My Outlook

My Outlook

Psychologists often tell us that the personalities of “normal people” are generally formed by one’s early 20s.  Of course, certain unstable personality types, such as those suffering from a borderline personality disorder, do not fit under this generalization and have unstable personalities.  In going over the pages of my science fiction novel from the early sixties, I find that my views and outlook have changed little.  After extricating myself from a crisis of religious belief in my late teens, I had settled pretty much a view of what Stephen King termed. “a dark Christianity,” one based upon the views of Ecclesiastes and the sturdy old Medieval belief that this world is a vale of tears and humankind’s true home lies beyond the grave. Of course I am not an utter pessimist. Certainly this world offers joys and pleasures. Some people are winners, some loser, often because of events beyond their control.

A Relief

A Relief

As some of you may recall, I have been preparing for publication the science fiction novel I initially wrote in the 60s and rewrote in the seventies. I have been planning to do so for some years. In the back of my mind lurked the possibility that I would be unpleasantly surprised by what I wrote eons before.  I am glad that so far I have found little that needs changing.

Florida on My Mind

Recently my imagination has been occupied by the fair blue skies. White sandy beaches, and tropical vegetation of the state. My mother long wanted to go to Florida. But my father had no interest in visiting the state. So in the summer of sixty-three. Mom and I took a trip via Greyhound bus to Miami. Indeed we had so grand the time that she and I returned the following summer. In nineteen sixty-four and nineteen sixty-five I worked on the first version of my science fiction novel, which I’m preparing for publication.  Small wonder then that I set the novel in Miami and the Everglades, especially since the setting fit. Hence my recurring memories of Florida.

Boasted Too Soon

A few weeks ago I boasted too soon about being back in the saddle as far as blogging was concerned. Alas, I spoke too soon. Again I had computer problems. Every now and then a message appears stating that Windows is having problems communicating with my computer and has to restart. I can’t prove my supposition, but problem began about the time Windows forcibly switched my computer to version 10.  The repairman cannot find the source of the problem since it has never occurred while he was examining  the machine. So apparently I’ll have to endure the problem until it gets so bad it starts acting up frequently. By that time I’ll probably decide to get a new computer.

Computer problems have prevented my blogging for a while, but as Gene Autry would say, "I'm back in the saddle again."

Still Trying to Tame That Dragon

A few weeks ago I wrote about buying a Dragon voice to text machine since I’m such a slow and terrible typist. I was hoping to improve both my speed and accuracy.  Like others, I learned the Dragon is rather slow in attaining precision.  It still makes Dumbo errors.  But it seems to be improving, although I must check everything it types. But it is faster than my rather clumsy typing.

Fortunately or unfortunately, I am one of those persons who have to write. It seems I’m always scribbling – or perhaps I should say – tapping the keyboard– to write something, either fiction or nonfiction. The only dry period I ever experienced occurred in the early 70s when I came to Murray after getting my doctorate. My mind seemed worn out from completing my dissertation, and for several years I couldn’t put my mind to writing anything. Then I began writing articles, etc. I even wrote several novels, although I had little hope that a publisher would be interested in them. Self-publishing was years away. I went through my files the other day and discovered that I have about five books completed. Despite my working on new material, I’ll be working some of the old books into the line. Two I especially like: the others, perhaps I’d better think about.

                                                                                    

A WORKABLE MS. AT LAST

A WORKABLE MS. AT LAST

Last weekend I d concluded my task of sorting out intermingled pages of my ancient science fiction novel and  now have two manuscripts of the 1974 version, one of the original, the other of a carbon copy.  A few pages are missing from each manuscript, but I believe I know elsewhere to look. If I can’t locate the three pages missing from the original typed manuscript, I’ll have to improvise those sections. As you may recall, I originally wrote the novel in 1964 and early 65. Fearing that I had not honed my writing skills enough, I did not submit the novel to any publisher but rewrote it in 1974. By then, it had become so long that I decided no publisher would at a book of 350 odd pages sent by a first-time writer. Hence, I had hoped my Harpe brothers novel A WILDERNESS OF TIGERS would gain attention, and I could get the science fiction novel published. But during that 80s and 90s most publishers decided not to publish fiction. Hence I had a hard time getting anyone to look at WILDERNESS.  Then  self-publishing became respectable and took off like a rocket to the moon. I published WILDERNESS and fresh novels.  Thus I’m finally getting around to going back and printing my effort long ago.

Suddenly a New Horror Story

As some of you may know, ever since the winter of 2013, interrelated horror stories have been popping into my head.  Suddenly they sprout forth and mature, whereupon I hammer out a rough draft. The imagination clicked again last week as I was taking a daily walk. As I left my house, ideas started germinating in my head, and by the time I got home, the plot was laid out.  I spent several days last week writing out the rough draft. Looking through the collection, I realize that I am getting close to having a book- length work.  However, I have not rewritten any of these, not knowing how they would end up finally being interrelated. Hence I have some work to do before the project is complete.

Last week several Facebook friends and I were commenting on the old Jayne Mansfield movie The Girl Can’t Help It (1956). Not only did it feature Jayne Mansfield but a number of popular rock ‘n roll are performers of the time in cameo parts– performers such as Little Richard, Fats Domino, and the Platters. As a draw for adults, the movie also included an appearance of songstress Julie London singing her hit “Cry Me you a River.”  I saw the film when it first came out. A few years back, when I was writing No Marriages in Heaven, I remembered this segment of the film and mentioned London and her hit in the novel's pages. Funny, how the imagination works. When the mind is in a creative mood, it will grasp at anything that pops up. The imagination pulls from many sources, even films seem long ago.

More Thoughts on Videos and Books

Musing upon Kim McDougall’s video for NO MARRIAGES IN HEAVEN, I reflected upon her photo of a gray-haired man as Dr. Fell—evidently the best photo she had to represent the black-haired character--and decided the man in the picture could well represent my character. However, as  I was writing the novel, my imagination fastened upon actor Victor Jory’s portrayal of the villainous Jeb Torrance in THE FUGITIVE KIND (a 1960 adaption of Tennessee Williams’ play ORPHEUS DESCENDING).  I also reflected that readers who had not seen the film or do not remember Jory, or even those who do, would have a somewhat different image of Dr. Fell, none really “more correct” than the others.   In other words in reading, we allow our imaginations leeway in responding to the author’s words, so that none of us pictures the same Macbeth.   Here we have another way authors and readers become collaborators. British critic John Carey provides a fine discussion of this aspect of reading in his book WHAT GOOD ARE THE ARTS?

About the Video of No Marriages in Heaven

I hope that by now you have been able to see my video on Facebook, advertising my new novel No Marriages in Heaven. Kim Dougall has done a fine job of catching the spirit of the story. Of course, she has to use copyright free photos, music, and film clips. Neither she nor I can afford to hire actors. Hence some discrepancies appear between the figures on the screen and the characters in my story. For instance, Dr. Fell has black hair in my pages but is gray-haired in the photo. Her picture of Earl Hollo is not quite a representation of  how I imagine him but close enough to be meaningful. I do not know where Kim got the film clip of Maggie before my heroine was shot, nor do I know what that the little wisp of smoke-like substance that flutters before her is , but this clip contains an figure that resembles Maggie and captures the feeling of the scene well. Hence, I recommend Kim’s work highly if you wish to have a video made. Her firm’s name is Castelane. It can found on the Internet under that name.

Writers and Readers as Collaborators, Part 2.

To Say Exactly What I Mean

Perhaps this goal can never be fully performed, since in literary criticism one is dealing with the intricacies of language and the complexities of the human mind.  But I thought a few additional comments might clarify my last post on readers and writers as collaborators.  Forgive me for drawing on one of my own works, my Civil War novel set in Kentucky I Pray the Lord My Soul to Keep, but I believe it suggests what I mean.  Jeremiah Manningham flees from the Battle of Fort Donelson. Stunned by his cowardice and the bloody horrors of war, he retires to lead a monk-like existence, brooding about his character and the nature of God.  Later he learns that Jerry Manning, a rebel guerilla, who could be his brother, has been captured by the Northern forces.  Jeremiah travels to the jail cell to conduct a makeshift communion service for Jerry, using wine and household bread. A devout man borrowed the novel from some friends to take along on a vacation. Upon returning, he told me that he had enjoyed and profoundly been moved by the novel, especially by Jeremiah’s believing that he had a heavenly ordained mission to perform. I thanked him, glad of his response.  Sometime later, without mentioning my novel, I asked my clergyman at the time whether a communion administered by an unordained celebrant would be valid. His answer was prompt and unambiguous: No.  Communion had to be administered by an ordained member of the clergy. I do not know whether he read the novel. If so, he might have seen episode as presenting a pathetic mock ritual, or, even while holding this belief, he could have been moved by Jeremiah’s good will.  A non-Christian could have read the scene with disgust, seeing the ritual as superstitious foolery. Or an atheist could have read these pages and, while not believing in the Holy Supper, could have enjoyed the scene because of what it reveals about Jeremiah’s character.  Each of these views would have validity for their particular holders. As to communion services being administered by a layman being valid, I have no certainly. But I believe God would approve of such devout emotions.   Later, at the end of the novel, when Jeremiah becomes the inheritor of the plantation, he makes a momentous decision that good-minded people today would applaud, but would it have been practicable or even beneficial in the long run during his era?  Does Jeremiah remain at the end of the novel a Jungian Holy Fool, or does he move up with Jungian ladder to become the Hero or savior figure?  I don’t know. I leave the decision to the reader. Of course, not all interpretations would be valid. If someone argued that Jeremiah was the devil in human form or an unwitting agent of the devil attempting to damn Jerry by administering an invalid service, I would shake my head. In a novel an interpretation cannot simply be superimposed upon the action. Most works of literature have pointers to suggest how certain events should be interpreted, but even sometimes skilled readers may disagree about the interpretations.  Nothing suggests that the devil is using Jeremiah to damn Jerry. 

Writers and Readers as Collaborators

Long before the controversial heyday of reader response criticism in the eighties,  I stumbled upon a variation of this idea in 1963.  I turned in a paper on George Eliot's Adam Bede to Dr. Mary Burton, our primary 19th century scholar at the University of Louisville, and received a B+. Her complaint about my paper was that I was too kind in my evaluation of Arthur Dunnithorne, the seducer of Hetty Sorrel.  Now I have never been an admirer or defender of seducers, but I felt that Dunnithorne showed ample penitence for his sin by trying to help Hetty. I was a bit confused by my professor's comment.. Of course, those were the high water mark days of the New Criticism and the idea that a complex work of literature could not be reduced to a moral or simple statement,. yet so often works of literature were analysed as though they were mathematical problems to be solved so that everyone got the same view of a character or action.  I must say that  Dr. Burton did not teach me the novel; I choose it for my term paper. But we disagreed about how one of the major characters ought to be judged. She felt him irreparable; I thought he had redeeming characteristics. (I must also mention that I haven't reread the novel; perhaps if I did so, I would agree with Dr. Burton.)  Hence, we were both allowing our subjective views  to color our understanding of a major character. It seemed to me then that neither one of us could be "proved" wrong. Our sensibilities reacted with and modified in different ways Eliot's portrayal of a character. Hence, each of us in a way was a co-creator with George Eliot. I believed thereafter in this view that situations and characters in novels could be ambiguous, and that readers could been given some leeway in their interpretations. Of course, this view cannot be applied to all characters and all novels.  Some characters are nearly 100% evil, like the Harpe brothers in my Wilderness of Tigers,  Francis Edward Sweeney, the mad butcher in my historicalEliot Ness novel Trickster, and the psychopathic country prosecutor in The Fall of the House of Spade, just to point out that I have created characters who are overwhelmingly evil and shouldn't be applauded by a sane person.. Still, most of my characters are mixtures of good and evil who can be understood in different ways by different readers. The course of action Earl Hollo, my detective, takes in No Marriages in Heaven could create different reactions in different readers. I might point out that I do not believe that all  literary interpretations are equally valid, but this is a very complex matter that perhaps I'll touch on some other day.

What to Work on Next?

A question that has my brain spinning slowly, but still slowly.  I still have a number of books in my head, but I don't know how many years I have left to complete them.  I have been planning three books on Elizabethan literature--my academic specialty--and a book on the nature of God, defending Christianity. I've been working on these for years, adding a bit to them each year.  Since more research is required for such books than for fiction, these take me longer to work on.  Besides, writing fiction is more fun  and I give more time to it.. Moreover, I'd like to write an introductory book on Shakespeare for the general reader. Of course, a number of these are out, but I'd like to do one just for the fun of doing so and to share some of my knowledge about my lifelong specialty.  Moreover, I have several novels written in long hand before computer days that I would still like to publish, as well as several unwritten ones in my head.  I spent the winter adding to my planned nonfiction works.  I plan continuing to do so through the spring, but also want to resurrect one of my early completed novels from the early sixties.  Sometimes I wish I could had a machine that would allow me to slip periodically into another dimension where time did not exist, so I could get all these planned works done.

On rereading Euripides' Suppliant Women

Last week I reread Euripdes’ Suppliant Women,  generally not considered one of his better plays, but an effective one. Like many of his dramas it is fiercely antiwar.  I cannot help remembering Kurt Vonnegut’s quip in Slaughter House Five:  That writing an antiwar novel is like writing an anti-iceberg novel. Euripides fiercely wrote against the Peloponnesian War in his plays. Yet Athens was defested and its democracy suspended temporarily,

More About Ambiguous Writings

During the summer of 1960 I stumbled upon the type of literature I like best. In those days I was an avid reader of modern drama.  I was a bit put off by much of the drama of the 1930s since during the Depression much writing was valued for its social significance; or message—an underlying thesis supposedly showing how to reorganize society. Always a more of an art for art’s sakest, I felt that the work of art itself should be valued for itself rather than whatever message one could extract from it. (Hence, I was pleased to find support from T. S. Eliot and the New Critics—as they were called at the time and later—John Crowe Ransom, Allen Tate, Cleanth Brooks, and company.  One afternoon I was reading Arthur Miller’s play ALL MY SONS.  The basic plot follows. Joe Keller, a successful businessman, a manufacturer of air plane parts, is hosting a backyard barbecue shortly after World War Two.  During the afternoon we learn that Keller’s firm accidentally produced a series of defective parts.  Fearful of the company’s financial loss, Keller hastily decided to send them on to the government. The possibility is made known that the defective mechanisms caused the crashes of several planes and the deaths of several pilots, very likely including that of Larry, one of Keller’s two sons.  Chris, the idealistic second son, becomes aware of his father’s malefaction and demands that Joe Keller turn himself into the police and threatens to report his father if the latter will not do so.  The upshot is that Joe Keller, unable to face the disgrace  and a prison sentence, shoots himself in the head. Chris is horrified at what his noble intentions have caused. The play astounded me. Here was more than a simple disguised treatise on the evils of wealthy businessmen. (And indeed some should be condemned). But here was a play showing that life is complex, complicated—that we are all subject to what has now become called the law of unintended consequences.  Today we commonly demonize those who disagree with us, but Miller portrays Keller with some sympathy.  At the conclusion Keller’s wife urges Chris to forget what happened and live. But, having unintentionally caused his father’s suicide, how can he? The play stunned, excited, and overwhelmed me.  It showed me that life is more complex than I had suspected. Ever since I have generally preferred this type of writing rather than that which sought to promote a specific religious or political doctrine.

Ambiguous Endings

            I mentioned on Face Book some time back that MUIRSHEEN DURKIN has two distinct conclusions. The situation is not that of giving the reader a choice of either one ending or the other. Both “occur.”  How I do this, you’ll have to read the book to find out. But I give the reader a choice as to which ending presents the more realistic view of human existence. I’ve long been intrigued by writings that leave something open ended as far as a thematic conclusion. I don’t care for underlying one-sided messages.  Like Keats, I don’t like a writer who has a design on me, (Not exact quote); that is, seeks to convert me to a certain cause or to make me accept a certain message.)  For me the best writings are open-ended enough to allow the readers to make up their own conclusions in so far as judging the situation. I certainly don’t have all the answers to life’s problems. For me the best writing points to the uncertainly of our knowledge

At last

I have finally received copies of my detective novel NO MARRIAGES IN HEAVEN.  It is available on AMAZON. Within a few days I shall begin selling copies from my website.

I have contracted with Kim McDougall to have her make a video advertising The Trickster.  It should be available within a week.  She made the fine one for my Kentucky Colonel in Wagner Land.

New Videos

            I am planning to have advertising videos made for THE TRICKSTER and NO MARRIAGES IN HEAVEN. These will be available at my website and on You Tube.

More About the Previous Subject

On the Previous Subject

           Of course, I did not mean that one should not use copy editors.  These persons are necessary.  No one can  be so expert as to see all the errors in one’s own manuscript—misspelled words, omitted words, awkward punctuation, and a basketful of other errors may appear.  Our minds can easily trick us: We know what we want to write, and our unconscious puts it in our prose.  Almost all self-publishing companies offer copy editing in package deals. Generally, the copy editor will read simply for grammatical errors and omissions. By paying a higher price, a writer can have the copy editor check for inconsistencies in the plot and improbabilities and the correctness of facts. Sometimes editors who are sincere can offer helpful advice.   When my short story “Morning Glory” was published in the anthology Legends and Legacies by the Midwest Writer’s Guild of Evansville, an editor suggested that I should add a paragraph to the beginning.  I saw the value of her comment and constructed the short addition.  I feel that her suggestion indeed improved the story.  Sometimes editors provide valuable insights: Generally they are not the prima donnas who like to show off their expertise that I warned about in the last blog.

Should beginning writers have other persons critique their works?

The question comes up again and again at our meetings of the Murray Writers Support Group: that  of whether and how fledgling writers should get some else, presumably another writer, to critique their poetry or prose. Having someone critique one’s work can be helpful, but hazardous. Hazardous because there are too many egocentric persons who love to make themselves look impressive by slashing another’s writing. Such persons are dangerous when the beginning writer assumes that they are indeed qualified and honest in their assessments.  I know of one woman who had her story read by members of a writers’ group. One or more persons so bitterly verbally shredded her work that she did not return to a meeting and did not attempt to publish fiction for 10 years. Now she has written many novels and runs her own publishing company. Hence, getting someone to critique your work is not easy. I believe a good course is for two beginning writers who know and trust each other to work together. That way neither can assume the role of master craftsman; both should see themselves as beginning writers, attempting to help one another’s work.  Then, too, as one guest speaker emphasized at a meeting, she does mind a person’s pointing out errors and flaws, just so long as the reader does not correct the words, thereby presenting him or herself as an expert.  This lady asked for readers to point out errors and weak spots, but to let her herself make the corrections, if they are needed.  I think a better method is the one I used: making myself my own critic.  So many people cannot be counted on to give an honest assessment.

Serious Fiction, Part Two

administrator sells his soul to the devil to be a college president, hardly has a realistic character in it. Rather they all are type characters like Ben Jonson’s humors characters, who highlight or exaggerate foibles and foolish traits of humanity. In other words, a lot of the fun of fiction is encountering realistic or quasi-realistic characters, whom one may analyze, as one enjoys their adventures and even afterward. But I do not try to push any specific dogma. But here I am approaching a topic for another time.

Serious Fiction?

WHAT I MEAN BY “SERIOUS FICTION”

WHAT I MEAN BY “SERIOUS FICTION”

I promised I would post this material yesterday but found myself tied up. Then, too, I found that I wanted to think a bit about the matter at hand. I suppose an effective route to explaining what I mean by “serious fiction” is to talk about its opposite: pure action fiction, if indeed anything can be pure.  When a teenager, I used to read the sci-fi pulps and digests avidly.  Most of the plots had duplicate skeletons.  Aliens invade; the hero fights them, often with the aid of an elderly scientist, who has a beautiful daughter (Most sci-fi movies and mags of the 1950s included scientists who invariably had beautiful daughters.)  The hero, the heroine, and others join forces and defeat the aliens. Then, during the last few pages, although the hero and heroine have hardly pitched a word of woo, they suddenly find themselves in love and ready for the altar.  I don’t mean to trash this fare.  Much of it was written for teenage boys, young men, and even men in their seventies who still have a number of teenage brain cells in their craniums. Occasionally I still get out one of my old pulps and enjoy an action sci-fi tale by such writers as Edmund Hamilton, Leigh Brackett, or Don Wilcox. (Of course, even at that time more cerebral sci-fi was being written by Robert Heinlein, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon and others.)  But the bare skeletons of most stories closely resembled one another.  Action surmounted all other goals. But often the characters were interchangeable, lacked in-depth personalities, and had few, if any, if any personal problems. The same is true for much genre fiction. I have been told that many women’s romances follow basic formulas. Publishers require that the heroine meet the man of her dreams on the second page and thereafter feel unworthy of him. Again I do not intend of downgrade such fiction and mock it. Most of us occasionally enjoy escape reading.  True, too, genre fiction can take on attributes of more serious fiction. Owen Whister’s The Virginian is a western, but some readers would consider it literature.

The type of fiction I generally write focuses attention largely upon that most intriguing species of created beings: humanity.  Whether I write genre fiction or another type, I direct my interest on the personalities of the characters, their quirks, fears, vices, and manias. Even when I am writing my Kentucky Colonel novels, primarily humorous adventure stories, one eye us on spoofs, cockeyed kidding around, and at times satire of humanity,  My fantasy HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, in which a college administrator sells his soul to the devil to be a college president, hardly has a realistic character in it. Rather they all are type characters like Ben Jonson’s humors characters, who highlight or exaggerate foibles and foolish traits of (Continued)whom one may analyze, as one enjoys their adventures and even afterward. But I do not try to push any specific dogma. But here I am approaching a topic for another time.

Are You Trying to Write a Book in Each Genre?

I’ve heard this question more than once when potential buyers approach my display tables at book fairs and see books ranging from one on Shakespeare to novels about mass killers.  My answer is no: I simply have an unruly muse.  Different kinds of stories attract me and demand to be told.  Thus far my books fall into such categories as southern Gothic as such as Faulkner’s and Robert Penn Warren’s novels do, comic fantasy, such as my Kentucky Colonel series, HELL IS WHERE THE HEART IS, and MURSKIN DURKIN, although final one has more comic sci-fi in it than fantasy. The Colonel novels are more light-hearted, but I have come to think of HELL IS as a comical satire in the spirit of Ben Jonson’s plays. MADONNA is a horror novel with a religious subtext; PLAYER GODS is a sense is an attempt to create a book-long nightmare that, I suppose, defies genre.  I have probably omitted a form or two I’ve written in, but sticking to one type is not how my mind functions.  The standard advice to beginning writers is to stick to one genre and attempt to build up a group of readers centered upon one character.  (I’m not so sure this advice is still valid). A friend of mine consulted an agent and said that she was interested in writing both science fiction and Christian women’s fiction. The agent told her to choose one. She chose Christian women’s fiction, but I have noticed that she is venturing into sci-fi. Despite my wide range of novels, I do believe them united by seeing myself as what I call a serious writer.  I’ll explain about that idea tomorrow.

A Revising Trick

At times rewriting and revising a novel or a book of non-fiction can be tiresome, especially when one reads the material straight through from the 1st page to the last again and again. I trick I use to break the monotony is to skip about, reworking the chapters out of order.  This method refreshes my interest and imagination.

On Revising and Planning

ON RAPID WRITING AND PLANNING AHEAD

Earlier I noted on FB that a reason Isaac Asimov wrote so many books was that he never worried about style or finding the best word to express a feeling or idea. His goal was simply to put the information down clearly.  Another prolific writer was W. E. D. Ross, who wrote many kinds of books under different names. (As Marilyn Ross he wrote a series of romance novels associated with the classic TV series DARK SHADOWS.) Ross said that he never revised a sentence: He believed that the original words should stand because they expressed the original emotion.  A writer whom I was pared with at a table at a book fair at Union college—unfortunately I do not remember his name—told me that he never revised his novels—and he had nine or ten.  Rather he took about nine months to plan each detail assiduously so that when writing he quickly put everything down. I—alas—am an inveterate reviser. I probably go through each of my novels ten to fifteen times. To me one of the joys of writing is reworking sentences and replacing words and adding details to make the prose more effective. Nor do I plan each detail meticulously. I have a general plot in mind, a number of scenes envisioned, and the conclusion set up. Then I leap into the creative waters and start writing, relying on my imagination to get me to the end. (In recent years it hasn’t failed me.) Of course, my rather romantic method of writing has its problems. In revising, I have to be careful that the heroine’s dress doesn’t change from green to yellow during a single scene. But all writers are welcome to their own choice writing techniques.  But I. alas, feel compelled to revise and revise.