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.