all critique of their work.

Of Haggadahs, Passover, and the Sexist Roots of Judaism

For decades the home of my parents has been Passover central, with a staggering number of holiday meals served (at least 1500 - nothing for McDonalds, but a lot for one Jewish family with an averaged sized living room in a suburban home), traditional songs sung loudly and off key, and haggadahs read. The Haggadah is the book of Passover. In our home, it's wine-stained, torn, and stuffed with copied pages of new readings to share with family, friends, and strangers. As part of our seder, a word that means "order," we have shared, created, and edited a story of liberation, slavery, longing, and justice. It is an active tradition.

Not My Father's Seder

The seder I grew up with was boisterous. It was my father's gift to us, his five children, one unlike those he grew up with, which went on for hours in a language he neither spoke nor understood. "That was a seder for men," my father always tells us. My mother grew up in a retail family, which meant most Passovers were spent working selling Easter finery to farmers.

My father was determined that our seder welcome and include children. As the years passed, our celebration also welcomed and included women. We altered the texts and sometimes even referred to God as she. New texts and traditions were added regularly. My brother introduced a fifth cup of wine to the four tradition demanded to remind us of those killed during the Holocaust. My cousin added a cup filled with water to remind us of the well discovered by Miriam during the forty-year wandering in the desert. My friend added the orange to the seder plate as a rebuke to a man who had said, "A woman belongs on the bima as much as an orange belongs on a seder plate." (A bit or research informs me that the orange was originally added in support of gays and lesbians. This new bit of information, no doubt, will be incorporated into our seder next year.) We replaced the "sons" with children. We added our mothers to our fathers. We heard the voices of women in the never ending story of freedom from slavery.



The New American Haggadah

When I heard Nathan Englander speak about the work of writing a new Haggadah in an interview with Terry Gross, I was thrilled. A great writer, a secularist, with deep roots in Jewish tradition, and a knowledge of Hebrew had reimagined the Haggadah! I knew it would be something I wanted, something that would enhance my celebration of Passover.

I ordered it, and it arrived in time for the first seder.

I opened it randomly and read this first:

"Here I am, prepared and ardent, allied and present, ready to perform the mitzvah of the first cup, the enactment of salvation's promise."

Prepared and ardent, allied and present. What thrilling language! Give me more. The writing throughout is immediate, clear, and gripping. The Haggadah is filled with intriguing bits of commentary and little details that are interesting. In the end it is a failure. Women and girls are relegated to the margins where we get a mention or two on the timeline, but the traditions we have added to the seder over the years are nowhere to be found.

The New American Haggadah reflects very little of the tradition of my family or of others who have used the ubiquitous and imperfect Maxwell House Haggadah as the inspiration for self-made traditions and new readings. As reformed Jews, we have as much of a right to our heritage and ritual as the orthodox and the lapsed orthodox. And our heritage is one that has struggled (as Jacob struggled with God) to include the voices of women and the marginilized. This is
especially true on Passover, when families become the centers for religious interpretation rather than rabbis and congregations, and when the story is one of overcoming oppression and injustice.

A Boy's Guide to Passover

The New American Haggadah is written by two men who obviously did not share the tradtion of change and inclusion I gew up with. It has erased decades of American Jewish learning by reverting to the old order of a story passed on from fathers to sons. Given the opportunity to include the voices of women, the retelling gives us more male voices and more male voices: it's awash in testosterone.

Reading the Haggadah reminded me of the sexist core of Judaism, not the beauty of tradition and ritual. Like all Haggadahs that have come before it, the best parts will be copied and inserted into the worn out Maxwell House Haggadah we've been using since before I was born. It will not replace the self-made books in my home or the homes of many I know who celebrate Passover as a living tradition that over the years has come to include the stories of women and girls, mothers and daughters, as much as those of fathers and sons and rabbis and disciples.

The New American Haggadah squandered an amazing opportunity to reflect the new traditions of many American Jews by diminishing our contributions and ritual and reverting to the sexist core of the religion. It would be better titled A Boy's Guide to Passover.