Missing A's Prepared by: Alice Folkart Posted on: Sunday, October 31, 2010
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Exercise: Write a scene of 400 words or less in which you useno adjectives or adverbs.
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Can you describe a landscape, a person, an interior, a storm, a day in summer, an emotion without using any adjectives? Can you write life in action without adverbs?
Imagine "It was a dark and stormy night" without the adjectives "dark" and "stormy." Maybe, for example: ''That night clouds veiled the moon and we couldn't see the mountain." No adjectives. No adverbs.
Does it take more words, more writing, to transmit visual and emotional images to the reader without adjectives and adverbs?
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Exercise: Write a scene of 400 words or less in which you use no adjectives or adverbs.
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In your critique tell the author whether or not the work fits the exercise and why--let the author know what worked or didn't, and why.
As you read the piece, did you hunger for adjectives and adverbs in the scene, or did you forget about them? We might consider adjectives and adverbs as both friends and foes of the writer and reader. How might they enhance or mar one's writing?
These exercises were written by IWW members and administrators to provide structured practice opportunities for its members. You are welcome to use them for practice as well. Please mention that you found them at the Internet Writing Workshop.
Happy Halloween I'd like to wish all of you who celebrate it a happy and safe Halloween. As part of the celebration, I recommend reading the classic horror stories of Edgar Allan Poe, H.P. Lovecraft, Bram Stoker, Mary Shelley, Washington Irving, and Guy de Maupassant!
This Day In Writing History On October 29th, 1740, the famous Scottish writer James Boswell was born in Edinburgh, Scotland. His father, Alexander Boswell, was a judge and the 8th Laird of Auchinleck. His mother, Euphemia, was a strict Calvinist.
As a child, James Boswell was delicate and sickly. He suffered from an inherent nervous ailment. At the age of five, Boswell was sent to the James Mundell Academy, which was an advanced school for its time; students were taught English, Latin, writing, and mathematics. Boswell was unhappy living at the school, and his nervous ailment manifested itself in forms such as extreme shyness and night terrors.
Finally, three years later, at the age of eight, Boswell was removed from the Academy and taught by private tutors who awakened in him a love of literature and an interest in religion. When he was thirteen, Boswell enrolled in the arts program at the University of Edinburgh. He studied there for five years, then suffered a bout of severe depression and nervous illness. When he recovered, he had lost his childhood delicacy and found good, robust health.
Boswell continued his studies at the University of Glasgow, where he was taught by Adam Smith, who would become famous for his treatise on economics, The Wealth Of Nations (1776). While at Glasgow, Boswell decided to convert to Catholicism and become a monk, which prompted his irate father to demand that he return home. Instead, Boswell ran away to London, where for three months, he lived the unrestrained life of a libertine until his father came to bring him back to Scotland.
When he returned to Edinburgh, Boswell re-enrolled at university to finish his education. On July 30th, 1762, he took his oral law exam, which he passed easily. The following year, he met Samuel Johnson for the first time, and they became close friends. Johnson was a British poet, novelist, essayist, literary critic, and lexicographer who has been described as "arguably the most distinguished man of letters in English history." He called Boswell "Bozzy."
Three months after he met Johnson, Boswell left for the Netherlands, where he planned to continue his law studies at Utrecht University. Although deeply unhappy at first, Boswell eventually came to enjoy his time in Utrecht greatly. He met and fell in love with an eccentric, vivacious young Dutchwoman named Belle van Zuiylen, who proved to be his social and intellectual superior.
Belle refused to marry him, so Boswell left Utrecht and traveled around Europe for two years, where he would meet the legendary writers and philosophers Voltaire and Jean-Jacques Rousseau. He also met one of his heroes, the Italian independence leader Pasquale Paoli. The diaries that Boswell kept during his time in Utrecht and his travels through Europe would later be published as Boswell In Holland (1763-64) and Boswell On The Grand Tour (1764-66).
In 1766, Boswell returned to Scotland, where he took his final law exam, passed it, and became a practicing advocate for over a decade. Once a year, he would go to London to see his friend Samuel Johnson and hobnob with London's literati. Boswell's journals and letters from this time described his libertine exploits. In a 1767 letter to W.J. Temple, Boswell wrote "I got myself quite intoxicated, went to a Bawdy-house and past a whole night in the arms of a whore. She indeed was a fine strong spirited girl, a whore worthy of Boswell if Boswell must have a whore." Earlier, Boswell had written of a one night stand he had with an actress named Louisa. Though he occasionally used a condom for protection, Boswell would contract venereal disease at least seventeen times.
In November of 1769, Boswell married his cousin, Margaret Montgomerie. She bore him seven children, two of whom died in infancy. He also had at least two illegitimate children who died in infancy. Despite Boswell's frequent visits to brothels, Margaret remained with him for twenty years, until her death from tuberculosis in 1789. Despite achieving moderate literary success with the publication of his travel journals, Boswell was unsuccessful as an advocate. By the late 1770s, he had plunged into the depths of alcoholism and gambling addiction, and also suffered from severe mood swings, most likely the result of bipolar disorder.
After his old friend Samuel Johnson died in 1784, Boswell moved to London to try his hand at the English Bar, but was even less successful than he was as an advocate in Scotland. So, he spent most of his last years writing a biography of Samuel Johnson, which was published in 1791. It was a masterpiece, considered to be the greatest biography ever written. Unlike most biographies of the time, which just provided the dry details of an individual's public life, Boswell's biography of Johnson was revolutionary. It included far more personal information than readers of the time were accustomed to, providing them with not only a record of Johnson's public life and works, but also a vivid personal account of Johnson the man. Boswell even included transcripts of conversations he'd had with Johnson. The longevity of Samuel Johnson's fame owes itself mostly to James Boswell's biography.
With the publication of The Life Of Samuel Johnson, James Boswell finally received the literary recognition he'd sought for so long, and his fame endures to this day. After the book was published, Boswell's health began to deteriorate from the ravages of alcoholism and venereal disease. He died on May 19th, 1795, at the age of 54. Over 120 years after his death, a large collection of his papers, including intimate journals he'd kept throughout his life, were discovered at Malahide Castle, North of Dublin. They were sold to an American collector and later passed on to Yale University, which published them.
Quote Of The Day "I hate mankind, for I think myself one of the best of them, and I know how bad I am." - James Boswell
Vanguard Video Today's video features a short presentation on the life of James Boswell. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 28th, 1905, Mrs. Warren's Profession, the famous play by legendary Irish playwright George Bernard Shaw, opened at the Garrick Theater in New York. The play, Shaw's second, was written in 1893. It had been banned in Britain by the Lord Chamberlain (England's theater censor) because of its frank depiction of prostitution. It would finally open in London on January 5th, 1902, behind closed doors at the New Lyric Club - a private, members-only organization. It wouldn't be legally performed in public in Britain until 1926.
Mrs. Warren's Profession centers on the relationship between Mrs. Warren, a middle-aged ex-prostitute turned brothel madam, and her prudish, Cambridge-educated daughter, Vivie. Mrs. Warren has always hidden the truth about her profession from her daughter. When Vivie discovers that her mother's fortune was really made in the brothel business, she's horrified. Eventually, the two strong willed women reconcile when Mrs. Warren explains that her childhood, spent in grinding poverty and despair, led her to become a prostitute because it was the only way to support herself. Vivie forgives her - until she finds out that Mom is still running brothels.
George Bernard Shaw, a staunch socialist, said that he wrote Mrs. Warren's Profession "to draw attention to the truth that prostitution is caused not by female depravity and male licentiousness but simply by underpaying, undervaluing, and overworking women so shamefully that the poorest of them are forced to resort to prostitution to keep body and soul together." The play was also inspired by Yvette, a novel by the great French writer, Guy de Maupassant.
After opening in New York, Mrs. Warren's Profession would close after only one performance, as the play was promptly shut down by puritanical authorities. A few days later, on October 31st, the producer and the entire cast of actors were arrested for obscenity. Fortunately, they were all acquitted of the charge in court - including George Bernard Shaw, who was tried in absentia.
Shaw would go on to write many more classic plays, including Candida (1894), Caesar And Cleopatra (1898), Major Barbara (1905), The Doctor's Dilemma (1906), Fanny's First Play (1911), and Pygmalion (1912), upon which the famous, award-winning musical My Fair Lady was based. In all of his works, Shaw supported socialism and denounced capitalist exploitation and the degradation of women. He also drew attention to the effects of poverty, violence, and war on both society and the individual.
Quote Of The Day "The secret of success is to offend the greatest number of people." - George Bernard Shaw
Vanguard Video Today's video features a scene from a production of Mrs. Warren's Profession. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 27th, 1932, the legendary American poet and novelist Sylvia Plath was born. She was born in Jamaica Plain, Massachusetts. Her father, Otto Plath, was a German immigrant and professor of biology and German at Boston University. Her mother, Aurelia, was the daughter of Austrian immigrants. She was 21 years younger than Sylvia's father when she married him.
When Sylvia Plath was four years old, the family moved to Winthrop, Massachusetts, where she spent most of her childhood. Otto Plath died of complications from diabetes when she was eight years old. The loss devastated his daughter and would affect Sylvia the rest of her life. Her most famous poem, Daddy, reflects her grief over her father's death and her anger at him for leaving her. Plath's readers still visit her father's gravestone at Winthrop Cemetery.
The same year that she lost her father, the eight-year-old Sylvia Plath had her first poem published in the children's section of the Boston Herald. In addition to her writing talent, she also displayed artistic talent; when she was 15 years old, her paintings won an award from the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards. She began keeping a diary at the age of eleven and kept journaling up until her death.
Sylvia Plath attended Smith College in Massachusetts. During her junior year, she was awarded a position as guest editor at Mademoiselle magazine. She spent a month in New York City working for the magazine. She hoped it would be a great experience, but instead, it marked the beginning of a downward spiral in her life and resulted in her first documented suicide attempt. She crawled under her house and took an overdose of sleeping pills. She was briefly committed to a mental institution where she received electroshock therapy. All of these experiences would be used as the basis for her only novel, The Bell Jar.
After recovering from her first bout with mental illness, Sylvia graduated with honors from Smith College. She won a Fulbright scholarship to Newnham College, Cambridge. There, she continued writing poetry, and her work was occasionally published in the student newspaper, Varsity. At a party at Cambridge, Sylvia met British poet and children's book writer Ted Hughes. After a brief courtship, they were married on June 16th, 1956. They spent the next couple of years living and working in the U.S., where Sylvia taught at her alma mater, Smith College.
When Sylvia found herself pregnant with their first child, Frieda, she and Ted returned to London. There, in 1960, her first poetry collection, The Colossus and Other Poems, was published. Some of the poems contained in it had been previously submitted to magazines and rejected because the editors found them to be too strange and disturbing. The year after her first poetry book was published, Sylvia, then pregnant with her second child, suffered a miscarriage. In 1962, she became pregnant again and gave birth to a son, Nicholas.
The birth of their second child did nothing to help Sylvia and Ted's already troubled marriage. News of her husband's affair devastated Sylvia, and Plath scholars believe that Ted was also physically abusive to her throughout their marriage, though Hughes' admirers dispute that. The couple separated in late 1962. In 1963, Sylvia's first and only novel, The Bell Jar, was published under the pseudonym Victoria Lucas. The semi-autobiographical novel, based in part on Sylvia Plath's first struggle with mental illness, is considered a masterpiece. I read it when I was a teenager and loved it. The novel was adapted as a feature film in 1979. A new adaptation is currently in development.
A month after The Bell Jar was published, Sylvia Plath committed suicide at the age of 30. She sealed herself in her kitchen, plunged her head into the oven, and turned on the gas. Family, friends, and scholars believe that Sylvia's suicide was the result of a combination of factors. She suffered from mental illness (most likely bipolar disorder), she was devastated by her father's death and her own miscarriage, and she suffered at the hands of an unfaithful and physically abusive husband whom she still loved. Six years after Sylvia's death, her husband's mistress, Assia Wevill, committed suicide herself - the same way that Sylvia did - after murdering her daughter. Sylvia's son Nicholas Hughes, a biologist, would commit suicide later at the age of 47 after suffering from depression. Her daughter Frieda Hughes would go on to become a poet, painter, and children's book writer.
As the result of Sylvia Plath's untimely suicide in 1963, her second poetry collection, Ariel, which featured her most famous poems, (Daddy, Lady Lazarus, and Tulips) was published posthumously in 1965. More poetry collections, prose works, and four children's books would also be published posthumously. In 1981, a complete collection of Sylvia Plath's poetry, The Collected Poems, would be published. It won her a Pulitzer Prize the following year. Sylvia became the first poet to win a Pulitzer Prize posthumously.
Sylvia's husband, Ted Hughes, spent the last years of his life preparing an unabridged version of her journals for publication. They were first published in an abridged version in 1980. Hughes faced criticism for the way he handled Sylvia's journals. He claimed to have destroyed her last journal "because I did not want her children to have read it." He was also accused of trying to cash in on his wife's death, though the proceeds from all of her posthumous publications were placed in a trust fund for her children.
In 2000, Anchor Books published The Unabridged Journals of Sylvia Plath, which writer Joyce Carol Oates called a "genuine literary event." To this day, Sylvia Plath remains a major influence on American poetical voice.
Quote Of The Day "Everything in life is writable about if you have the outgoing guts to do it, and the imagination to improvise. The worst enemy to creativity is self-doubt." - Sylvia Plath
Vanguard Video Today's video is a two-part presentation featuring an interview with Sylvia Plath from October, 1962, conducted by Peter Orr of the British Council. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 26th, 1945, the famous American novelist Pat Conroy was born in Atlanta, Georgia. The eldest of seven children, he was born Donald Patrick Conroy, Jr., the son of a Marine Corps colonel. Conroy's father was a domineering, emotionally and physically abusive monster who terrorized his children. He would later inspire the main character in his son's first novel.
Pat Conroy's mother, on the other hand, was loving to her children and tried to protect them from their father, who abused her as well. Conroy credits her for his early interest in reading and writing. When he was five years old, she read him Margaret Mitchell's classic novel, Gone With The Wind, (1936) which became his favorite book.
In addition to the abuse Pat and his siblings suffered at the hands of their father, they also had few friends because Colonel Conroy's position required the family to move frequently. He claimed that by the time he turned 18, his father had moved the family 23 times. While living in Orlando, Florida, Pat Conroy channeled his anger at his father into a constructive outlet: he became a star basketball player. His fifth grade basketball team defeated the sixth grade team that year.
As a college student, Pat Conroy attended the Citadel, a famous military college in South Carolina. He would later base two of his most popular novels on his experiences at the Citadel. After graduation, he became an English teacher and met and married Barbara Jones, a young widow who lost her husband to the Vietnam War, and adopted her children.
Conroy changed teaching positions, accepting an offer to teach in a one-room-schoolhouse in a remote location - Dafuskie Island, South Carolina. At the end of his first year as a teacher on the island, Conroy was fired for refusing to administer corporal punishment to his students and disrespecting the school's administrators.
Pat Conroy's first book, The Boo was published in 1970. It was a non-fiction work - a collection of letters, stories, and anecdotes about Lt. Colonel Thomas "The Boo" Courvoise, who had been Conroy's Commandant of Cadets at the Citadel. Courvoise was a close friend and father figure to his cadets, including Conroy.
In 1974, Conroy would publish his second non-fiction book, The Water is Wide, a memoir of his year as a teacher on Dafuskie Island, which is renamed Yamacraw Island. The book made Conroy's name as a writer. In the year of its publication, it won him a humanitarian award from the National Education Association and was adapted as an acclaimed feature film called Conrack (Most of Conroy's students called him Conrack) starring Jon Voight in the title role. It would be remade as a TV movie in 2006.
Though he had started out writing non-fiction, Pat Conroy soon began work on his first novel, which would be published in 1976. It would establish him as one of America's best and most popular novelists. The Great Santini was based on Conroy's horrific childhood. It told the story of Ben Meecham, a boy coming of age as he and his siblings struggle to deal with their monstrously abusive father, tyrannical Marine Corps fighter pilot Lt. Colonel Wilbur "Bull" Meecham, who calls himself The Great Santini.
The novel would become a bestseller, earning Conroy rave reviews and the wrath of his family, who accused him of betraying them by writing about his father. Some of Conroy's mother's relatives actually picketed his book signings and encouraged people not to buy his novel. The familial stress contributed to the failure of Conroy's marriage.
Ironically, the novel helped Pat Conroy finally reconcile with his father, who was so troubled by his depiction in The Great Santini that he was moved to change his ways. After reconciling with his son, Conroy's father would often sign copies of The Great Santini as "Donald Conroy - The Great Santini. I hope you enjoy my son's work of fiction!" The book would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1979, starring Robert Duvall in the title role.
Pat Conroy's next novel, published in 1980, was based on his years as a student at the Citadel in the 1960s. The Lords of Discipline told the story of Will McLean, a young Irish-Catholic cadet at the Citadel (renamed the South Carolina Military Institute) who finds himself pitted against the college's powerful and and ruthless secret society, The Ten.
The Ten are the ones who really determine if a cadet will graduate from the Institute. They put the cadets through a horrific hazing designed to run undesirables out of the college. These undesirables include the Irish-Catholic Will and the college's first black cadet, whom the Commandant of Cadets, Colonel "Bear" Berrineau, has asked Will to mentor. When Will discovers the existence of The Ten and who they are, his and his roommates' lives are endangered.
The Lords of Discipline was adapted in 1983 as an acclaimed feature film starring David Keith as Will McLean. When the novel was published, it started a twenty-year rift between Pat Conroy and his former classmates at the Citadel, who were angered by Conroy's less than flattering depiction of campus life. In 2000, Conroy was awarded an honorary degree by the Citadel and asked to give the commencement address. When he gave the address, he defended his novel, saying that as a proud graduate of the Citadel, he had every right to depict the negative aspects of life as a Citadel cadet in the 1960s.
In 1986, Pat Conroy published what many consider to be his greatest and most popular novel, The Prince of Tides. Once again using his experience as abused child from a dysfunctional family, Conroy tells another gut wrenching, emotional story. Former star football player Tom Wingo goes to New York City to help his sister, Savannah, a published poet who has once again attempted suicide and suffers from severe depression in addition to the schizophrenia that has plagued her since early childhood.
Tom meets with Dr. Susan Lowenstein, Savannah's psychiatrist, who hopes to gain insight to Savannah's childhood from her brother. Tom tells Dr. Lowenstein stories of his and Savannah's childhood growing up in a dysfunctional family. They and their brother Luke were the children of a savagely abusive ex-soldier father and a cold, unloving mother. As Tom tells his tales, Lowenstein suspects that there is something he's hiding, a huge childhood trauma that he is suppressing.
As Lowenstein tries to get him to open up to her, the married Tom finds himself falling in love with her. He finally reveals the secret he's been burdened with since he was a young boy - the brutal sexual attack on Savannah, himself, and their mother by a trio of escaped convicts. They were saved by Luke, who unleashed the family's pet tiger on two of the men, while Tom killed the third. The family buried the bodies and the children's mother made them promise never to tell a soul what happened.
Alas, Luke grew up to become a disturbed Vietnam veteran (an ex-Navy SEAL) who waged guerrilla warfare against the local authorities when his land was seized to build a nuclear power plant. Tom and Savannah had tracked Luke down and talked him into surrendering. Unfortunately, on his way to turn himself in, he was shot and killed. The death of Luke - Savannah's brother and hero - is what pushed her over the edge.
The Prince of Tides would be adapted as an acclaimed feature film in 1991, starring Nick Nolte as Tom Wingo, Melida Dillon as Savannah, Kate Nelligan as their mother, and Barbra Streisand (who also directed) as Dr. Lowenstein.
Pat Conroy followed The Prince of Tides with more great books, including novels and memoirs. His latest book, My Reading Life, a non-fiction work that pays tribute to the books and the "book people" who have influenced him, is due out on November 2nd, 2010. He lives on Fripp Island, South Carolina, with his third wife, novelist Cassandra King.
Quote Of The Day "My mother, Southern to the bone, once told me all Southern literature can be summed up in these words: 'On the night the hogs ate Willie, Mama died when she heard what Daddy did to sister'.” - Pat Conroy
Vanguard Video Today's video features Pat Conroy discussing his most recent novel, South of Broad, which was published in 2009. Enjoy!
This week's publishing successes leads off with an announcement by Julie McGuire of The Internet Review of Books. Based on the content that follows, it appears there will be even more content to enjoy from the IRB.
Congratulations to this week's writers!
Jody
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Julie McGuire
On October 15, 2010, The Internet Review of Books (IRB) relaunched to a daily format. Our lead review is of Sara Gruen's (Water for Elephants) latest novel, Ape House.
Though we are sad to say goodbye to Carter Jefferson and Ruth Douillette who retired to pursue other interests, Bob Sanchez, Gary Presley, and I are pleased to continue the tradition of high quality fiction and non fiction reviews. We'll just do so more frequently.
Many of you at IWW have contributed fantastic reviews for the IRB, and we've had the great fortune to review some published work by IWW members. We share this YAHOO with all of you who have supported us along the way.
Thanks to Gary Presley for great help with the imagery.
Mark Budman
My review of "Super Sad True Love Story" by Gary Shteyngart has been accepted by Rain Taxi Review of Books.
Joylene Butler
After self-publishing my novel Dead Witness and then signing with Canadian distributor Sandhill Books in 2009, my next novel Broken But Not Dead is due for release through Theytus Books next summer. My editor Leanne Flett Kruger of Coyote Rock Editing did an outstanding job.
Florence Cardinal
My article "How Do You Like Your Coffee?" is up at Health Central.
Ruth Douillette
I went to read Sarah's review on the new Internet Review of Books site... and what do you know? Just above hers was my brief review of Bring Down the Little Birds, a slim ode to/complaint about motherhood.
Alice Folkart
My almost Haiku, "Untethered," is up at Four and Twenty Magazine's October issue. It's number 23.
There is some good work in there and I'm proud to be part of it. Hope you enjoy.
My review of The Disappearing Spoon: And Other True Tales of Madness, Love, and the History of the World from the Periodic Table of the Elements (Wow, that’s a long title!) by Sam Kean is now up at the Internet Review of Books.
A special thanks to all in nonfiction who helped tweak this piece. ¡Muchos gracias!
Anita Saran
On the Muse Writer's Conference, I pitched two of my novellas -- one fantasy and the other literary fiction -- to four publishers, and just finished pitching to the publisher at Eirelander Press. The publisher hadn't been able to make it to the conference and I had missed pitching to her. She's asked to see both novellas and agreed to give me a month polishing them.
I will be subbing Nederland -- a new and improved version, complete with a funny cave-dwelling hermit nun who transforms the lives of my main characters -- so the story becomes tragi-comic. And it looks like there's actually a market for it!
Weird Year will publish my flash, "Is It My Fault?," December 13.
Both of these stories were written with the Practice group, so I have them to thank.
Long Story Short has accepted my flash, "A Secret," for their December issue. Thanks to Practice for helping me get this one started.
And Skive Magazine, a print monthly out of Australia, has accepted an old story of mine, "At the Hop," for their November Americana issue.
Jack Shakely
My new book review about the events leading up to Martin Luther King Jr.'s memorable "I Have a Dream" speech leads off the current issue of Internet Review of Books. Do you remember where you were that steamy August day in 1963?
Carol Sutton
My book #3 Blood Opal -- crime fiction set on Cornwall UK --- is now available on Amazon.co.uk and Amazon.com.
My thanks go wholeheartedly to those on the IWW Novels-L list who critiqued it and helped me hone my work.
Check out its cover art. This photo was taken by Jenni Brammall of Down to Earth Opals of Lightning Ridge, Australia.
This Day In Writing History On October 22nd, 1964, the legendary French writer Jean-Paul Sartre won a Nobel Prize for literature, which he declined. He was the first person to ever decline the award. When Sartre learned that he was in contention to receive a Nobel Prize, he wrote to the Nobel Institute and asked that his name be removed from the list of candidates. The Swedish Academy had already made its decision to give him the prize.
Sartre didn't want to cause a scandal by refusing the Nobel Prize, nor did he want to offend the Swedish Academy, so he prepared a statement explaining that he always turned down "official distinctions" because he believed that "a writer must refuse to allow himself to be transformed into an institution, even if it takes place in an honorable form." He believed that if a writer carried the authority of an institution along with his name, it wasn't fair to the reader, saying that "It is not the same thing if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre or if I sign Jean-Paul Sartre, Nobel Prize winner."
Sartre had previously turned down both the French Legion of Honor (the highest award given by his country) and a tenured teaching position at the prestigious College de France.
Jean-Paul Sartre was not only a novelist; he was also a playwright, a screenwriter, and most famously, an existentialist philosopher. He was a founding father of the existentialist movement in 20th century literature. As a young man studying at the elite École Normale Supérieure from 1924 to 1929, Sartre met legendary writer Simone de Beauvoir, who would become his lifelong companion. They would spend hours in cafes, talking and writing. Sartre's first novel, Nausea, was published in 1938.
A year later, Sartre was drafted into the French Army. During World War 2, he was a prisoner of war for almost a year. After he was released and France fell to the Nazis, he became a fighter for the French Resistance. During the war years, he published his first major existentialist work, Being and Nothingness. (1943)
Sartre's most famous work was his classic 1945 novel, The Age of Reason, the first in a trilogy of existentialist novels called The Roads to Freedom. The other two novels in the trilogy were The Reprieve (1947) and Troubled Sleep (1949).
In the 1960s, Sartre became a political activist. A communist sympathizer, he sought to reconcile his existentialist philosophy and ideas of free will with communist principles. He went to Cuba to meet Fidel Castro, and also met the revolutionary Ernesto "Che" Guevara. After Guevara was assassinated, Sartre said of him, "[he was] not only an intellectual but also the most complete human being of our age." Back in Paris, Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir supported the radical student uprisings.
Jean-Paul Sartre died in 1980 at the age of 74.
Quote Of The Day "Words are more treacherous and powerful than we think." - Jean-Paul Sartre
Vanguard Video Today's video features a clip of Jean-Paul Sartre discussing classic intellectualism. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 21st, 1977, Bridge To Terabithia, the beloved, award-winning, and controversial children's novel by Katherine Paterson, was published. The heart wrenching tale of a poor, lonely, artistically gifted farm boy who finds a soul mate in the bright, vivacious, and imaginative city girl who moves in next door was inspired by a real life tragedy that affected the author and her son.
Katherine Paterson had already established herself as an acclaimed and popular children's author with her first two books, The Sign Of The Chrysanthemum (1973) and Of Nightingales That Weep (1974), when her eight-year-old son David lost his best and only friend, a vivacious and imaginative little girl named Lisa Hill. While at the beach with her family, Lisa was struck by lightning and killed. David Paterson was devastated and traumatized by his sudden loss, and his mother was deeply affected by it as well.
After publishing her third novel, The Master Puppeteer (1975), Katherine Paterson and her son were still struggling to cope with Lisa Hill's death. So, for her next book, she decided to write a story about a close friendship between a young boy and girl that ends in tragedy, the boy struggling to cope with his loss. She would later say that writing the book was a therapeutic exercise that helped her and her son make some sense out of a senseless tragedy.
Bridge To Terabithia is set in Lark Creek, a small town in rural Virginia. The novel opens with 10-year-old Jess Aarons, a poor farm boy, going out for a morning run before breakfast. The introverted, artistically gifted Jess has no friends, but hopes to win his peers' admiration and respect when school starts by becoming the fastest boy in the fifth grade and winning the races held during recess.
When Jess returns from his practice run, we get a look at his bleak home life. The Aarons family is large and poor. His two older sisters, Brenda and Ellie, are cruel to him. His younger sisters, May Belle and Joyce Ann, adore him, but also annoy him, as he must share a bedroom with them. His mother favors her daughters over her son and is always yelling at him. Jess' father lavishes affection on his younger daughters but is emotionally distant from his son and shows him no affection. He's often gruff and foul tempered, especially to Jess. With money so tight that he has to commute over an hour each way to Washington, D.C. to work as a day laborer because farming doesn't pay enough to support the family, Mr. Aarons is rarely in a good mood.
At school, Jess' teacher is a nasty, foul-tempered, obese older woman named Mrs. Myers, nicknamed "Monster Mouth" by her students for obvious reasons. The music teacher, Miss Edmunds, is young and pretty, and the only human being who seems to care about Jess. She admires his artistic talent and encourages him to keep drawing. She's a non-conformist like Jess - she wears jeans to class and no lipstick. She's also a hippie and plays folk songs on her guitar for the kids. Jess sees Miss Edmunds as a "diamond in the rough," and has a huge crush on her.
Jess' artistic talent is a source of consternation for his ignorant father, who worries that Jess' passion for drawing poses a threat to his only son's masculinity:
He would like to show his drawings to his dad, but he didn't dare. When he was in first grade, he had told his dad that he wanted to be an artist when he grew up. He'd thought his dad would be pleased. He wasn't. "What are they teaching in that damn school?" he had asked. "Bunch of old ladies turning my only son into some kind of a..." He had stopped on the word, but Jess had gotten the message. It was one you didn't forget, even after four years.
Into Jess' bleak world comes a ray of sunshine in the form of a new girl who moves in next door. Leslie Burke is Jess' age. She's an intelligent, vivacious tomboy from the city whose parents are both writers. The Burkes are wealthy, but don't own a TV set. They prefer that their daughter call them by their first names (Bill and Judy) instead of Mom and Dad. They're liberal and non-religious, whereas the Aaronses are Christian fundamentalists like most people in Lark Creek - though they only attend church once a year, on Easter Sunday, because Mrs. Aarons "got mad at the preacher."
Jess and Leslie don't become friends when they first meet. Leslie joins Mrs. Myers' class and then runs against the boys in the races at recess. Unfortunately, she beats Jess in the heat, eliminating him from the races and crushing his dream of being the fastest kid in the fifth grade. Nevertheless, when Gary Fulcher, a bully, refuses to let Leslie run in the finals. Jess stands up for her. Fulcher lets her run, and she beats him. She outruns the other boys as well, humiliating them.
That's no way to start a friendship, but soon, Jess and Leslie become inseparable. Deciding that she and Jess need a place of their own, Leslie chooses a forest clearing on the other side of a creek bed near their homes. In order to reach their secret land, they swing across the creek bed on an old rope tied to a tree branch. Leslie names their magic kingdom Terabithia. There, they rule as king and queen, though Jess, who is in awe of Leslie, feels unworthy of being her king.
In Terabithia, Jess and Leslie grow closer as she draws him into her world of imagination. There, no enemies - not the imaginary giants from Leslie's stories or their real-life foes can defeat them. Leslie builds up Jess' low self-esteem and makes him feel good about himself for the first time. Although nervous around them at first, Jess grows close to Leslie's parents as well, as they too introduce him to a world he never knew existed.
Together, there's nothing that Jess and Leslie can't do. When another bully, Janice Avery, steals food from Jess' little sister May Belle, he and Leslie get even by playing a brilliantly conceived and executed practical joke to humiliate Janice in front of the other kids. Later, when Jess hears Janice crying in the girls' bathroom, he gets Leslie to reach out to her. They learn that she is being abused by her father - brutally beaten - which is why she became a bully.
Although Jess likes Leslie's parents, he's uncomfortable having her over at his house. His sisters tease him about his "girlfriend," his mother hates Leslie's boyish looks and clothes, and his father keeps "fretting that his only son did nothing but play with girls," and is "worried about what would become of it." When Leslie asks if she can go to church with Jess and his family for Easter services, (she's never been to a church before) his mother grudgingly says yes. Afterward, on the way home, Leslie wonders why Jess, who is a Christian, hates church so much while she, a nonbeliever, thinks that the story of Jesus is beautiful. May Belle warns Leslie that she has to believe in the Bible, or else God will damn her to Hell when she dies. Leslie disagrees.
The closer Jess grows to Leslie, the less he thinks about Miss Edmunds, the music teacher he had a crush on. But one morning, Jess is stunned when she unexpectedly invites him out to an art gallery in Washington. Thrilled to be able to spend time with Miss Edmunds outside of music class, he goes off with her, asking his sleeping mother for permission. He forgets to call Leslie and tell her that he won't be meeting her in Terabithia that day. Jess loves the art gallery, and immediately chastises himself for not inviting Leslie along. It's just not the same without her. He promises himself that he will invite her next time.
There won't be a next time. When Jess returns home, he finds his family worried, his mother in tears. His older sister Brenda breaks the news: Leslie is dead. His father explains that she had been swinging on the rope to Terabithia when it broke. She fell, struck her head, and drowned in the creek. The family thought that Jess had been killed, too. Disbelieving them at first, the terrible realization hits Jess and he takes off running, as if by running, he could keep Leslie alive. His father brings him home.
Jess goes through all the stages of the bereaved: denial, anger, fear, guilt, and sorrow. He and his parents go to the Burkes' house to pay respects. The experience is unreal to him. Afterward, Jess struggles to deal with his grief. The only way he can cope with his loss is to use all the inner strength that Leslie had given him. He decides to repay her for her kindness by passing it along. He builds a bridge to Terabithia and brings his neglected little sister May Belle into the magical kingdom, making her the new queen.
Katherine Paterson's powerful, emotional story won the Newbery Award the year it was published. Over 30 years later, it continues to touch the hearts and minds of new generations of readers. Surprisingly, Bridge To Terabithia holds the distinction of being the most banned and challenged children's book of all time. Often appearing on teachers' assigned reading lists for classroom study and discussion, the novel continues to raise the ire of disgruntled parents and conservative groups who complain about the novel's bleakness, stark realism, themes of death and grief, dialectic use of mildly profane language, (casual use of the words damn and hell in conversation) ridiculing of authority figures, and negative depictions of Christians and Christianity.
These criticisms are surprising, considering that the author is the wife of a Presbyterian minister. Religious themes are handled in an honest, realistic way. Due to the effect of the religious dogma he was raised to believe in, Jess' faith is no comfort to him at all in his greatest time of need. On the contrary, he is terrified that God will send Leslie Burke to Hell for being a non-believer. His father assures him otherwise, telling him that "God don't send no little girls to Hell."
Bridge To Terabithia was first adapted in 1985 as an episode of the PBS TV series, Wonderworks - a zero-budget, horribly written, poorly acted episode of a series that usually produced quality adaptations of children's literature. Fans of the book, including me, believed that it would never be made into a movie because of its controversial nature. However, in 2007, Disney's Walden Media division produced a feature film version of Bridge To Terabithia.
With David Paterson (who grew up to become a playwright) serving as producer and co-writer, the movie turned out to be a faithful (albeit modernized) adaptation that beautifully captured all the emotion of the story. Lovingly directed by animator Gabor Csupo in his first live-action film, the movie features stunning performances by young leads Josh Hutcherson and AnnaSophia Robb as Jess Aarons and Leslie Burke. They're backed by a stellar supporting cast, including Robert Patrick as Mr. Aarons and Zooey Deschanel as Miss Edmunds.
Although the "Disneyfied" screenplay tones down the story (the book is much darker) and omits or waters down the most objectionable elements of the novel, the movie still ignited a firestorm of controversy due to deceitful marketing practices over which the filmmakers had no control. The movie was falsely marketed by Disney as a lighthearted fantasy similar to The Chronicles Of Narnia. Parents and children unfamiliar with the book went to the movie expecting to see what was advertised. Instead, they saw a deep and very sad story that really had little to do with fantasy. The marketing also drove away fans of the book (like me) who believed that the story they loved so much had been totally butchered and ruined.
The Bridge To Terabithia movie is currently available on standard and Blu-Ray DVD. I wholeheartedly recommend that you see it - after you read the book, which is a masterpiece of contemporary children's literature.
Quote Of The Day "When people ask me what qualifies me to be a writer for children, I say I was once a child. But I was not only a child, I was better still, a weird little kid." - Katherine Paterson
Vanguard Video Today's video features Katherine Paterson discussing the writing of Bridge To Terabithia, along with her longtime editor, Virginia Buckley. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 20th, 1854, the famous French poet Arthur Rimbaud was born. He was born Jean Nicolas Arthur Rimbaud in Charleville, France. When Arthur was six years old, his father, Captain Frederic Rimbaud, a Legion D'Honneur award winning soldier, left to join his regiment and never returned, having tired of domestic life. This left Arthur and his siblings to be raised alone by their mother, a domineering, controlling, fanatically devout Catholic.
In 1862, believing that her children were spending too much time with the local poor kids and being influenced by them, Madame Rimbaud moved the family to the Cours D'Orleans, where the living conditions were better. Instead of being taught at home by their mother, Arthur Rimbaud and his brother attended school for the first time at the Pension Rossatr. To push her children to get good grades, Madame Rimbaud would punish them by forcing them to learn a hundred lines of Latin verse, then withholding their meals if they recited the verse incorrectly.
As a boy, Arthur Rimbaud hated school and his mother's constant control and supervision - he and his brother were not allowed to leave her sight until their late teens. At the age of nine, Arthur wrote a 700-word essay voicing his objections to having to learn Latin in school. When he was eleven years old, he had his first communion. Despite his intellect and his fiercely individualistic nature, he became as fanatically devout a Catholic as his mother, which led his schoolmates to call him un sale petit cagot - a dirty little hypocrite.
Though most of his reading as a child was confined to the Bible, the young Arthur Rimbaud also enjoyed fairy tales and adventure stories. Though he disliked school, he became an outstanding student and was at the head of the class in all of his subjects except science and mathematics. His schoolmasters noted with awe Arthur's ability to absorb large quantities of material. In 1869, at the age of fifteen, he won eight prizes in school. The following year, he won seven.
Around the same time, while studying at the College de Charleville, Arthur's mother hired a private tutor for him, Father Ariste Lheritier, who was the first person to encourage Arthur to write. The teenage Rimbaud's first published poem, Les Etrennes des Orphelines, (The Orphans' New Year's Gift) appeared in the January 2nd, 1870 issue of the Revue pour Tous magazine. Two weeks later, a new teacher, Georges Izambard, arrived at Rimbaud's school and became his literary mentor.
When the Franco-Prussian War broke out, Izambard left to enlist, and Rimbaud was devastated. He ran away to Paris and was arrested and imprisoned for a week. After returning home, he ran away again to escape his mother. He became a different person; he drank, wrote vulgar poems, and stole books from bookshops. He abandoned his penchant for neatness and wore his hair long. Later, he wrote to his old teacher Izambard about his method of achieving poetic enlightenment through "a long, intimidating, immense, and rational derangement of the senses," reporting that "the sufferings are enormous, but one must be strong, be born a poet, and I have recognized myself as a poet."
A friend encouraged Arthur Rimbaud to write to Paul Verlaine, a prominent Symbolist poet, after Arthur's letters to other poets went unanswered. So, Rimbaud sent Verlaine two letters, which contained several of his poems, including the dazzling, hypnotic, and shocking Le Dormeur du Val - The Sleeper of the Vale. Impressed, Verlaine wrote back, sending Rimbaud a one-way ticket to Paris and telling him to "Come, dear great soul. We await you; we desire you." Rimbaud arrived in September of 1871 and stayed briefly at Verlaine's home.
Although Paul Verlaine had a pregnant wife, he and Arthur Rimbaud engaged in a brief but torrid gay affair. While Verlaine had previously engaged in homosexual relationships, there is no evidence that Rimbaud had gay affairs before he met Verlaine. He would later become involved with women. While he and Verlaine were together, they led a wild, vagabond life that was enhanced by their frequent use of absinthe and hashish. Rimbaud's outrageous behavior brought scandal to the Parisian literati. He became the archetypal enfant terrible, yet at the same time, he wrote striking, visionary works of verse.
In September of 1872, Rimbaud and Verlaine arrived in London. They lived in poverty in Bloomsbury and Camden Town, scraping together a meager living, mostly through teaching. Their relationship grew increasingly bitter. By June of 1873, a frustrated Verlaine returned to Paris. The following month, he wrote to Rimbaud, telling him to meet him at the Hotel Liege in Brussels. The reunion was a disaster. They argued incessantly and Verlaine drank heavily. He bought a revolver and ammunition, and shot at Rimbaud twice in a drunken rage. The first shot missed him, but the second grazed his wrist.
Rimbaud dismissed his injury as superficial and declined to press charges. But after the shooting, when Verlaine accompanied Rimbaud to the train station in Brussels, his bizarre behavior made Rimbaud fear that he was going insane. Rimbaud begged a policeman to arrest Verlaine for his own good - and for Rimbaud's safety. Verlaine was charged with attempted murder. In the resulting investigation, Verlaine's intimate correspondences with Rimbaud were uncovered and used against him. Rimbaud withdrew his criminal complaint, but the judge sentenced Verlaine to two years imprisonment anyway, because of his wife's accusations of homosexuality.
After the trial, Rimbaud returned home to Charleville and completed his famous epic work Une Saison en Enfer (A Season In Hell), a masterpiece of Symbolist prose poetry. In 1874, he returned to London with his friend, poet Germain Noveau. There, Rimbaud wrote and assembled his groundbreaking prose poetry collection, Les Illuminations (Illuminations). The following year, after Paul Verlaine was released from prison, Rimbaud met him for the last time.
Arthur Rimbaud later gave up writing and settled into a quiet, steady working life. Some say that he had become fed up with the wild life; others speculate that he intended to save up enough money so he could afford to live independently as a carefree poet. He continued to travel extensively throughout Europe, mostly on foot. In May of 1876, he became a soldier for the Dutch Colonial Army in order to travel to Indonesia for free, after which, he promptly deserted and sailed back to France. In December of 1878, Rimbaud went to Cyprus, where he worked for a construction company as the foreman of a stone quarry. Five months later, he had to leave after contracting typhoid fever.
In 1880, Rimbaud settled in Aden, Yemen as an employee for the Bardey agency. Four years later, he left Bardey's and became an independent merchant in Harar, Ethiopia, dealing mostly in coffee and weapons. He took native women as lovers and lived with an Ethiopian mistress for a time. He became close friends with Ras Makkonen, the governor of Harar and father of future Ethiopian Emperor Haile Selassie.
The following year, in February 1881, Rimbaud developed a pain in his right knee that he thought was arthritis. A British doctor in Aden mistakenly diagnosed Rimbaud's knee pain as tubercular synovitis. When the pain grew agonizing, he returned to France for treatment. He was admitted to a hospital in Marseilles, where he was diagnosed with cancer. His right leg was amputated. After a brief stay at the family home in Charleville, Rimbaud tried to return to Africa, but on the way, his health deteriorated and he found himself back at the same hospital in Marseilles in great pain.
He was attended by his younger sister, Isabelle, until he died in Marseilles on November 10th, 1891, at the age of 37.
Quote Of The Day "Genius is the recovery of childhood at will." - Arthur Rimbaud
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading of Arthur Rimbaud's poem Le Chercheuses de Poux (The Seekers of Lice) in English. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 19th, 1946, the famous British novelist Philip Pullman was born in Norwich, England. His father, Alfred Pullman, was a Royal Air Force pilot. His job allowed the family to travel frequently; Philip once attended school in Southern Rhodesia. When he was seven years old, his father was killed in a plane crash. His mother later remarried and the family moved again, first to Australia, then Wales, then back to England.
Around this time, Philip Pullman became interested in comic books, a medium he continues to express his admiration for, from the old style comics to the modern graphic novels of today. As a middle school student, he read John Milton's classic epic poem, Paradise Lost, which would prove to be a major influence on his most famous series of novels, a trilogy whose title comes from a line in Milton's poem.
Pullman received his college education at Exeter College, Oxford, but "did not really enjoy the English course." He graduated in 1968 and embarked on a career as a teacher. While he taught middle school children, he also wrote school plays and began work on his first book, The Haunted Storm, a fantasy novel geared toward young adult readers, which would be published in 1972. Although it won him the New English Library's Young Writer's Award that year, Pullman considers The Haunted Storm his worst book and refuses to discuss it.
Pullman's second book, Galatea, a fantasy novel geared toward adults, was published six years later, in 1978. He did not publish another novel until 1982, when Count Karlstein was released. Originally written as a school play for his students, it made Pullman's name as a young adult novelist. Count Karlstein is set in Karlstein, a Swiss village, circa 1816.
The evil nobleman Count Karlstein obtained his wealth and position by making a deal with Zamiel, the Demon Huntsman. The Count's part of the bargain requires him to present Zamiel with a human sacrifice within ten years, on Halloween night. The time has now come, so the Count plans on sacrificing his young nieces, Lucy and Charlotte, to the Demon Huntsman. His maidservant, Hildi Kelmar, overhears his plan and determines to save the girls.
Pullman would continue to write great young adult novels. Spring-Heeled Jack (1989), was a comic adventure inspired by the real life monster that supposedly haunted Victorian England. In Pullman's novel, Spring-Heeled Jack is not a monster at all but a superhero mistaken for a monster. He tries to save three orphaned children from evil orphanage director Mr. Killjoy and his horrid assistant, Miss Gasket, in a delightfully demented parody of Dickens.
In addition to his fantasy novels, Pullman has also written some great non-fantasy novels. In The Broken Bridge, (1990) 16-year-old Ginny, a half-English, half-Haitian girl, lives with her father in a coastal Welsh village. A social worker arrives with some shocking news: Ginny's father had a child with another woman. The woman is dying, and her son needs a home. The revelation that she has a white half-brother she never knew about turns Ginny's world upside-down and inspires her to investigate the mystery of her own life, and that of her long-dead Haitian mother.
Five years later, in 1995, Philip Pullman published the first volume of his most famous work - a series of novels called the His Dark Materials trilogy. This brilliant, dazzling series is set in an alternate universe, on a world similar to Earth, in a country similar to Victorian England, where everyone has a daemon - an externalization of the soul that takes the form of a shape-shifting creature (and dear friend) that always remains by their side. The heroine is a bright, brash, imaginative, and mischievous 12-year-old girl named Lyra Belacqua. Her daemon is called Pantalaimon. Lyra is an orphan who lives with her uncle, Lord Asriel, at Oxford University.
In the first book, Northern Lights, (retitled The Golden Compass for its U.S. release) Lord Asriel makes an important discovery - the true nature of Dust, the fabric of the universe. This discovery threatens to invalidate the Catholic-esque monotheistic religion whose cruel and repressive clerical body, the Magisterium, rules the world. His life is now endangered. Meanwhile, Lyra finds herself at the center of a prophecy. She is the chosen one who will not only bring down the Magisterium on her world, but bring about a revolution in Heaven as well. The being worshiped as God is actually not a benevolent creator god but an evil, dictatorial angel called Metatron who seized power over Heaven and the universe from The Authority - the first angel to emerge from the Dust - who is now aged and dying.
In The Subtle Knife, the second book in the trilogy, Lyra meets Will Parry, a boy her age from another universe and world (ours) who becomes her first love and partner in the prophecy, which is a reversal of Milton's Paradise Lost. Lyra and Will become the new Adam and Eve, but instead of causing the fall of Man with their sin of fornication, they cause the fall of Metatron (God) and save Man. Where the Harry Potter novels invoked the wrath of religious conservatives over the issue of witchcraft, the His Dark Materials trilogy made them go ballistic, accusing author Philip Pullman of blasphemy, anti-Catholicism, and promoting atheism to children. Others complained about the books' violence, gore, sexual content, and the heroine who is disobedient by nature and an accomplished liar.
The most (allegedly) objectionable elements of the story occur in the third book, The Amber Spyglass. Lyra and Will free the Authority from confinement so he can die peacefully and return to the Dust. Although an act of mercy, critics see this as the symbolic killing of God. In order to fulfill the prophecy, Will and Lyra make love. The sex scene is tastefully handled, as is a previous awakening of sexual feelings within Lyra. While Pullman's American publisher, Scholastic, Inc. (who also published and doctored J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter novels) censored some passages in the U.S. version of The Amber Spyglass, the entire trilogy of novels still faces challenges and bans in the United States.
While conservative British columnist Peter Hitchens denounced the His Dark Materials novels as an atheist rebuttal of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia series, (which Pullman hated) surprisingly, the novels and Pullman's outspoken criticisms of religion were defended by, of all people, Rowan Williams, England's Archbishop of Canterbury, who also said that the author's criticisms of organized religion were valid.
In December of 2007, Hollywood studio New Line Cinema released a feature film adaptation of the first book of the His Dark Materials series, The Golden Compass. Unfortunately, squeamish studio bosses demanded a film that would not offend religious groups, so the screenplay obliterated most of the storyline. That didn't stop religious groups from mounting protests against the film.
The movie proved to be a huge critical and commercial failure for New Line Cinema. It cost around $200 million dollars to make, and only earned the studio a total of $70 million at the box office. The movie performed surprisingly well internationally, earning nearly $300 million more, but New Line Cinema didn't see a dime of it. Those profits went to overseas distributors, as New Line had sold them the rights to finance the expensive project. Ultimately, it wasn't the protests but New Line's decision to radically change the story to appease religious groups that sank The Golden Compass at home. The studio announced that it would not adapt the rest of the His Dark Materials series for the screen.
Philip Pullman continues to expand the His Dark Materials series. He has already published two companion novellas, Lyra's Oxford, (2003) and Once Upon A Time In The North. (2008) He is currently working on the fourth novel in the series. Tentatively titled The Book Of Dust, it figures to be the longest book in the series yet.
Pullman's latest novel, The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, published in the spring of 2010, is a fictionalized biography of Jesus. In it, the Virgin Mary gives birth to identical twin sons - Jesus and his brother, Christ. While the outgoing and sickly Jesus becomes the popular one, his devoted brother Christ observes his ministry and records his every word and deed, making ordinary acts seem like miracles through his embellishments. Although he means well at first, Christ allows himself to be swept up in the politics and plots of corrupt, power-hungry men, which ultimately results in the formation of the institutional Church.
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ may prove to be Philip Pullman's most controversial novel.
Quote Of The Day "We don't need lists of rights and wrongs, tables of do's and don'ts. We need books, time, and silence. Thou Shalt Not is soon forgotten, but Once Upon a Time lasts forever." - Philip Pullman
Vanguard Video Today's video features a lecture given by Philip Pullman at Open University in Milton Keynes, Buckinghamshire, England. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 15th, 1844, the legendary German writer and philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche was born. He was born in Rocken bei Lutzen, Prussia, the son of a Lutheran pastor and teacher. The oldest of three children, Nietzsche's brother Ludwig died at the age of two, a year after their father died of a brain ailment at the age of 33. Nietzsche's sister Elisabeth would later figure in the controversy that still surrounds his philosophy and writings.
As a boy, Friedrich Nietzsche attended a boys' school, then a private school. In 1858, the 14-year-old Nietzsche displayed particular talent for both music and language, so the world famous school at Schulpforta accepted him as a student. While studying there, he received his first important introduction to literature, especially ancient Greek and Roman literature.
After graduating in 1864, Nietzsche entered the University of Bonn, where he studied theology and classical philology. After his first semester, he lost his faith and ended his theological studies. Around this time, he had read David Strauss' famous book, The Life of Jesus, a debunking of the Bible as mythology. However, two years earlier, in an essay titled Fate and History, Nietzsche had already argued that the central beliefs of Christianity had been discredited by historical research.
Deciding to become a classical philologist, Nietzsche followed his favorite professor to the University of Leipzig. At this time, he began delving into philosophy, studying the works of the thinkers of the day, such as Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Albert Lange. In 1869, although he was only 24 years old and had neither a doctorate nor a teaching certificate, Nietzsche was offered a professorship in classical philology by the University of Basel in Switzerland. He accepted the offer and served for ten years. Today, he is still one of their youngest tenured Classics professors on record.
During this time, Nietzsche struck up a close friendship with legendary composer Richard Wagner and his wife, Cosima. He had met Richard first in 1868. Nietzsche admired the Wagners greatly, and they introduced him to their inner circle of friends. His friendship with the Wagners would sour after Richard began to champion "German culture," which Nietzsche considered to be a contradiction in terms. He would later blast Wagner in his 1888 book, The Case Of Wagner.
In 1872, Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy, where he argued that ancient Greek tragedy was the highest form of art. This was because its blending of Apollonian and Dionysian elements into a whole allowed the viewer to experience the full spectrum of the human condition. The Apollonian impulse is detached, rational, sober, and emphasizes superficial appearance, whereas the Dionysian impulse is immersion in the whole of nature, intoxication, irrationality, and inhumanity. Nietzsche argues that it's not healthy for the individual or society to be ruled by either impulse. Instead, they should be combined to create a healthy whole.
Nietzsche's 1878 book, Human, All Too Human, was a reaction to the pessimism of Wagner and Schopenhauer. It was a book of aphorisms on subjects including metaphysics, religion, the sexes, and morality. It was the first of Nietzsche's writings that would be taken out of context by the Nazis to build the foundation of their own philosophy - despite the fact that Nietzsche was the same man who had said, "Germany is a great nation only because its people have so much Polish blood in their veins."
In 1879, Nietzsche resigned his professorship due to a severe decline in his health. While serving as a medical orderly in the Franco-Prussian War, he contracted several diseases, including diphtheria, dysentery, and some believe, syphilis, which would eventually cause his mental illness and death. After leaving the university, he continued to write, and in 1881, he began using a typewriter, as his eyesight started to fail.
In his 1881 book Daybreak, Nietzsche began his "campaign against morality," criticizing the moral schemes of such institutions as Christianity and utilitarianism. His aim was not to destroy morality, but to replace the moral schemes of the aforementioned institutions with a new moral code. There is no such thing as one-size-fits-all morality, and exceptional people should no longer be ashamed of their uniqueness. The old style of morality is best suited to unexceptional people who are satisfied with their mediocrity. Thus, Nietzsche's motto is "become what you are."
The Gay Science (1882) was a mixture of philosophy and poetry. It contained Nietzsche's famous axiom "God is dead" and its explanation, "Whither is God? he cried; I will tell you. We have killed him - you and I. We are his murderers."
Nietzsche's most famous book, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, published in four parts between 1883 and 1885, was a philosophical novel. It incorporated all of Nietzsche's ideas into a prose narrative. It told the story of Zarathustra, a wandering prophet who seeks to teach people how to live a fulfilling life in a world without meaning. Although Zarathustra was based on the Persian prophet Zoroaster, he seems more like Jesus Christ - or rather, an anti-Christ. Ironically, Nietzsche's prose mimics that of the Bible, in a clever parody.
Thus Spoke Zarathustra is not a traditional novel by any means. It's a very deep and dense treatise on philosophy and morality. It explores Nietzsche's concept of the ubermensch, or overman, better known in English as the superman. It would be another concept bastardized by the Nazis after Nietzsche's death to justify their racist beliefs. Whereas Hitler's idea of a superman was a physically strong Aryan warrior, Nietzsche's ubermensch was mentally as well as physically strong - a well-rounded superman - and could be of any race.
On January 3rd, 1889, Nietzsche collapsed after witnessing the whipping of a horse and throwing his arms around the animal's neck to protect it. This event triggered in Nietzsche a severe psychotic episode from which he would not recover, as it was believed that he was in the final stages of syphilis. He started sending incoherent letters to friends. Claiming to have been crucified by German doctors, he called for the abolishment of anti-Semitism, the execution of the German emperor, and for all European powers to declare war on Germany.
Nietzsche's mother had him committed to a psychiatric hospital. Later, his sister Elisabeth returned from Paraguay following the suicide of her husband, a notorious anti-Semite. While she cared for her brother, Elisabeth studied his works and read through all of his unpublished manuscripts. She hired writer and philosopher Rudolf Steiner to tutor her so she could understand her brother's writings. After a few months, Steiner gave up, declaring that it was impossible to teach her anything about philosophy.
Following a series of strokes and a bout with pneumonia, Friedrich Nietzsche died on August 25th, 1900 at the age of 55. His sister Elisabeth took control of his literary legacy. The following year, she had his last book published posthumously. The Will to Power (1901) was actually a patchwork quilt of bits and pieces of previously unpublished manuscripts cobbled together by Elisabeth Nietzsche, who took great liberties with the material, and most of it out of context. The final product was a hodgepodge of Nietzschean philosophy distorted and slanted to suit Elisabeth's anti-Semitic, nationalistic beliefs.
When Hitler rose to power in the early 1930s, the eightysomething year old Elisabeth Nietzsche became enamored with the Nazi dictator, who was equally enamored with Elisabeth's bastardization of her brother's work. Hitler made Friedrich Nietzsche the official philosopher of the Third Reich. In life, Nietzsche was no anti-Semite; he broke ties with his editor, Ernst Schmeitzner, because he was disgusted by Schmeitzner's anti-Semitism. His relationship with his sister was on again-off again, a seemingly never ending pattern of conflict and reconciliation, as Nietzsche was also disgusted by her anti-Semitism and that of her husband. And, as previously mentioned, Neitzche had a low opinion of German culture. He also despised the concept of nationalism.
Today, over a hundred years after his death, Friedrich Nietzsche still remains one of the world's most influential and most controversial philosophers.
Quote Of The Day "Good prose is written only face to face with poetry." - Friedrich Nietzsche
Vanguard Video Today's video features a reading from Friedrich Nietzsche's classic book, The Antichrist. Enjoy!
This Day In Writing History On October 14th, 1888, the famous writer Katherine Mansfield was born in Wellington, New Zealand. She was born Kathleen Mansfield Beauchamp. The third of four children, she had two older sisters and a younger brother. Her father was a banker who would become the chairman of the Bank of New Zealand and be knighted as well. The Australian-born British novelist Elizabeth von Arnim was her cousin.
Although her first published short stories would appear in the High School Reporter and Wellington Girls' High School magazines, the teenage Katherine Mansfield was an accomplished cellist who initially planned to become a professional musician. She developed a crush on fellow cellist Arnold Trowell, whose father was her music teacher, but her feelings were mostly unreciprocated.
Mansfield began keeping journals from a young age. She wrote of her growing alienation from provincial white New Zealand society and her disillusionment with and disdain for her fellow whites over the repression of the Maori (New Zealand aboriginal) people. In her fiction, Mansfield often depicted the Maoris in a positive or sympathetic light.
In 1903, Mansfield moved to London, where she attended Queen's College with her sisters. While she continued with her cello studies, she also contributed to the school newspaper, doing so with such dedication that she eventually became editor of the paper, bringing to it her interest in the French Symbolists and Oscar Wilde. Her peers regarded her as vivacious and charismatic.
From 1903 to 1906, Mansfield traveled through Europe, living mostly in Belgium and Germany. After completing her schooling in England, she returned to her home in New Zealand, where she began her writing career. She quickly tired of the provincial life and returned to London, falling into the bohemian life.
Katherine Mansfield was known for her restless and rebellious nature, so the bohemian life suited her. She was bisexual and had many lovers, mostly male, though she had some lesbian relationships. One was with Ida Baker, a South African fellow writer who would become a lifelong friend. In 1908, when she returned to London, Katherine sought out her old friends, the Trowell family. Her teenage crush Arnold Trowell was involved with another woman. She soon found herself involved in a passionate affair with his brother, Garnet.
By 1909, Mansfield found herself pregnant with Garnet's child, but his parents disapproved of their relationship, so they broke up. She hastily married George Bowden, a singing teacher eleven years her senior, but left him the same night after failing to consummate the marriage. Her mother came to see her and blamed the breakup of the marriage on Ida Baker. She sent Katherine to Bad Worishofen, a spa town in Bavaria, where she miscarried after trying to lift a heavy suitcase and place it on top of a cupboard.
Mansfield's life in Bavaria had a major effect on her writing. She was introduced to the works of Anton Chekhov, who would prove to be a bigger influence on her than Oscar Wilde. In January 1910, she returned to London, where she had over a dozen works published in The New Age. A socialist magazine edited by A.R. Orage, it was a highly regarded intellectual publication. In 1911, her first short story collection, In A German Pension, was published. A hit with critics, the book would be greatly enjoyed by readers during World War 1, due to its negative portrayal of Germans.
The Great War had a major effect on Katherine Mansfield's life and writing. In 1915, news that her younger brother, to whom she was very close, had been killed in action shocked and traumatized her. To cope with her loss, she took refuge in her memories of him, basing her fiction on nostalgic reminisces of their childhood together. In one of her poems, she writes of a dream she had shortly after her brother's death:
By the remembered stream my brother stands Waiting for me with berries in his hands... "These are my body. Sister, take and eat."
Mansfield's best collection of short stories, The Garden Party and Other Stories, published in 1922, was also inspired by her childhood in New Zealand.
In 1911, Mansfield submitted a short story to a new avant-garde literary magazine called Rhythm. The editor, John Middleton Murry, rejected it as too lightweight. So, Mansfield submitted another story, The Woman at the Store, a dark tale of murder and insanity. Not only did Murry publish it, he and Mansfield began a seven-year relationship that resulted in their marriage in 1918. Their life, however, was not a happy one.
Stephen Swift, the publisher of Rhythm, fled and left John responsible for all the magazine's debts. Katherine's health began to deteriorate from, among other things, an undiagnosed case of gonorrhea. She left John twice, but returned to him each time. In 1915, she had an affair with French writer Francis Carco after visiting him in Paris. She retold the story of this relationship in her short story, An Indiscreet Journey. That same year, she learned of her brother's death in the war.
In 1916, Katherine Mansfield entered her most prolific period as a writer, and her relationship with John Murry improved. She broadened her literary acquaintances, meeting great writers such as D.H. Lawrence, Virginia Woolf, T.S. Eliot, Lytton Strachey, and Bertrand Russell through social gatherings and mutual friends. Unfortunately, in December of 1917, Mansfield fell ill and was diagnosed with tuberculosis.
In April of 1918, Mansfield's divorce from her husband George Bowden was at last finalized, so she married John Murry. The following year, he became the editor of a prestigious weekly journal called Athenaeum. Mansfield wrote over a hundred reviews for the magazine. During the winter of 1918-19, because of her poor health, she stayed in a villa in San Remo, Italy, with her friend and ex-lover, Ida Baker. Their relationship became strained, and Katherine wrote to John of her depression, so he came to stay over the Christmas season. But their relationship too became strained and they often lived apart.
Katherine Mansfield spent her last years seeking unorthodox treatments for her tuberculosis, but none of them worked. She died on January 9th, 1923, at the age of 34. She was a master of the short story, a modernist, an early feminist, and a progressive thinker ahead of her time.
Quote Of The Day “Looking back, I imagine I was always writing. Twaddle it was too. But better far write twaddle or anything, anything, than nothing at all.” - Katherine Mansfield
Vanguard Video Today's video features a short documentary on Katherine Mansfield. Enjoy!
Thanks to all who helped with it under a different title.
Sherry Gloag (Jackie)
I am blogging over at Rites of Romance, where I am talking about editing. Please come over and share some of your editing experiences too. :-)
Today I am blogging at The Phantom Photographer about that tricky scene--or chapter--that won't go right, and how I overcame it while writing my debut novel, The Brat.
My poem "Travelling Companions" is up at The Heart of Romance today.
Jacquelynn Rasmenia Massoud
My flash piece "House Cleaning" is scheduled to appear at Every DayFiction on Thursday, the 14th of October. This started as an exercise for the Practice list a few months ago, so thank you to everyone who helped me out by critiquing this one.
Gary Presley
I once ate at Arnaud's in the French Quarter in New Orleans. My wifehas dark hair and is smarter and better educated than I am. Good raw material, huh? Why not write a short story for Poor Mojo's Almanac?
Just finished pitching my new novella, The Choosing, via Muse Conference, andgot a request for a full manuscript by Solstice Publishing. Now I must polish it. Such an amazing experience--all but one of the writers pitching to this publisher were successful. The pitch is first sent to one of the founders, Lea, who then lines you up for the publisher on chat. So she's already donemuch of the homework for you, making sure you're in the right place. Well, Ihave a few more lined up for the pitch, so I will keep pitching unless one of them asks for an exclusive. The international Muse Writer's Conference isreally worth it and I can only thank Ann Hite for letting me know. I wokeup at 6 a.m. to be in time for this event, me being in India and they inCanada. Very worth it.
This is my log line (and it's followed by a brief plotline):
"My 24,000-word erotic-paranormal fantasy The Choosing is about a younggirl's struggle between desire for power and a yearning for purity. It is a story of redemption.
Yaay!
Wayne Scheer
My story, "Doing Right," is up at Midwest Literary Magazine. It's a hard site to navigate. My flash 'The Parking Lot" was accepted at Left hand Waving, and will be up November 5.
My 100-word story "Surprise" has won an Honorable Mention in Necon E-Books' monthly writing contest. I was one of the winners last month as well. It's an interesting experience peeling down a longer story to under 100 words. I'm not sure if what's left is art, but it's fun. The theme for next month is Halloween, of course. I'm going to see what I can do. You might consider giving it a try as well. Guidelines are just below my story near the bottom of the page.
ken#again will publish "Buddies" in their Winter issue. This was critiqued in Fiction a while back, so I thank the group.
Jack Shakely
Imagine my surprise when I discovered that a review I did of Eric Burns' "Invasion of the Mind Snatchers," a very funny history of the early days of television, showed up in the Sept-Oct issue of ForeWord Review. It was originally scheduled for the Nov-Dec issue, but they needed copy, I guess.
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