Terrific #10 (updates)

Reading update:

I’m still suffering from too many books and too little time, in the middle of three nonfiction books of varying lengths. 1. I’ve followed Tony Horwitz and Captain Cook to Alaska, and we’re on the captain’s final, fateful voyage. 2. I’m learning a little French horn history and taking armchair lessons from author Jasper Rees and horn virtuoso Dave Lee. 3. Through an elementary-level biography, I’m developing a fascination for 19th-century scientist Michael Faraday. (The fact that he was a young man during the Napoleonic wars is, I believe, not coincidental to my fascination.)

The book I managed to finish reading is the Kay Winters/Larry Day picture book Colonial Voices: Hear Them Speak. This book introduces us to various denizens of Boston on the day of the Boston Tea Party, December 16, 1773. We meet people of different occupations and different loyalties through simple yet poetic language. Winters does a nice job of showing that many factors played into people’s feelings about the building Revolutionary fever; and that for some people, like the Native American basket trader and African-American slave, the colony’s taxation-without-representation grumblings were largely irrelevant. The book is rounded off with historical notes and a bibliography. The title of the book is a bit misleading, for the “colonial voices” are all from only one day in one colonial city; but I think we could easily extend the trades, feelings, personalities, and issues to the pre-Revolutionary era in general, especially for the northern colonies.

Writing update:

Unfortunately there is not too much going on here. I keep casting nets, but most of my ideas are either too slippery or too small, and escape back into the wider sea. My “inventors” project is starting to solidify, if ever so slightly. Patience, patience, patience. I also started drafting a short tale that will NOT EVER turn into anything longer. It is JUST FOR FUN.

Spring hopes eternal

I found a wonderful Richard Wilbur poem on yesterday’s Writer’s Almanac. It is especially appropriate for two reasons: 1) We’re all desperately wishing for spring and flowers here at my house; 2) My creative spirit is pretty much always in need of reassurance.

It came of winter’s giving ground
So that the freeze was coming out,
As when a set mind, blessed by doubt,
Relaxes into mother-wit.
Flowers, I said, will come of it.

—Richard Wilbur, from “April 5, 1974”

The entire poem can be read here.

I also appreciated this bit of wisdom from poet Robert Haas (also found on Writer’s Almanac): “Take the time to write. You can do your life’s work in half an hour a day.” Ah! If only it were so easy.

Finally, on this quote-full day, I had to throw in this funny from Daniel Handler, aka Lemony Snicket: “A library is like an island in the middle of a vast sea of ignorance, particularly if the library is very tall and the surrounding area has been flooded.” Handler happens to share a birthday with Michel de Montaigne, and he’s four days younger than me. *Spring green with envy*

Thirty-nine: 16-18

I have several books on my shelves that are about the craft of writing. Over the years, these have yielded much good advice and inspiration. When one is a writer, though, anything and everything becomes grist for the mill; and sometimes “writerly” truths jump out at me from unexpected sources.

16. So it is that a writer writes many books. In each book, he intended several urgent and vivid points, many of which he sacrificed as the book’s form hardened. “The youth gets together his materials to build a bridge to the moon,” Thoreau noted mournfully, “or perchance a palace or temple on the earth, and at length the middle-aged man concludes to build a wood-shed with them.” The writer returns to these materials, these passionate subjects, as to unfinished business, for they are his life’s work.
—Annie Dillard, The Writing Life

17. If you are curious to know what course I took under the circumstances, I beg to inform you that I did what you would probably have done in my place. I modestly declared myself to be quite unequal to the task imposed upon me—and I privately felt, all the time, that I was quite clever enough to perform it, if I only gave me own abilities a fair chance…I went to my writing-desk to start the story. There I have sat helpless (in spite of my abilities) ever since—seeing what Robinson Crusoe saw, as quoted above—namely, the folly of beginning a work before we count the cost, and before we judge rightly of our own strength to go through with it. Please to remember, I opened the book by accident, at that bit, only the day before I rashly undertook the business now in hand—and, allow me to ask—if that isn’t prophecy, what is?
—Wilkie Collins, The Moonstone

18. Miss Testvalley blazed at them. “Oh, you are both impetuous, too impetuous! The trouble is that I too am a romantic! Last night I tried the sortes Virgilianae with Dante Gabriel’s poems, and the book opened to:
     “Look in my face: my name is Might-have-been;
     I am also called No-more, Too-late, Farewell…
“you see, I would act! I would seize the moment!…”
—Edith Wharton/Marion Mainwaring, The Buccaneers

Updates, and piling it on

Reading update:

Finished Treasure Island! Yes, it was a shortish novel, but it felt good to finish anything at all in that horrid month of January. How did it compare with the Muppets film version? Plotwise, wildly divergent, as you might imagine (though incredibly, the part where Jim Hawkins sails the ship alone is actually in the book). No Miss Piggy or cannibal tribe on the island, only the half-baked Ben Gunn. More fighting, wounds, and actual death in the book. Interestingly, the Muppets nailed the character of Long John Silver, so much that I kept picturing and hearing Tim Curry as I read. A good adventure, though the end was a little anticlimactic. A writerly note: Stevenson used first-person narration; primarily Jim Hawkins, but switching to Dr. Livesey when he needed to convey action that Jim knew nothing about. Write up the alley of my current WIP.

Books-into-movies update:

We finally finished watching the HBO miniseries John Adams (based on the biography by David McCullough). We had many interruptions between the sixth and seventh parts, including Life, illness, the need to sleep, and a cracked Netflix DVD. But we persevered, and honestly, we could just have skipped the final installment. As my husband put it (before he drifted off), “too much personal drama.” The last part has Adams retired and at home, his children dying or being abandoned by their husbands, etc. Do I want to see, hear, or even imagine a woman suffering a mastectomy without anesthesia? No, thank you. Nor do I want to see old men dying in their beds, eyes staring, while their families weep around them. (Ah, Jefferson! Where are your elegant drawl, your satin waistcoats now?) I might just add here that I once saw a documentary on historic houses (with Bob Vila) that showed Thomas Jefferson’s bedroom, and the bed in which he died; and it looked nothing like the bedroom in the movie. The one saving grace (besides the stirring movie score), is that if you stick it out to the end, you hear an Adams quotation in voice-over: “Now posterity—it will never know how much it cost us to preserve your freedom. I hope that you will make a good use of it. If you do not, I shall repent in heaven that I ever took half the pains to preserve it.” I think that’s pretty good.

Writing update:

I finished interviewing two main characters (six single-spaced pages for the first and maybe three for the second), and am now working on one of the “villains.” What I love about this process is discovering the little details and idiosyncrasies that might never show up in the story, but which make the characters who they are. Once, at a Teen Writers Workshop, one of the kids asked, “How can you say you don’t know everything about your character? Didn’t you make him up?” Yes, and no. It’s a little like getting to know any flesh-and-blood person. There are layers there that need to be explored.

Piling it on:

Went to two different libraries yesterday. The top two are books I had requested through interlibrary loan; the rest are books that just caught my attention as I browsed (alone! sans children!) the stacks. Empires of Light, by Jill Jonnes, and Joplin’s Ghost, by Tananarive Due, are linked by a mysterious thread that will be revealed with the next edition of Lit for All. The Patriots is for novel research; the rest are for fun. I know, pretty ambitious for someone who finished reading a whopping one novel in all of January.

Reading is…

I was going to write, “the cure for all that ails you,” but that would have been too melodramatic. It is amazing to me, though, how having the right reading material can affect my outlook on life.

Two or three days ago, I was suffering from a strange malady. Perhaps it was only a serious attack of the January blahs, or what the sophisticated would call a malaise. One of the most painful symptoms was, I could not find a book to capture my interest. I have been from youth an obssessive reader (if there is no book, I read the cereal box, yes?). For me, books are breakfast-lunch-dinner AND dessert. And suddenly I wasn’t hungry.

It wasn’t lack of choice (many shelves full of my own books, plus some dozen from the library). It was that I found the books’ contents unappetizing. I put aside Daniel Deronda because Eliot’s sarcasm and Gwendolyn’s selfishness got on my nerves. I thought maybe a nice thick fantasy would cheer me up, so I bought Sherwood Smith’s Inda. It made me tired. I was rapidly losing hope. I picked up Treasure Island, still on the library pile. Oh, thank goodness.

Pirates, of course, along with many other essential ingredients: eighteenth century, a young innocent, mystery, high-seas sailing. A story to sink my teeth into.

Voila! Life is tasty again.

Learning something every day

Sympathy

I know what the caged bird feels, alas!
When the sun is bright on the upland slopes;
When the wind stirs soft through the springing grass,
And the river flows like a stream of glass;
When the first bird sings and the first bud opes,
And the faint perfume from its chalice steals—
I know what the caged bird feels!

I know why the caged bird beats its wing
Till its blood is red on the cruel bars;
For he must fly back to his perch and cling
When he fain would be on the bough a-swing;
And a pain still throbs in the old, old scars
And they pulse again with a keener sting—
I know why he beats his wing!

I know why the caged bird sings, ah me,
When his wing is bruised and his bosom sore,—
When he beats his bars and he would be free;
It is not a carol of joy or glee,
But a prayer that he sends from his heart’s deep core,
But a plea, that upward to Heaven he flings—
I know why the caged bird sings!

Paul Laurence Dunbar, 1899

I found the above poem while researching Dunbar for my next edition of Lit for All. I don’t remember ever reading it before, though I was struck with the familiarity of the last line (as in the title of the Maya Angelou autobiography).

I had to wonder how I missed Dunbar through my years of English-degree coursework. As I read up on him now, I learn that he was popular and critically celebrated in his own time. Somehow, however, he didn’t make the canon. I can think of some reasons why not, and most of them make me sad. On the other hand, I am glad to learn that after many years of neglect, Dunbar’s work (including volumes of poetry, novels, short stories, even opera libretti) is being studied more widely, and there are several new editions of his works.

I must admit, however, that I am less concerned with what the established educational centers do than I am with an increasing sense of my own smallness and ignorance. What else have I been missing? Humorous as the analogy may be, I have to say “amen” to the following quote:

The analogy between body and mind is very general, and the parallel will hold as to their food, as well as any other particular. The flesh of animals who feed excursively is allowed to have a higher flavour than that of those who are cooped up. May there not be the same difference between men who read as their taste prompts, and men who are confined in cells and colleges to stated tasks?

James Boswell, The Life of Samuel Johnson, 1791

This reading as “taste prompts” is reportedly how Johnson gained his great breadth of knowledge; his is not a bad example to follow in that regard.

Today’s Poetry Friday roundup is hosted by Karen Edmisten.

Library bounty

Yesterday was my bi-weekly visit to the local public library—the one that officially belongs to our village (though physically located in another), the one I can use for interlibrary loan. What did I bring home?

Daniel Deronda, by George Eliot

I had forgotten I wanted to read this after watching the PBS Masterpiece Theater version a couple months ago. How I love those Victorians. You can’t get a sentence like this anymore: “She who raised these questions in Daniel Deronda’s mind was occupied in gambling: not in the open air under a southern sky, tossing coppers on a ruined wall, with rags about her limbs; but in one of those splendid resorts which the enlightenment of ages has prepared for the same species of pleasure at a heavy cost of gilt mouldings, dark-toned colour and chubby nudities, all correspondingly heavy—forming a suitable condenser for human breath belonging, in great part, to the highest fashion, and not easily procurable to be breathed in elsewhere in the like proportion, at least by persons of little fashion.”

Robert Louis Stevenson: Four Complete Novels, including Treasure Island

If I get a chance, I’d like to peek into The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as well.

For Princess Two I picked up the latest in Mo Willem’s Pigeon saga, Pigeon Wants a Puppy, which was enjoyed family-wide. Princess Two and I also read together the picture book Turtle’s Penguin Day, by Valeri Gorbachev. Twice in a row (she’s in a penguin phase). Fortunately, the book had short and sweet text, and giggle-inducing art; so I didn’t mind.

In the interest of honesty, I now have to admit that I returned unread Sara Gruen’s Water for Elephants. I got to skimming through it, and it just didn’t appeal to me that day (or the next). It has been some years since I decided I don’t have to finish every book I pick up. Life is too short, and there are too many other books out there.

Updates

Weather update:

Snow again.

Reading update:

You’d think this kind of weather would give me more time to curl up with a good book, but alas, now that the holidays are over and school is back in session, the whole family is thrown back onto the dizzying wheel of activity. Fortunately, before all this back-to-real-life frenzy began, I did manage to finish reading one book: Philip Reeve’s Here Lies Arthur.

In a previous post, I expressed doubts and dismay after early forays into this book. Let me humbly say here that I stand (mostly) corrected. I have to credit Reeve with truly excellent writing and storytelling skills; notwithstanding the fact that only one of the characters appealed to me much at all (NOT the main character, but the “love interest,” if you will, young Peredur), I had a hard time putting the book down. Partly I wanted to see how Reeve would re-cast the classic Arthurian events, but also I simply wanted to know what happened next.

One of my initial questions was, What is Reeve trying to accomplish by turning the King Arthur story so rudely on its head? One answer I found was that the book is about how legends are made, a story about the power of stories. One little gripe: I did have some believability issues with the transformation of the central character Gwena/Gwen from girl to boy and back again (and back again). But perhaps this is Reeve furthering his metafictional theme: Just as Gwena and Myrddin persuade the people of Britain to believe that Arthur is a great hero, is Reeve winking at the reader as he tries to pull one over on us?

Books-into-movies update:

My husband and I have now watched half of the HBO miniseries John Adams (based on the biography by David McCullough). I offer some halfway-point observations. The film takes a whirlwind ride through the American Revolution and its aftermath, focusing more on personality (how the events impact Adams and his family and vice versa) than on the details of the conflict itself. On the plus side, this results in some fascinating insights into the politics of the Continental Congress instead of the well-trod battleground stuff. On the minus side, I did find it mystifying how eleven years of Revolutionary history passed without the Adams children aging one day. True, one child was added (initially predicted by Abigail’s burgeoning belly, appearing the next moment as a four-year-old boy), but otherwise the children looked exactly the same on the day Abigail learned of Cornwallis’s surrender at Yorktown (1781) as they did the day of the Boston Massacre (1770).

Most humorous portrayal: Benjamin Franklin with his stringy gray hair and his aged French-nobility mistress. Most gratifying portrayal: Thomas Jefferson, with his nonchalant elegance, his soft-spoken and cultured intelligence, his gorgeous clothes (oh! the clothes!). In one favorite scene, he lounges at a desk while Franklin and Adams critique his work on the Declaration of Independence, his facial expression a combination of pain and affected indifference. When Franklin bluntly suggests they should use the word “self-evident” (as in, We hold these truths to be…) instead of Jefferson’s more grandiose phrase, Jefferson lifts his chin and says, “I assure you that I chose every word with care.” Priceless, and something any writer who shares his or her work can identify with. Which leads me to…

Writing update:

I sent the first section of Early First Draft of my current WIP off to my trusted critique buddies yesterday. I think I have a plot. I have 20-odd pages of text. Life is good.

Twelfth day of Christmas books

Now that Christmas Present has come to an end, I have run across the Ghost of Christmas Past. Twenty-five years past, to be exact. I was 13. That Christmas stands crystal-clear in my memory, for whatever reason. We spent the holiday at my aunt’s house, and my oldest sister received The Police’s new record, Synchronicity, and my younger sister received Van Halen’s new record, 1984, and my one-year-old baby sister was toddling around, fetching and carrying things at my command, and to my great amusement.

The gift I remember is four paperback books wrapped in a shirt box, Niel Hancock’s fantasy series The Wilderness of Four.

When I think now of the joys of childhood, it is that idyllic time that I yearn for. Delicious vacation with nothing to do but dive deep into another world, one peopled by talking animals and dwarves and primeval forests and cold fast-running rivers. To dive so deep that my parents’ or sisters’ voices are no more than distant burbling.

Perhaps part of what makes this time so idyllic is that soon after this, the demands of school and extracurricular activities took me farther and farther from the fantasy books I loved. I started, of necessity, to live more in the real world, to read only assigned books to find school answers, to dissect and regurgitate themes, symbols, lessons.

Though I studied creative writing in college, and never lost my desire to be a writer, I somehow lost my passion for writing. Until, full circle, I had children of my own. I stopped working outside the home. I vowed to sit down at the computer and recapture the writing dream. But what to write? And where to find inspiration?

One day I picked up a battered and beloved copy of Lloyd Alexander’s The Book of Three. Like a dam breaking, it all came back: the joy, the blood-stirring, the creative fire. I dove in again, into all my childhood favorites: Lloyd Alexander’s Prydain Chronicles and Westmark trilogy; Niel Hancock’s Wilderness of Four and Circle of Light; my dad’s 1960s paperbacks of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings; my own 1970s boxed set of C. S. Lewis’s Chronicles of Narnia.

When I surfaced, I had joy in my hands again. What the Ghost of Christmas Past reminds me is that I must not forget to occasionally take it out and gaze into its shining depths.

Eleventh day of Christmas books

This gift came from my youngest sister. It is not actually a book, but got me thinking about them…

The Dread Pirate Game by Front Porch Classics. Anyone who knows me can guess the first “Dread Pirate” that came to my mind—the Dread Pirate Roberts from William Goldman’s brilliant book and book-into-movie, The Princess Bride.

From there I got to reminiscing about some of my other favorite books featuring pirates:

Tanith Lee’s young adult fantasy novels Piratica and Piratica II

Ian Toll’s history about the early U. S. Navy, Six Frigates, which includes some fascinating material on the Americans’ struggle with the Barbary pirates at the turn of the 19th century

Patrick O’Brian’s Aubrey/Maturin novels about the British Navy during the Napoleonic Wars, in which pirates pop up in various exotic waterways

I also realized the biggest omission in my trove of pirate literature is Robert Louis Stevenson’s Treasure Island, which has been on my to-read list for far too long (though I recently watched the Muppets movie version).

Thanks, sis, for the fun pirate times, and Merry Christmas!