JAMES D. SANDERSON, AUTHOR

New Website.

2011-10-03T17:58:00.001-07:00

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GETTING THE WORDS RIGHT

2011-09-02T08:37:00.000-07:00

The story is told that Ernest Hemingway wrote the ending of 'The Old Man And The Sea' twenty six times. When a reporter asked him why he wrote the ending so many times old Hem said, "I couldn't get the words right."

That's it. That's what the true artist struggles with. That's what I've been trying to do my whole life. So, when I hear from readers that my novella 'The Angelic Mysteries' is very short, I cringe a little. Yes, it is not long. It was once a longer work and I have worked it down to the very essence of the story at hand. There are not long descriptions of landscapes or backgrounds of the lives of the characters or long rambling discourses of philosophy. There is, instead, a broken up but progressing series of events that lead the characters to a life changing decision. Much like my own life. Yours and mine.

Hemingway also spoke about the words that are purposely left out of a work. He claimed they are of equal importance with the words that are left in. Such discipline does not lend itself to wordiness.

A reader would have to go a long way to find another novel as great as 'The Old Man And The Sea'. It was specifically mentioned in Hemingway's 1954 Nobel Prize award. Old Santiago had gone eighty-four days without catching a fish and he was now considered unlucky by one and all. Even the boy Manolin who used to go out in the boat with him was no longer allowed to go. He was sent out with other boats that had a better chance of actually catching fish. (People must be pragmatic in such matters, after all).

Somewhere along the line Santiago had become a simple and humble man. He dreamed of lions playing on the beach of Africa, and life has made a true saint of him. The large fish he was about to catch would make an even greater saint of him.

He had the heart of a turtle, this old man, which would keep on beating long after it had been butchered. When the giant fish took the bait, Santiago let him take the line for a while so he would have time to eat it, and would be deeply hooked. So deep, he hoped, that the hook would pierce the great fish's heart. Instead, however, when he was hooked he began to tow the old man's skiff far out to sea, steadily and slowly into deep water.

Here, in this simple tale, is all the suffering of a lifetime. All the greatness. All the destruction. All the tears. In the end, tired to the point of exhaustion, Santiago shoulders his mast like a cross and climbs the hill toward his shack. Several times he fell down and had to get back up again. There, in with the other garbage along the shore, is the backbone and tail fin of his great fish, waiting to be washed out with the tide.

This story, also, is the story of every writer who ever tried to write something extraordinary or great. The author is towed far out into the deep water, even against his/her will, and has to struggle with the work as one suffers with a fishing line heavy across the back and cutting the hands until they bleed. The author sheds the tears and implores all the powers of the universe to help in this one task alone: "Help me get the words right!"

Then, having suffered and labored so long, the author must send the work out into the marketplace along with the garbage and swill along the shore, waiting for it to be swept out on the tide of popular opinion. It doesn't seem fair, really, and it is small wonder we see so many good authors abandoning literary fiction and embracing instead the ready money of genre writing. Perhaps greatness will be extinguished altogether. Readers will recall the day when great fish once swam in these waters, but no more...

That is the task that is before us, fellow authors. Fellow readers. Are we going to abandon that which is great? Are we going to satisfy ourselves with something less than the right words? I vow to you now, I will keep up the struggle for greatness, even if I suffer for it. (And at fifty nine years old I can assure you I already have). What say ye? Will you take up the challenge? Will you struggle and sweat and shed the tears that greatness demands of us?

I do hope you will.

'The Angelic Mysteries' available in Kindle now: http://www.amazon.com/dp/B005HFA3K0

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The ANGELIC MYSTERIES: A Novella

2011-08-18T04:45:00.000-07:00

Greetings my friends,

'The Angelic Mysteries' has been a long time coming. Back in 1995 the novel 'The Angelic Mysteries' first came out in literary paperback. As it began to sell locally and regionally an agent became interested in it. She loved it and believed it would bring in an advance of seven figures. (I had to count the digits on my fingers). Yes - $millions. I had made the big time. Her advice was to pull it off the market until we got the big money. Well, things don't always work out the way they are portrayed.

One editor did call. She wanted me to say that the events in 'The Angelic Mysteries' were fact - that they had actually happened. She didn't want me to lie, exactly, but couldn't I think of a time when something like this might have actually happened to me. This was at the time when some very far-fetched stories were being sold as nonfiction. There was a lot of money involved...

But the events in 'The Angelic Mysteries' are not true. It is fiction. When Daniel Allman meets and falls in love with Sarah - a woman who believes she is an angel - we are in the territory where the material world meets the spiritual. We are seeing the duel nature of human existence in struggle. Will these two aspects of life unite? That is the question.

Because I didn't believe 'The Angelic Mysteries' ever got a fair reading from the public, I have dusted it off and completely re-written it as a novella. Much shorter, but in my mind much better. I am making it available to you in Kindle or Nook for only $2.99. I hope you'll give it a read:

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AN EXCERPT - THE ANGELIC MYSTERIES

2011-08-12T07:34:00.000-07:00

This excerpt is taken from Chapter 23 of ‘The Angelic Mysteries’. It is Copyright © 2011 by James D. Sanderson. All Rights Are Reserved.

Daniel Allman and Sarah have been fleeing across Europe to escape the huge anti-angel Morton Toombs but here in Chapter 23 he finally catches up with them:

At last they came out on the Grand Canal. A boatman was standing at the ready. “Can you take us to Santa Lucia Station?” Daniel asked him.
“Of course,” the boatman replied. “I can take you anywhere you want to go.” The boatman pointed across the canal.
Daniel seemed perplexed. “I thought it was on this side.”
“No, my good sir. It is across over there.” He pointed again, as if they might be able to make it out in the darkness. “Step in; I’ll take you straight to it.”
“Very well,” Daniel said.
“Where are we going?” Sarah asked.
“We need to get over to the other side.”
“What’s wrong with this side? Going over there doesn’t seem right to me.”
“No? Well, unless you have a better idea, that’s where we’re going,” Daniel said. “We’ve been lost for hours.”
“I don’t know which way to go.”
“Just follow along, then. One way is as good as another.”
“This is the way,” said the boatman.
They stepped down into his vaporetto and a moment later they were off across the swampy-looking water.
“This place smells like hell,” Daniel remarked.
The boatman nodded sincerely. “These canals have become like swamps. They are like Styx itself.”
“Is that where we are?” Sarah asked him. “Are we entering the gates of Dis?” A black water snake shagged by in the silence. “Has he chased us into hell’s black capital?”
“Few return,” the boatman said.
“We’re at the gate,” she said. Red flames were reflecting on the walls of the buildings ahead. Toombs was on the other side, waiting for them.
“Welcome,” he said.
“You!” Daniel said.
“Weren’t you expecting me? Fallen angels are the first here. We have rebelled against Himself.”
“So you admit it. Sarah was right all along.”
Toombs laughed maniacally. “Right. Wrong. Makes no difference here.”
“Why have you brought us here?” Sarah asked.
“Ah, a sensible question. You have brought yourselves here, actually. I am here to conduct your tour for you. That’s all.”
“What if we don’t want the tour?” Sarah demanded.
“Don’t worry. You have nothing to fear, being here. Not yet.”
“What is this about?” Daniel asked.
“You have begun your inquiries. Now you must learn the truth.”
“Don’t follow him,” Sarah cautioned. “He knows nothing of the truth.”
“As I told you,” Toombs picked up smoothly, “there is no reason to hesitate. You have a free passage here. No one will detain you.”
Without another word on the subject Toombs turned and made his way up the street. Daniel followed him and Sarah tagged along after him. They were unable to resist his power which was drawing them onward. Wild birds were screeching somewhere ahead in the distance.
“Tell me, where are the other fallen angels?” Daniel asked Toombs.
“They are all above, on your good earth, doing whatever tasks have been assigned them.”
“What kinds of tasks are those?”
“They have tasks similar to mine.”
“What exactly is your task?”
“You still need to ask? It is just as your girl here has supposed all along. We have become very good at trapping these risen angels and bringing them back here.”
“What happens when they get here?”
“They are held in captivity until they come to recognize the true way.”
“The true way?”
“The way that leads to the great one – Satan himself.”
“Don’t listen to him,” Sarah interjected. “His words twist everything.”
“Quiet,” Toombs shouted. “Life here is not as she would portray it. This is a good place. A place of sensual delights. Unlike the sterile silence of her heaven.”
Sarah began to object again but the big man raised his hand and shouted, “Silence!” Sarah found she could no longer speak. “You have no power here.”
“What have you done to her?” Daniel asked.
“She talks too much. You have come here to learn, and learn you shall. You must decide for yourself. I think you’ll find that hell is very much for people like us. It is a place of power.”
“Is it all about power, then? I thought hell was about punishment.”
“Dantesque clap trap,” Toombs snorted. “Some are punished here. But not those who have power. We are Satan’s chosen.”
“You keep saying ‘us’.”
He gave Daniel a libidinous wink. “You too can be here, in the halls of power.”
Sarah grasped his arm between her two hands but Daniel pulled away brusquely. “And you say you have risen angels held captive here?”
“Only the ones who refuse to convert. Foolish, really. We all serve a master, do we not? What difference does it make which one?”
“But… I don’t see any of those captive angels around anywhere.”
Toombs stamped his foot. Daniel followed his eyes downward. “In the cement.”
“In the cement?” Daniel did not understand.
“We mix them in the cement we use to build our roads. None ever escape.”
Daniel was horrified. “So, we’re walking on them right this minute?”
“Don’t worry about offending them. It’s their punishment. Those who have risen so high must now lay there while we tread on them. Just punishment, don’t you think?”
“Are they never released?”
“Of course they are,” the big man smiled. “Some are released every day. They have but to pledge their allegiance to their rightful King, the Prince of Darkness, and they fly out of the roadway complete and unharmed. It’s quite a spectacle.”
“I can imagine it is.”
Toombs continued to lead the way. “Ahead here is the Park of the Suicides.”
Daniel caught his breath. It was from this park the sound of the screeching birds was coming.
“This is one part Dante actually got right. The leaves of the trees trap the souls of those who have committed suicide, and the Harpies eat the leaves.”
“Is my father...?”
“You father committed suicide, didn’t he?”
“Is he here?” Daniel whispered.
“He’s here. In one of these trees. But he doesn’t have to be, you know.”
“How do you mean?”
“Those of us with power can have things as we wish them.”
“You know what I wish…”
Morton Toombs cocked his head to one side. “What do you wish?”
Daniel caught himself and shook his head. “Nothing. It’s only that this has something to do with my dream. I don’t know what exactly.”
“A dream?”
“A recurring dream,” Daniel said. “In the dream I am confronted by two knights on horseback; a white knight and a black knight. The black knight is first. He charges his horse at me and lowers his lance. At the last possible moment I leap aside and, using my staff, pin his lance against the trunk of a tree, breaking it. The white knight then turns his horse and rides away.”
Morton Toombs nodded his head reflectively. “It’s a funny thing.” He motioned to the leaves of the trees. “All any of them have to do to escape is to desire it. But none of them ever does.”
“Because of pride?”
“I suppose so. But I don’t really know. Only they know, and they’re not talking.”
Just then a great pit began to open up at their feet. Sarah became frantic trying to pull Daniel back from the edge.
“Where do you think you’re going?” Toombs asked.
“This is far enough. I’m going back.”
“Oh, so you’ve decided have you? Don’t you want to see more?”
“I’ve seen enough.”
“That’s a pity, but there’s no going back from here.”
“I thought we were immune…”
“Who told you that?” Toombs asked. “Oh, I did, didn’t I? Well, I lied.”
“I want to go back.”
“Of course you do.”
The mouth of the pit opened up like the aperture of a giant camera lens. Daniel turned to Sarah. She needed no prompting. She was running already. There was a tremendous crashing noise all around them. The earth crumbled and fell away. Toombs’ laughter was in their ears. Toombs reached out and grabbed Daniel’s leg. His grip could not hold. His nails left a nasty scratch. Daniel and Sarah continued to lose ground, like ants in an ant lion’s trap.

CAVEAT LECTOR

2011-07-15T06:22:00.000-07:00

Caveat Lector. Let the reader beware. Latin, of course. When this phrase was used in Rome it meant that there might be something wrong with the text. That there might be something that could mislead the reader. My usage today is a little different. I am asking the reader to beware my new novella 'The Angelic Mysteries'.

There are several things about this novella that might mislead the reader. First is the title. When we hear the word 'mysteries' today we naturally think of murder mysteries from the likes of Agatha Christie or from television shows like Monk. But in this work it doesn't mean that at all. The word mysteries here is used in its original sense: that which has been kept secret, unknown, obscure; and which is revealed by devine revelation. When Daniel Allman meets a woman who believes herself to be an angel, as he does in 'The Angelic Mysteries', he is running smack into the most deeply held secrets of his own soul.

When Daniel meets Sarah a love story begins which might lead the reader to think this is a romance. One reviewer has already been left scratching her head wondering why there isn't more background given leading the reader to the romantic moment. Well, okay, that's called In Medias Res. It begins in the middle of things. When Gregor Samsa awoke in the moring to find himself turned into a giant vermon we don't necessarily get a lot of preparation either. It simply happens and we are left to figure out what it's all about.

Then, because a very bad pyschopath comes into the story - Morton Toombs - one might be led to believe this is a suspense-thriller. Well, yes, it is suspensful and it is thrilling, but there may be more to this bad man than a plot device to drive the story forward. I will quote here from the Prologue of 'The Last Temptation of Christ'. Kazantzakis writes, ""My principal anguish and the source of all my joys and sorrows from my youth onward has been the incessant, merciless battle between the spirit and the flesh. Within me are the dark immemorial forces of the Evil One, human and pre-human; within me too are the luminous forces, human and pre-human, of God - and my soul is the arena where these two armies have clashed and met."

Reader beware. There are powerful forces at work in this novella. If one chooses to read it as a mystery, so be it. If one chooses to read it as a romance or a thriller, read on. But if the reader stumbles into the treacherous deep and finds herself/himself clawing tooth and nail trying to get back out... well... don't blame me. You have been warned.

'The Angelic Mysteries'. Release date: August 18th, 2011. For more follow along on Facebook.

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REGARDING INJUSTICE

2011-07-08T08:09:00.000-07:00

When Richard Wright wrote his autobiography ‘Black Boy’ in 1945 there was already a long tradition of black writers using their words to expose the truth about racism in America. It stretched at least as far back as Frederick Douglass and his ‘Narrative Life of Frederick Douglass’, which came out one hundred years earlier. Douglass wrote that he did not know his age and could not remember a slave who did know his birthday, and that was a source of some unhappiness for him. He worked on a farm where the principal crops were tobacco, wheat and corn. An adult slave received a monthly allowance of food – eight pounds of pork or fish, and one bushel of corn meal. Yearly they received two coarse linen shirts, one pair of linen trousers, one jacket, one pair of winter trousers, one pair of stockings, and one pair of shoes. Children did not receive an allotment.

“I have been utterly astonished,” Douglass continued, “since I came to the north, to find persons who could speak of the singing, among slaves, as evidence of their contentment and happiness. It is impossible to conceive of a greater mistake. Slaves sing most when they are most unhappy. The songs of the slave represent the sorrows of his heart; and he is relieved by them, only as an aching heart is relieved by its tears.” He wrote of the savage brutality of the various overseers. Of his suffering from hunger and cold. He had no shoes, no stockings, no jacket, and no trousers. He wore nothing but a linen shirt that hung down to his knees. On cold nights he crawled into a corn sack. The food he ate was coarse corn meal boiled – called mush. He was taught to read by the wife of one of his owners, or he would never have learned. It was against state law to teach a slave to read.

“I often found myself regretting my own existence,” he wrote, “and wishing myself dead; and but for the hope of being free, I have no doubt but that I should have killed myself, or done something for which I should have been killed.”

The first African American novel (that is, a novel written by an African American) – ‘Clotel’ – was written by William Wells Brown and it is his own story that opens the work. (This following a poem by John Greenleaf Whittier):

“Shall tongues be mute when deeds are wrought
Which well might shame extremest Hell?
Shall freemen lack th’ indignant thought?
Shall Mercy’s bosom cease to swell?
Shall Honour bleed? – shall Truth succumb?
Shall pen, and press, and soul be dumb?”

President Thomas Jefferson fathered children with his slave Sally Heming. This while penning words of freedom and equality. (Proving that the truth can transcend even the actions of those who bring that truth). In ‘Clotel’ Brown attempted to portray the reality of slaves in America, though it cannot be said to be an accurate account of Jefferson and his mistress. Currier, “a bright mulatto, and the mistress of Thomas Jefferson”, according to the novel, was about to be auctioned off with her two daughters, Clotel and Althesa. In a ruthless act of unconcern, the President’s own family was about to be sold to others. Slavery, these writers insisted, could only undermine the values of a great nation.

Their voices were only the beginning of this insistence. Throughout the next hundred years black writers wrote against slavery and then the white supremacy attitudes and ‘Jim Crow’ laws that sprang up throughout the south after the Civil War. Streetcars were segregated, to cite an example, and blacks boycotted lines in some twenty five different cities. (This long before the Montgomery Bus Boycott more than seventy years later). One black woman journalist in particular, Ida B. Wells, resisted with everything she had. In Memphis in 1884, Ida Wells was told to give up her seat to a white man on the Chesapeake, Ohio & South Western Railroad. She was ordered into the ‘smoking car’, a car set aside for ‘Jim Crow’ passengers. Wells protested and was physically thrown off the train by the conductor and two other white men. The crowd of whites that had gathered applauded the action. Her inquiries into lynching in the south led her to publish the ‘Red Record’ itemizing many of these abuses of justice. Of the 728 lynchings she investigated, only a third were accused of any crime. Most had never received a trial in a court of law. Hers was a strident voice for change until the end of her life.

Other voices along the way that might bear reading again are Paul Laurence Dunbar; Charles W. Chesnutt; Booker T. Washington; and W.E.B. Du Bois. One wonders where our country would be today if it had not been for the writers who dreamed of freedom.

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FROM THE MOUTH OF TOOMBS

2011-07-08T06:26:00.000-07:00

People tend to think of evil as something coarse and gaudy and ugly. That’s a laugh. You’d think they might know better by now. No, evil is smooth bordering on silky. It is bright and beautiful and glossy. Do you think the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil was bitter fruit? No, it was enticing and delicious. I can tell you this straight out, without any subterfuge, because you won’t listen anyway.

People tend not to believe in the veracity of demons which is exactly why we can be so honest. We can lay a trap in open country, mark it with red danger signs and post flashing neon arrows all along the way and still fill it up faster than we can get the trap door slammed shut. Now that’s saying something.

That’s why when we hear there’s an angel about, we really sharpen our claws and rise to the occasion. An angel is harder to trap, you see. They’re not going to walk right into a trap – they’re not going to put their own neck in the noose so to speak – like humans will. No, we have to show some real skill and cunning when it comes to catching an angel. What we do, (and you’ll probably come to appreciate this more when you read Mr. Sanderson’s ‘The Angelic Mysteries’)… what we do is to build a kind of labyrinth. When the angel enters the labyrinth she loses her way. She gets turned around and before she can find her way out she discovers that she has been grounded. She has lost her wings, if you will. Then we track them down and confine them in the land of Dis.

Anyway, I don’t want to give too much away. You’ve got your Dante. You’ve got your Milton. Now you’ve got your Sanderson. They’ll tell you how it is. ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ ought to give you enough to go on.

It was pride that caused our leader the infernal Serpent to stir up our most foul revolt, so I hope you’ll indulge me for just a moment. Look around you, good people. Read your newspapers or take a look at the evening news. What do you see there? Acts of goodness and mercy? Be honest now. I think not. LOL. (Which in our language means the Lowest of the Low). No. What you see is murder and mayhem in your streets. What you see is war and armed revolution and acts of terrorism. What you see is nuclear disaster and illegal business deals and adulterous behavior and drug and alcohol abuse. The list could go on and on. So, in my one moment of pride I will ask only that you recognize this: I’m not doing too badly now, am I?

Go ahead. Put another angel in my path. At least then I’ll have a worthy opponent. (You humans make me laugh. You’re just too easy).

While you’re at it, why don’t you go check out Sanderson’s page over on Face Book. Click ‘Like’ when you get there:

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Yours for Eternity, Morton Toombs

Copyright © 2011 James D. Sanderson. All Rights Reserved.

THE AMERICAN CHARACTER PART III

2011-07-01T07:23:00.000-07:00

The other famous character found in Washington Irving's 'The Sketch Book' is 'Rip Van Winkle'. ''Rip', perhaps, as in R.I.P. - Rest In Peace - as indeed this strange tale will have its hero slumber as if dead for twenty years. This is another of those papers found among the effects of one Diedrich Knickerbocker, deceased; an old gentleman who had researched the history of the Dutch settlers in that region. The story takes place in the Catskill Mountains of New York. It opens with its hero, Rip, being portrayed as a 'loafer' - one who loves to fish and hunt rather than engage himself in more profitable labor. After hunting squirrels one late afternoon he settled down on a green knoll.

From there he continued on, meeting a square-built stranger along the way. They joined up together and as they went along they heard a sound like distant thunder, and came upon some strange looking men playing ninepins. After joining them for a drink Rip fell into a deep slumber.

Upon waking he found himself once again on that green knoll where he had first dozed off. Since it was morning he realized that he must have slept there all night. Next to him he found a rusty old gun and his dog had disappeared. He headed back to the village but he met no one along the way.

The village itself was larger and more populous than he remembered it, and there were strangers everywhere. He headed over to his house but found it gone to decay and a half-starved dog waiting there. His nagging wife was nowhere around and the very character of the people in the town had changed. He found himself, then, after twenty years of sleep, "alone in the world." Eventually he meets up with his daughter and her child, and goes to live with them.

Again an afterward is signed D.K. and in it he attests to the absolute truth of this account. "The story therefore," he concludes, "is beyond the possibility of doubt."

In this story of Rip Van Winkle it is shown that change is not always for the better, and that Rip has lost his identity in the time he has been gone. In this world of constantly accelerating change and progress and 'future shock', alienation is a very valid motif in American literature, and has been right from the start. If one should only happen to blink, or to take forty winks, as it were, he might lose his place in time. Unlike the tradition-bound Europeans that have been left behind, Americans are at a loss to find any tradition at all. The American character, again, is just not able to find a place in this world.

As with the Sleepy Hollow story, old Rip returning home reveals the very American tension between the wilderness 'out there', and the civilization he returns to. Between the outer and inner aspects of humankind. Between the one who hunts and the one who works. Between brains and brawn. Here, another theme is added as well - the confusion that change brings in the lives of those who live through it.

In his eulogy to Washington Irving given at the Massachusetts Historical Society in December of 1859 his friend Henry Wadsworth Longfellow spoke of this author's contribution in these words: "We feel a just pride in his renown as an author, not forgetting that, to his other claims upon our gratitude, he adds also that of having been the first to win for our country an honourable name and position in the History of Letters."

THE AMERICAN CHARACTER PART II

2011-06-25T10:45:00.000-07:00

How would the American character have been portrayed if our earliest writers had not made the attempt to define it for us? Last time we left off with Washington Irving warming to his story set in the small market town of Greensburgh. Or, more specifically, in a quiet spot two miles outside of town. A spot known as Sleepy Hollow. In this bewitched place there was one apparition that seemed to prevail over all others - that of a Hessian soldier from the Revolutionary War whose head had been carried away by a cannon ball. Historians believed that the body had been buried in a nearby churchyard and that every so often he rides out in search of his lost head. Before daybreak this 'Headless Horseman' was always in a hurry to get back to his proper place.

Now it is said that some thirty years earlier a tall, lank man with narrow shoulders and long arms and legs - a man named Ichabod Crane - 'tarried' in the area. "To see him striding along the profile of a hill on a windy day, with his clothes bagging and fluttering about him, one might have mistaken him fro the genius of famine descending upon the earth, or some scarecrow eloped from a cornfield," Irving writes. Such details continue to build believability in his tale.

Why is it that Irving gives his main character, his 'hero', such strange features and odd manners? This school teacher from Connecticut is an 'outsider' and anyone who has been an outsider in a small town will recognize just what this man is up against. That old Headless Horseman is more accepted, despite the fact that he is ephemeral - a spirit - than this very human stranger. By sharing his stories of ghosts, Crane is hoping to win acceptance in this place where nightmares and superstitions are as real as, or more real than, real life.

Ichabod Crane was a strict taskmaster in the classroom who always kept in mind the golden maxim to spare the rod is to spoil the child, but after school he would hang out with the older boys and even escort the smaller ones home if they had pretty sisters or mothers who were good cooks. This character might be summed up in modern terms like this: he was a gangly, freeloading, self-absorbed, sissy. Not the attributes that would naturally endear him to his solid, hardworking, tough neighbors. He was the quintessential outsider.

This hero makes his first real mistake when he begins courting the beautiful Katrina Van Tussel, whose father also just happens to be a prosperous farm owner. She, of course, is also being courted by some of the local boys - strapping, hardy lads. Chief among them is a strong country fellow named Brom Van Brunt, whose nickname reflects his prowess - Bram Bones. He is the true hero. Here is the insider, the hard rider, the wild and spirited fist fighter. It is he, Bram, (the narrator leads his readers to believe), who 'becomes' the Headless Horseman in order to run this weak, effeminate, intellectual city slicker back to where he came from. It is this child of the American wilderness who prevails in the end and all join in the laughter as old Ichabod Crane skedaddles back to civilization.

It is here, too, in this tension between civilization and wilderness, between the insider and the outsider, between the intellect and the physical, that is found the American character and the gravitas of Washington Irving's storytelling.

Next week we'll take a look at Rip Van Winkle in the concluding post of The American Character. Hope you'll join me.

THE AMERICAN CHARACTER PART I

2011-06-17T15:54:00.000-07:00

I thought there would be a 'Sacred Writing' Part III this week but as is sometimes the case, I just discovered it is not here to write. I do reserve the right to post more on Sacred Writing at some later date. Instead, join with me as we explore some of the earliest writing in our country's history, and how it reveals something about The American Character:

Jorge Luis Borges said of Washinton Irving and James Fenimore Cooper,"... we can skip over them without any consequence." Friends, their position at the very beginning of the history of American literature brings at least some relevance to their work. Here in their writings is found the first seeds of the American hero. Here is found the hero that is never quite at home in the world. The one who is unsure of his place. The one who is unable to ever completely fit in. Here is found the predecessor of Ahab, Snopes, Jake Barnes and Dean Moriarty.

It is, in fact, impossible to calculate just how much influence Washington Irving exerted over those who were to follow. He was the first belletrist of American Letters. He was the one who shaped and created the modern American short story - placing his tales on American soil. He was the first to write in the vernacular - the common language of the day. The first to bring humor into his work. The first in the Gothic tradition that would later influence Edgar Allen Poe. The first to set pen to parchment to create literature in America. What might have emerged if he had not written can never be known.

Because he was born shortly after independence in 1783, he was named for George Washington. He was a sickly kid - the eleventh in his family - but he dreamed of adventure and far-flung travels. His favorite book growing up was 'Robinson Crusoe'. One day his dreams would be realized and, as was reported in 'The Atlantic Monthly' "He recognized fully the advantages of a foreign life... in following up that career of belles-lettres study which he had marked out for himself. The free entree of European libraries and galleries and familiar association with a class of cultivated men of leisure (in countries where such class exists), offered opportunity for refining his taste, for enlarging his stock of available material, and for stimulating his mental activity, of which he was not slow to perceive the value, and of which he has given ample account." ('The Atlantic Monthly' Vol 13, Issue 80. Boston. June 1864).

Irving's two most famous stories appeared in 'The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.' (1819). Its publication won its author and American literature in general the respect and acclaim of European critics.

'The Legend of Sleepy Hollow' is told in the first person, presumably by the late Diedrich Knickerbocker. By claiming the manuscript was found among the papers of the deceased, and by saying in the Postscript that it had been "Found in the Handwriting of Mister Knickerbocker," Irving is doing everything he can to make the story seem a true one. The narrator gives details that he claims to be precise and authentic. At every turn he attempts to establish the story's veracity. "On my word of honor," is what is implied.

Having established the 'truth', then, Irving warms to his story. (One can almost see him rubbing his hands together with a mischievous and knowing smile on his full face). On the eastern shore of the Hudson River lies the small market-town of Greensburgh or, more properly Tarry Town. So-called because in it men used to tarry or hang around on market days while their wives were off shopping. Outside of town, some two miles away, is found a quiet and secluded spot. In fact the general characteristics of the entire area is of quietude, of repose, and retreat from the troubles of this world. There, in that little valley known as Sleepy Hollow one may find tranquility and a drowsy atmosphere. Some say the place is haunted or bewitched. There are many local tales about that enchanted region.

Let me tell you more about this Sleepy Hollow next week in Part Two of 'The American Character'. Jim

SARAH'S STORY

2011-06-13T12:17:00.000-07:00

SARAH’S STORY
I don’t even know where my name came from. I like it though. Sarah. There is something romantic about my name. But when people ask about my mother or father, I have no idea how to respond to them. I tried to explain it to Daniel, I really did, but he seemed to understand even less than anyone else. Leave it to me to run into such a skeptic.

Actually, Sarah has always been my name. There has never been a time I know of that I was not called Sarah. It means something different in heaven though, I think. Sarah was Abraham’s wife in the Bible, of course, and the name itself is from the Hebrew for ‘Princess’. But a princess on earth is one who is honored for being born high-up in society, while in heaven the name has more to do with servant hood. That’s what makes me the perfect guardian, I guess. The name fits for that, don’t you think?

Many stories are told about angels but not many of them are very accurate. Angels are not born as humans are. We are created and have always been. Our encounters with humans have been relatively recent, in fact. I recall my very first assignment with human beings. They were the first man and first woman – Adam and Eve. They had become hopelessly lost in the harsh land to the east of Eden and I helped them find their way. The morning after they were expelled from the Garden both of them paused for a long moment to look out over the land around them. Behind them the smoke and fire at the gates of the Garden that had seemed so near the night before now was far off. The black smoke was on the distant horizon. Far beyond that – a mere dimple on the skyline – was the mountain they had called God’s Throne. It was part of a great range of peaks that bled off into the distance, purple and indistinct. The hillock they stood upon led down into what looked to have been a river valley; dry now. As they descended they slid in the rough rock scree and were forced to steady themselves with their hands. Adam was pricked by the spine of a tiny cactus and he held his palm to his mouth and tried to force the black spine out with his teeth. At last he succeeded and he rubbed his palm against the thigh of his skin robe.

They reached the bottom of the slope now and began to follow the dry stream bed along, generally to the south. Here, they were confronted with a world that was so different from the life they had led in the Garden that both of them felt slightly unhinged from their former identity. Nothing was as it had been. They were no longer who they had been. The life they had lived was no more, and yet they had no idea what their life ahead might lead them to. As they passed under gigantic overhangs of rock and the infinite sky overhead, they seemed to be passing through time – from one time (the time that had been) – into another.

Distances were deceptive here. They walked the entire long day before they reached the other side of the bowl and came upon a ridgeline of rotted rock and crumbling outcroppings. They lay down in the sand at the base of this rise just as the sun was blotted out by the distant line of the horizon. The next morning they climbed the outcropping to the top of the ridge. Ahead was more of the same. Rock sculptures were thrust up here and there with colors that were so muted they almost could not be called colors. There were layers of light red and pink and brown and tan all fused together into one grand effect. When the yellow sun hit them, they seemed to be transformed into even more indescribable hues.

A sense of emptiness plagued them all that day as they walked along the floor of this immense flat expanse of dirt and rock. Only the shifting colors of the rocks – red, yellow, brown, confirmed that they were actually moving forward. An eagle flying far overhead was a major event. They found no water that day and by nightfall their tongues were thick with thirst.

The next day the land changed again and I managed to lead them without their knowledge to a narrow stream that ran down between the rocks. They drank as much as they could hold – their bellies were bloated by the time they had finished – and then they began to follow the stream down into a wide valley that was strung along with greenery because of the water. Who knows what would have happened to humankind if I had not been there to lead them to water.

Anyway, my story goes on like that over the centuries. I go wherever I am needed and I could tell you some interesting things all right. (Perhaps one day I will write my angelic memoirs, who knows?) But my most recent story (the story Mr. Sanderson relates in his ‘The Angelic Mysteries’), begins with the trickery of Morton Toombs. I was in New York City following my charge Daniel Allman when I found myself getting turned around in the dark alleys and streets. I recognize now what I did not recognize then – that Toombs had drawn me into an elaborate labyrinth from which I could not escape. In this way he clipped my wings and brought me into an earthbound existence. I am still not certain exactly how he did it.

Then, when he had me completely lost and without my superpowers (as it were), he tried to get his hands on me. I knew very well what would happen if he did. But let me leave all that to your reading of ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ which is being released on August 18th. Mr. Sanderson is a capable storyteller and he has written very well the story I have just begun for you. I do hope you will continue reading it there.

Oh and by the way, you can keep up with Mr. Sanderson and his writing at http://www.facebook.com/jamesdsandersonbooks

Hope to see you there. Sarah

Copyright © 2011 by James D. Sanderson. All Rights Reserved.

SACRED WRITING - PART II

2011-06-10T15:36:00.000-07:00

I'm way behind the times. In fact the truths I try to live by are as old as the hills. Love God. Love One Another. Tell the truth. (Perhaps even more important -live the truth). Haven't I heard about Postmodernism? people demand to know. I must be stuck way back there in the male dominated, structuralist, pre-deconstructionist, urban, elite, totalization - ated :), hierarchical, designed, purposeful, modernism (or even pre-modernism) of some other time! Well, OK, while that is not completely true, it is mainly true. Is that because I don't understand Postmodernism? Not at all. I understand it only too well and I reject it.

How can I reject it? Everyone else is doing it. I reject it because of its selfish, relative, anarchic, fragmented, and deconstructive approach to the truth. (Or antithesis of truth). It is just that simple. I believe in a creator God. A saving Christ. A single truth. A value system rooted in God's Word. A purposeful life lived according to an ultimate plan. Eternal life.

The way I believe causes me to write the way I do. There is a reason for writing as I do, I should say. I understand that there is a reason Postmodernists write the way they do too. They see the world as a frustrating, enraging, dis empowering, authoritarian place to live. (And believe me on certain days I can see exactly what they are talking about). But when I'm in my right mind, I know that I am but a small part of the overall pattern and plan in a universe created for a purpose by a Grand Creator - God.

My belief causes me to love others even when they are unlovable. (Its a supernatural thing). To help others even when they don't deserve help. To live the way of nonviolence in my life. (And that's a tough one folks in a culture steeped in violence). To love and cherish my wife and family. To touch the earth lightly with a smaller car, recycling, reusing, rethinking the way I do things, batching my trips so I drive less, buying locally when possible, shopping at the thrift shop, to grow my own food as much as I can, to capture and use rainwater, to stop and help my neighbor with her goats... I'm not trying to pat myself on the back here. I'm trying to make a point that the way I believe drives the way I act 'and' the way I write. My writing is just part and parcel with the way I have chosen to live my life.

And, as I pointed out last week, my life is all I have to give. The time I'm given on this great earth is all I'm going to have so when I write, I'm investing the most precious gift I have - my time - into my work. I think that makes what I have to say pretty important. It will have to be important to you, too, if you're going to spend/invest your time reading it. Does that mean you have to believe exactly as I do? Not at all. We can agree to disagree. We can even disagree and disagree. But I want you to know that what I have written I take very seriously. I hope it entertains you, but I also hope it makes you stop and think about the nature of the planet we live on, and the sacredness of our lives.

Those are the terms under which I set pen to paper. It sets a standard for my writing and it also sets forward a challenge for the reader. The more the reader has read, the more insight the reader will have into what I have written.

Whew, this whole post took an unexpected turn. I guess I'll have to write what I planned to write next week. Let me know what you think either here or on Facebook at:

http://www.facebook.com/jamesdsandersonbooks

See you next time GLW (Good Lord Willing),

Jim

MARMADUKE

2011-06-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

It doesn't seem like so long ago when I was young and my dad was in business for himself as a house painter and Marmaduke came over every so often to visit us. I always looked forward to seeing Marmaduke. He was a college guy and he had big plans and he always handed me one of those match sticks that was made of cardboard and asked me to split it with my thumb nail. Then he'd tell me to take each side between my fingers and hold the thing out in front of me. Then he'd tell me to say 'Vroom' 'Vroom' and when I did he said, "Hey, what have you got there, a motorcycle?"

He did it every time he came over and I guess it was a little bit silly, especially looking back at it now, but I admired him so much I didn't care.

Marmaduke always had a story to tell and of course I don't remember most of them now. He really liked my dad and they hit it off well in spite of the difference in their ages, just as I hit it off with him in spite of the age difference between us. Maybe Marmaduke just hit it off well with everyone, I don't know.

One time Marmaduke came over with a record album to play for my dad. It was one of the first albums by Bob Dylan - I don't remember which one. I listened in and I could tell my dad didn't really get it about Bob Dylan but I did. After a while my friends were listening to Bob Dylan and they didn't really get it either. I tried to explain it to them but they still didn't get it. Then after some more time went by everyone was listening to Bob Dylan and they really got it about him. I think I must have been one of the first people to get it about Bob Dylan and that was because of Marmaduke.

Another time he came over he had a roll of paper under his arm and it was plans for an amusement park once he rolled it out, all laid out like it was ready to be built. It was a project he had done for a college class but then he started to take it seriously and thought that he might actually build it and he'd make a bundle of money. He asked my dad if he'd like to invest some money in it but my dad just shook his head sadly and shrugged his shoulders and showed the palms of his hands.

"Sorry, buddy, I can't do it. I've got kids to raise."

I don't know if the amusement park ever got built. I don't remember there ever being a new park being built around that part of Southwest Michigan. Probably not. That's how things go, really. There are a lot more 'probably nots' than there are 'probablies' in the world. As least that was true where I came from.

Anyway, I ran into Marmaduke years later and he didn't mention the amusement park or anything like it. He worked in a record store as I recall. He still like Bob Dylan but there was a lot of other music he liked too. That was after my dad lost his business and went out to Arizona to live in a school bus.

After we had gotten past our greetings and smiles and back slapping and answering, "Say, where is your old man anyway?" and "How is he doing?" Marmaduke said, "I've got a story to tell you, Jim." And he proceeded to tell me about this man he knew - Daniel Allman - who met a woman who believed she was an angel. "Honest to God," he said. "They traveled around together and I'm not lyin' he said they were being chased around Europe by a huge anti-angel. An anti-angel is one that comes from hell according to Daniel. And their job is to catch or kill the good angels."

And the more he told me the story of this Daniel Allman and the girl, Sarah, the more I knew I had to write it all out and that is the story that is 'The Angelic Mysteries' that is coming out August 18th this year.

I don't know whatever happened to Marmaduke after that. I never saw him again. I do know what happened to my dad and all the rest of it. But I guess that will have to wait for another time.

Copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson All Rights Reserved.

SACRED WRITING - PART I

2011-06-03T07:20:00.000-07:00

All writing is sacred. It is sacred in the sense that our lives are sacred and if we are pouring our lives into something, that something becomes a sacred endeavor. This makes some assumptions, I know. It assumes that our lives 'are' sacred. That there is some meaning and purpose for our lives. And it assumes that what we do is sacred - that it is part and parcel with the purpose of our lives. Without those basic assumptions I question whether anything is, or could be, sacred at all.

Even if we leave aside the idea of a Creator God (which I don't), our lives are sacred in the sense that we are only given so much time. This moment is the only such moment we are to be given. When it has passed it will never be present again. We will never again be present in this moment. In a sense I have traded this moment in time to be writing this blog posting. It will never be again. I will never be again in this moment. Therefore, this moment is a sacred moment.

I have heard it said that time is limited. That's not true. Time is not limited. Our lives are limited in time. Because our lives end, we have been given only so much time to be. What I am be-ing in this moment, what I am doing, is therefore important. Should I not be doing something important with it?

Sacredness in our culture has been eclipsed by the desire for money and the pleasure that we believe money can buy. We are intent upon getting our work done so that we can exchange it for payment and to exchange that payment for a night out, a travel adventure, a new car/boat/house/RV, or what have you. Even when we are poor, however, and not presented with so many options, we can lose track of our sacredness. We become caught up in our lack of money and our lack of the pleasures that money can buy. (We see these pleasures being lived out all around us, do we not?) We can come to curse our life and lose sight of its significance.

But time is passing whether we recognize our sacredness or not. A good exercise might be to imagine we are at the end of our lives and looking back and asking ourselves what we would like to see there. Am I going to curse the day I held my child and loved her? Am I going to rue the day I woke up early to watch the sunrise? Am I going to feel cheated by the time I put into writing the greatest work I possibly could?

Such is the sacredness of writing.

I am nearing 59 years of age and both ends of life are coming into view. Looking back now, I can scarcely remember the gratification that came from owning things. I can scarcely recall the days I cursed my life because I was poor and having trouble paying the bills. What has become important to me, and what was important all along, was the time I spent/invested in finding the sacred center. It is here I want to spend the rest of my days.

With love,

Jim

WRITING GREATNESS

2011-05-30T06:39:00.001-07:00

I was twelve years old. It was the year - and this is how I remember it - it was the year I took a job with old Mister King. He grew tomatoes for the local grocery stores and he was gettin' old. He needed a hand around the place. Mostly I was breaking up tomato crates so they could be reassembled into new crates. Anyway, it was in that same year my dad took a creative writing course. So I have my writing career to thank my dad for - for better or worse.

Here's how it went: When I heard that a body could make money writing stories, which is what I already knew I wanted to do anyway, I was amazed. I was already reading classic literature by that time. I would read a story like 'A Barn Burner' or 'The Snows of Kilimanjaro' and I didn't really understand it so I would go to my dad and ask him what it was all about. "Did the guy die in the end or what?" I'd ask.

"Maybe you're too young to understand it yet," he'd say.

And he was right, of course, but I'd read them anyway and maybe that was part of the appeal - that I didn't really understand and wanted to, or that I wanted to be able to say I read stuff than nobody my age understood.

This is the second anniversary of my blog. I am creating this blog while I am working on my work in progress - attempting to work out details and to come up with solutions I might not otherwise have come up with. Sometimes it is hard to tell which is which. I am writing from within the creative eye, as I call it. I hope you are enjoying my work here.

In August my novella 'The Angelic Mysteries' will be released through Amazon and Barnes and Nobles and Smashwords. I hope you will give it a try and let me know what you think of it. It has been many years in the making. 'The Angelic Mysteries' was published first as a trade paperback novel in 1994. It was picked up by an agent who made promises of millions $. When that didn't happen it was dropped quick enough and I don't feel it was ever given a proper reading. I have since completely re-written it and it is much shorter. I like to think it has been distilled. In any case, I like this version much better and am excited to be releasing it soon.

Thanks for following my work here and as always I invite comments from my readers.

Yours always,

Jim

RESURRECTION

2011-05-27T04:44:00.000-07:00

What if you decided to give up everything you owned and live among the poorest of the poor? Would it make any difference in the world? Would it make any difference in your life?

Tolstoy tried it and the results were mixed. His family didn't want him to give up his property and they wanted to retain the rights to his work. After his death they won it all back in court. We know Tolstoy by his greatest works 'War and Peace'
(1863-1869)and 'Anna Karenina'(1873-1877) of course. So how is it I have never before read his third great novel, 'Resurrection'(1899)?

Tolstoy's later writings caused a great deal of trouble for a great number of people. 'The Kingdom of God is Within You' and other writings and thoughts troubled the Orthodox Church so much that he was excommunicated in 1901. He corresponded with M.K. Gandhi about the way of nonviolent resistance to evil. (Still a controversial idea today in this world filled with violence). It is better to let such troubling ideas slip into oblivion, is it not? But this is Tolstoy! How can you silence this great author and moralist? But that is apparently what happened to 'Resurrection' in those years following his death in the train station at Astapovo in 1910.

'Resurrection' is the story of Prince Dmitri Nekhlyodov who, as a younger man, seduced and then abandoned a young woman by the name of Katyusha. Many years later he chances to become involved in her life again - as a juror this time - and he is confronted with the fact that his actions have ruined her life. He becomes determined to give up everything and follow her into exile in Siberia.

The questions remains: Will he be able to find redemption in his attempt to overturn his past mistakes? Will it make any difference to anyone if he does? Will the world be a better place because of his sacrifice?

Tolstoy's conclusions will be as disturbing today as they were then to those who have chosen to look for answers everywhere but in the Bible: "Seek ye first the kingdom of God, and his righteousness, and all the rest shall be added on to you."

Tolstoy highlights five 'commandments' from the Bible, each of which is most disturbing to those of us who have decided to try to live this way literally in our daily lives. They are commandments based upon the law of love and nonviolence. From our own experience we have found that the way of love leads us quite literally to die to this world and to be resurrected in eternity. 'Resurrection' is work of literature that explores that territory.

THE WORDS OF ABRAHAM LINCOLN

2011-05-20T08:56:00.000-07:00

Now that we are all positively giddy with the prospect of yet another election season - only seventeen months left before the election - we can't wait to see what a crop of political geniuses will enter the ring and which will stand victorious before the nation next November. (Or as my southern friends would say, "November a year.") Will it be Newt? Sarah? Jim? Jim. Jim who? Yes, it always begins like that. From 'Jim who?' to Mr. President. In this way I am announcing my own bid for the White House.

And why not? Every four years we hear the we have need of change. Well I say we are tired of change. We'd rather have dollars. We're tired of spare change. Give us dollars or give us gold!

And why not? I really am the common citizen. Others make a mockery of our commonness by claiming their own commonness. This when they are anything but common. They are common to one another. They are not common to me.

Campaigns are a war of words and images. Slogans. Speeches. Radio and Television and Internet spots. And words are the stuff of literature. The one candidate I believe transcended words to achieve literature was Abraham Lincoln. I'm not sure how that happened. He really was a common man and he spoke in the common language and he lacked the classic education of other gifted pols. Further, his words were few. All of his speeches were incredibly brief. In that fact may be the key to his literary greatness.

In his 'Farewell to Springfield' he summed up his sentiments in this way: "To this place, and the kindness of these people, I owe everything."

His 'First Inaugural Address' was longer, but for good reason. Only two weeks earlier Jefferson Davis had been inaugurated President of the Confederacy. He made his case again the division of the Union in part in this way: "Perpetuity is implied, if not expressed, in the fundamental law of all national governments. ...no government proper ever had a provision in its organic law for its own termination." "...if the destruction of the Union by one or by a part only of the States be law full possible, the Union is less perfect... having lost the vital element of perpetuity."

His most famous speech is, of course, the 'Gettysburg Address'. Who has not heard the words, "Four score and seven years ago..." "...we can not dedicate - we can not consecrate - we can not hallow - this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it far above our poor power to add or detract." And in conclusion: "...that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom - and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

And finally his 'Second Inaugural Address', delivered little over a week before his assassination: "With malice toward none, with Charity for all, with firmness in the right as God gives us to see the right, let us strive on to finish the work we are in, t bind up the nation's wounds, to care for him who shall have borne the battle and for his widow and his orphan, to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves and with all nations."

As I was looking at Mr. Lincoln and his work this past week I found that it was important to keep in mind the time in which he lived, and the pressures that he was under. Pressure is what turns carbon into diamonds under the earth. Pressure is what makes the need for a few well-chosen words a must. We live in a world that is filled with words, words, words. There is no pressure. Words can just be glibly reeled out, one after another after another. Everyone knows they don't mean anything. They may even be lies. That's just the way it is.

What if we began to apply the pressure of the spiritual to our words? What if, as in other days, words were seen as sacred? What if our lives had to live up to our words, and our words live up to our lives? Would that not bring a different and more pressurized meaning to our words? I believe it would. As I am writing my latest work, I am keeping in mind that each word is sacred. That should make all the difference.

In closing I will use these words spoken by former Presidential Candidate Pat Paulsen: "If you vote for one of the other candidates, don't blame me!"

BOTH

2011-05-13T14:04:00.000-07:00

Both! That's what the title character in the popular movie 'Radio' answered when he was asked which kind of pie he wanted. (Cherry or Apple? I don't remember specifically). But I remember that answer. Both. Isn't that what we all want when it comes to pie? (Never mind my diet).

But when it comes to literature we are told we can't have both. It's either cherry or apple. Take your pick, but you can't have both. Only in this case it's either deeply moving character-driven 'literary' stories or novels 'or' it's plot driven stories with shallow characters and even more shallow moral problems to work through. Now I may be hard to please but if I get the chance, I want both. I want a work that sweeps me up in a genuine story (it doesn't have to be a three act play or follow the Freitag Triangle, but it has to move along) 'and' a reason for that story to exist. Both a deep character study 'and' a great story line, in short.

After all, what is a plot but a series of incidents that happens to (or are caused by) character? What is character but an ever deepening personality formed by the things that happen to her/him, or by what they already believe? I know. I know. This is not the place to go into a long study of either character or theme or plot. You can read entire books on any of those subjects.

I'm a frustrated author and reader. About the time I started writing in earnest, back in the early seventies (that's 1970s thank you very much), a movement was taking hold that later came to be called 'Post Modern'. A division had begun between what was considered 'literary' and thus serious writing, and popular, and thus not serious writing. If you were a serious literary writer, you didn't concern yourself with the story. (Sniff). You only concerned yourself with character and experimental ways of driving the story forward. But if you were a popular writer who wanted to explore the depths of human character in your story, you were accused of slowing the plot line down. (Which is Baaad).

Well, I'm here to tell you: I still want both. I want to read both and I want to write both. I know I'm too picky for words. I want 'Lonesome Dove' or 'A Thousand Acres' or even 'Blindness' for crying out loud. Both. So if you're writing, please remember me while you're doing it. And I pledge that I will remember 'both' in my writing.

Work on my master work continues and you can bet it has both. I am experimenting a little too, but it is within the framework - the structure (another no-no word for post moderns)- of the greater story. I am taking time to develop my characters and they have genuine heart-felt reasons for doing what they do and the action grows from those characters and their convictions. Work is progressing nicely.

I wanted to take a moment to thank my daughter Holly here, too. I was struggling with all the work I am doing promoting 'The Angelic Mysteries' which is coming out in August. I wasn't getting as much work done of my work in progress and was having trouble concentrating on it. She reminded me of something her writing professor taught her: "Do the writing first." Now that sounds like pretty simple advice (the best advice usually is), but it is so true. The minute I started putting my writing first again, everything else has begun to fall in line. After all, I could work 24/7 on promotional activities and still never be done. Start with your writing. Then do everything else. Thanks again Holly.

Jim

THE HEART AS LUTE - PART TWO

2011-05-06T16:45:00.000-07:00

The first Gothic novel was ‘The Castle of Otranto’ by Horace Walpole, Earl of Oxford (1717-1797). Its castle was a dismal place, but not near as much time is spent developing the atmosphere in that story as in ‘Usher’. (The Fall of the House of Usher). The reader is led, there, straight into the action with the crushing death of a young prince. There was the underlying shame of incest, of supernatural events, and hauntings by unknown and perhaps unknowable fears and horrors. Other influences on Poe may have been Clara Reeve (1729-1807) who wrote ‘The Old English Baron’ and Matthew Gregory Lewis (1775-1818) who wrote about things supernatural in his ‘The Monk’ and in the Gothic tradition in ‘Mistrust’ with its mysteries, witchcraft, murder and the horror of human deeds. There was Mary Shelly’s ‘Frankenstein’, of course, and his contemporary Nathaniel Hawthorne, though Poe did not like Hawthorne’s, ‘The White Old Maid’.

Did Poe influence Wolfgan Hildesheimer’s story ‘A World Ends’? This story describes a gala party at San Amerigo (an artificial island – can the word America be missed here?). It is a place of much splendor and opulence. The end of something has come but no one seems to have a clue about it. It is as if they are on the deck of the Titanic but no one notices that they are about to sink. The story is told in a tone of dreaminess and acceptance. There is a certain cynical notion presented here that things have always been this way, and they always remain so. The first person narrator finds himself among the cultural elite, but the rats have quite literally begun to abandon the place. The floor vibrates as the very foundation of the island is breaking apart. The music continues to play and all stay behind save the narrator who, like the rats and the servants, flees for his life. There was the crashing roar as of a building collapsing. Upon looking back from sea, it was if the place had never been.

To ‘usher’ is to lead someone to their seat. An usher is a person who is the doorkeeper; the one who introduces a personage. In this case, to usher in a new way of being, and to usher out the old.

Poe is the first one to usher in the detective story as well. ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ begins with a narrative discussion of those who delight in analyzing (as with Poe himself): “that moral activity which disentangles”. “He (the analyst) is fond of enigmas, of conundrums, hieroglyphics…” The author is setting the scene here in a different way – setting the mind to pondering what it means to analyze a situation. He then discusses various games – chess, draughts, and whist – weighing the necessity of each in the use of calculating powers. He goes on to say, “The analytical power should not be confounded with simple ingenuity; for while the analyst is necessarily ingenious, the ingenious man is often remarkably incapable of analysis.”

His narrative then brings the reader to Paris in the summer of 18— and as a matter of shear coincidence the narrator and a Monsieur C. Auguste Dupin happen to meet while searching for the same rare book. Dupin had, he noticed, a peculiar analytic ability. He seemed, in those times when he pondered a problem, to become a different person, as though he were a “Bi-Part Soul”. Dupin managed to amaze him with his powers of deductive reasoning. His powers of observation were extreme.

Later, as they were looking through the latest edition of the ‘Gazette de Tribunaux’ the story of “Extraordinary Murders” caught their eye. At about 3 A.M., according to the report, there was an uproar on the fourth floor of a house in the Rue Morgue which was occupied by Madame L’Espanaye and her daughter, Mademoiselle Camille L’Espanaye. Neighbors and gendarmes found the door locked and upon forcing it open found the apartment in wild disarray, a blood-stained razor, several thick tresses of gray human hair pulled out by the roots, with the corpse of the daughter up the fireplace chimney, head downward. The old lady was found later in the rear yard of the building, also dead. Her throat had been cut.

The next day’s paper added some details, statements had been taken from various people but these seemed to bring the authorities no closer to solving the case. In spite of that, a clerk named Adolphe Le Bon had been arrested and imprisoned in the matter. Dupin remembered that La Bon had once done him a good turn and wanted to look into the case a little further. In the end, of course, it is C. Auguste Dupin’s powers of deductive reasoning that cause him to solve this extraordinary case using only the most common and obvious of clues. He resolved at the beginning that these women were not murdered by spirits, thus rejecting the possibility of spectral evidence that had been used in the trial of witches a century earlier. By ruling out the various possibilities, what is left must be truth, no matter how unlikely it may seem.

This ratiocination, that is, the cold, objective logic used to solve a mystery, was later used in Arthur Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes. It is difficult to miss, again, the very American contrast and conflict between the use of brains, represented by the man of reason; and brawn, represented here in the very real animal itself.

‘The Gold Bug’ too, is an extraordinary story. Extraordinary in that a code is embedded in the text. A parchment is found on the beach, apparently something from the pirate Captain Kid. A treasure hunt is afoot, but what distinguishes this story from other ordinary adventure stories based upon the seeking of a lost treasure, is the cryptogram written in invisible ink on the parchment. An ink that only reveals its secrets when held near the fireplace. A code, of course, begs a solution. And what is used to solve this particular code is a substitution cipher using letter frequencies. This cipher presumes that some letters occur more often than others. The letter ‘E’, for example, occurs in writing more often than any other. This is one of the few stories ever to involve a cryptogram in the story itself.

In a way Poe was already ‘ushering’ in with his work, the coming of modern literature - (Can ‘ushering’ be used more than once?) – laying out the satisfying but fragmentary modern short story. The collapse of the old way was not to be eclipsed yet for another sixty years. Then it would come tumbling to pieces in the hands of Virginia Woolf, James Joyce, and others. With Poe the old order is already being shaken. A new order is yet to take its place.

I have lived under the specter of madness all my life and suspect many people have. The malady seems to infiltrate every home in one form or another. It is this sense of madness in modern life that Poe predicts so well. When I sat down to write 'The Angelic Mysteries' (it was begun many years ago), I wanted to convey this madness not only in the story itself, but in the way the story is presented. Some early readers have commented on the large number of very short chapters. Yes, that is right. Madness leads to a kind of fracture in a life's story. So, this story also attempts to break up attempts at a 'rational' reading. Please bear with it. I think the effect is worth it in the end.

Jim

This post has been adapted from a chapter of 'American Masters' due out March 2012. It is copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson

THE HEART AS LUTE - PART ONE

2011-04-29T06:49:00.000-07:00

In a letter to Edgar Allan Poe (Cambridge, May 19, 1841), Longfellow wrote: “You are mistaken in supposing that you are not ‘favorably known to me.’ On the contrary, all that I have read, from your pen, has inspired me with a high idea of your power; and you are destined to stand among the first romance-writers of the country, if such is your aim.”

Poe returned the favor the following year with a heavy-handed review of Longfellow’s ‘Ballads and Other Poems’ in Graham’s Lady’s and Gentleman’s Magazine, 20 (March – April, 1842) 189-190; 248-251. “Much as we admire the genius of Mr. Longfellow,” he wrote, “we are fully sensible to his many errors of affectation and imitation. His artistical skill is great, and his ideality high. But his conception of the aims of poesy is all wrong…” Then he picks up a line later, “He has written brilliant poems – by accident; that is to say when permitting his genius to get the better of his conventional habit of thinking – a habit deduced from German study.”
This, as it turns out, is a rather more clear-eyed criticism of Longfellow than Poe will render later, when he becomes absolutely obsessed with the claim that Longfellow was a plagiarist in the matter of the Kalavala and ‘The Song of Hiawatha’.
Edgar’s parents were both actors but his mother died while he was still in infancy. He did endure some poverty for a time but then began to make a name for himself as an editor and critic at the ‘Southern Literary Magazine’. He married his thirteen year old cousin Virginia Clemm. Then, because he tended to drink overmuch, he lost his position at ‘Southern’. His bent toward Romanticism caused his concern with the occult and the satanic. His own feverish dreams seem to have driven him on. He may even have been bi-polar or to have had, as they called it, a double personality. That would certainly explain his bizarre mood swings and obsession with things macabre. His ‘Narrative of Arthur Gordon Pym’ is believed to have had an influence on Herman Melville’s Moby-Dick.

Who can forget the first time they read Poe? Whether it was ‘The Raven’ or ‘Masque of the Red Death’ or ‘The Pit and the Pendulum’ – (or ‘The Gold Bug’; ‘The Tell-Tale Heart’; ‘The Fall of the House of Usher’; ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’; ‘The Cask of Amontillado’) – one can have started almost anywhere and still have the same strong impression; the same strong memory.

‘The Fall of the House of Usher’ begins with a quote by Pierre Jean de Be’ranger from his ‘Le Refus’: “Son Coeur est un luth suspendu; Silot qu on le touché il resonne.” (See accents). Why does Poe choose to begin this dreary Gothic account with such a peculiar epigraph? “His heart,” it reads, “is a suspended lute; which resounds at once when it is touched.” Whose heart resounds – the narrator’s? (Why has Poe changed the quote from ‘My heart’ to ‘His heart’? What does that have to do with a man visiting this “melancholy House of Usher”? One who felt “with the first glimpse of the building, a sense of insufferable gloom…” A man who was forced at the outset to, “…grapple with the shadowy fancies that crowded upon me as I pondered. I was forced to fall back upon the unsatisfactory conclusion, that while, beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us, still the analysis of this power lies among considerations beyond our depth.”

Poe uses the atmosphere and tone of the work to create an emotional response in his reader, using the first person narration (narrator as character), to forge a bond – to grab hold and not let go until they – narrator and reader – have reached the desired conclusion together. Desired, in any case, by the author, Poe himself.
Roderick Usher had been a boyhood companion, the narrator claims, but it had been years since their last meeting. Then, out of the depths of an oppressive mental and physical disorder a letter arrived asking for a visit. Usher had always been a private soul, so even though they had been close friends in some ways, the narrator claims he didn’t really know him at all. Thus our narrator arrives on horseback at the House of Usher.

The impression of the house itself and the atmosphere surrounding it was that it had been cut off from Heaven’s good graces, and was instead a place of rot and decay. Of death. It was as if the rot had occurred, and was still occurring, but nothing had fallen apart because there was no force; not the slightest force, that could complete the task. The narrator comments, “I felt that I breathed an atmosphere of sorrow.” Certainly this is a world far from the open expanses and good air of wild country.

The Usher he met was quite a different man from the one he remembered. He seemed to believe that the mansion itself controlled his behavior and shaped his destiny. Usher was afflicted, he said, by “a constitutional and family evil…” His sister, the lady Madeline, was also afflicted by this elusive illness. There was, “A settled apathy, a gradual wasting away of the person…” These strange afflictions may have been the result of familial intermarriage, “…the entire family lay in the direct line of decent.”

Poe includes his poem, published earlier, ‘The Haunted Palace’, in which people dance to a lute around a throne upon which the King of the realm sits in all his glory. But some evil “in robes of sorrow” had entered in and now a discordant melody was being played.

There was a poison, it seems, that had gotten down deep into the soul of this place. Was this, perhaps, representative of the Europe of old with her monarchs and traditions; a place that could not change. Or was it something more – a warning – against any form of rigidity in life. Life is supple and spontaneous and animated. Death is rigid, airless, and motionless.

A list of books is included in the tale, a list that proves Usher was fascinated with the occult. The list includes, in part, ‘The Subterranean Voyage of Nicholan Klimm’ by Ludvig Holberg, a novel published originally in Latin. ‘Chiromancy’ by Robert Flud (1574 – 1637), who studied chemistry, medicine, and the occult. ‘Journey into the Blue Distance’ (‘Das alte Buch und die Reise ins Blave hinein’ by Johann Ludwig Tieck (1773-1853). And ‘Directorium Inquisitorum’ by Nicoau Eymerich (1320-1399), the Inquisitor general of the Inquisition of the Crown of Aragon. This ‘Directorium’ defined witchcraft and ways of discovering witches. “Over which,” the narrator claims, “Usher would sit dreaming for hours.”

At this point in the story, Usher informed him that the lady Madeline was no more. He was keeping her corpse hidden away (lest her physician snatch her body – a specimen for medical study). She was, it turns out, his twin. Now Usher roamed about the place aimlessly. “The pallor of his countenance had assumed if possible a more ghastly hue – but the luminousness of his eye had utterly gone out.”

To pass the night as Usher slowly sinks into madness, the narrator chooses to read aloud from an “antique volume” called the ‘Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning’. (This may, in fact, have been another work by Poe, but one which has never yet been discovered). As he reads he hears unusual screaming or grating sounds which correspond, oddly, with the final shriek of the slain dragon in the tale. Then he reads of the sound of a brass shield falling upon a silver floor, and again there is the corresponding sound in the house of Usher.

Now Usher claims that the lady Madeline has been placed in her coffin still alive! (An attempt, perhaps, to keep her entombed just as she is. To keep her from being changed in any way by this stranger’s visit). And there she is now in shrouds, come to bear her brother also off to death. (The only one who could touch Roderick Usher’s suspended lute of a heart was his twin sister).

It had been the narrator’s hope, one thinks, to save his long lost friend. But by entering that world of fantasy and madness, one risks being infected as well. One must escape back into the real, the natural world, if he is to save himself.
The narrator flees and along his path a wild light flashes. He turns to witness the house rent from roof to foundation, and the walls come crashing down – the fall of the house of Usher.

This article (along with Part Two) was first published by The Smoking Poet and is adapted from a chapter from 'American Masters' to be published in September 2012. It is Copyright 2011 By James D. Sanderson. All Rights Reserved.

NAKED UNDER THE SKY

2011-04-22T08:56:00.000-07:00

“How strange and awful it seemed to stand naked under the sky! how delicious! She felt like some new-born creature, opening its eyes in a familiar world that it had never known.” That is a strange and wonderful quote from ‘The Awakening’ by Kate Chopin. I read it some years ago but I’m not sure I really appreciated its worth. Written well over a hundred years ago, it predicts the coming awakening of women in history, but reading it again now I can see how it also predicts the coming experimentation in modern literature. Here is a writer on the cutting edge, in short.

When the book’s main character Edna Pontellier is released from the sweltering heat of New Orleans and from the oppressive hand of her husband, she finds she is not the woman she had thought herself to be. Unlike others of her time, however, she is willing to throw off the constraints of life as a married woman and the mother of her children and explore beyond the bounds that good society will allow. And yet the ‘lesson’ in the story is not what is expected. It is not the tragedy it seems to be on the surface. Rather, it is a story of liberation. A woman’s personal struggle against the ties that bind. And Woman’s struggle in history to break out of the captivity of society’s norms. That seems to be what readers and critics alike objected to. The book was pulled from the shelves of her local (St. Louis) library and she was ostracized for the remaining few years of her life.

One need not be a feminist to appreciate ‘The Awakening’ and as modern readers we need not be shocked by the story it tells. But when I think of what it must have been like for Kate Chopin to write such a beautiful and powerful work so ahead of its time, I also wonder where those writers are today. Now the tide has turned. It is the ‘norm’ to write stories of moral relativity and it is shocking to think that anyone might write from any other perspective. Can anyone still, in these post-modern times, think that God exists? Did not Nietzsche pronounce God’s death? Can anyone still, in these post-modern times, believe that there is a single overarching truth that is worth searching for? Can anyone possibly, in these post-modern times, question the absolute conclusions drawn by the scientific community about the ‘facts’ of evolution over creation? Of course not. To do so would be to draw the ire of readers and critics alike.

Much as Kate Chopin did.

I am continuing to write this weekly experiment in literature from within the creative eye. By that I mean that I am reading and writing and thinking and just plain trying to figure it out as I go along. I write where the words will take me. I experiment with my own thinking so that when I sit down to my own fiction, I have an idea about what I’m doing and why. It takes me into some strange territory sometimes. I will end with a quote from Hermann Hesse: “I wanted only to try to live in accord with the promptings which came from my true self. Why was that so very difficult?”

Regards,

Jim

SIXTY MILLION AND MORE

2011-04-15T07:03:00.000-07:00

There is something special about the writing of Toni Morrison right from the start – her first novel was ‘The Bluest Eye’ (1970). Hers is a distinctive voice that draws the reader in. She remains as popular today as when she wrote those first words filled with place and people and color: “…here is the house. It is green and white. It has a red door. It is very pretty. Here is the family. Mother. Father. Dick and Jane live in the green-and-white house. They are very happy. See Jane. She has a red dress…” It reads like something out of that ‘Dick and Jane’ reader from grade school. Then is all runs together into one perplexing Dick and Jane mess. Is it the American Dream unraveled?

Claudia tells the story. She and her sister Frieda. She tells the story of their eleven-year old friend Pecola Breedlove (an astonishing family name) who is carrying her father’s baby; a girl who believes she will only be beautiful if her eyes turn blue. Blue like those blue-eyed, blond, white children who are loved in America. She had no place to stay, so Pecola came to stay with their family – just for a few days until the county could decide what to do with her – until her family was reunited. Her father had “…burned up his house, gone upside his wife’s head, and everybody, as a result, was outdoors.” (Horror of horrors, as everyone knew, was to be left homeless).

“… all the world had agreed that a blue-eyed, yellow-haired, pink-skinned doll was what every girl child treasured.” Here, as with ‘To Kill A Mockingbird’ the world is seen through the eyes of a child; except for that blur of Dick and Jane at the head of each chapter echoing like a prolonged scream down through the entire book. She talks about that doll in a way that proves she does not comprehend its value. She knows she is supposed to take it in her arms and hold it – but it is cold and lumpy and scratchy and makes that awful noise that is supposed to sound like ‘Mama’; but in reality all she wants to do is to tear the thing apart so she can get to the place where the secret of its beauty is found. But that, of course, is impossible.

‘The Bluest Eye’ did not receive the recognition the author thought it should, and in fact it took 25 years before it would.

‘Sula’ (1973) picks right up where ‘The Bluest Eye’ (and Ralph Ellison and William Faulkner…) left off. Here, the Medallion City Golf Course is displacing what was one a neighborhood. When black people lived in that neighborhood is was called the Bottom. It is now called the suburbs. The pool hall, the hair stylist, the grill, even the foot bridge over the river are coming down to make room for ‘progress’. Nothing will be left of the old neighborhood when they get done with it.

The Bottom was bottom land promised to a freed slave for some work he did – that’s the ‘bottom’ up in those hills. It was part of a little river town in Ohio that didn’t used to have a name. Nel was born to a manipulative mother and, “Any enthusiasms that little Nel showed were calmed by the mother until she drove her daughter’s imagination underground.”

On the other hand Hannah, Sula’s mother, “… never scolded or gave directions…” Their home was much more comfortable, with lots of people dropping in. Nel and Sula were friends growing up. They stood together. When a group of Irish boys started harassing them, Sula pulled out her mother’s paring knife and sliced the end of her finger to show them she meant business.

Nel got married and settled down with her husband and had three children. Sula, however, left the Bottoms and wandered around in America for ten years. There is something a little stilted and contrived about these early works (compared to her later works). People are catching fire and drowning but there is little emotional attachment, it seems. (Or is it as Flannery O’Connor said about this being the southern reality?) They are not as natural as her later books, ‘Song of Solomon’ (1977) and ‘Beloved’ (1987). Still, one can sense the storytelling mastery that is growing in her work.

‘Song of Solomon’ was cited in awarding its author the Nobel Prize for literature in 1993. Early on she writes, “Just goes to show, they murmured to each other, you never really do know about people.” That’s what people were saying when their insurance agent was up on the roof of Mercy Hospital getting ready to jump with flapping blue wings on. It was as true of him as it was of any other character in that novel. It is true of all the characters wandering the streets of anywhere right now. You just don’t know about people.

“The next day a colored baby was born inside Mercy for the first time.” This was Macon Dead III who would later become known as ‘Milkman’ because he was breastfed for so long his feet were “… touching the floor.”

The trouble is, not only do you not know about people; most of the time people do not even know about themselves. Milkman spends a great deal of time in this novel trying to discover who he is and just where he fits in the history of his people.

His best friend, Guitar, comes to believe Milkman has cheated him, and threatens several times to kill him. In ‘Song’ as in all her novels, Toni Morrison is confronting the long-term consequences of that peculiar institution – slavery. The effects of slavery have been deep and are passed on from generation to generation. And the high-point of her examinations reside in her next novel, ‘Beloved’. Some claim that ‘Song’ is a better novel than ‘Beloved’, but really the comparison elevates both – they are both that good. If one had to choose, ‘Beloved’ edges ‘Song’ out by a whisker.

The Pulitzer Prize winning novel ‘Beloved’, you see, is a culmination of this extraordinary writer’s life work and is extraordinary itself for that reason. “Sixty Million and more,” reads its epigraph. It is unclear exactly how many people died as a result of the slave trade in American history – the number could be much higher. The practice of slavery, the participation in it, the horror of it, has left a deep stain on American history. Can Americans ever truly face the past of witchcraft trials and the extermination of indigenous peoples, and the institution of slavery and the exploitation of workers and women and find repentance? Or will Americans, like so many others, indulge in a continued mass amnesia that allows forward motion into the future, without ever allowing for a change of direction? Well, if it is up to writers like Toni Morrison, no one will be allowed to forget.

In her Forward to ‘Beloved’ Morrison relates, in thumbnail fashion, the story of Margaret Garner, also known as Peggy, an escaped slave woman who killed her two year old daughter (and attempted to kill the others), to prevent her from being returned to slavery. She and her husband Robert escaped across the river from Kentucky and made it to the home of a relative near Cincinnati, Ohio. There, slave catchers and police cornered them. Garner killed her daughter with a butcher knife and was preparing to kill the others and herself when she was apprehended. Her case became a landmark for the Abolitionist movement and the opposition to the fugitive slave laws, (which forced the return of escaped slaves to their owners). It was also inspiration for ‘Beloved’.

‘Beloved’, then, is the story of an escaped slave woman, Sethe, who killed her daughter, Beloved. She now lives with her daughter Denver in the house at 124 Bluestone where the crime was committed and which is now haunted. Her boys, Howard and Buglar ran away from home at age thirteen, secretly fearing their mother might one day kill them as well.

Paul D, also a former slave, arrived one day and sees how things have stagnated there in that house. “What kind of evil you got in here?” he asked. Not evil, she assured him, but the strong presence of her long lost daughter. Still, Paul D sees it as his duty to bring them all back into the real world of solid and present events, leaving the past behind them where it belonged. He took them to a carnival over near Cincinnati. When they returned a young woman with a broken hat was there in front of the house. When asked her name she replied, “Beloved”. Then she spelled it out slowly. She slept four days, only sitting up to take some water.

“This girl Beloved, homeless and without people, beat all, though he (Paul) couldn’t say exactly why, considering the colored-people he had run into during the last twenty years. During, before and after the War he had seen Negroes so stunned, or hungry, or tired or bereft it was a wonder they recalled or said anything. Who, like him, had hidden in caves and fought owls for food; who, like him, stole from pigs; who, like him, slept in trees in the day and walked at night; who, like him, had buried themselves in slop and jumped in wells to avoid regulators, raiders, paterollers, veterans, hill men, posses and merry-makers.”

Who was this young creature with the babyish features and the new look about her? She could be the girl who had been locked up by a white man over Deer Creek way. Or could she be, could she possibly be the very daughter, killed by her mother’s hand, that they all wanted her to be – come back in some supernatural form? Or was she, somehow, the personification of all the horrors of all those years and years and years when white slave owners held captive and did as they pleased with black human beings who were their slaves?

There are times when a story is so full of truth that it simply is – it simply tells itself in a powerful way without the need of fancification or ornamentation. That is the story of Beloved. Whether or not that child that shows up at 124 Bluestone was the child that was killed, or some other, simply does not matter. She is the specter of the past that is very real and will not go away until it has somehow been ‘exorcised’ by the entire community.

The storytelling did not end with her Nobel Prize, either. Picking up ‘A Mercy’ (2008), the reader knows once again he or she is in the hands of a master storyteller. This novel takes place in the 1680’s America of the religious divisions, the class divisions, the prejudice and oppression of the early slave trade that was just beginning to take root. Jacob, an Anglo-Dutch trader and adventurer takes a small slave girl named Florens, in payment for a debt. He did not normally deal in ‘the flesh’. Florens has the hands of a slave but the feet of a Portuguese lady. Her feet are not tough enough to withstand the rigors of this world. She was a daughter that had been cast off by her mother in order to save her. (Looking back with Ms. Morrison, one wonders how anyone had the strength to withstand the rigors that early America required.)

John Updike wrote a review of ‘A Mercy’ (‘Dreamy Wilderness’ The New Yorker, November 3, 2008) in which he writes, “Toni Morrison has a habit, perhaps traceable to the pernicious influence of William Faulkner, of plunging into the narrative before the reader has a clue to what is going on.”
“… in time we come to comprehend that it is 1690 in Virginia, and that the narrator is a sixteen-year-old black girl called Florens, who was, at her mother’s plea, impulsively adopted, eight years ago, by a white proprietor (“Sir” to Forens), in partial settlement of a debt owed him by an insolvent slave owner from Portugal called “Senhor.”

Mr. Updike concludes with this observation: “Varied and authoritative and frequently beautiful though the language is, it circles around a vision, both turgid and static, of a new world turning old and poisoned from the start.”

Adapted from 'American Masters'. Copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson.
All Rights Reserved.

PSYCHE REVIVED BY CUPID'S KISS

2011-04-08T06:13:00.000-07:00

During my first visit to the Louvre in Paris, in the early 1970’s, I became transfixed by a certain statue. It was Antonio Canova’s neoclassical work ‘Psyche Revived by Cupid’s Kiss’. I couldn’t believe the impression the softness of the white marble made upon me as I gazed at that winged son of Aphrodite meeting in a kiss that most beautiful of women – Psyche. I can still see, in my mind’s eye, the lightness with which Cupid descends upon her, supporting her with his left arm across her breasts and his right cradling her head. How her arms reach up for him. How their lips are only the merest moment past touching together. He has awakened her lifeless form. She is his!

The tale of Eros and Psyche has always fascinated me. An old woman tells the tale in the second century AD ‘The Golden Ass’ by Lucius Apuleius. It is the story of a most beautiful girl named Psyche who has caused envy and jealousy to grow in the goddess Aphrodite. Spitefully she calls upon her son Eros, or Cupid, to use one of his golden arrows while she sleeps to cause the girl to fall in love with the vile creature she will place there when she awakes. (Because of the arrow’s magic, she will fall in love with the first one she sees).

Cupid himself becomes invisible as he surreptitiously enters her room so no one will be able to see him. He intends to scratch her shoulder with his arrow but she awakens and looks directly into his eyes; seeing through his invisibility. Cupid is so startled he scratches himself with the arrow instead and falls madly in love with Psyche. When he reports what has happened to his mother, Aphrodite is enraged. She places a curse on the girl, so that she will never be able to find a husband for herself. Cupid, for his part, refuses then to use his arrows. No one falls in love. No one marries. No one has children. The earth begins to grow old.

At last Aphrodite relents and lets Cupid go to the girl. The story has many more twists and turns, but the part that intrigues me is the coming together of the earthly and the divine. The material and the spiritual. The two aspects of humankind. Together they have a daughter – Voluptas – the goddess of sensual pleasures.

I always wanted to write the story anew, but could never find a way to do it. I wanted to capture Eros reviving Psyche with that divine kiss. But how does an artist express such a theme in a new way? Whenever I outlined or sketched out a plot it either sounded like the same old story retold, or was so far from the original as not to make any sense whatever. That was the state of things until, one day; I came upon the idea of a man meeting his beautiful and now earth-bound guardian angel. If such an arrangement could be made in a very realistic way… say, being forced to travel together, they might just fall in love. They might just bring heaven and earth together in a very real and believable way.

Yes!

That was the first moment of ‘The Angelic Mysteries’. (Due out August 18th).

THE NEW LANGUAGE OF NONFICTION PART II

2011-04-01T06:50:00.000-07:00

Roland Barthes, too, studies the deep narrative structures in writing and finds that there are five ways of organizing text and that every narrative is interwoven with these various codes. Rather than trying to make a text conform to the Freitag triangle (beginning, rising action, climax, denouement), we can think outside the standard plot line. We can think like writers rather than like readers. In nonfiction (I am adding the context here – not Barthes), the organizational structure might be found in a series of modules that are tied together by various interconnecting webs of information. No one module is self-contained, but rather relies on others to enhance meaning.

My most recent reading has led me to Peter Brooks – especially his ‘Reading for the Plot’. Readers, he believes, are affected by the stories they read in very intimate ways. A desire is built in the reader to find the end and then to tell the story to someone else – to pass it on. (Built-in viral marketing, if we wanted to take it that way). They become caught up in the tale that must be told and re-told.

I am not at all sure that I have managed to capture all of these various aspects of language and plotting in ‘American Masters’ my popular narrative of American literature, but all were certainly in mind as I struggled with the text. The schema I worked from began with a deep underlying structure (an outline not of linear progression; though the work does follow the historical occurrence of authors and their works – but of a series of modules and how they might be tied together); then with a more linear and normal chronological reading; then writing at a more symbolic level; then a mythological level; and finally at the labyrinthine level which includes puzzles, word play, neologisms and what-not. As you can see, ‘American Masters’ is more than a simple story about our authors and their stories. It is an attempt at a new form of nonfiction that goes far beyond the so-called New Journalism of Capote, Hunter Thompson, and Tom Wolfe.

I do hope I have managed to convey these thoughts clearly. I certainly will entertain your questions and comments either below or on my Facebook site. Your input is very welcome. Thanks for bearing with me.

Jim

THE NEW LANGUAGE OF NONFICTION PART I

2011-03-25T02:28:00.000-07:00

Having nearly exhausted my creative capacity after a year-long project of researching, writing and rewriting, (and now seeking publication of) my popular history of American literature, ‘American Masters’, I have given myself a month off. (Of course with my novella ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ due out in August, it won’t be much of a break). But it is important to replenish the wellsprings of narrative creation. For some time I have put off writing of my inquiry into narrative structure, desire and resistance in nonfiction – what is called plot in fiction. (This along with the study of language generally). So now, after many patient months of doing other things, I have begun. It is the fruit of this lengthy inquiry I would like to share with you today.

I begin with a new notion of language itself as set down by Steven Pinker in his brilliant and popular book (is popular the right word? Well read, perhaps.) ‘The Language Instinct: How the Mind Creates Language’. It is his contention that language is something far more organic than has been previously believed. (Something I have suspected for a long time, too). Language is, he writes, a human instinct that is hard-wired into our brain much as animals have instincts of their own. (A squirrel to bury nuts for winter. A spider to spin its web). This is why, when stone-age people were discovered in New Guinea, for instance, long cut off from any other humans, language had still developed among them. This offers us only a place to begin – it is not my intention here to dig deeply into the work of either Pinker or Noam Chomsky. Let us say that my conclusion has been this: If language grows naturally and organically from the human subconscious, perhaps our approach to narrative structure and plot has been too formal, just as the dictates of grammar may restrict rather than enhance a student’s ability to learn language.

With that as a premise, then, I began to look further afield for ideas that I may employ in my narrative nonfictions. I came across some very interesting writings by Algirdas Greimas – ‘The Semiotics of Passion’ and ‘On Meaning’ in which he searches for those elements in narrative that create oppositions. What he discovered is that there are points of opposition – of friction we might say – that lie outside our normal patterns of narration. They lie, rather, in the deep structure of the work itself. He designed a semiotic square with which to illustrate his findings. Contradictory pairs could be found not only between life and death, but in ‘not life’ and ‘not death’, for instance. If such pairs could be identified in a work at the outset, a certain tension could be created without the use of standard ‘fictional’ plotting techniques. As you can see, this gave me another way to think about narrative nonfiction. If tension could be introduced that was not glaringly borrowed from fiction, a new and different kind of story would result. And, since nonfiction has at least the potential of being more ‘true’ than fiction, whole new possibilities present themselves.

I hope this gives you something to chew on this week, as it has me for some time now. I will continue the subject next week in Part II. As always, I welcome your thoughts and comments either here or on my Facebook page. This is part of an article ‘The New Language of Nonfiction’ Copyright © 2011 James D. Sanderson. All Rights Reserved.

Thanks for reading,
Jim

A SENSE OF CONVICTION II

2011-03-18T07:48:00.000-07:00

“There is no way to peace. Peace is the way.” - A.J. Muste

This week I briefly jumped in on a Facebook conversation. One man posted that he liked plain old fashioned characters in fiction that are caught up in the human condition. Regular ol’ storytelling, in short. I agree with him. But immediately that puts those on the defensive who read ‘experimental’ fiction. “Why can’t we read both?” one asked. Well, of course we can read from across the spectrum and probably should do so. But to say I prefer straight storytelling should not offend anyone. It is coming from my sense of conviction. I have read much experimental and postmodern fiction and nonfiction and still, I prefer straight storytelling. Now here is what may offend: I do so from a sense of conviction about the way the world is. From my personal worldview, if you will.

Let me take a giant leap back to the beginning of existence. To the beginning of the universe, if you please. There are really only two ways of approaching the truth about existence. Either A) we have been created by God and that as those created in God’s image we have an eternal purpose and… greatness, as a result of that, or B) we are all just the result of some cosmic accident that leaves us living in chaos and absurdity, fighting our way forward – struggling just to live out our time of existence in the here and now.

Now, again, I am not going out of my way to deliberately offend anyone; but either we believe that we are a part of God’s great design and purpose for the universe, or we don’t. If our conviction is that we are part of a design and plan, then it is easier for us to find a design and purpose for our fiction. (Not that we can’t experiment within our structure, but the structure remains intact). If we believe that all life is absurdity – that there is no plan for anything and that our lives are over the moment we draw our last breath – then we are free to ‘experiment’ outside any kind of set structure. “The truth is relative. There is no definitive truth. One person’s truth is just as valid as another’s.” All of these ideas grow from the so-called postmodern worldview or sense of conviction.

I’m probably not going to convince anyone to change their worldview here in my little weekly blog post. I am only going to point out that there ‘is’ a difference. I will even go so far as to say that nothing great has ever been written that was not written from some deep conviction about the way the world is. That sense of conviction was certainly different for Tolstoy than it was for Kafka. Different for Hemingway than it was for Emily Dickinson. But each held their conviction deeply and attempted to convey what they believed through the written word – through the world of their writing. That is the way to literary greatness.

For many years my wife and I have held to the conviction that the way of nonviolence is far superior to the way of violence. (See last week’s post). Over and over again we have seen the ‘miracle’ of forgiveness and reconciliation in situations that might normally lead to harm and retaliation. We have put our convictions into practice. So, when I write, that is the place in reality that I write from. For many years we have held to the belief, the conviction, that there is no place for nuclear reactors on our planet. We are not capable of handling it or disposing of it properly and so we ought not be employing it in any capacity. Not many people listen to us about nonviolence or the nuclear problem or anything else. But hey, this is my written world. And in this world I get to say what is what. This is my island. And I say we vote everything nuclear off. And just like that… it is gone.

All the Best,

Jim

A SENSE OF CONVICTION

2011-03-11T08:14:00.000-08:00

“Peace is not merely a distant goal we seek but a means by which we arrive at that goal.”
Martin Luther King, Jr.

At the end of the protracted civil war in Nicaragua, in 1990, I went to build houses with Habitat for Humanity in an upcountry village called Jinotega. The end of the war had been announced. Peace had been achieved. But as is often the case the end of hostilities does not always coincide neatly with such announcements. In the jungles around Jinotega there were snakes, jaguars, big spiders, armed Sandinistas, armed Contras, land mines, trip wires and so on. Oh, and it was rainy season.

Pat and Donna, the supervisors of the building site, never once used the word ‘nonviolence’ to describe how they conducted themselves in such an environment. I, having spent time in the US Army Infantry, would not have understood if they had. When soldiers in olive drab uniforms that lacked any kind of insignia or identification swept cautiously through the village armed and dangerous, I felt completely at a loss. Such men can do what they want.

In spite of the dangers, this young couple came and went as they pleased in their old Toyota Land Cruiser. Once, they said, they had taped ‘TV’ on the windows of the Toyota. When they were stopped, rebel soldiers assumed they were from American Television and let them go where they wanted without hassle. One day I had the opportunity to ride along with them to pick up supplies. By the time we were heading home it was growing dark. I was jammed in the back with the supplies so I did not at first see why they were slowing down and coming to a stop. When I did see, I felt the icy sweat of panic. “What’s going on?” I asked, though I had a pretty good idea.

Armed men were blocking the road with their vehicles. These men, too, had no insignia nor identification of any kind. When we came to a stop one of the men came around to the driver’s side window and demanded to know who we were. Pat told them. They ordered us out of the Toyota. The back of my scalp prickled as I clamored out of the back and was lined up at gun-point with the others. What should I do? What could I do?

The moment of death was at hand and yet Pat and Donna addressed the soldiers lovingly and with a great sense of calm. I could not believe how calm they were, in fact. Here we were lined up and for all any of us knew we might be dead bodies dragged off into the jungle in another minute. (Perhaps less than a minute). But they continued to respond in ways that showed a great deal of courage, and without the need for weapons of any kind. We were not killed. What did happen, however, was a profound shift in the way I saw my life. A shift in the way I view courage. A shift in everything.

When I returned home I began to study everything I could get my hands on about this nonviolent way. I read Gandhi and Jesus (in a new light), and Dorothy Day and Oscar Romero and Martin Luther King, Jr., and many others. After a time my wife and I swore an oath of nonviolence. We have not taken that oath lightly.

Now, what does any of this have to do with writing or great literature? (The title might lend a clue). Over this past year I have been writing a series of short stories based on the ideas of nonviolent direct action and the various movements of nonviolence in the world. The collection is due out in the Spring of 2012. Meanwhile, you might check out one - 'A Most Curious Activity' that has been published in the online literary journal 'The Smoking Poet'. See it for free at www.thesmokingpoet.net Click on Fiction3 or my name James D. Sanderson.

Return next week, same time and same station for Part II of ‘A Sense of Conviction’.

A TALK WITH THE AUTHOR

2011-03-04T07:23:00.000-08:00

I had the great pleasure being on the Tony Angelo radio show last Saturday, and I wanted to share some of the things we talked about (and have added some other things we didn’t talk about). If you have any comments or questions of your own, please add them in the comments below.

Why do you write? A person must be crazy to want to write, and I mean that literally. When I was a kid my Dad was such an overbearing and dynamic force in my life – and I don’t mean to say he was abusive, really – that I couldn’t seem to find a voice for myself. When he argued with my mother I remember scrunching down into the corner of my bedroom and making myself very tiny. Then, when I learned to write, my writing was very tiny as well. People still comment on it today. My script is almost microscopic and all pinched together. It was as if I was trying to express myself but I didn’t really want anyone to be able to see what I was trying to say. So, I guess to keep expressing myself, I had to write.

How do you come up with story ideas and characters? It takes me a long time to come up with story ideas – and I mean years – and they almost always come from character. Characters develop from people I know, or from my own experience, but I don’t believe any of my characters are based on real people. They are more like composite people. Then, when I know my character, I begin to wonder how they would act or react in this situation or that. The story usually emerges from that.

When and how do you write? I have the great luxury now of being a full-time writer, but if I’m not careful my time can go away just as fast as anyone else’s. I usually blog ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ – my novel coming out in August - on Monday. Then I work on the next chapter of my latest novel on Tuesday and Wednesday. Then on Thursday I blog ‘Literary Greatness’, which is my blog about great authors, literature, books, and writing. I promote my work online anytime I get a minute. For the modern author, marketing and promotion must be part of the writing process.

What authors inspire you? I have a library full of authors I refer back to often. Tolstoy. Dostoevsky. Hemingway. Faulkner. Steinbeck. Melville. The complete Shakespeare. Henry James. Of course any I don’t have right on the shelf I can usually find online now. That is a great benefit of reading classic literature – you can usually get it free or very cheap on the library giveaway shelf or the used bookstore or online.

What are you working on now? ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ is a novel about a man who meets a woman who believes herself to be an angel. They are being pursued around Europe by a psychopath she believes in an anti-angel – an angel from hell. It is a thriller and a love story, but also a novel of ideas: about the thin line between sanity and insanity. It’s due out August 18th.

How long does it take you to write a novel? Oh goodness, there is no time limit. ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ came out in a limited edition literary paperback in 1994. I have been working on it off and on ever since. The edition due out in August is my final draft however.

What is your next project? I have been working on a series of short stories about nonviolent direct action as it has been used around the world, and the collection, as yet untitled, is due out in the spring (March 2012). Meanwhile some of them are being published in small press magazines.

How long have you been writing? Well, as I said about being a kid hiding out in my bedroom from the fights my parents had, I began to write stories almost as soon as I could write. I remember my twelfth year in particular. I always read classic literature too, so I was considered somewhat weird by my young friends.

How does your background influence your work? I know I have always wanted to be a writer, and the fact that I read classic literature from an early age has had the most influence on my work. Whenever I read I am making mental notes about how this or that style or technique might be useful to my work in the future. I believe that novels should express great ideas because the written word is just too important to waste on only entertainment.

How do you research? Plain old library time. Of course it is a lot easier to get books now through inter library loans and so on, and I use the internet extensively. A writer simply must use the internet to help with research. There is no reason for a writer to miss some important detail.

Give some facts and juicy tidbits about your work. (Laughs). I don’t know how juicy it is, but when I was writing ‘American Masters’ I came to the chapter about our American State Papers as Literature. It occurred to me that Benjamin Franklin, because he had access to his own printing press, was able to go directly to his readers with his story. Who knows what would be known of him today if he had had to go through some convoluted publishing process to get his work out. In France especially he was able to influence people directly with his writing. I think we authors need to start looking for ways to write directly to our readers. Of course the internet is making great strides at helping us do that.

What are you reading now? I am reading ‘Anna Karenina’ for the umpteenth time. It is really my favorite novel. On my shelf are also ‘Middlemarch’ and ‘Vanity Fair’, which are also long reads. So, I’ve got my reading time mapped out for me for quite a while.

Do you have any concluding remarks? Only that we writers need to hear from our readers. If you are reading a blog or are meeting an author on Facebook or wherever, don’t be afraid to speak out and say what you think about our work or about reading and writing in general. (Be kind, but be real). We are just breaking into the idea of being able to speak directly with our readers, and we need to know what you are thinking. It will help us create our future works and it will keep us honest about why we’re writing, and who we’re writing for. I would love your feedback at either of my blog sites: Literary Greatness - www.jamesdsanderson.blogspot.com or www.theangelicmysteries.blogspot.com. You may also look for me on Facebook (James D. Sanderson).

Jim

A CHANCE ENCOUNTER

2011-02-24T08:18:00.000-08:00

A chance encounter on the Warsaw-Petersburg train. Sounds like something from an Alfred Hitchcock film. It is true that chance encounters do occur in life, though they can be darned tricky in literature. The author wants the reader to suspend real life and enter the parallel universe of fiction. To do this, anything from the real world that slips in can trigger the reader’s recognition that this fiction – this novel – is an artifice. But Dostoyevsky can and does get away with the chance meeting between Lev Nikolayevitch Myshkin and Parfyon Rogozhin. In fact that moment of chance becomes the fateful intersection of multiple destinies which become the basis of one of his great novels – ‘The Idiot’.

Dostoyevsky had an interesting chance encounter with fate himself when, as a young man of twenty-seven years he was arrested and convicted of being a member of a socialist group. He was condemned to death and actually faced a firing squad before his sentence was commuted and he was sent to a prison in Siberia instead. His own life was one filled with suffering and pain, so it is not surprising that such themes find their way into his work. ‘Notes from Underground’ (1864), ‘Crime and Punishment’, ‘The Idiot’, ‘The Possessed’, and ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ are his most notable works.

In Myshkin he created a character that not only reflects 19th-century Russia in all its aspects, but becomes the center of that time. The other characters move around this goodly prince like the arms of a spiral constellation. ‘The Idiot’ becomes not so much a tragedy as a huge slice of life that reveals the human condition.

“Had they known about one another and why they were both at that moment remarkable, they would certainly have marveled that chance had so strangely put them opposite each other in the third-class car…” (quotations take from the Henry and Olga Carlisle translation of 1969). That’s the key to everything in life – had we only known! It is what drives people into the newspaper horoscopes or to seek a glimpse of what is to come from fortune-tellers of every stripe. If we but knew, we could have done things differently. We would have done! But we don’t know. At least, not in specific terms.

What we do know as readers, as authors, and as those who must live our lives as best we can, is that character is everything. Who we are and what we stand for shapes our future, in spite of the events we have yet to face. For that reason character in fiction is more important than plot, style, dialogue, or any other element. By subjecting a character to the action the true person is revealed. The dialogue, the conflict, the style and everything else is intended to reveal the character, and so find themselves in a lesser position. Works that are written to sweep the reader along with a strong plot are destined to be forgotten. The plot of history eventually eclipses them.

Copyright ©2011, James D. Sanderson. All rights reserved.

A chance encounter between Daniel Allman and Sarah leads them on an adventure across Europe and into the shadow world that separates reality from insanity in ‘The Angelic Mysteries’ coming out in August.
Jim

NEW BLOG: THE ANGELIC MYSTERIES

2011-02-22T13:18:00.001-08:00

Just a note to let you know that I have started a new blog around my soon to be published 'The Angelic Mysteries'. It is the story of a man who meets and falls in love with a woman who believes herself to be an angel. She is being pursued around Europe by a psychopath named Morton Toombs. She believes he is an anti-angel. (And you thought vampires were scary).

Anyway, I hope you'll join the discussion which will include stories from the main characters Daniel Allman; Sarah; and Morton Toombs. (Who better can tell us how close Dante was in his descriptions of hell?

Join the fun at www.theangelicmysteries.blogspot.com

Jim

AMERICAN STATE PAPERS AS LITERATURE

2011-02-18T05:02:00.000-08:00

You may be interested at take a look at our American State Papers as literature. Their greatness as documents of change eclipses their contribution as great literature.

Benjamin Franklin was the only one to have been involved in all the State papers: the Declaration of Independence, the Articles of Confederation, and the Constitution. The fight against tyranny, he knew, was and is a universal endeavor. Ideas, expressed in written words, have power when they appeal to universal truths and ideas. A declaration of independence would only take the country so far. The Americans knew that French assistance and support would be needed to actually win a revolutionary war. In the hope of obtaining their support, Franklin was sent to France. In his home near Paris he built a press to reproduce and distribute papers of interest. He took his case directly to the French people, who would very soon embark on their own struggle for independence.

The Articles of Confederation, also written in part by Franklin, granted Congress no power to levy taxes. In fact the messenger that delivered the articles to Congress could not be paid from the national treasury, so members of Congress had to dig deep in their own pockets for the money. The states had all the power under these articles, as there was still an inherent distrust of a central government. The weaknesses were built in. Article Two, for instance, stated, "Each State retains its sovereignty, freedom, and independence, and every power, jurisdiction, and right, which is not by this Confederation expressly delegated to the United States in Congress assembled."

Determined to draw up a constitution, the Constitutional Convention gathered together in secrecy. Franklin was 81 by this time. He was in favor of a supreme national government, but not everyone was with him on that. His concluding remarks at the end of the convention, September 17, 1787, begins "I confess that I do not entirely approve of this Constitution at present..."

"... there is no Form of Government but what my be a Blessing to the People if well administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be well administered for a Course of Years, and can only end in Despotism as other Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need Despotic Government..."

He ended with, "It is therefore that, the older I grow, the more apt I am to doubt my own judgment and pay more respect to the judgment of others..."

"Most men, indeed as well as most sects in religion, think themselves in possession of all truth..."

"It therefore astonishes me, sir, to find this system approaching so near to perfection as it does..."

"Thus I consent, sir, to this Constitution because I expect no better, and because I am not sure that it is not the best."

It was almost certain that many would oppose the new constitution, and indeed the powerful governor of New York, George Clinton, came out against it, writing an article for the New York newspapers. Alexander Hamilton began a series of essays also published in the New York City newspapers under the pseudonym 'Publius'. He was joined with contributions made by James Madison and John Jay. Together these essays became 'The Federalist Papers' which remain today a classic of political philosophy.

Franklin continued to lead the country toward reason and equality right to the end of his life. He came out against slavery - something none of the other founding fathers, Washington and Jefferson among them - were able to embrace. Late in his life he became president of the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery and one of his last writings, near the end of his unfinished 'Autobiography' deals with the issue of slavery in an ironic way. He mentions 'the Idea of Sancho Panza' which in Cervantes' 'Don Quixote' (Part 1, Chapter 29) is this: Sancho Panza laments the fact that he will be required to oversee slaves. This until he comes to understand that he can, in fact, sell them for a profit. This was the dilemma facing many Americans of that day. The specter of slavery would cast its own stain and long shadow over the nation for many years to come.

Hope you enjoyed my American History lesson. It is a part of the second chapter of my 'American Masters' and so is copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson, all rights reserved.

COMING: I will boldly proclaim that on my birthday, August 18th of this year, my novel 'The Angelic Mysteries' will be available as an ebook. You can download it to your Kindle or other device. It is the story of Daniel Allman who, while traveling in Europe, meets a woman who believes herself to be an angel. They are set upon by a psychopath they believe is an angel from hell.

I do a lot of talking about Literary Greatness. Well, now it's time for me to put up or shut up, and it will be up to you to decide. 'The Angelic Mysteries' is a thriller; a love story; and a grand adventure. I do hope you will like it.

Anyway, I'll give you more details as time goes along.

Jim

PS: A recent article stated that ebook publishing amounted to only about 9% of the industry right now. However, within three years it was predicted that fully one of every two books published will be an ebook. Just as Benjamin Franklin took his argument directly to the people, so too we writers are able to appeal directly to our readership without all the publishing industry gatekeepers in the way. We live in interesting times.

A SINGULAR WORK

2011-02-11T08:17:00.000-08:00

Like so many others I have been laid up with the flu this week. I did a lot of reading. Mostly what I have been reading is 'Anna Karenina' by Count Leo Tolstoy, perhaps the greatest novelist who ever lived. It is not the first time I have read it, of course, and I really did not intend to write anything about it. What more, after all, could one possibly write? In the back of this volume alone there are over 150 pages of critical essays and author biography. There are extracts from letters, diaries, and newspapers. There is an essay by Fyodor M. Dostoevsky (perhaps the second greatest novelist ever - I say perhaps because when you set yourself up as a target someone will usually take a shot at you). There is an essay about 'Levin and Social Chaos' and another about Tolstoy's 'Physical Descriptions'. All very interesting and all very daunting for the writer of novels.

I say 'daunting' because once we have read such a work of singular greatness, how are we supposed to sit down and write anything at all from our own limited talents and means? I am amazed, again, at the texturing of each chapter as characters are revealed along with their motives, their 'nature' and their flaws and foibles. How Levin and his philosophy of simple living counterweights Anna and the others who are caught up in complex moral situations.

Tolstoy himself was attempting to live his life more and more simply, even attempting to give away his work and any rights to his work. (Strenuously opposed by his family). And at last giving everything up and deciding to become a wandering ascetic; and being at the Astoapovo train station on his way out when he contracted the pneumonia that would kill him. (His journey took him farther than expected, I guess). Simplicity is what led him away from the Orthodox Church and to write 'The Kingdom of God is Within You'. When he was excommunicated a band of followers sprang up around his 'beliefs', which irritated him no end. The banning together of followers was not the point! What one should look for in life, in belief, and in writing, is one's own life, belief, and talent. That is something singular; not something that calls for gathering together.

By the end of last year I had finished up all the short stories I had been working on; the nonfiction book 'American Masters'; the novel 'The Struggle' and a couple of screen plays. I wanted to finish those things so that I could begin this year to work on a singular work. One that only I can write. One that only I can struggle with and sweat over and agonize with as I try to top even the great Tolstoy. So, that's where I'm at - two months in.

I hope your work is going well also,

Jim

SO DEEP A STAIN

2011-02-04T09:09:00.000-08:00

I had the opportunity to read some of my Chapter One of 'American Masters' at our local writer's group this past week and thought I would share it with you today. 'American Masters' is a sweeping narrative history of United States literature, told in a way that may help make literature popular again. Anyway, let me know what you think:

Of his Puritan ancestor's "persecuting spirit" and involvement in the martyrdom of witches, Nathaniel Hawthorne wrote, "...their blood may fairly be said to have left a stain upon him. So deep a stain, indeed, that his old dry bones, in the Charter Street burial-ground, must still retain it, if they have not crumbled utterly to dust!" (Found in 'The Scarlet Letter' 1850, referring to John Hathorne (1641-1717), one of the judges of the Salem witchcraft trials of 1692. A man can do no more than live his own life and try to expiate the sins of his forefathers.

Two hundred and sixty years passed before playwright Arthur Miller was able to gain the proper perspective on the trials of witches in this country's colonial period, (thereby attempting to expiate the country's sins). In 1952 Miller's friend, and director of his play 'Death of A Salesman', Elia Kazan was called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and threatened with blacklisting from Hollywood. Rather than face the loss of his livelihood, Kazan named eight black men as fellow members of the Communist Party. Because the activities of that committee were likened to a 'witch hunt', Miller traveled to Salem, Massachusetts to research a play 'The Crucible', which came out the following year.

In the play a local preacher's daughter has taken ill. It is discovered that she along with other local girls were dancing around a bonfire in the night forest with the slave woman Tituba. The Reverend John Hale is called in to investigate the possibility of witchcraft. John Proctor, a farmer, is revealed to have had an affair with seventeen year old Abigail Williams, who accuses John's wife of witchcraft. The presiding judge, Judge Hathorne, refuses to listen to evidence that the girls might be lying. More accusations are made and more people arrested. John Proctor himself is accused by Mary Warren of being in league with the Devil and he, seeing the horror of what is happening, says that if such things can happen, God is dead. Proctor admits to being a wizard but then tears up his signed confession when he sees how it will be used to ruin him and other of his neighbors in Salem. In the end he is led away to be hanged.

To see these dramatic events acted out by talented actors is memorable indeed. To hear the fear and vengeance dripping from their lips - to hear their wails and screams - one may well lose sleep over the monstrous state of the world, then and now.

Nathaniel Hawthorne struggled to make sense of his own heritage. The beginning of his 'Scarlet Letter' finds bearded men "in sad-colored garments" assembled at the door of the jail with the narrator's observation that the building of jails and graveyards had been the first order of business in the establishment of this utopia. Mistress Prynne, emerging with her baby, has ignored the "dismal severity of the Puritan's code of law" and has become known as a "hussy" and a "malefactress" by the other "Goodwives" of the colony. She should have been branded on the forehead, the good women think; not only given a mark to wear on the bodice of her gown. "On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A."

Why the A? Why the baby? Whose baby is it? Such are the questions that form in the first passages of 'The Scarlet Letter'.

Brought out in shame! The narrator comments of the "Severity of the Puritan character. Meagre, indeed, and cold, was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders at the scaffold."

In an odd twist of history, however, it was Cotton Mather's book (Cotton Mather also took part in the witchcraft trials) concerning the Christian's obligation to take action in the world: 'Bonifacius: Essays to Do Good', published years later, in 1710, that was to influence a boy who would one day become a founder of the American nation. This boy's name was Benjamin Franklin.

Adapted from Chapter One of 'American Masters'. Copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson. All rights reserved.

WHY 'LITERARY GREATNESS'?

2011-01-28T08:34:00.000-08:00

With all the new folks signing up for my blog and on my facebook, many of whom have advanced degrees in English and Literature and so on, I told my wife that sooner or later someone was going to recognize me for the fraud that I am. Well, that has finally happened. A woman took a look at this blog and had this to say, "Do you know how much of a prat you sound?" She asked that I never darken her facebook wall again. Of this blog specifically she said "... it sounds like a lot of male ego boasting, with some intelligent words flowered around it, trying to make a point over some vague topic, when there is none." Then, "Take your head out of your arse and learn some humility."

Well, I have to agree with everything she said. I am a male, and therefore what ego I have must be male and if it be ego, it boasts. I have spent years and years trying to learn humility, and life has beaten me down to such an extent that you would think humility would be natural by now. But, and it is this I am sure she is picking up on, I don't think I am yet completely humble.

Further, my topic 'is' vague. I am trying to write this blog from the eye of the creative experience, which means I am learning as I write along, and my hope is that the reader of this blog will find something useful in it also. I am working on my life's masterpiece, which also probably lacks humility. (The very act of trying to achieve greatness is probably not very humble). But, having said that, I am trying to hold myself to a certain standard. This means that I read Tolstoy and Shakespeare and Dostoevsky and Eliot and etc., and out of my experience of writing, and out of my reading, I am trying to establish what is 'Literary Greatness'. I may never attain it. I am humble enough to admit that. But I am going to try, even if that is not very humble.

When I offered to quit writing as penance for my crimes, this woman thought that might be a bit much. I have been writing since I was twelve, so I'm happy she didn't pull the plug on my efforts. Now I am tempted to say something cute and cutting to get back at her - to retaliate for her blow against my huge male ego. But then I remember the saying, "When you go seeking revenge, dig two graves." The fact is, I am somewhat less than perfect and I hope you forgive me that. But the fact is, also, I seek your comments both positive and negative.

There was a time when a writer could write. Period. "A writer writes," is the saying. But now a writer must write and edit and promote and market and be all things to all people. I make no apologies for being less than stellar in all these areas. I know deep in my heart of hearts that the only thing I can do, as Churchill used to say, is to "KBO - Keep Bumbling On." I will do just that until there are no more readers interested in what I have to say.

Thanks for reading. Jim

FOUND THINGS

2011-01-21T06:40:00.000-08:00

Years ago, in Art 101, I learned something new. Our prof had us pick up things all week that caught our eye and then were were challenged to put them all together in a work of art. 'Found' art, she called it. The idea is, if something catches your eye to the extent that you will actually stop and pick it up; that item holds some power for you. Some special attraction. So, if you use what you have found to create a work of art, that piece will reveal something of your inner self to the world. It will have a feeling different from any other work of art you might create.

And feeling is what art is all about, is it not? What does the viewer feel when he or she takes a look at what you have created?

None of my found art went on to be displayed at MOMA or anywhere else for that matter. (I was too old for Moma (My Momma) to tack such things up on the refrigerator). Hi Mom. But the idea stuck. Now, as part of my regular writing and reading routine, I go out and 'find' words. When a word strikes me as I read along, I pause long enough to jot it down. (I always carry a notebook with me). Then I try to incorporate those words into the sentences I write for my novel.

What could be more natural, then, than to use found words for poetry? As part of the first novel in my novel in four parts my characters use poetry to express themselves. Most of the time they are using simple heroic couplets, though once in a while they opt for something more complex. Now my 'found' words are really coming into play. I have begun to use them in this poetic interplay between my characters.

So, without further ado, let me make my poetry debut:

THE LOST ONES

The lost ones move across the falls of twilight
No longer do they search the faces of the crowds
Their skin is old and parchy
and no longer catches the sun's kind embrace.
The lost ones move like a burden of wood
hobbled on the backs of the road.
Their stare is not meant for this world.
The lost ones move across the falls of twilight.
Nothing holds them down
And nothing lets them go.

(Copyright 2011 by James D. Sanderson, All rights reserved).

I will post some more of my new poetry on my 'Notes' on my profile page over at Facebook if you'd like to take a look. See yours truly, James D. Sanderson. For those of you who regularly use Facebook, my blog is networked also on my fan site: James D. Sanderson (Readers of).

All right. One more for good measure:

MAKE ME YOUR LOVER

Make me your confessional
where all secrets are told

Make me your sorrow
when the quiet outrushing scream
is too much to hold.

Make me your salvation
we can share the common madness

Make me your tree of life
a grove of sturdy oaks.

Make me your hidden desire
source of excruciating longing.

Make me your pomegranate Christmas carol
Your twilight of silence
Your thunderstorm heartbeat.

Make me your lover.

(Also copyright 2011)

Thanks for indulging my poetic fantasies.

Jim

IS MYTH ONLY FANTASY?

2011-01-14T06:15:00.000-08:00

When I think of myth I cannot help but think of the great educator and writer Joseph Campbell. And, whether I like it or not much of what I write here today will probably be his thoughts re-thunk and set down in different order. Sorry, I wish I could be more original but that tells you just how important he was (and is) to this subject. It was he, not I (darn it), who began to recognize mythology as one great story. His studies caused him to recognize that myth was nothing more than a set of stories that try to make some sense of this old world, and the world beyond. That, upon looking more closely, we can see that myths use universal themes from across human experience. And that myth comes from humankind as a whole, while dreams are personal and individual.

For source material simply look up one of his many books – ‘The Hero With A Thousand Faces’ is one I recall, or see a series of his lectures recorded as ‘Mythos I and Mythos II’ available at Netflix.

Society, Campbell claimed, must have a central myth to hold it together. Without that essential element, society will fly into a million pieces. That, he continued, is exactly what is wrong with our world today. Nowhere can we find a single myth or story that we can agree upon. In fact I will take that a step further and say that we do not even believe there is a single story that could define us. That leads, naturally, to the fragmented literature of the post-moderns, so called, and the overwhelming numbers of stories and various points of reference now found on the internet. Every story is important; we are told, and equally valuable. Every point of view is correct for the person expressing that point of view, and we must respect it as such. A single story? That’s a laugh. We’re lucky if we can find two people to agree on the validity of any story at all. And this is to our detriment, according to Campbell.

The stories today that most embody mythology are found in the fantasy genre. This gives the reader one measure of distance between the story and the underlying myth. It can be read for entertainment, in other words, and never has to be acknowledged as any kind of truth. Here we still find the hero going forth to be confronted by innumerable dangers and mystical experiences and encounters with strange and wonderful beasts and peoples and maidens or men. Try to write anything that is genuinely mythological and you will find lots of resistance, I’m afraid. I am speaking to myself here because what I am currently working on comes from just that background – genuine myth. I am looking for ways to convey that universal story in ways that are fresh and meaningful for moderns and post-moderns. Not a small task.

In order to accomplish this, I have decided to use motif and symbols that come from the deep well of our common humanity, and a series of interlocking epiphanies along with the ‘normal’ plot development of the story. And so, since this is a blog written from within the creative eye, I will be writing more about these subjects in the near future. I do hope these journeys into literature will be a benefit to you, dear reader, as well as to me and my own work. As always I invite your comments.

Until next time then, I remain…

Yours In Literature, Jim

WRITE TRUTH AND BEAUTY

2011-01-07T09:05:00.000-08:00

Let me begin the New Year by welcoming all the new readers of this blog who have signed up in recent months. I was going to publish my piece ‘Is Myth Only Fantasy?’ this week but then something interesting came up and I decided to wait until next time for that. What came up was some very interesting writing in the New York Times Book Review (Jan 2 issue) about the state of literary criticism. Like so many others I had begun to speculate that criticism, and even the need for it, was dead. The cluster of essays in the Review has renewed my hope.

Like you, fellow reader, I had begun to suspect that to set standards of value in literature has become a thing of the past in this post-standard world. That (with a nod to the great critic Alfred Kazin) literature is no longer in the position to change the outcome of the future. That the future is now in other hands. That, in fact, the whole thing has collapsed from the inside. That the writer of literature no longer knows what the reader wants. That the reader doesn't know what the writer is saying. And that the critic who tries to make sense of it all simply cannot.

But then there it was in the midst of all the other words and sentences like a shining beacon home: seek truth and beauty in your work, no matter what! Be ye writer, reader, or critic, do not settle for less. And that is precisely what I am seeking here. In writing here from my own work in progress – what I am reading, writing, thinking at the time of creation – a new work emerges, which the reader might find important in its own right. It is interesting, I think, that I am able to use the internet to connect up directly with my readers. The internet has become a kind of great leveler, for good or bad. By way of this connection we can write anything, tell my story as it were. But what we may not do (and yet so many have), is to become sloppy in our work. Sloppiness is neither truthful nor beautiful. This blog, then, acts as a kind of ‘Author’s Notes’ as I try to make sense of it all, but from another perspective: from the very center of the creative eye.

The marketer in me is now tempted to shout ‘if you have friends who read, invite them to join in.’ But perhaps we should be more selective than that. Perhaps we should say ‘if you know someone who is seeking truth and beauty in literature, we would be happy to have them join us.’

Or, will we suppose that the future will be increasingly image-driven: film, television, photo, graphic art?

Or will words continue to pull from that deep place within us all that distorts images. The place that shadows and lengthens and deepens the truth we may yet encounter and choose to live by? Only in this way will words continue in importance – a great responsibility and great opportunity for all writers, readers, and critics.

Seek truth this New Year. Seek beauty. Jim

UTOPIA IV THE CULT OF PERSONALITY

2010-12-31T13:36:00.000-08:00

As I have looked into ideas of Utopia for my fourth novel (of the four I am working on), I realize that writing is utopian by its very nature. We are writing about things that have not yet and may never come to pass. Some writers have absolute control over their material and others seem to just let it range out there a little. A writer writes and perhaps that is as far as it should go. In our work we can give our thoughts the kind of freedom our actions can never have. It is only when we try to put into practice some of the things we have thought that the trouble begins.

Louisa May Alcott (‘Little Women’) was the daughter of transcendentalists who tried to put their theories into practice. The results were not disastrous, at least, but they were disappointing. She summed it up with words to this effect: “Great thinkers tend not to make great farmers.” And, since most utopian efforts are agriculture based, (and often led by great thinkers), you can see the problem.

We here have set our utopian efforts to agriculture as well, on a small scale. (One acre). On a morning like this while I was out shoveling snow and working in the greenhouse and bringing in firewood, I began to wonder if I would ever get to my writing. (The snow does pile up here in Colorado at times – it took three hours just to move it). Of course while you are shoveling snow all morning you can let your mind convince yourself that you are the leader of some great utopian enterprise if you want, but the reality is somewhat grittier than that. And for a writer to be shoveling snow, well, it’s just unseemly. But I guess Robert Frost owned a working farm and if it was good enough for him, who am I to complain? Besides, if we run into economic bad times in this country – as we certainly might - at least we’ll know where our food is coming from.

Utopia is normally considered unattainable and perhaps that is true unless we stick to a micro-utopia like ours and leave it at that. I would like to think ours is the mustard seed of the New Testament Church as it will one day be, but even that may simply be grandiose thinking. Utopia cannot be completely lived out as long as it is wrapped in a society that remains organized around other principles. (With a nod to Karl Mannheim ‘Ideology and Utopia’ 1929). The dominant wish prevails. Or, in the words of Meister Eckhart, “Nothing so much hinders the soul from knowing God as time and space.” Since Utopia in reality is fixed in time and space, we are hindered from other-worldly results. Of course no one would love it more than I if the true Christian ideals of love as taught in the Sermon On The Mount would suddenly burst into existence and that love of one another would become a reality at last, but I think I will have to continue to be patient for that day.

In the work of Utopia we must choose what to remake and what to leave as it is. To tear down without a plan of rebuilding is simple destruction. Yet many a charismatic leader has led followers into destruction. (I am thinking specifically of cult leaders on the order of Jim Jones). The charismatic leader can be temperamental and self-seeking. No, I know the vision must lie with the people themselves if anything is ever going to change. I know that change must be implemented nonviolently. Only in that way can we avoid the pitfalls of violence and destruction.

But I leave this subject with a bitter-sweet meditation, again from Louisa May Alcott: “They said many wise things and did many foolish things.”
For those of us who attempt to step outside the norms of society: Beware.

Have a Happy New Year

Jim

UTOPIA III THE KINGDOM OF GOD

2010-12-24T07:16:00.000-08:00

All that is not given is lost. If everyone gave everything they had, everyone would have everything they need. After many years living among the homeless we have been given the solution to the problem. This solution, of course, goes way beyond most Liberal thought and beyond even the urge to communism, (though we have been called that). (“Why is it when we help the poor they call us saints, but when we ask why they’re poor they call us communists?” –Dom Helder Camara). All of this goes far beyond where most people are willing to go, we know, and that is just the problem with Utopia.

The social and political approach to Utopia has left the idea dead. No wonder modern writers trend toward dystopia – all that can go wrong will go wrong (and just when I thought it was going so well). And, looking at the long history of religious Utopia – the Puritans; the Shakers and so on, we see that that idea is also dead.

This leaves only one possibility – the Utopia of the Kingdom of God.
I once wrote an article that was rejected on the basis that, according to the editor, “The Church is not about Kingdom work, but about gathering for worship on Sundays.” This reduces the church to a worship center and as my wife said, “That’s just plain wrong.” Whether or not Christians are willing to come together once a week for an hour to worship God leaves the world unmoved. The only way for things to change is for us to lead in changing them. In addiction recovery groups I have run we said, “The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again expecting different results.” Well, that seems to be what most people expect. “If I vote once every few years, everything will change. If I go to church on Sunday, everything will change. If I buy guns to protect myself and my family, everything will change. If I spend lots of money this Christmas season, everything will change. If I give a little to the poor this year, everything will change.” Here’s a news flash: That’s what has been happening for a long long time, and nothing has changed. Nothing will change, either.

Utopian thought as it grows from the Kingdom of God is not about wild-eyed revolution with blood running in the streets. (Nothing changes that way either). It is, rather, the growing up of the new within the shell of the old – eventually bursting its desiccated skin and sloughing it off – as a new order emerges that is not based upon certain rules or religious dogma, but which is based upon the actual ‘laws’ of love. Love others as you love yourself. Do to others what you would have them do to you. Easy to say. Not so easy to do.

I live in a Utopia that actually works. When I and others like me were ready to stop living the way of insanity and to actually live the way of change in the world, we stepped across some invisible barrier that had previously held us in place. Through our work with the poor we came to know the problems of the world first hand. Poverty. Selfishness. Addictions. Violence. All have been a part of our daily lives for many years. And we have found that the only way to solve these problems is to ‘be’ the New Testament Church. Only in self-suffering nonviolent love can we find the solution to these problems. If we are to solve the problem of war and violence, we must live the way of nonviolence in our own lives. (We have not solved the world’s addiction to war, but we have solved it for ourselves – we do not participate). If we want to solve the Gulf oil spill, we must drive a small car or walk or ride bicycles. If we want to solve the problem of resource shortages, we must recycle everything and touch the world lightly. If we are to solve the problem of hunger, we must grow and share our food. We conserve water by capturing rain water and using it for the garden. I could go on, but I think you get the idea.
If Utopia is ever to be anything but an abstract idea, we have to begin to actually live it. By my experiences I am in a unique position to write about Utopia from direct experience. I intend to use these experiences to illuminate the final volume of my novel in four parts.

I do wish you a Merry Christmas and the best for the New Year. I know I have not convinced you with this argument. (How few have actually listened to us over the years – sigh). But if you would drop everything and begin again, sharing everything… Well, your world would change today.
Love to you, Jim

I am not copyrighting this piece so that you may spread it far and wide among your friends if you wish. I do invite your comments or further discussion. I’d like to hear your thoughts on Utopia. Thanks.

UTOPIA II THE REALITY OF THE WORLD

2010-12-17T06:56:00.000-08:00

Once Utopia leaves the mind, like a child leaving the womb, it is confronted with the reality of the world. The idea is immediately set upon from every side and, whether reality was considered at all in the formulation of the Utopia, it can no longer be shielded from that reality. Reality is no respecter of ideas. Reality will not only attempt to reshape the utopian idea in those places where it does not fit, it will attempt to annihilate any aspect of the idea that does not conform. What seemed so pristine in its conception is now beleaguered in its inception.

Let me give an example. Fifteen years ago I visited a local soup kitchen with the idea of donating some money and then getting out. It was a cold February morning and when I stepped in from the quiet whiteness of the snowy dawn I was confronted with the reality of heat from the kitchen and the smell of cooking and the almost monolithic noise of people gathered in a confined space, all of whom were trying to be heard over everyone else. I met a fifty year old woman who obviously lived outdoors. She was shivering and her grey coat was mottled with damp spots.

“I live in a cave in Horse Gulch,” she informed me. I stayed to share some hot beef stew. “Of course on nights like last night my pets get awfully cold.” She carefully took some rocks from her coat pocket. I looked at her closely to see if she was joking.

“What’s it like, living out like that?” I asked. The nighttime temperatures had been hovering around twenty degrees.

She looked evenly back at me. “Well if you want to know what it’s like, why don’t you come out and try it for yourself.”

This was probably a standard dodge for her. She never thought, and I never dreamed that I might actually take her up on her proposition. But on Friday afternoon I followed her and several others up into the mountains along a narrow trail that led, they informed me, into a place known as Horse Gulch. I had nothing with me but a sleeping bag and a roll of plastic to keep out the cold and wet.

There is no way for me to relate here what transpired over the next twelve years. Suffice it to say that we took her challenge to the greatest extreme possible. We lived among the poor and homeless. We shared meals and led worship and cared for those who were ill and helped in any way we could for all that time. We came to realize that if we set up camp right in the midst of the homeless we could bring positive elements to an otherwise very negative community. And it worked! It worked, that is, until the reality of the world set upon us. It was strange, really, how we were cast away. People did not want to help the poor or homeless – at least not in the way we were doing it, up close and personal – but they also didn’t want us doing it. Apparently our sincere actions made them look bad. So in the end they got rid of us. They closed the soup kitchen on Sundays altogether, so that we would not have a place to gather.

Their actions, however, did not change our commitment to helping others. We moved out into their parking lot in and continued to serve hot meals all winter long. If they would not fulfill their own mission, we would do it. It was something of a Public Relations nightmare for them. At last they negotiated with others to re-open on Sundays and we were not invited.

This Utopia did not grow directly from an idea. Rather, it grew from a need that wasn’t being met. A community was already there. The homeless in our town knew each other and met together, but at the center of their meeting were drugs and alcohol and violence and alienation. What we did was to displace that center and bring a positive community into existence. A community of love and nonviolence and of healing recovery.

We still live in that Utopia. We meet in our home. We share food and love and healing recovery together, though on a much smaller scale. While living in the streets we came to truly understand what the problems of this world are, and what must be done to solve them. Now, we are living every day as a solution to those problems. But that is the subject of next week’s post: ‘The Kingdom of God’.

Merry Christmas. Jim

THE DILEMMA OF VIOLENCE

2010-12-14T11:31:00.000-08:00

Violence is a way that seems to work. When one gets the upper hand over another, the issue seems to be resolved in favor of the 'winner'. But is that ever really the case? Are we not always left with unresolved issues that will need to be worked out in the future? And, if violence is the way that seems to have worked, will we not be more likely to employ it next time?

A number of years ago a member of our family was preparing to enlist to fight the war in Iraq. Nancy and I had taken a vow of nonviolence years before that, so it was not surprising that we voiced our objection to sending this young man off to be a Marine. It is also not surprising that we were laughed at and our voices left unheard. He joined and went.

Before that, even, we were laughed at whenever we attempted to voice an alternative response to the horrible events of 9/11. Would war really be the best way to lead to peace in the world? We were very lonely then. I went out with a sign that said simply, "Say No To War". People driving by threw things. They made gestures. They shouted out their windows at me. We put the sign in the window of our home and it gained us no new friends. We wrote a letter to the editor of our hometown newspaper and became the target of written animosity.

Now everyone is tired of war. The truths we tried to convey then still hold true today. But has anyone learned anything from these years and years of war, or will we simply be led into another bloody war after this one? And another after that? Our family member went to Iraq for two tours. He was not killed. He came back injured in body and mind. He has turned to alcohol and his anger cannot seem to be contained. What a tragedy his life is turning out to be.

"What are we to do?" people are asking now. (Especially now as we approach Christmas day). "How can we fight evil without becoming evil ourselves?" Ah, there is the question. The dilemma is created by our addiction to violence. Because violence seems to work, and doesn't, we hopefully choose it every time, only to have our hopes dashed. The problem seems too large and thus seems to have no solution. But, as with nearly every problem, we can reduce it in order to find a solution. If I personally choose the moral way of nonviolence - if I choose not to participate in violence - I will have solved the problem of war for myself. I cannot say what others will do. I cannot say what my government will do. But as for me, I choose the only sane way open to us. My writing reflects this stand.

I wonder if others will have the courage to choose a new way, or if the new year will simply be an extension of last year's moral dilemma. May you have a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year.

Jim and Nancy

UTOPIA I The Dream of the Mind

2010-12-10T06:35:00.000-08:00

The utopia of the mind is not the same as the utopia of reality. Writers and philosophers and great thinkers of every stripe; and in fact any old crackpot, scoundrel, and megalomaniac can conceive of a utopia in the mind. That is where utopia works best – in the imagination and in dreams. A utopia in reality is quite another matter and we yearn with all our hearts to look further into that possibility next week.

As you may recall, the fourth book of my novel in four volumes will concern itself with the ideas of utopia. (Utopia as allegory).

The utopia of the mind works best because, after all, who does not have the answer to all the world’s problems? If all the people in the world simply acted more like me or at least did everything I told them to do, the world would be a much better place. And when we read Utopian literature that is what it most often sounds like. Take Plato’s ‘Republic’ for instance. What it seems like on paper is the ideal, if not perfect society, based upon the City-State of the Spartans of another age. But in reality what it would be is the kind of totalitarian nightmare regime we have become so familiar with in the modern age. The Nazis in Germany thought of themselves in Utopian terms and look how that turned out. Their ‘reason’ was formed in a vacuum so when it became reality it was as twisted as their swastikas.

Writers through the ages have always had a Utopian bent. The word itself comes from Sir Thomas More’s ‘Utopia’ which can mean either ‘Good Place’ or ‘No Place’. This fits because utopia can be a good place, but it is found no place. His utopia was a contrast to the English society of his day. (He later died a martyr’s death at the hands of Henry VIII, but that is quite another story). Some other Utopian writings are Dante’s ‘Purgatorio’ and ‘Paradiso’; John MacNie’s ‘The Diothas’ (1883); Edward Bellamy’s ‘Looking Backward’ (1888); ‘What the North Wind Rose’ by Robert Graves; St. Augustine’s ‘City of God’ and B.F. Skinner’s ‘Walden Two’. I remember being enthralled by ‘Walden Two’ back in the day, but now find it simplistic in the horse and carrot manner of solving social problems.

Of course there are plenty of examples of utopia gone wrong such as Aldous Huxley’s ‘Brave New World’; ‘1984’ by George Orwell; and the allegorical ‘Lord of the Flies’ by William Golding. We might say that the Engels/Marx Utopian idea of communism went terribly wrong also, but that has crossed over into the world of reality.

America, the dream – not the reality – was very Utopian from the beginning. Columbus dreamed of discovering the Garden of Eden. Puritans sought release from the bondage of European restrictions. (Even that failed, however. We North Americans think of Puritanism with no little embarrassment today.) Henry David Thoreau’s ‘Walden’ is a kind of individual utopia. If we are willing to endure loneliness and to live within the laws of nature, we can seek and find the genuine self.

There is something unreal even in the dream of utopia. Once we have dreamed it up (it’s perfect!), are we then to stop dreaming? And the reality is even more removed –who will do the work and who would even want to live in such a place? “That’s your idea of perfection, partner, not mine.” Or – “That might work for a mindless automaton, but I have dreams of my own.” In a way the writer is always somewhat Utopian - thinking. The written word is a utopia created and controlled by me (and I hope you all will fight to the death with sticks and fingernails over the manuscripts and papers I leave behind me when I die!). Most writers have given up on utopia altogether, and have opted for anti-utopia, or dystopia instead. Utopia, they believe, is bound to fail.

All life must grow. In order to grow, utopia cannot become static. Growth causes pain. Pain must either be inflicted on others or taken upon ourselves in self-suffering love. Pain becomes suffering if it is not addressed and alleviated. Suffering causes discontent. Discontent leads to Utopian thought. Utopia fails because the people dream of utopia…

Next Week: UTOPIA II The Reality of the World.

Copyright © James D. Sanderson 2010. All rights reserved.

For some intellectually stimulating and eclectic articles about utopia see:
www.the-utopian.org

TO ALLEGORY OR NOT TO ALLEGORY?

2010-12-03T08:18:00.000-08:00

I confess I'm not sure I know exactly what an allegory is. I know one when I see one, (see my list below), but I'm not sure how to define it or how to put it into practice. The reason this is important is that this month I am studying allegory with the notion of employing it in the fourth volume of my novel in four volumes. In September, you may recall, I studied Tragedy with the emphasis on Shakespeare. In October it was Apocalyptic Literature (not post-apocalyptic like 'The Road'), and last month the emphasis was on Prose Epic. So now - Allegory.

As near as I can figure, a work is allegorical when the meaning of the story is conveyed symbolically - where one thing represents something else - or when the story itself represents some other story. (If you know a better definition, please enlighten me). In a way, all literature is allegorical. The quest for Utopia (a rough idea about volume four), is the American story, for instance, or perhaps it is a universal story. Do we not all yearn for a perfect life? But a perfect life means different things to different people, and there is the rub. (American Anglo settlers destroyed indigenous peoples and cultures). Anyway, we'll look deeper into Utopia next week.

Coleridge said allegory "cannot be other than spoken consciously, whereas in... the symbol the general truth may be unconsciously in the writer's mind." A symbol is a physical image of some other thing. It therefore has a deep affinity with physical things. Allegories make extensive use of symbols - the most successful I believe is 'Lord of the Flies' - but they are more than symbolic.

Plot in an allegory unfolds as an exploration of a literal truth that is found in the words themselves, and in the history of those words. This can cause confusion among readers who are used to the standard triangular plot arrangement seen in most writing today. The author may suspend a traditional plot in mid-air, so to speak, and reveal a deeper truth about characters, situations, or words. Wordplay, then, is an organic part of the genre.

Allegory works on at least two levels - the literal and the figurative. The figurative level offers up a moral or political lesson which is indicated by the characters, symbols, and everything else in the narrative. Dante claimed that his Commedia, like the Bible, worked on four levels: 1) The literal level - the historic event. 2) The typological level - writing history as a series of signs, just as God does. 3) The moral level - the turning of the soul from the sorrow and misery of sin to a state of grace. 4) The anagogical level - the soul's departure to heaven from the body at the time of death. This definition seems to pose as many questions as answers 'nel mezzo del Cammin di nostra vita' ('halfway along the road of life', or in my case more than half way.

At what point, then, does formal allegory give way to extended metaphor or imagery? Can a sustained metaphor become allegory? All writing begins with words and letters upon the page. Writing cannot be 'real' at all - all is allegorical. The inherent truth on the page is found in the words themselves and the narrative images they produce. If I find the rules of allegory too rigid, can I find a way that does not bind the narrative so tightly? Like Milton, of course, I can choose not to write allegory at all. Or, as when Melville claimed that 'Moby Dick' was not allegory, Hawthorne pointed out that it was "part-and-parcel allegoricalness of the whole." Perhaps I can find what C.S. Lewis ('The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe'), called "the allegorical core". Thank goodness I don't have to decide today. I will continue to study the matter and invite your comments.

One allegorical novel I particularly enjoy is Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter'. Yet even here some of the rules of allegory seem to be neglected or abandoned, especially when one considers how well the 'real' nature of the main characters and the demands of the tradition plot works. Still, who can forget that opening scene - an allegory if there ever was one - with the rose found at the threshold of the prison and the grim 'black and white' vista of the Pilgrim world beyond. Again and again the narrative returns to this opening scene as Pearl and the scarlet letter become one, and the scarlet letter itself becomes the 'letter of the law' written of in Paul's letter to the Corinthians.

What I am looking for may be more 'mythical' than allegorical. Myth is a story that is central to a culture or society. It embodies the values of that culture. An example of myth is, of course, the creation myth. How the universe and people came into existence. There are nearly as many creation stories as there are cultures telling those stories.

While I consider which I will use for volume four, I will be reading (or re-reading) the following books this month as examples of allegory:

'Gulliver's Travels' by Jonathan Swift
'Ulysses' by James Joyce
'Pilgrim's Progress' by John Bunyan
'Divine Comedy' by Dante
'Sea Wolf' by Jack London
'Blindness' by Jose Saramago
'One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest' by Ken Kesey
'Lord of the Flies' by William Golding
'The Heart is a Lonely Hunter' by Carson McCullers
'Death Comes for the Archbishop' by Willa Cather
'Gravity's Rainbow' by Thomas Pynchon
and 'The Scarlet Letter' mentioned above, by Hawthorne.

Alright, I admit it may take more than a month.

Happy Holidays to you all.

Jim

HIROSHIMA, The Bomb and The Book

2010-11-26T05:59:00.000-08:00

For some reason the notion that there was an itching sound inside the bomb as it rode along in the belly of the Enola Gay persists. It is mistaken of course. Who knows even where the notion came from? Perhaps the silence of the bomb in those moments before it was dropped on Hiroshima is just too immense to contemplate. The itching sound, then, is some sort of compensation for that end-of-the-world silence.
In 1939, before the United States entered what became World War II, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to President Roosevelt explaining the efforts by the Nazis in Germany to purify uranium-235, which in theory could be used to build an ‘atomic’ bomb. An atom is comprised of the three sub-atomic particles – protons, neutrons and electrons. Protons and neutrons cluster together to form a center mass around which the electrons orbit like tiny planets around a sun. Uranium is a heavy metal with the largest atom of all natural elements and is the most highly ‘splitable’ atom there is. Given several hundreds of thousands of years this atom will disintegrate naturally into lead. If it is bombarded with neutrons, however, a chain reaction occurs releasing heat and gamma radiation. It is this effect, it was thought, that could be used to create a blast to destroy our enemies.
Thus began the Manhattan Project. Two billion dollars were spent over six years to develop the atom bomb. A huge uranium enrichment plant was built at the secret city of Oak Ridge, Tennessee and, under J. Robert Oppenheimer a laboratory was created at another secret city; Los Alamos, New Mexico. By 1944 most of the work was focused on an implosion type device made with plutonium using the cold name ‘The Gadget’, which need to be tested before it could be used in combat. (This was the type of bomb used on Nagasaki on August 9th.) Oppenheimer directed Project TR, for Trinity, to conduct this test.
Some believed this test might cause a cataclysmic reaction in the upper atmosphere bringing about the complete destruction of the world and the annihilation of humankind with it, but apparently this did not cause enough concern to bring the project to a halt. Instead people prayed for God’s protection while their hands went about the work of creating the atomic bomb.
On July 16th, 1945 the Gadget was suspended one hundred feet above the ground on a steel tower in the pre-dawn hours and was detonated. .034 seconds later a camera caught a black and white image of the dome-like ball that looked like the back of a jelly fish or a flapper’s hat, with a roiling fringe along the bottom edge. The burst of light was such that people in distant towns thought the sun rose twice that morning. A blind girl 120 miles away ‘saw’ the light. This intense white flash stretched from the basin of the Jemez Mountains in northern New Mexico across the Jornada del Muerto and then it became an orange fireball shooting upward at 360 feet per second turning reddish and pulsating, and finally blooming into the full mushroom cloud we have all become familiar with, pushing up to 30,000 feet in the atmosphere.
Oppenheimer, now at the very pinnacle of his achievement, grimly quoted from the Bhagavad Gita. “I am become Death,” he said, “the destroyer of worlds.” Several others circulated a petition to stop this monstrosity from ever being used again. Their efforts were, of course, like trying to put the genii back in the bottle. No one paid any attention to their protests.
In a diary entry dated July 25th, President Truman wrote, “We have discovered the most terrible bomb in the history of the world. It may be the fire destruction prophesied in the Euphrates Valley Era, after Noah and his fabulous Ark…
“This weapon is to be used against Japan between now and August 10th. I have told the Sec. of War, Mr. Stimson, to use it so that military objectives and soldiers and sailors are the target and not women and children…
“The target will be a purely military one and we will issue a warning statement asking the Japs to surrender and save lives…”
Work commenced at once to produce the bomb – ‘Little Boy’ – that would be used in combat. Even though it was a cute little thing by today’s standards, the bomb was still ten feet long, over two feet in diameter and weighed four and a half tons. It would use TNT charges to force two masses of 235U together causing the chain reaction. Parts were delivered and assembled at the island of Tinian, in the Mariana Islands, an island that had been liberated form the Japanese. Fierce fighting was continuing on other likely island locations like Okinawa and Iwo Jima.
Hiroshima was chosen as the site of the drop because it was flat river delta country, with no hills or mountains in the immediate area to deflect the blast and so it had been bypassed as a target for conventional bombing, leaving it in pristine condition so that the effects of the blast could be more readily observed. The heart of the city covered about four square miles. Its normal population was 380,000 men women and children, but this had been reduced to 245,000 by wartime evacuations. There were factories and residential areas there, and other residential areas extended outward toward the hills in the distance.
At around six in the morning a minute-long sounding of the air-raid siren warned of approaching enemy planes but this got little response. People were used to weather planes coming over at about that time of day, so they paid little attention. Those who were going to evacuate had already done so. Besides, strangely, Hiroshima had been spared all bombing up to this time. People speculated that their city was not a critical target for Japan’s enemies. Perhaps, they thought, the area was so beautiful that the Americans could not bring themselves to spoil it with bombing. This in spite of the fact that 720,000 leaflets had been dropped two days earlier, warning them of the impending destruction of their city. Before eight another siren sounded, but then the all-clear was given. There was no breeze that morning. It was going to be a beautiful day, if a little too warm.
The Enola Gay was a B-29 Super Fortress under the command of Colonel Paul W. Tibbets. It had been flying practice missions out of North Field, Tinian, since early July and on August 5th LI1 – Little Boy – was loaded into the front bomb bay. The following morning at 2:00 a.m. it took off on Special Bombing Mission #13. Target: Hiroshima, with the bomb to be dropped from 30,000 feet at 8:15 local time. Ground Zero was a point 1,980 feet above the Aioi Bridge.
In an instant 70,000 people vanished from the face of the earth, evaporated by a 13 kiloton explosion that measured one mile in diameter. The super-heated x-ray heated air sent a shock wave and fireball in all directions at the speed of sound. Houses were reduced to kindling as this massive wave shot forward with 5psi (which amounts to about 720 pounds per square foot), and the kindling then burst into flame, further fueling the destruction. At the very center of the blast the temperature was 10,000 degrees Fahrenheit. Another 70,000 were injured with no one to care for them.
A noiseless sun-bright flash of light bounced across the sky toward the hills. Those who survived the initial blast were knocked off their feet and covered with splinters of wood and shards of glass and bits of concrete. Only those many miles away heard any kind of noise from the explosion. Most thought that the bombing had been a near-direct hit in their own neighborhood. Clouds of dust rose up into the air, causing a kind of eerie morning twilight. Flames and clots of smoke rose up from anything left to burn. Survivors staggered around with terrible burns on their faces and arms, and in many cases their clothes had been burned away, leaving the pattern of the fabrics imprinted in their skin. Some people’s faces had been melted away completely. A wind picked up now and peculiar grape-sized raindrops began to fall from the dirty sky. We know now that this rain was packed with extreme amounts of radioactive materials. Here and there children were calling out for help form the piles of rubble which moments before had been their homes. For the most part there was no one capable of digging them out, and after a time their cries died down.
Survivors tried to help each other out as much as they could, but in the face of such destruction there wasn’t much anyone could do. Many made their way to the Red Cross hospital, which was filling up so quickly most were left outside. The few doctors and nurses left alive were soon overwhelmed by the shear number of casualties.
The shadow of one anonymous man – all that remains of him – was found on some steps near a bank.
Over the next several days those who had not been killed in the initial blast began to experience headaches, nausea, diarrhea, and recurring fevers. Many died. In two weeks their hair fell out in clumps, diarrhea and cramps increased, and fevers shot up to 106 degrees. By the end of the month incidents of blood disorders increased, people’s gums began to bleeding, and they experienced a sharp drop in their blood cell counts. (White cell counts went below 4,000). Open wounds were slow to heal. They had sore throats and mouths.
If their burns healed at all, and many did not, these ‘kibakusha’ as they were called – ‘explosion-affected persons’ – healed with deep layers of pinkish, rubbery scar tissue called keloid tumors.
In his book ‘Hiroshima’ (1946), the finest and most horrifying book written about this event, John Hersey quoted a report sent to the Holy See in Rome by a German Jesuit priest, a Father Siemes, “It seems logical that he who supports total war in principle cannot complain of a war against civilians. The crux of the matter is whether total war in its present form is justifiable, even when it serves a just purpose. Does it not have material and spiritual evil as its consequences which far exceed whatever good might result? When will our moralists give us a clear answer to this question?”
Everything following ‘Hiroshima’ can be read in a different light – the light of a nuclear explosion. Not that literature itself was shaken by this book’s words or style, but that life itself has been irreparably shifted from its foundations and that literature from then on likewise had shifted. There is no way it could not have. For that reason alone everyone who reads should read this book. It is horrible, intelligent and realistic. It begins, “At exactly fifteen minutes past eight in the morning, on August 6, 1945, Japanese time, at the moment when the atomic bomb flashed above Hiroshima…” The author then proceeds to give a rundown on what each of his six ‘characters’ were doing at that moment. These are some of the real-life survivors of ‘the Bomb’.
Originally published in ‘The New Yorker’ in its entirety, it was recognized at once as a classic in American literature, standing witness to the tragic and earth-shaking (literally a global event as subsequent decades have proven) moment of a nuclear detonation over a largely civilian population. A hundred thousand people died in a single blast intended to prove to Japan the futility of its continue the fighting of World War II. Those who supported the use of the weapon justified it by pointing out the casualties that would be spared by abruptly putting an end to the war. Hersey’s journalistic masterpiece repudiates their claim by presenting the horrifying facts about how the blast affected the lives of real people.
Hersey wrote, “Hiroshima had been getting such warnings almost every night for weeks, for at that time the B-29s were using Lake Biwa, northeast of Hiroshima, as a rendezvous point, and no matter what city the Americans planned to hit, the Superfortresses streamed in over the coast near Hiroshima. The frequency of the warnings and the continued abstinence of Mr. B with respect to Hiroshima had made its citizens jittery; a rumor was going around that the Americans were saving something special for the city.”
Special indeed: “He heard no roar. (Almost no one in Hiroshima recalls hearing any noise of the bomb. But a fisherman in his sampan on the Inland Sea near Tsuzo… saw the flash and heard a tremendous explosion; he was nearly twenty miles from Hiroshima, but the thunder was greater than when the B-29s hit Iwakuni, only five miles away.)”
Nearly forty years after writing ‘Hiroshima’ John Hersey returned to Japan to follow up with the people who had lived through this horrendous event. He wrote an ‘Afterward’ to his original work, published by Alfred A. Knopf (1985). Most had gone on with their lives, as one might expect; and most believed that nuclear weapons would be used again one day. Their memory, “like the world’s, was getting spotty.”

Copyright © James D. Sanderson 2010. All Rights Reserved.

NO SOUP FOR YOU

2010-11-23T13:30:00.000-08:00

"The man who does not read good books has no advantage over the man who can't read them." - Mark Twain.

Well that didn't take long. All one has to do is suggest that there might be a certain standard in literature for it to achieve greatness and the controversy begins. Perhaps it is time for some controversy. Readers keep being led to mediocre books (those written by the Greek master 'Mediocretes'), without ever being shown that there might be something better or (dare I say it?) more valuable. Oh sure, everyone is exposed to a good book or two in their High School lit class, but that is often considered a violation of the reader's 'free will'. To actually pick up a great work of literature and read it and to come to understand why it might be considered great... that seems to be a thing of the past. Or, perhaps it has always been so. Perhaps greatness is always reserved to an exclusive few while the masses always continue to lust after that which is worthless.

Let me be clear, here, so as not to upset any future readers. This is a blog that concerns itself with literary greatness. (Thus the name: 'Literary Greatness'). We will not, here, concern ourselves with literary mediocreness nor with literary trashiness, nor with literary okayness. No, greatness is our goal and we shall not deviate from it. If, in these pages, certain readers are made uneasy by our directness, we make no apologies for it. If readers of these pages become outraged that we do not accept the flat terrain of the internet, so be it. (The internet seems to make everyone believe they have something to say, and that it is important because they want to say it, and that it is worthwile reading because they have said it. I assure you, I don't have time left in my life to share with you what I had for breakfast (oatmeal), nor do you have the time to spend reading such hogwash). I see that anyone and everyone may 'vote' their preferences on certain book sites. In that way Harry Potter is 'great', while 'Great Expectations' might be considered too long and, you know, like, totally boring. If that is the site for you, please go there.

This is the last I am going to say on the matter. From here we will continue to wade into the deep waters of great literature - both the reading and writing of it - and we will not detour because certain writers or readers think we should lend our attention to more mundane affairs.

I agree with Robert Frost... "People who read me seem to be divided into four groups: twenty-five percent like me for the right reasons; twenty-five percent like me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the wrong reasons; twenty-five percent hate me for the right reasons. It's the last twenty-five percent that worries me."

Well, No Soup For Them...

Jim

RUNNING 'WITH' THE BULLS

2010-11-19T06:57:00.000-08:00

At dusk we set out by train from Barcelona. The compartment was jammed with merry-makers from many countries passing bottles of wine around. Empty bottles rolled and clinked together on the floor of the compartment. After a time many of us dozed off.

It was many years since I had first read Hemingway and by now I had read them all. Somehow I had gotten the notion that all great writers must attend the Running of the Bulls during the Festival of San Fermin in Pamplona. I don't know why they call it the Running 'of' the Bulls, which makes it seem that the bulls run alone through the streets.

In the morning we stepped bleary-eyed from the train into the dusty dawn of Pamplona. Women were down at the river already washing clothes. We began to ask along the street about a place to stay. The town was packed with tourists, of course, but we eventually got a spare room in the house of a couple whose baby toddled around without benefit of diapers. The place smelled dusty and even the water from the tap tasted of dust.

The day was hot and dry. It was the first week in July. We spent our time wandering around, taking a meal at a little restaurant, and napping in the afternoon. That night the merry-making continued. Everyone had come to get drunk, it seems. Perhaps they were building up their levels of liquid courage. By morning people were staggering or already passed out in doorways and along the sidewalks. Those who were still upright began to line up along the street that would take the bulls through town to the bullring. The very bravest, the drunkest, or the most insane, formed a line nearest the place the bulls would come from. I will leave it to the reader to decide which I was.

We began to shake rolled-up newspapers and chant and call for the bulls. We didn't have long to wait. The loud retort of fireworks set them off. We waited and chanted and shook our rolled-up newspapers and then the bulls appeared around the corner below us. The first wave of bulls are relatively tame, and lead the next wave - the actually Spanish fighting bulls - through the streets. They were very close and still no one moved. Each of us seemed determined to wait for someone else to run first. It doesn't seem nearly so brave now.

At last someone moved and we all turned and ran. We took three steps before the first wave of bulls was upon us and we dodged as best we could those horns that could carry us away to the infirmary or worse. But the bulls were intent upon getting up the street and we came away undamaged. In fact they seemed little concerned with us at all.

Things became serious with the second wave. They also seemed little concerned with us except inasmuch as we got in their way. As they came up even - we were running with all our might, indeed, with all our might - a black bull stumbled on the cobblestones and fell heavily in the street beside me. I stopped, not knowing what to do. The bull regained its footing and now, cut off from the others, became dangerous. He swung away from me. A man on that side caught hold of the awning over the doorway and pulled himself bodily up and out of the way of the horns. I don't know what superhuman strength he called upon to accomplish it.

The bull swung his head back toward me. A man just in front of me caught his eye. He charged. His right horn caught the man in the midsection, in the stomach, and slammed him mightily against the wooden beam barricade that blocked that side of the street. An astonishing fan of blood splayed out into the dust. The man dropped where he had stood and people on the other side of the barricade pulled him under. I turned and ran back down the street the way we had come. The bull proceeded up toward the bull ring, attacking any and all who got in his way.

I found Nancy in the crowd. She hadn't been able to see, but heard someone shouting a man was gored. It wasn't me, I informed her.

Somewhere in the thick of the crowd someone got the notion that the bulls were coming again. A moment of panic seized them all. The crowd surged with a mind of its own. Nancy was knocked to her knees.

The bulls, apparently, are not the only thing to be feared in Pamplona early in July.

Copyright 2010 by James D. Sanderson. All rights reserved.

THE OLD MAN AND THE AUTHOR

2010-11-15T07:36:00.000-08:00

I first read ‘The Old Man and the Sea’ by kerosene lantern light in a cabin in the wilds of northern Michigan. The lantern sat in the middle of the kitchen table and my brothers read ‘Sports Afield’ and ‘Outdoor’ magazines and as we read shadows played upon the dark walls. The cabin itself was made from sections of an old army barracks that my father and I had hauled up one weekend on a flat trailer pulled behind a borrowed truck. Outside in the dark as we read the wind blew acorns down onto the roof with a nobly sound and it was then, somehow drawing a connection between the tall dark forest of the north and the infinite deep waters of the Gulf Stream, that I knew I would be a writer.

Santiago, the old man of the story, had gone eighty four days without taking a fish. Many years have passed for me since first reading that opening line. And, like the old man, I have had little luck. A couple of minor works were published, but that was long ago, and the two good things I have written now go begging for a publisher. But, also like the old man, I would rather hone my skills than depend upon luck. In that way when the big one comes along, I will be in the place to hook it.

It has come along and I have hooked it and now, like old Santiago, I know I will suffer for it and pay my life into it and struggle with it until the greatness has been landed. Nothing else, now, is of any significance. Even to write here, now, would be a waste of time if I was not also thinking through what I will do with the greatest story I have ever been given; and the greatest story I ever will be given.

In college my professor predicted I would be a great writer and I have spent much time since then trying to live up to the promise, with little material success. But now that I too am growing old I know that material success has little meaning in itself and that once his fish was landed and he had paid the price for it, it would all be stripped away and he would be left with nothing but a bare backbone that would lie awash in the water along the beach, and the tourists would identify it with a very different fish. It would be tempting to shrug and say fatalistically, “such is life,” and give up on the whole mess.

And I would give up, too, if it were not for the greatness that is calling from the deep waters too far out from land. I, like Santiago, know that I will go there and bring in the big fish, no matter what the cost.

TOWARD A MODERN PROSE EPIC?

2010-11-12T08:09:00.000-08:00

In the world of publishing any long novel is considered to be an epic. ‘Lonesome Dove’ is an ‘epic’ of the old west. Or it might be called a ‘sweeping epic’, or a ‘grand epic’. And of course it is prose, so it might also be considered a ‘prose epic’. But is this correct?

The only true prose epic I know of is ‘The Trials of Persiles and Sigismunda’ by Miquel Cervantes, the Spanish author who also brought us ‘Don Quiote’. It was his final work, published posthumously. It is the story of a prince and his wife who travel as ordinary people and who are met with many dangers along the way. The remarkable thing about his epic is that Persiles is a hero who employs not a sword, but his words against those who would harm them. It is a kind of nonviolent epic, the only one of its kind that I am aware of.

I bring this up because I have been working this month on the structure and plan for a prose epic. It will be one volume of a novel in four parts. The first, which I planned out in September, is a tragedy. That led me to read and study Shakespeare, of course, and other tragic works. Last month I planned out my apocalyptic novel, the second in the series. I, like so many others, really thought of post-apocalyptic when I thought of such work. But no, apocalyptic is before the event. It predicts the coming events. Not in the way of fortune telling, I found, but more in the sense that if we don’t change the way we do things, this is how it will turn out for us. So that will be the second. Now, the third is an epic novel. There are certain characteristics that make an epic an epic:

True epics are found in verse form. The verse builds a kind of separation between the events, and the story of the events, and the reader. ‘The Illiad’ and ‘The Odyssey’, are epics. The ‘Modern Sequel’ by Nikos Kazantzakis (also the author of ‘Zorba, The Greek’, one of my favorites), is also an epic. Dante’s ‘Inferno’ and Milton’s ‘Paradise Lost’ are epics. They begin in the middle of things, (in medias res). The hero is in the thick of it, perhaps at his lowest point. The setting of an epic is vast, and may even represent the world or the universe. It begins with an invocation to a muse and with a statement of theme. Epic simile is used.

There are many more ‘restrictions’ to epics that I’m sure you can find if you take up the subject search on the internet. The main point I am making, and am learning for myself, is that modern literature does not lend itself to the creation of true epic, especially in the prose form. Our sense of what a novel is rejects many traditions and rules. We tend to shy away from a high moral tone and long lists of people or objects, which seem to typify the epic. We think of our heroes, and ourselves, as individuals doing single battle in the world, whereas the epic hero embodies the values of civilization and community. Many modern novels reject the idea of an orderly and purposeful universe, while the epic assumes there is meaning in life, and that it is directed toward some purposeful goal.

So, have I painted myself into a corner by planning a prose epic? We shall see. It will be a challenge, to say the least. But isn’t that what we authors love most?

Copyright 2010 by James D. Sanderson. All rights reserved.

CASCADE. NOT VIRAL.

2010-11-09T16:19:00.000-08:00

PLEASE, LITERARY AGENTS. DON'T DO US ANY FAVORS:

At an agent's site this week I read with interest that our (we writers) best bet would be to churn out a couple of trashy (my words) novels a year and forget about the literary stuff. After all, who is going to pay any attention to literature? Do you want to make a comfortable living or get a good review?

I'm not even sure I'm capable of saying what is wrong with all that. Is it any wonder we don't have any Leo Tolstoys around any more? "Hey, Mr. Tolstoy, that 'Anna Karenina' is great but what we really need for you to do it to crank out a couple of romance novels first. You've got to keep the rubles rolling in, you know."

This comes at a bad time for me. I have been trying to find a publisher for a literary nonfiction book 'American Masters' and for my novel 'The Struggle' and have not been having much success. I have also picked up working on a novel in four volumes - very literary - that I began clear back in 1996. Each volume is going to have a different literary approach to the story. The first is tragedy. The second apocalyptic (not post-apocalyptic, but true apocalyptic). The third is prose epic. (About which I will write more on Friday's post). And the final volume will be allegorical. If I can't even get anyone to pay attention to my more modest works, who is going to go for such a grand work of literature?

Then it dawned on me: A publisher is not going to take a risk on anything any more. The author is going to have to do all the leg work to get people interested and to get the word out. To 'build a platform' as they call it. But, if the author has done all that, what need do we have of a publisher? I have seen some of my work through the printing and distribution process before. So why not again?

THE TROUBLE SEEMS TO BE THIS: NO ONE KNOWS WHAT TO READ ANYMORE; AND NO ONE KNOWS WHAT TO WRITE TO MEET THE NEEDS THE READER DOESN'T KNOW ABOUT.

Does that make sense? There seems to be no standard in literature except that it be exciting and that it make money. Is anyone attempting anything more than that? I'm sure some are, but I'm not sure their voices are being heard.

Having said that, then, I have begun trying to get the word out via this blog and on Facebook and so on. This is not a viral effort, which suggests an overnight 'Flash' success. No, there will be nothing flashy about any of this. What there will be, here, is a genuine effort to discover what is missing, and perhaps to explore ways to put it back into our literature. Content is supreme here.

I can't do this alone, however. I'd like to link up with other authors and groups that have similar interests. I will be looking to those of you who read classics and who write literary novels , short stories, and nonfiction. Then, as we build a network together, I believe we will experience a cascade as friends tell friends that something real is happening among us. Once we have set this in motion, in short, it will be difficult to stop.

Won't you join with me in this effort? Spread the word that literature is not (yet) dead. We won't let it die.

Jim

ANNOUNCING: LITERARY GREATNESS

2010-11-05T06:39:00.000-07:00

Our eleven year old granddaughter has begun reading some 'classic' literature. She started with Ernest Hemingway's 'The Old Man and the Sea'. (The author claimed to have written the ending 26 times. When asked by a reporter what the problem with the ending was, Mr. Hemingway replied, "I couldn't get the words right"). She has just finished 'Call of the Wild' by Jack London and is now reading 'Great Expectations' by Charles Dickens. She has found these books 'real' and 'fascinating'. Even her vocabulary has increased. I don't ever remember hearing 'fascinating' before. Her reading has caused some lively discussion around here and she has been asking some pointed and sometimes uncomfortable questions. New worlds are opening up to her, in short, and her experience reminds us that Great Literature 'is' fascinating. These are words and sentences and stories that have lasted - some for thousands of years.

THEY HAVE VALUE. THEY ARE VALUABLE!

We can turn to them when we want a real experience of the world, and of our struggles in it. Their pages are filled with laughter, tears, and questions like: "Why am I here?" And "What is it all for?" Sometimes we are disturbed by the author's answers.

Here, at 'Literary Greatness', we take a look at what makes such work great. We struggle with the questions. We look at the stories of what it took to create these works - what it cost their authors or at what they did with their lives. These, also, are sometimes fascinating. In her childhood, for instance, one famous American author taught a chicken to walk backward. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, the Russian novelist, was next in line for the firing squad before his sentence was commuted and he was shipped off to a prison camp.

Here you will find these 'portraits' of famous authors, essays on things literary, book reports, reviews, short stories (as I struggle with the questions in my own work), sample chapters, and more.

I hope you will join 'Literary Greatness' now to receive weekly updates and to post your own comments. Let me know what you think. Let me know what you're reading and what you think of it. Let me know how you are struggling with the questions and what greatness is required of us all to prevail.

Sign up now and let's get to it...

Jim

DOUBLE PORTRAIT, Chapter One

2010-10-29T06:41:00.000-07:00

At sixty years of age Daniel Allman had committed the one sin he never thought he would; he had not died in his youth. To say he wouldn't live past forty had been a popular saying back in his day, (or was it thirty?)but he had really believed it. He had always done the kinds of things that would bring an early death, but he had somehow avoided it. Now, as he had heard someone say, "If I had known I was going to live so long, I'd have taken better care of himself." He had lived hard then and was paying the price now.

Courting death then had been his way of staving off madness, a family malady, but now - being no longer young - he tried to stave off that madness and his quite literal temptation to suicide, by way of his writing.

He wrote a weekly column about literature, surprisingly popular, for a metropolitan newspaper, had had reviews and articles published in the 'New Yorker' and others, but he feared writing his Great American Novel because he might fail and kill himself at last. It was touch and go for him - any day could be the end of his sanity and his life. He had a long history of many events and a nearly photographic recall of things literary. He had the ability to write interesting tidbits about books and authors. These were things he knew he could write. His 'portraits' as he called them. But there was no guarantee that he could actually write fiction of great caliber.

So it was with great apprehension he sat down and began to write what was then and would remain his secret work - his secret novel.

Copyright 2010 by James D. Sanderson. All rights reserved.

AMERICAN MASTERS

2010-10-21T06:47:00.000-07:00

I just finished my nonfiction book 'American Masters'.

‘American Masters’ (89,000 words) is a book for those who love books. It is a popular history of American literature from its beginning in our colonial period (Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin), through our most recent Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. It is written in a sweeping narrative style (with a hidden first person narrator), drawing from the lives of the authors, their stories, their work, and interesting anecdotes from their own experiences. (All properly researched and referenced). Did you know, for instance, that at age six Flannery O’Connor taught a chicken to walk backward. It was filmed by the Pathé News and was shown across the country. Little Mary O’Connor was on film helping with her chicken. She claimed that everything else in her life was anti-climactic. This is only one of the many such stories that have turned up in the research of this book. (And it has been just a plain ol’ hoot to write, if you’ll allow me that levity).
The study of literature has somehow become divided up by particular authors or poets, or various ‘movements’, or by their individual works. Very little has been done to mine the vast interconnectedness of the literary tradition from its earliest days until the present. Yet, not surprisingly, these authors knew each other, or had read each other, or had written reviews about each other, or had made comments about each other, and nothing was ever written in a vacuum as it sometimes appears to us today. Readers, (myself included), have approached the whole affair of reading our masters as a hit and miss matter, which seems to be more often miss than hit.
‘American Masters’ has a strong narrative insistence which does not sacrifice itself by use of obvious fictional techniques. Rather, it is written on several levels, giving it a deep tidal flow that is not fully appreciated by only a surface reading. Beyond the simple chronological reading there is a deeper symbolic level; and a deeper still mythic historicity of dreams, fears, imaginings; and a deeper still labyrinthine level of games, puzzles, codes, word play, and so on. (Which could be appreciated by the likes of Nabokov.)

You will find that my serial novel 'Double Portrait' will contain many of the same devices, as well as being a good read. I'll let you know. Soon. Very soon.

THE DEFINITION OF INSANITY

2010-10-20T16:28:00.000-07:00

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again, expecting different results. So, having said that, I am going to try something very different very soon.

It's not like I haven't been doing anything this past year. I have finished a screenplay 'The Angelic Mysteries', 118 pages. It is an action thriller with a love story naturally woven in based on my 1995 novel by the same name. (There are still some copies floating around out there on the 'used' shelves. Yes, that is the very same novel my agent said was going to bring in seven figures. (I had to count on my fingers. Yes, that's $millions!) Well, that didn't happen then but maybe it will now.

'The Angelic Mysteries' is 'Terminator' meets 'City of Angels'. When sensual young bachelor Daniel Allman leaves home to travel in Europe he does not expect to meet Sarah, a woman who believes herself to be an angel. Intrigued by her beauty and mysterious ways, he invites her to travel along with him. Only too late does he discover she is being pursued by a monstrous psychopath known as Toombs. Only by transcending his own selfish desires and falling in love with this 'spiritual' part of his life will he be able to destroy the evil anti-angel that dogs them.

I am currently finishing up a literary novel, 'The Struggle' - the story of a man who must give up everything in the attempt to liberate his country through nonviolent direct action - and a screenplay based on that novel. I am also working on yet another screenplay that I'll say more about as it gets closer to completion.

Soon, very soon, we will begin a literary adventure that will explore the life of Daniel Allman in his later years. He writes a column for a metropolitan newspaper. His subject. You guessed it. Literature.

How well read are you really? You will have to be ready to delve into the mysteries of great literature, and great writers - their lives and ideas about writing - in order to fully appreciate this serialized novel that will be offered right here. Soon. Very soon.

I have disabled comments from any and all except members of this blog. I was getting way too many weird comments from all over the blogosphere. I'd rather know who it is I'm corresponding with. Hope that works for you.

Keep reading and writing,

Jim

GERMINAL by Emile Zola

2009-10-17T13:08:00.000-07:00

While I am on the subject of books that it has taken me a long time in my career to finally read; I have finally read 'Germinal' by Emile Zola. Everything in my life is coal mining lately. I have a son-in-law who was injured in a coal mine. I recently watched the movie 'The Molly Maguires' (1970 - Sean Connery) about coal miners in 1876 Pennsylvania. And now this novel about French coal miners.

In his 'Journals' Andre Gide wrote that he was reading 'Germinal' for the third time and it... "seems more admirable than ever."

First off, I liked it. I was caught up in the story of a young man Etienne Lantier coming into the coal country of Northern France to seek employment there. He is taken in by one of the families and put to work. Seeing the injustice in the world of coal, however, he begins to struggle against the owners and managers. This leads to a protracted strike that leaves everyone out of work, without money, and without food. I guess having fought some of those battles before myself I am a sucker for a story about the struggle for worker's rights.

This is a prime example of French Naturalism. Zola is out to examine not only the conditions of coal and coal miners, but of working class people and the clash between capital and labor, and the sociological ramifications of such clashes. It is a dark tale, but very insightful of the human condition. (Perhaps whenever anyone chooses to focus on the human condition things turn dark - as the saying goes, an optimist is only one who has not yet seen reality).

'Germinal' is one of twenty novels Zola devoted twenty-five years of his life creating - 'Les Rougon-Macuart. Histoire naturelle et sociale d'une famille sous le Second Empire'. (I'm trying to impress here by typing out the entire title). The truth is, I am so taken with 'Germinal' that I am a little afraid to pick up any of the others because they may disappoint. Can anyone point me toward one that would be equal or better?

Let me know.

Jim

All The Not So Pretty Tales of Cormac McCarthy

2009-10-09T07:57:00.000-07:00

Greetings,

I have finally gotten around to reading Cormac McCarthy and now I wonder what took me so long. I have not kept my blog current these last two weeks because I have been busily trying to finish my own novel and I'm having trouble with that. Maybe a novel is never really finished in the mind of the author. Hemingway wrote the ending of 'The Old Man and the Sea' twenty six times. When asked by a reporter what the problem had been, Hem said "I couldn't get the words right." Well... there you have it.

I found 'Blood Meridian' in the western section at the library. Even though I live in the west, I'm not a big reader of westerns. The big exceptions have been 'The Ox-Bow Incident' and 'Lonesome Dove'. So I don't often find myself browsing there. But when I saw the name Cormac McCarthy a little thing (is it a buzzer?) went off in my brain. "Oh, yes. That's someone I should be reading." So I took that one home along with the Border Trilogy - 'All The Pretty Horses'; 'The Crossing'; and 'Cities of the Plain'. (There's another problem with keeping a blog current - when I'm not writing, I'm reading).

McCarthy lives over here in Santa Fe, which is maybe fifty miles away, but I've never met him. He says he doesn't know any writers and he apparently prefers the company of scientists and hangs out, so they say, at the Santa Fe Institute, which he helped found, where they study complex systems, (and I presume language is one of those). He has won the National Book Award and the National Book Critics Circle Award, and more recently the Pulitzer for his post-apocalyptic 'The Road'.

The word apocalyptic has popped into my mind over and over again while I have been reading him. In an odd way his writing is prophetic while looking backward into our American past. Prophetic in the Biblical sense (not the mystical). Bible prophets warned against what the future would be if we do not change our ways. In the same way McCarthy is warning about the future based upon where we have been. So, to put it in more direct terms, (and declarative sentences is where McCarthy lives): If we don't change our violent ways, we are likely to end up where we have always been, with blood on our hands.

These books come at a perfect time for me because that is exactly the sort of novel I am writing, or attempting to write. The conclusions I have drawn from my own life have been different, because I have found the way of nonviolence - it is a way that offers a way out of the madness. But not many people in real life listen to me about that, and I wonder if many will listen in this blog or in my writing. If we continue our violent madness in our lives and in the world, we will end with blood on our hands.

To say these books by McCarthy are bloody is an understatement. I watched the movie version of 'No Country For Old Men' and guess what - it was bloody. But we have to get through the blood to get to the point. The point for Cormac McCarthy seems to be that violence and bloodshed in America is somehow redemptive. And that has been the story for a long long time. We confront the bad guys. We fight the bad guys but we are beset by obstacles. We reach a climax of blood and gore and the good guy (that's always me), wins.

Here's another possibility. We confront those who are destructive and violent. We would rather die than live in a world where such people get the upper hand. We confront that person or people with the truth of redemptive nonviolence. We stand up for that truth no matter what it may cost us. Then we either die, in which case we no longer live in such a world, or we open the truth up to that other person or people. They, having seen the truth, embrace that truth and the world is a better (more nonviolent) place. The thing is, I'm a writer of the realistic style. Most people believe that realism is violent climax with the good guy winning. Another way must be found to tell this other story.

Anyway, Cormac McCarthy is a great writer who must be read by anyone who is serious about books and such, and I make no apologies for the blood shed.

Written Lives by Javier Marias

2009-09-18T16:55:00.000-07:00

The Independent said "Marias is one of the best minds in fiction today. His is an experiential kind of writing, a thinking on the page, unlike anything else now."

What a joy it was, then, to find a work of nonfiction by this same author: 'Written Lives'. It was first published in his native Spain as 'Vidas Escritas' in 2000 but the English edition did not come out until 2006 - translated by Margaret Jull Costa.

In it he explores the real life of famous authors (as I have done also in a different way in 'American Masters'). He writes portraits - some very brief - about William Faulkner, Joseph Conrad, Isak Dinesen, James Joyce, Henry James, Thomas Mann, Nabokov, Rainer Maria Rilke, and many others. Did you know, for instance, that Faulkner wrote 'As I Lay Dying' in six weeks while stoking a boiler with coal at an electric power plant. (And I thought I knew just about everything there was to know about Faulkner). Arthur Rimbaud (for another instance) abandoned poetry at a young age. As an adult he had nothing at all to do with poetry and lived on the Somali coast, employed at the worst jobs imaginable. He apparently took his own famous words seriously, "Je est un autre' "I is someone else".

He goes into excruciating detail about the death of Yukio Mishima of Japan. (Don't read it, I warn you, unless you have a strong stomach). Or Robert Louis Stevenson: "Perhaps because he died so young or because he was ill all his life, perhaps because of those exotic journeys which, at the time, seemed nothing short of heroic, perhaps because one began reading him as a child, but whatever the reason, there is about the figure of Robert Louis Stevenson a touch of chivalry and angelic purity, which, if taken too far, can verge on the cloying."

Or the Russian Ivan Turgenev, of whom Pauline Viardot said, "He was the saddest of men."

For those who are serious about writing and reading, this book certainly deserves a look.

EMILY DICKINSON's VOLCANO

2009-09-11T07:08:00.000-07:00

Emily Dickinson was not a laborer on the surface of things. Her poems are concerned with death and God and eternity. She allowed herself to think and write what other women of her time dared not even whisper:

The reticent volcano keeps
His never slumbering plan;
Confided are his projects pink
To no precarious man.

If nature will not tell the tale
Jehovah told to her
Can human nature not survive
Without a listener?

Admonished by her buckled lips
Let every babbler be
The only secret people keep
Is Immortality.

When she speaks of a volcano here she is speaking not of that mound of earth one sees on the surface, but of what is inside - a hidden secret. The volcano is always cooking his plan hidden in that mound, never revealing his plan of pink eruption (projection), which will happen in his own good time. Certainly this plan is not being revealed to man, who will hear its voice soon enough and loudly enough that there will be no mistaking it. Nature hold's God's truth closely - it is not easily revealed. People could learn from this lesson in silence. The volcano doesn't wear anyone out with its babbling. It only speaks when it is important to speak. The only secret worth speaking of in humankind is the secret of Immortality. Perhaps people should not be too quick to talk it to death.

What else can I say?

Jim

OUR POETS: EMILY AND WALT

2009-08-28T06:17:00.000-07:00

The tendency is to call them Aunt Emily and Uncle Walt; they are just that close to us in American literature. But Walt Whitman did not write about Emily Dickinson. It is possible that he was not even aware of her. Hers was a still small voice very like that of the Spirit. Only eleven of her poems were published in her lifetime and these were tampered with by her publishers - to make them more 'acceptable' for their time. They shamelessly added titles to her work, and changed punctuation and capitalization. Her poems were too original, apparently, for her day. But it is that originality that might have attracted the attention of other poets. Alas, she never seems to have complained or to have been much noticed. (Not until 1955 was a faithful collection of her poems finally released).

Dressed in white, Emily Dickinson sat at her writer's desk daily and wrote poetry. Like Hawthorne and to a lesser degree Thoreau she chose the reclusive life. She seldom traveled; and she never ventured very far from her home in Amherst, Massachusetts when she did. She never married. She never saw a volcano. She never had a direct experience of much of anything, it might be said. But what she did experience was her innermost self, and it is there - deep inside - that she has touched the readers of her poems. At the time of her death, when her poems were at last brought to light, there was found to be one thousand seven hundred and seventy five of them.

If Emily Dickinson was aware of Walt Whitman, the other great poet of her age, she never said much about it. His great yawping shaggy-bearded reputation may have seemed a bit overwhelming for her. (In a letter to Thomas Wentworth Higginson from April 26, 1862, she wrote, "You speak of Mr. Whitman. I never read his book, but was told it was disgraceful.") She read Shakespeare and Emerson and William Wordsworth and Longfellow's prose tale 'Kavanagh'. "Great men stand like solitary towers in the city of God," 'Kavanagh' begins, "and secret passage running deep beneath external nature give their thoughts intercourse with higher intelligences, which strengthens and consoles them, and of which the laborers on the surface do not even dream!" Emily Dickinson was certainly not a laborer on the surface of things. Her poems are concerned with death and God and eternity. She allowed herself to think and write what other women of her time dared not even whisper.

Hope you'll take a look.

Jim

INVENTIVENESS IN FICTION

2009-08-07T14:24:00.000-07:00

When we Americans think of inventiveness in our fiction we think of wild machinations and fireworks and showy plot devices that drive us forward from one page to the next. Either that or, as a librarian friend of mine recently said, "We are just telling the same story over again in different ways." But I just read a novel by Spanish author Javier Marias and there we find a very different sort of inventiveness. I am new to this author, though he is on the short list for the Nobel Prize every year. 'The Man of Feeling' was first published in 1986 but wasn't translated into English until 2003. We are a little slow.

And it is that slowness to seek what is beyond our own borders that caused one Nobel committee member to say that he would not vote for an American again and that an American would not win the prize as long as he was a member. Now, our first reaction might be one of outrage and a sense of injustice. But his observations could enlighten us. We are too provincial. Too narrow minded. Too concerned about our own affairs. We don't translate enough.

Marias spends many of the early pages of this novel building character as a young opera star travels on a train from Milan to Venice. The main character finds himself helplessly detached from the world around him because of his traveling and the kind of rarefied life he leads. (Living as he does in grand hotels between rehearsals and performances).

Of his writing Marias says, "I need to feel my way forwards, and nothing would bore me or put me off more than knowing, when I start a novel, precisely what it will be: the characters who will people it, when and how they will appear and disappear, what will become of their lives or the fragment of their lives that I am going to recount. All this happens as I am actually writing the novel and belongs to the realm of invention..."

I have been reading Chekhov again recently and am astonished at how quickly he can pen the essence of character in his short stories. Perhaps we should spend more time inventing what is essential to the story we are trying to tell. What do you think?

Jim August 21, 2009

THE WESTERN CANON

2009-07-31T18:17:00.000-07:00

The reason 'The Western Canon' - The Books and Schools of the Ages, by Harold Bloom (1994) is so important to writers and readers alike is this: We need some point of reference in the cosmos of the written word. Without some point of reference; without some 'North Star' as it were, we are likely to lose our way in the sea of literary endeavor. (Indeed, there are some of us who contend that we have lost our way). 'The Western Canon' is an outrageously ambitious book by Yale professor Harold Bloom. In some ways it is his master work. It would be difficult to envision any greater work coming from his desk. It is weighty with all his immense learning and is surprisingly readable in the bargain.

I mentioned in a previous column that I found 'The Western Canon' at our local thrift shop for $3. I have read it before - borrowed from the library, I could not afford to buy it - but now I own it. What better time to pause and share something from this important book? I shudder to think how, or why, such a book would have turned up in a thrift shop to start with. But I am thankful to have it.

In the Canon Bloom explores our literary tradition through the works of twenty-six authors. He "laments the loss of intellectual and aesthetic standards" (this from the jacket); "he deplores multiculturalism, Marxism, feminism, neoconservatism, Afro-centrism, and the New Historicism." If this was anyone but Harold Bloom, we would simply have him declared insane and leave it at that. But he is Sterling Professor of Humanities at Yale University and Berg Professor of English at New York University. He is a MacArthur Prize Fellow, and a past Charles Eliot Norton Professor at Harvard University. He is a member of the American Academy. He is, in short, not someone who can easily be dismissed.

So why is his thought considered to be so unusual, so counter to the thought of our time? Because unlike so many others, he believes that a course can be charted through history by way of our most outstanding authors that will help us chart a course for the future. This is not radical , so much as retro. And it is retro that has gone out of style. Today every creative person that comes along wants to shout their greatness from the treetops, no matter how valuable their work may turn out to be in the long run. What is short and snappy and makes a lot of money is what is respected, in short. Any compass point will do, so long as we are on the cutting edge of it.

Patiently and wisely, Bloom lays out the Canon for us. He compares and contrasts works by Shakespeare, Milton, Samuel Johnson, Goethe, Ibsen, Joyce, and Beckett. Tolstoy, Freud, Dante, Wordsworth, Austen, Dickens, Whitman, Dickinson, Proust and others to bring a deeper understanding of our place in this galaxy. We may not agree completely with all his conclusions, but we can certainly admire how he reaches them.

"With most of these twenty-six writers," Bloom writes in his Preface and Prelude, "I have tried to confront greatness directly: to ask what makes the author and the works canonical. The answer, more often than not, has turned out to be strangeness, a mode of originality that either cannot be assimilated, or that so assimilates us that we cease to see it as strange."

"Canonical strangeness can exist without the shock of such audacity, but the tang of originality must always hover in an inaugural aspect of any work that incontestably wins the agon with tradition and joins the Canon."

Recently a librarian here noted that what we are getting any more in published books is simply various versions of the same story. All of these, without a doubt, will be lost in the sea of time. What remains, then; what is important, is those few highly original writers and their work that add value to us as readers, as human beings, and as members of the progression of history into the future. As for the rest... they need not be written or read.

Take a look at the Canon for yourself and let me know what you think.

Jim AUGUST 14, 2009

THE BILLION-FOOTED BEAST - A Look Back

2009-07-31T17:26:00.000-07:00

The other day I was looking through my files labeled 'Ancient History' and found an essay by Tom Wolfe (author of 'The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test' and 'The Bonfire of the Vanities' to name a couple). The essay's title: 'Stalking The Billion-Footed Beast' - A literary manifesto for the new social novel. I couldn't remember having read it way back in 1989 when it appeared in Harper's Magazine (November issue). But there it was, pointing the way back to the future. Or, to put it another way, can counter culture really be counter to the culture if it is running against the current, back to where it came from? Let me explain.

In the years after WWII we began to hear about the death of the novel. What was meant by that, really, was the death of the novel as we knew it. That is, the death of the realistic novel that had been around for a long time, (say, since Mark Twain at least). "The realistic novel, in their gloss," (according to Wolfe, speaking of the intellectual intelligentsia that was emerging then), "was the literary child of the nineteenth-century industrial bourgeoisie. It was a slice of life, a cross section, that provided a true and powerful picture of individuals and society - as long as the bourgeois order and the old class system were firmly in place."

"By the early 1960s," (he continues), "the notion of the death of the realistic novel had caught on among young American writers with the force of revelation... It had been only yesterday, in the 1930s, that the big realistic novel, with its broad social sweep, had put American literature up on the world stage for the first time. In 1930 Sinclair Lewis, a realistic novelist who used reporting techniques as thorough as Zola's, became the first American writer to win the Nobel Prize. In his acceptance speech, he called on his fellow writers to give America "a literature worthy of her vastness," and, indeed, four of the next five Americans to win the Nobel Prize in literature - Pearl Buck, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, and John Steinbeck - were realistic novelists."

"Yet by 1962, when Steinbeck won the Nobel Prize, young writers, and intellectuals generally, regarded him and his approach to the novel as an embarrassment."

Now, it is tempting to just go on quoting from this excellent essay, but that could cause me some trouble. What I am grappling with here is this: What have we been doing for the last twenty years? This essay could have been used to propel us in a new direction. Or, rather, it might have compelled us to go back to where we had been and to start again. But no such movement seems to have taken place. There are a few of us around who are running counter to the post-modern trend to write some very realistic literature. But we are in the minority. Meanwhile, the literary world charges ahead into a kind of no-man's (ok, no-person's) territory and my question is this: Has this really produced a better or higher quality literature? I think not.

There is an even larger question embedded in this discussion. 'Has the breakdown of our society caused this fractured, broken, disjointed form of literature to emerge; (post-modernism) or has this chaotic, moral relativism helped break down the society in which we live?' That's a mouthful, I know, but the way we view the world around us is important, and it is our writers (and readers) who help shape that world-view. So, if the point of our writing is that there is no point, what does that say about our world?

In case I haven't made myself clear, count me in as a writer of the realistic style. Whether my writing helps lead us back to the future is yet to be seen. I, like Wolfe, am also experimenting with nonfiction as well. Unlike Wolfe, however, I am trying to discover a whole new set of rules that will apply to nonfiction, rather than plundering all the ficitonal techniques and trying to adapt them to nonfiction. What better place to begin looking for the truth, after all, than in true stories. In my latest effort, 'American Masters', a popular history of American literature and our most famous authors; I use a sweeping narrative style with a hidden first-person narrator, with symbolism and motif to create an underlying current that helps sweep the story forward.

I'll write more about that in the future. Until next time, then, keep reading and writing.

Jim

THE MOVEMENT BACK TO REALISM

2009-07-29T17:55:00.000-07:00

There is something of a counter-movement in literature, of which I am part, that is turning back from the brink post-modernism had led us to. We - and I am in the good company of Harold Bloom, Francine Prose, Tom Wolfe and others - have recognized that the trashing of all tradition in writing, along with the evaluating of books and their authors by forcing them through a strainer of political, ethnic and gender screens, has not necessarily produced a finer or greater body of literature. At some point in history, at about the time I began to try unsuccessfully to publish my work, a growing concensus of academics decided that literature must be intellectual, high-brow, written by someone other than the white anglo-saxon protestant male, and in a way which breaks down all the previous wisdom about the craft of writing. A solid storyline, for instance, became taboo. Strong characters - especially those who stood for certain values - were ousted. A clear theme - again, especially when it conveyed anything other than post-modern values - was cast out. And what are post-modern values?

Anything goes. There is no single truth. Truth is, rather, relative to the one seeking that truth. To push an extreme example: Hitler had his own truth, and his truth can neither be considered to be better or worse than any other truth.

This post-modern approach, I will be the first to admit, has made for some interesting reading. It has released a tidal wave of exuberance in the creative realm, which has found a natural home on the free expression 'pages' of the internet. This has reached the point, now, of an almost complete meltdown; where every person can shout "look at my creation" and any other person may look upon that creation, without any sense of 'value' at all. 'Reviewers' of any stripe can review books using almost any criteria (or lack of criteria) to pronounce their judgments. 'Don Quiote' may be seen as "boring", and Charles Dickens as "too old fashioned".
Further, there are books being written instructing the writer on how to be a better writer; that is, more successful, like Stephen King and 'Harry Potter'. It is small wonder that readers are confused about what is good to read and what is trash. Writers are just as confused. It is small wonder, too, that more and more readers have given up all together - deciding that reading is just not that much fun any more.

In her excellent book 'Reading Like a Writer' Francine Prose says, "There, (in graduate school), I soon realized that my love for books was unshared by many of my classmates and professors. I found it hard to understand what they did love, exactly, and this gave me an anxious shiver that would later seem like a warning about what would happen to the teaching of literature over the decade or so after I dropped out of my Ph.D. program. That was when literary acedemia split into warring camps of deconstructionists, Marxists, feminists, and so forth, all battling for the right to tell students that they were reading "texts" in which ideas and olitics trumped what the writer had actually written."

Then, later, "You can assum that if a writer's work has survived for centuries, there are reasons why this is so, explanations that have nothing to do with a conspiracy of academics plotting to resusicate a zombie army of dead white males."

This is very close to my own experience and outlook. (Though I did not go to graduate school - I left college to swim in the deep waters of experience.) My fellow readers, there is a reason some books are considered classics and others have been allowed to die a natural death in the waters of time. The classics are worth a look because they will outlive us.

The other day I found Harold Bloom's 'The Western Canon' on the shelf at a thrift shop for $3. I bought it, of course, and was glad to get it at that price. But how did it come to be there? Are readers so little interested in the classics that a monumental book such as this is simply one more thing to throw into the bag destined for the thrift shop? I shudder to think.

I'll pick this up again next week with Tom Wolfe's 'Stalking the Billion-Footed Beast' and more.

See you then, Jim

THE IDIOT AS SAVIOR

2009-07-24T05:37:00.000-07:00

ALL THINGS LITERARY

It is commonly accepted that Prince Myshkin, the main character in Dostoevsky's 'The Idiot' is a savior figure or, more to the point, Christ. While Myshkin does fit the bill in several ways, he seems to fall short in one very important way.

The Savior is a motif that runs throughout literary history, from Prometheus to Jesus and into modern times. Prometheus suffered in order to bring fire and light (and presumably enlightenment) into the world. Jesus suffered and died to save humanity from its sins.

'The Idiot' is a very modern novel, especially considering it was written well before the twentieth century advent of 'modernism' as a literary style. Its hero is an outsider. He spent four years undergoing treatment for a malady in Switzerland, and returned almost a complete stranger to his home - Russia. Great pains are taken in the novel to give him a 'ministry' among children - telling them stories - and caring for the sick Marie (or Mary, as in Mary Magdalene). In great detail the novel reveals what it must have been like for Myshkin's 'friend' to have been given a death sentence and then to have had it commuted at the last moment. Dostoyevsky himself had been sentenced to death and placed before a firing squad before it was called off. And of course Christ did face a sentence of death and was killed by crucifixion and was resurrected three days later.

The point of this novel is that a person who is innocent and genuine has no place in the real world, and is better off in an asylum (or dead). As Myshkin goes through his day he bumps into any number of people, all of whom are impacted by his innocence and who then find themselves in a different place in their lives. The trouble with this is that his innocence seems to operate from the outside in. Because they meet him, their lives are changed. Indeed, that seems to be the message of modern Christianity for the most part: Christ lived and died for us, so we should worship him. But the life of Jesus as the Christ ran counter to the accepted practices of religion of his day, and one suspects he would find the same thing today. The true power of Christ comes from the inside out. An encounter with Christ is an encounter with one's true self, and that self is then transcended. Only then will that person's life change in any real way.

By remaining an 'outsider', Dostoyevsky's character lacks the power of the real Christ. His impact on the lives of others seems quite coincidental and they react more like a body that has been impacted from without. The real Christ penetrated to the heart and soul of people, and their lives were changed forever.

Kazantzakis wrote of the duel nature of humanity - the body and the soul - and the war that exists between the two. Myshkin falls short as a Savior, but that does not prevent us from attempting to portray the savior in our writings. All of us, if we are genuinely willing to search ourselves, have experienced the conflict that exists between our earthly, fleshly, material selves, and the Spirit that dwells within us.

Next Week: The Movement Back to Realism.

THE TROUBLE WITH BLOGS

2009-07-21T17:50:00.000-07:00

A blog about the problem with blogs. Sounds oxymoronic. But I wanted to take a moment to clarify what I'm up to here. (And it has taken me several months to figure it out). For a creative writer a blog can be a problem in several ways. First, it can take up all your time. A writer writes. That is the maxim. So if a writer is spending all his/her time blogging, they aren't going to get much real writing done.

Second, writing a blog requires a somewhat different set of skills for the craft of writing. A blog is usually fairly short. So if you have to shift gears to write a blog and it trips up the flow of your longer work you can see how that might be a problem.

Third, a blog can become a kind of catch-all for poor writing. The standard does not need to be as high (one thinks), as 'real' writing, so you can kind of slouch into it and who will care? It can become a place to catch all the ash and trash. Well, that's a problem because writing is sacred, and to treat it as anything less is probably going to be a bad thing.

I have read many blogs that scream "I am creative!" when in fact all they are is a place for the writer to dump any old thing that comes into his/her head. What I'm having for breakfast and how my day is going may be of great interest to some, but I doubt it.

So, having said all that, I'm changing the format of my blog a bit. (Although I never did write about what I was having for breakfast - peanut butter and jelly toast today - jelly from our daughter, delicious). What I am going to do is to establish a kind of weekly column that will come out on Friday or Saturday morning (except in the case of emergencies). That way I will have all week to give you, the reader, my best. In it, as my sub heading above indicates, will be 'All Things Literary'. Whatever I have encountered this week past that is of interest in the world of literature. This might include publishing, promoting, classic works of literature, or anything else that has caught my eye. I promise I will try to put it into some context, and I hope it will be more interesting than anything else you have read this week.

So, having said that, I may post a thing or two during the week if I go off on a jag or have something to rant about, so I hope you'll forgive me that. But generally it will be the end of the week when my 'column' will come out. That way you can open it up like your weekly newspaper on Saturday or Sunday and enjoy all the great things that will flow from my pen.

At least, that's the intention. Thanks for reading and, by the way, if you enjoy it, I'll bet some of your friends will as well. Why not let them know about 'All Things Literary'?

Jim

CHANCE ENCOUNTERS WITH AN IDIOT

2009-07-18T06:01:00.000-07:00

A chance encounter on the Warsaw-Petersburg train. Sounds like something from an Alfred Hitchcock thriller. It is true that chance encounters do occur in life, though they can be darned tricky in literature. The author wants the reader to suspend real life and enter the parallel universe of fiction. To do this, anything from the real world that slips in can trigger the reader's recognition that this fiction - this novel - is an artifice. But Dostoyevsky can and does get away with the chance meeting between Lev Nikolayevitch Myshkin and Parfyon Rogozhin. In fact that moment of chance become the fateful interaction of multiple destinies which forms the basis of one of his great novels - 'The Idiot'.

Dostoyevsky (born 1821, in Moscow), had an interesting brush with fate himself when, as a young man of twenty-seven years he was arrested and convicted of being a member of a subversive socialist group. He was condemned to death and actually faced a mock firing squad before his sentence was commuted and he was sent instead to a prison in Siberia. His own life was one filled with suffering and pain, so it is not surprising that such themes find their way into his work. 'Notes from Underground' (1864); 'Crime and Punishment'; 'The Idiot'; 'The Possessed', and 'The Brothers Karamazov' are his most influential works.

In Myshkin he created a character that not only reflects 19th century Russia in all its aspects, but he become the center of that time. The other characters move around this goodly prince like the arms of a spiral constellation. 'The Idiot' becomes not so much a tragedy as a huge slice of life that reveals the human condition.

"Had they known about one another and why they were both at that moment remarkable, they would certainly have marveled that chance had so strangely put them opposite each other in the third-class car..." (Quotations are taken from the Henry and Olga Carlisle translation of 1969). That's the key to everything in life: Had we only known! It is what drives people into the newspaper horoscopes or to seek a glimpse of what is yet to come from fortune-tellers of every stripe. If we but knew, we could have done things differently. We would have done! But we don't know. At least, not in specific terms.

What we do know, as readers, as authors, and as those who must live our lives as best we can, is that characters 'is' everything. Who we are and what we stand for shapes our future, no matter what events we have yet to face. For that reason, Character in fiction is more important than any other element. It is more important than plot, style, dialogue, or what have you. By subjecting a character to action, the true person is revealed. The dialogue, the conflict, the style and everything else is intended to reveal the character, and so find themselves in a lesser position. Works that are plot-driven are destined to be forgotten. The plot of history eventually eclipses them.

More soon,

Jim

Promote Your Work - Start Today

2009-07-09T11:49:00.000-07:00

This may seem like an odd follow-up to my blog about commercialism in art, but word must get out about you and your work if you are ever going to find a following. And who is going to do that if you don't? Unfortunately, the days of the publishing houses taking a chance on an unknown author/poet are over. Big money is spent promoting books that don't need it - the ones that will be a commercial success no matter what - while almost none is spent on the small or choice book.

My daughter and I were talking about this very thing the other night. She is a poet. How is she to promote her work without simply giving it away? Indeed, what are any of us to do? We must have something to promote before we can promote it. And how do we promote without just giving everything away? The key is relationship building.

A while ago I was thinking that I wished someone would simply lay out what would work in the matter of promoting our work. I spent a lot of time gleaning book marketing sites and finally came up with some methods that take time but, to meet my specification, don't cost very much. Right here on the internet is the key.

1. Start a blog. Here is the place you can talk about your work, add a few sample chapters, or a poem or two, to get people interested in what you do. Why talk about what you had for breakfast (some experts recommend simply talking about your day), when you can talk about what is most important to you and probably to your potential readers - your work. Why do you do what you do? How do you do it? What inspires you? Who are some of your mentors in writing or poetry? What were their lives all about. I think you get the idea. Keep it interesting, and have fun while you're at it. Your blog is at the center of your promoting universe. It doesn't cost you anything and I actually prefer this over maintaining a web site, though it wouldn't hurt to have both.

2. Start MySpace, Facebook, and Twitter pages. From there you can set up your profile, and begin adding friends. Seek friends in groups that are along the lines of what you do. Poetry groups, writing groups, reading groups, all will have people who are interested in what you are saying. Add them as friends. No, you are not spamming. You are inviting them to be your friend based upon your common interests. I'm not as sold on Twitter as some people are, but you can go onto Twitter search sites and find topics that are along your line - reading, writing, literary agents, and so on. Keep in mind that the reason for all of this activity is to get people to read your blog and to pass the word along to their friends. Don't be afraid to ask for that referral. (I'm asking right now - please let all your friends know about my blog site).

3. Join other related groups: Author's Den. Poetry magazines or small press journals. Search the web for these sites and join them. Get a listing and then let it lie. (Too much internet time can be a drag on your real work. Don't let it consume you.)

4. Get the Word out. Send out free press releases. Post bulletins on your social network sites. Let people know that you are blogging and why it might be important for them to read what you have to say. I post a bulletin every time I create a new blog post.

5. Repeat. Repeat. Repeat. This isn't going to happen overnight but as you build a group of friends and fellow writers/poets who will be your friends and read your blog posts, you are building a following of people who will, one day when the time is right, want to read your new book that was just published. All of this has cost you nothing but time.

6. Submit some of your work as articles or short stories or poems to magazines or e-zines or other online sites. This will get the word out far and wide.

7. Spend a little money on postage to find a good literary agent once you have written the best book you know how. Don't get discouraged. This is still pretty cheap promotion and if you can catch the interest of a good agent, you may be on your way.

8. Expand your efforts. Be always on the lookout for another place to promote your work. Start a second blog and a third to talk about your upcoming books. You can start this early, while still in the planning process. It is never too soon to start promoting your next book, and the one after that. Start a fan group. Post a Squidoo lens. Come on, you probably already know other ways of promoting your work that I haven't even thought of. (If so, please let me know). I spend about an hour every day promoting my work. That leaves plenty of time to keep creating.

Hope this has been helpful. I'm no marketing expert, but this is the strategy I'm using, and I'm loving having all these new friends to correspond with. (Answer all your e-mails and comments. You can ignore the requests to play online games or to add other applications, but answer your mail. Your friends want to know you are a real person.

Yours, Jim

Commercialism in Art

2009-06-25T11:42:00.000-07:00

A couple of years ago Francoise Cachin, the head of all France's museums including the Louvre and the Musee National d' Art Moderne, and granddaughter of painter Paul Signac, lost her place on the national museum committe because of her views concerning the commercial use of art. Cachin, now 73, is an outspoken critic of such use of art in her country. According to ARTnews (September 2007) she said, "Morally, ethically, I am shocked to see the commercial and promotional use of art - of our national heritage, of masterpieces in the collection of the French museums. We should be protecting our patrimony." She says she has suffered some retaliation from the arts establishment as the result of her outspokenness.

Friends, it is this same sentiment that I bring to my discourse on American literature. Of course a piece of great literature must be promoted - its praises should be sung from the rooftops - but this spending of millions to promote the next banal piece of mediocrity is just plain foolishness. I think it was Mark Twain who said that one who does not read great literature has no advantage over the one who does not read at all. With a straight face and without any intended irony Stephen King said that reading Harry Potter was preparing a future generation of Stephen King readers. It is nearly impossible to find anyone who reads at all, let alone has read the classics of literature.

And yet how quickly we fall into that pit. "Well," we say, "we have to keep the industry afloat, so that the great literature at least has the chance to get noticed." Perhaps we should let the industry collapse, just as abuses have led to the collapse of our economic system, so that we can start again. Still, there is nothing I can do about that. I continue to read and attempt to write something great. That is all I can do for now.

I have just finished reading 'Revolutionary Road' by Richard Yates. It is all the rage lately with the new movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet (with Kathy Bates thrown in for good measure). And, while the movie is disturbing in its subject matter (is anyone safe from the angst of modern life?), I found it equally disturbing that Richard Yates was largely unknown in his lifetime. Perhaps, instead of writing this great American novel, he should have aimed his sites at something more commercial, like Harold Robbins or one of the other giants of that day. (Who? this generation might rightly ask). Exactly! There is no reason to remember him. There will be no reason for Harry Potter or the latest Stephen King to be remembered, either.

Here's hoping you are reading good and well and true. Pay no attention to that commercial trash behind the curtain. Stick with what you know to be great.

Jim

BOOK BLOGS

2009-06-10T09:52:00.000-07:00

My reader friends,

I keep a notebook of interesting book sites and publishers and anything related to books. It is one of those hardcover composition books that have a hundred pages or so. (Some have already been torn out). It has the photograph of one of my brother's paintings - a great looking lion - on the cover. It has paperclips to mark various sections and has pages ripped from magazines and what-not stuffed in it. I like to think about that old book of history (Herodotus), that was full of clippings and paintings and such in 'The English Patient'. Anyway, I am constantly looking things up that I find there, and ripping out pages and crossing things out as they no longer hold my interest.

I have found some interesting book blogging sites along the way that I thought I would share. You can go and look for yourself so I won't spend too much time on them, and I'm sure there are many other good sites besides these. (Could you recommend some)?

I like to look in on the U.K. because it gives me a different perspective, so these first three are from there. www.snowbooks.com/weblog is mostly about books that they offer as a publisher, but http://www.meandmybigmouth.typepad.com/ is more general and http://www.charkinblog.macmillan.com/ is a personal place for this long-time literary man to write what he thinks.

In the U.S. you might check out Pat Holt (another long-time publishing personality) at http://www.holtuncensored.com/ Then there is one I really like about the classics at http://www.classicnovelsblog.com/ and finally a book blog community for those who read books, blog books, and promote books at http://www.bookblogs.ning.com/ It has some 2200 members with groups, events, and forums about books.

Hope you'll take a look. And even more I hope you'll pass along some other good sites. I'm always interested.

Jim

THE STRUGGLE

2009-06-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Joseph Conrad wrote, "A work that aspires, however humbly, to the condition of art should carry its justification in every line. And art itself may be defined as the single-minded attempt to render the highest kind of justice to the visible universe, by bringing to light the truth, manifold and one, underlying its every aspect. It is an attempt to find in its forms, in its colors, in its light, in its shadows, in the aspects of matter and in the facts of life, what of each is fundamental, what is enduring and essential - their one illuminating and convincing quality - the very truth of their existence."

Since I have taken upon myself the stand that art in literature must be held to a high standard, I would like to share some of that struggle with you. It is one thing to write about classic literature, as I have done in 'American Masters' (and have tried to raise the level of nonfiction there also), but it is another to attempt it ourselves. 'The Struggle' is my novel in progress. It is the story of a man in an Eastern European country caught up in the war to liberate his people. Their rebellion, however, is crushed completely after many years of fighting. What emerges in the aftermath of that war, however, is a different kind of struggle. It is the kind of struggle that was fought by Gandhi, and Martin Luther King Jr. (among many others - myself included). It is the way of nonviolence that emerges when a people grow tired of resorting always to violence to solve its problems. I'm not going to give away the whole story, of course, but I think you can see where I'm headed with this. I'm going to attempt to justify my art in every line.

On my desk I have two reminders: "Create Community" and "Tell The Story". It has become more and more the responsibility of the author to create a communtity around his/her work because a publishing house is simply not going to spend much to promote an unknown author or work. Sorry, that's just how it is. They will spend millions to promote someone who is already a bestseller and so does not need the boost. But they will spend only pennies on an unknown. Small wonder most authors, even very good ones, slip into oblivion.

Second, tell the story. That is a reminder not only for my work (see yesterday's blog about plot); but to let my readers know what story I'm trying to tell and how I am struggling with the material to get it into the shape in the form of 'art'. That is what I'm about here. I am not really in the position to offer advice - your way to art is just as valid as mine - but I would like to share some of the struggle I am going through.

Hope you'll stay tuned as that is all played out here on my blog site. Please post a comment whenever you are moved to do so.

Yours, Jim

PLOT OR SERIOUS FICTION?

2009-06-05T12:30:00.000-07:00

The July/August issue of Writer's Digest has an article (Inkwell - edited by Zachary Petit) by Jordan E. Rosenfeld, author of 'Make a Scene' called 'Confessions of a Plot Junkie'. In it the writer confesses, "I am a plot junkie." The reason for this, is that Jordan likes a story to move along and not get hung up on long, even-if-well-crafted descriptions of scene, or a sentence that is written for its own sake.

I often wonder why this has to be an either/or proposition. (And some writers sit around wondering and wondering without ever getting anything on paper - I am cautioning myself here). My last post quoted some lines from 'The Snows of Kilamanjaro' by Ernest Hemingway. (Hemingway is a great author to blog about because some people really love him, and others are deeply offended by him). The main thing I can say about Hemingway in this context is this: he showed us how to fuse plot and great literature. In fact, it would seem odd if we read any Hemingway that wasn't plot-driven. He had a close eye to on the story line always, 'and' on the story he was telling.

I am not a fan of our postmodernist approach to literature, though in some instances I have enjoyed the creativity of it. I am not a fan of artists of any stripe who throw something on a canvas in the hope of getting a reaction - even if it is horrifying. There is enough that is horrifying in the world for us to write or paint, without becoming a part of the horror ourselves. But you see where wondering and wondering takes us - I have gotten off track.

Of course a story or novel (and I believe even nonfiction) should have a plot. My daughter Holly gave me a Storyteller and it sits on my desk even now. A Storyteller is a Native American ceramic of an adult with many little people crawling on him/her. These, presumably are the stories that person has to tell. I keep it right there to remind me of the importance of telling the story. Even in nonfiction (especially in nonfiction), we have the responsibility to do more than simply relate facts and information. If we do it right, in fact, nonfiction should be even more creative and more 'truthful' than fiction; though it almost never is presently. That narrative imperative is exactly what I have tried to write into 'American Masters', a popular history of great American literature from the colonial period to modern times.

I forget who told me this, but it still applies to every writer, "Start at the beginning, tell the story, and then stop." That is the plot. What you do with it is your business. Don't throw out plot because it will seem more 'literary' to do without one. I have just started a novel about war and peace (no, not 'that' novel). I am finding that I can be forgiven a multitude of sins if I just keep the story moving forward. Of course I'll have to write out the sins in the re-write.

Keep reading and keep writing,

Jim

WORDS THAT MATTER

2009-05-08T16:00:00.000-07:00

Hi again,

It occurred to me as I was writing 'American Masters' that there has been a disconnect between readers and writers. I mean, so many people seem to be reading only for pleasure (which ain't bad, but bear me out), that I began to realize that many readers simply don't know why the classics are the classics, or why they too might be a pleasure to read. What has happened is that classic literature has been intellectualized beyond the ken of most readers. When they think of the classics they think of words like high-falutin and artsy-fartsy, instead of having an image of some great read they can refer back to again and again.

This is a newly-formed idea, so I'm just working it out here on the keyboard. (And I want to hear your comments on this). If people just sat down and read some of our classic American literature without thinking they had to understand every minute detail of it setting out, why, they might find that they actually enjoy themselves. They might find that Huck Finn dressing up like a girl is just a plain old hoot to read. They might find that the hero of 'House Made of Dawn' connecting up with his ancestral stories and the hero of 'Ceremony' connecting up with the rituals that make one well, are just plain good reads. (Not to mention that a reader might get the idea that they, too, are connected with an ongoing story that extends all the way back to the American nation and before.

What I'm saying is this: why should only a few of us gain the pleasure of reading the classics when so many others could benefit from it. Then, instead of feeling like they have to read the latest any-old-thing to come out, readers might be a little more discerning in their reading.

Come on, what do you think? I found in writing 'American Masters' that our stories are important. That our words do matter. And that what we read and write is important to the future. Add a comment please - it don't cost you noffin'.

Keep reading,

Jim

HOW I FOUND MY STORY IDEA

2009-05-02T10:35:00.000-07:00

People have asked where I got my idea for 'American Masters', the popular history of American literature and authors.

Well... One day I was reading about Flannery O'Connor. I had never read much of her stuff, so I was just skimming - it didn't hold much interest for me. But then I learned that little Mary O'Connor, Flannery's real name, taught a chicken to walk backwards when she was six years old. It was such an extraordinary feat that it was picked up by Pathe News and the film was shown across the country. There was little Mary on film, helping with her chicken. She claimed that was the climax of her life. Everything after that was anticlimactic. What else did I not know about Flannery O'Connor? Alright, so I'd pick up one of her short stories and see what it was about. Then I was hooked. I had to read it all. Two novels and two collections of stories. She died young, of Lupus. (Why do so many great authors seem to die so young)?

Get this picture now. I have been reading most of my life. Even as a young man I read classic literature - ask my brothers. I was a nut. Kids on the ball diamond would ask if I was going to use 'For Whom The Bell Tolls' for first base. I never got any respect. But even with all the reading I had been doing, I had somehow missed Flannery O'Connor. What else had I missed?

I decided then and there to start over. I started to systematically read American classics beginning clear back in the colonial times with Cotton Mather, and then with Benjamin Franklin during the struggle for independence. What I found was that these two writers were connected. They lived in the same neck of the woods and back then it was a small neck. Of course they knew each other! As I was reading, I found many such connections and many, many, interesting stories from behind the scenes of American literature. Now we were cooking.

In short order I read and re-read everything from Hawthorne to Hemingway, from Melville to Morrison. It was great. I dug in and really got their stories. When I got around to writing, those stories just flowed from my pen (and onto the screen). So, now I have this book, 'American Masters', and it is in the hands of an agent right now and...

That's the story behind the story of 'American Masters'. Stay tuned for more.

Jim

SWINE FLU - 'THE PLAGUE'?

2009-05-02T08:51:00.000-07:00

"Death thou comest when I had thee least in mind." - Everyman

This everyman quote seems so appropriate right now. Everyone is fearful about becoming infected with this latest strain of the flu and about what methods might be used to prevent us from getting it. But really, the plague is as old as humankind. There are some mighty nasty bugs out there. They're sneaking around right now, waiting to get in. If it's not one, it's another. And while we're focused on swine flu, it may be something else entirely that will get us. Sorry, that's just how it is.

'The Plague' by Albert Camus (1947) is not comforting either. Originally published in French as 'Le Peste', it is the story of one Doctor Bernard Rieux who, leaving his surgery one day, (April 16th, to be precise), stepped on something soft. It turned out to be a dead rat! I use an exclamation point but really, there was nothing to exclaim about. It was simply a dead rat. He asked the concierge to dispose of it.

But then, that evening, Doctory Rieux "saw a big rat coming toward him from the dark end of the passage. It moved uncertainly, and its fur was sopping wet. The animal stopped and seemed to be trying to get its balance, moved forward again toward the doctor, halted again, then spun around on itself with a little squeal and fell on its side." (I am quoting from the Random House edition translated from the French by Stuart Gilbert).

That is only the beginning, of course. Next, patients begin to show up for examination with fever. Then the whole town is infected, it seems. Things progress from bad to worse, as they say.

But I'm not going to spoil it for you. My intention is to get you to go and read this excellent book. My intention is also to point out that there is nothing new under the sun. That's why classic literature is so important. When we read for entertainment alone, we miss out on the deep sense of connectedness that comes from getting to know the masters of world literature. The stories they tell are timeless. That's why they're classics.

I think it was Mark Twain who said something like, "One who doesn't read great literature has no advantage over the one who does not read at all."

So read it. Let me know what you think of it.

Keep reading,

Jim

The Language of Jorge Luis Borges

2009-04-30T17:20:00.001-07:00

You know me.

I'm a writer of nonfiction. (Though I reverse the right to fiction). Jorge Luis Borges was a writer of fictions. Minimalist fiction. He also wrote nonfiction. He reserved the right to write as he chose. In fact there is very little distinction between his fiction and his nonfiction. I would like to introduce him to you...I recently purchased a copy of his 'Selected Non-Fictions' edited by Eliot Weinberger. It's an interesting read. As interesting as any fiction. In fact, it is not so much a book to read as one that must be read and re-read again and again. It demands that with its intricate language and the almost impossible interconnectedness of its story lines and topics.

Richard Bernstein of 'The New York Times' said, "Borges's uniqueness in 20th-century letter is rooted in an almost monstrous combination: encyclopedic knkowledge, razorlike critical judgement and a ravishing appreciation for the magical and pagan dimension in every situation."This is no easy read, in short. But the works themselves are brief enough to invite a re-reading at any time. (You can pick it up almost anywhere and be as overwhelmed as you would have been by trying to read it straight through). If that hasn't been enough to frighten you off, let's continue.

Inside you will find his early writings (1922-1928) which include, (but are not by any means limited to), 'Joyce's Ulysses', 'Literary Pleasure', and 'An Investigation of the Word'.

The next section is 1929-1936 and includes 'The Superstitious Ethics of the Reader', 'The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights', and 'The Labyrinths of the Detective Story and Chesterton'.

Next come a whole series of 'Capsule Biographies' of the likes of Isaac Babel, Theodore Dreiser, T.S. Eliot, and Virginia Woolf, among many others.

Then 'Book Reviews and Notes', including 'William Faulkner, Absalom! Absalom!', 'Two Fantasy Novels', 'H.G. Wells' Latest Novel', and 'Joyce's Latest Novel'.

Next a section about the time of the Second World War 1937-1945, which is followed by 'Nine Dantesque Essays', the period of 1946-1955, and finally 'Dictations' with various lectures, his 'Prologues to the Library of Babel', and 'Prologues to a Personal Library'.

I am only telling you this to let you know what you are getting into if you decide to read this book. (But I consider it a must-read for those who write nonfiction. You will see why if you read it).I have found that I can get bogged down quite easily in any of his writings. The other day I was reading 'The Translators of The Thousand and One Nights'. "At Trieste, in 1872, in a palace with damp statues and deficient hygienic facilities, a gentleman on whose face an African scar told its tale - Captain Richard Francis Burton, the English consul - embarked on a famous translation of the Quitab alif laila un laila, which the roumis know by the title 'The Thousand and One Nights'. Now, I don't know about you, but that is an intriquing opening. So much is packed into a few sentences that I can't help but wonder what Borges will say next. "Lane translated against Galland," he writes, "Burton against Lane; to understand Burton we must understand this hostile dynasty."Now, I'm going going to spoil it by telling you what that hostiel dynasty is, or why it should matter to you. As my English teacher used to have us say at the end of a high school book report, "If you want to know the ending, you'll have to read the book." Actually, I'm not sure that applies in this case. Even if you read the book, you may not be able to make out the ending. Borges has a way of subverting the passage of time, too... But that is quite another story.

Keep Reading

Jim

WRITING CREDITS

2009-04-21T12:48:00.000-07:00

I began writing at a young age. At twelve years old, I think. I started out writing pretty lame stories about talking animals and such. That's what I thought you were supposed to do at twelve. But I was already reading Hemingway and Jack London and others by that age, so I wasn't going to keep writing at that level for long. By the time I got into Western Michigan University I aced a class in creative writing with a novella the professor thought I should try to see published. I burned it instead. "It's not good enough," I said.

Instead I sold my VW bug and went to Europe where I hitch-hiked around for five weeks. (This was the summer of 1971). When I returned, since I had blown off my draft deferment, I was drafted into the US Army, where I spent the next eight years.

My first novel was not published until 1994 - 'The Angelic Mysteries' (ISBN 1-884787-00-2) It is the first person narration of a how he met and fell in love with an angel. There was one complication, however. At the time he met her, she was being hunted across Europe by a psychopath - a man she believed to be an anti-angel. Breathlessly suspenseful and finely crafted, it is a study in human character and of humankind's continuing struggle against evil and insanity.

My second novel, 'Mirabilia' (ISBN1-884787-01-0) was published the following year - 1995. Hoping only that his kidnapped daughter is still alive, Daniel Allman enters the land of miracles in pursuit of her abductor. Along the way he is confronted by all manner of psychic obstacles and dangers from ferocious jackdogs and haunted swamps, to a sorcerer's malicious curse. With nothing more than his teacher's words to guide him and his own integrity to protect him, Daniel's very existence is in jeopardy.

While I continued writing, my publishing opportunities ceased until 2005, when 'Called To Love' (ISBN 1884787-02-9) was published. It is a nonfiction account of some of our adventures in Christian living (especially as lived out among the homeless in our community). Every day the world seems a little crazier than it was the day before. Fortunately there are some things that don't change. Our dedication to 'do to others as we wuold have them do to us' is the golden rule we can all live by - even in these uncertain times. We are called to love.

More recently I have had an article published in the May/June (2009) issue of 'Plain Truth' magazine, http://www.ptm.org/ a Christian publication for those who are trying to get away from the 'religious spirit' of Christianity. It is entitled 'The Church of Horse Gulch'. This article gives an overview of our activities among the poor and homeless of our community.

I will try to keep this blog updated with publishing credits as they come along. Sorry, 'The Angelic Mysteries' and 'Mirabilia' are both out of print, though I think you can still get copies through e-bay or others. 'Called to Love' is now available as a free e-book download at http://www.lulu.com/content/3778391 Hope you'll take a look.

I have just finished up my nonfiction book about American literature: 'American Masters'. I am currently seeking a publisher for it, and I'm working on a similar work called 'A Book of Books'. See my blog that has some of my new writing from that book at Book Of Books. http://www.abookofbooks.blogspot.com

Hope to hear from you soon.

James D. Sanderson

ABOUT JAMES D. SANDERSON

2009-04-21T12:26:00.000-07:00

Hello again.

I thought I might as well follow up and let you know who I am. I was born in 1952 and have been a reader from an early age. Even as a kid I was always carrying books around - many of them classic literature - mostly American though some others as well. (I did not read War and Peace until I was a teen). I think Ernest Hemingway was the one who got me started. As a young boy I couldn't believe that someone was actually living those adventures. I vowed to have such a life myself. (I would never have run with the bulls in Pamplona, for instance, if it hadn't been for Hemingway's vivid descriptions of that event in 'The Sun Also Rises' and other places in his writing. I read F. Scott Fitzgerld, Sherwood Anderson, Mark Twain, and Jack London. All of these and many more of course are what has led to my interest in writing about great literature.

As with other areas in my life, however, I wanted to write in a way that anyone could understand and in a way that would be interesting. (I have to write the stuff, after all, and if it is dull, Jim will be a dull boy too). So I began to make connections between the various writers I have read and am still reading, and began to put these tales together in interesting, exciting, and even adventurous ways. (Did you know, for instance, the 'Little Women' is an allegory about young women who are struggling with the burdens of their faults that is based upon the allegorical novel 'Pilgrim's Progress' by English author John Bunyon? So it becomes a kind of allegory within an allegory - the only one I am aware of. (Though is you know of others you might want to let me know). I found that these writers made comments about each other - some sage and some just plain rude. They read each other and reviewed each other's works and influenced each other in sometimes very subtle ways. In making connections in this way it seems life has been breathed back into the authors and their works.

My wife and I live in Colorado and we are currently raising our two granddaughters. I write full time and have just finished my book 'American Masters' and have already started on my next, 'A Book of Books' (which is where the illustration about 'Little Women' is from). If you would like to check out some of my writing from this next book, please click on the link below for my other blog: http://www.abookofbooks.blogspot.com

Let me know what you're reading and/or writing.

Sincerely,

James D. Sanderson

ABOUT 'AMERICAN MASTERS'

2009-04-21T12:13:00.000-07:00

Greetings Readers,

Sorry for the delay in getting this up and running but I have been busy putting the finishing touches on my new book. 'American Masters' is a book for those who love books. It is a popular history of American literature from its beginning in our colonial period (Cotton Mather and Benjamin Franklin), through our most recent Nobel Prize winner Toni Morrison. It is written in a sweeping narrative style (with a hidden first person narrator), drawing from the lives of the authors, their stories, their work, and interesting anecdotes from their own experiences. Did you know, for instance, that at age six Flannery O'Connor taught a chicken to walk backward. It was filmed by the Pathe News and was shown across the country. Little Mary O'Connor was on film helping with her chicken. She claimed that everything else in her life was anti-climactic. This is only one of the many such stories that have turned up in the research for this book. (And it has been just a plain ol' hoot to write, if you'll allow me that levity).

The study of literature has somehow become divided up by particular authors or poets, or various 'movements', or by their individual works. Very little has been done to mine the vast interconnectedness of the literary tradition from its earliest days until the present. Yet, not surprisingly, these authors knew each other, or had read each other, or had written reviews about each other, or had made comments about each other, and nothing was ever written in a vacuum as it sometimes appears in the classroom. Readers, (myself included), have approached the whole affair of reading our masters as a hit and miss matter, which seems to be more often miss than hit.

'American Masters' has a strong narrative insistence which does not sacrifice itself by use of obvious fictional techniques. Rather, it is written on several levels, giving it a deep tidal flow that is not fully appreciated by only a surface reading. Beyond the simple chronological reading there is a deeper symbolic level; and a deeper still mythic historicity of dreams, fears, imaginings; and a deeper still labyrinthine level of games, puzzles, codes, word play, and so on. (Which could be appreciated by the likes of Nabokov). 'American Masters' is going to need a respected agency to represent it for publication. If you know of one that might be interested, please blog me back and let me know.

Thanks, and good reading...

James D. Sanderson