Former Member

Edenton, N.C. (a beautiful town)

UNCLE

Underground newspapers collect licentious entreaties.

P A P E R 

Because I'm interested in it and very good with physics.

Enjoy it while it lasts.

 

You'll find out how fast you go from the hot twink that everybody wants to buy drinks for to the troll no one notices.

 

That distance is passed very quickly and its very hard to swallow.

Understanding your point, but... what a relief to be unnoticed, and just go about ones life! That's called

aging gracefully. With a few mid-life crises, of course, but you're freed from fashion, lots of social pressures,

and so much attachment. Which is all necessary, because in the end, it's "good-bye world, hello oblivion." 

Napoli, Italia (also a decent first baseman)

(FINGERS MOVING FAST...)

IMAGE

Illusive moons alter gnostic estimations.

L U N A R
 

TIMES

The imagination mines ephemeral sensations.

I M A G E 

NEEDY

Noble Empathizers Elope Down Yonder

ELOPE

Warrior1, 

I'm hoping two things. First that you don't waste your money thinking that a writing career will be enhanced by simply having a degree in creative writing. The academic industry has these goals. One is to make money. The other is to convince lots of people that there is practical value in purchasing their services, thereby accomplishing the first objective. Your degree will be most helpful in finding a position teaching creative writing. This monster is chasing its own tail.

I also hope that writers in general never depend on academic degrees to prove their worth. Artists have already succumbed. They need a degree, or two or three, to be taken seriously. The art itself is no longer understandable to most people. The craft is gone. All we have left is concept. Their degrees help them explain to the public what the art seems incapable of doing. Could this ever happen to literature? Possibly. Let academia create enough esoteric processes that channel writers into absurdities, and we'll need an interpreter for what used to be the natural art of telling a story.

Good luck to you, though. Just treat all advice (including ours) and instruction with your native skepticism.  

ROMAN

Renovate our masculine archetypes now!

GREEK 

Thank you answering me Thorn Wilde. I'll give that a try again.

I have a few stories in various stages of development. What I lack is someone to provide critical feedback as to the plot and character development. I'm really not willing to post a story unless it is as close to perfect as I can get it.

I just need someone to help me get these stories completed and well written.

I hope someone here can take a chance on me.

I'm an Astronomy major but I'm not to sure how much that can help anyone.

My co-favorite, with oak, is pine. It grows above the others like a sentinel, its boughs sing in the wind, its needles make a soft carpet... and its name evokes sadness born of love. (Tear)

Same question (there are so many trees)

ECHOS

Excellent chatter hinges on sobriety.

P E A C E

POLES

Pesky Otters Leave Existential Scat

P E S K Y

Aw, and we were getting along so well ;-). I have to object to that characterization of the classics.... I mean they are overflowing with unhappy endings, unless you stick pretty closely to Dickens and Austen. And even the "greater" Dickens works are pretty ambiguous, I mean look at Great Expectations and Oliver Twist.

And I'd say that The Destiny of Me (one of the Larry Kramer plays I read last month) is a happy ending thats "earned" as strenuously as by any Dickens hero.

 

Or am I not understanding you?

 

 

Edit: although that's actually a terrible counter example because Larry Kramer knows death better than most people in the western world at this point.

Yup. I'm thinking about Austen, and Dickens, and Scott. Villains can get the chop. But letting our main character/heroine fall over the cliff and into the abyss, followed by "The End"? That wouldn't start until the late 19th century, for the most part. Anyone as pessimistic as Melville would have to find popularity after death. Then Hardy and Eliot were messing with the sunny ending too. I was thinking that AIDS presented an exception, but in America most people saw it as a peripheral phenomenon. Not me, of course. And so I don't revel in murder, mayhem, and amorality, just for the heck of it. I'd like to read contemporary literature which acknowledges all of that, but doesn't seek critical approval by dragging the story and reader to the darkest places and denies me a way to return. Practically speaking, what's the use of such writing? I'm still sticking to my thesis, that only people in comfortable, affluent societies can stomach reading novels, etc. which offer no hope of a better world. So I'm getting into my romantic time-machine and taking off...   

 

 

 

I totally agree, and when I'm reading old books I try to sort of bootstrap my way into the emotional reality of the book by comparing our own emotional reality with that of the characters, at the main points we have in common--birth of children, death of loved ones, and so on.  For example, and at the risk of being morbid, I'll say that the treatment of the death of a child is something that hasn't really changed in literature as far back as I've read--it's never described as anything but the most shattering blow, something that rocks the self and destroys hope. Which gives you an idea of how incredibly stressful life must've been before antibiotics (whatever nasty cracks Harold Bloom makes about "historicism").

 

 

Since you mentioned death, is that issue the defining reason why "happy endings" are now sentimental and lowbrow, while in Victorian times they were essential in buoying up humanity? In our time, is there just too much fulfillment, satisfaction and all-around smugness to allow a "happily ever after" plot scenario? I also wonder about religion, along those lines. Can't hope noticing it's particularly salient in the lives of the old, the sickly, and the impoverished... (plus Americans, but that's another story). I'm waiting for the old pendulum to swing back, and for artists to find joy and beauty in the world, and shock the nihilist public! Someone earned the right to a lovely ending for their novel; someone earned the right to have a constructive morality for their life; someone deserved to bash the icons and smash the altar. But the rest of us are probably just pretending... 

Hey, I read a chapter of Don Quixote once! You know what it is for me---when they're that old, and in translation at that, it's really hard to pick up any emotional affect from the words. I start to feel like I'm just either not getting the joke, or not crying in the right places, or both.

 

I wouldn't recommend Ngaio Marsh unreservedly, as she has some issues, especially in the later books.  But in Light Thickens I get the impression she's too happy with her Macbeth to waste much energy on anything else. And that makes me happy.

I agree about the frustration of reading old classics. And either seeing the joke and not laughing, or missing it entirely. But I'm obsessed with the idea that I shouldn't be restricted by having been arbitrarily dumped in one place, in one time. And writers are obsessed with being read after they're gone... long gone! So, for example, I decided to read a novel by Sir Walter Scott. Even decades after his death, Twain was lamenting how Scott had ruined civilization and insidiously wormed his romantic notions into the minds of the masses, to no good effect. When Scott presented a "hilarious" character who would frequently exclaim "prodigious!", I knew my yawn should have instead been a knee slap and roar of laugher. As it would have been in his day. There should be an editorial footnote, instructing "huge guffaw here."

Scott was unbelievably popular and influential in his day, as compared to Jane Austen. Now she's left him in the dust of history, and all her books been made into films. And those wonderful productions show me how weak my imagination is. So at least I can see these works aren't just tortuous exercises that some professor or know-all critic has devised for me.  

 

Well, that's given me the impetus to continue, thanks!  And I could definitely use some lessons in Shakespeare appreciation. 

 

But OMG, Mr. Bloom's authorial persona is... not very warm   Maybe that's just his schtick.

 

You know who does a fantastic Intro to Macbeth? My favorite Ngaio Marsh, in Light Thickens.   It's a murder mystery set in a production of Macbeth, written by a stage professional who adores Macbeth.  Definitely a "breakfast in bed," but so great!

Thanks for the tip! And to confess, I love all breakfasts in bed. British ones are especially yummy. I remember Marsh's "Inspector Alleyn" series on the telly. Yes, Shakespeare is a real riddle-fest for me. As for Bloom, if he got a reader to pick up one his essential classics, despite his pontificating, he would claim a great victory. So someday, I'd like to read Cervantes, who never even heard of Shakespeare, according to Bloom.

LAMPS

Laughter and music pleasure satyrs.

S A T Y R 

Irritable,

You're probably twitching because Mr. Bloom is a mighty, pompous twit. Spoiler, if you can't stand it anymore... everything in modern literature goes back to Shakespeare, and among his works, 'Hamlet' reigns supreme. No ifs, ands, or whate'ers. But I'm used to those curmudgeons, and wanted to have a traditional look at literature. The twitching, if it's just irritation at a writer's message, can be a good thing. If we are pricked, do we not vent?

What I get from his little guide is an acknowledgement that classical literature is a thicket for modern readers, and that it's worth the hard slog. I need that encouragement. Which brings up my own theory of literature. There are two kinds of writing. The first comes to me on a  lovely platter with scones and tea, while I plump up my bed pillows. It finds me right where I am. The other type makes me get up, put on a hair shirt, wander through swamps and up inconvenient mountains, and as I stare off the precipice with hollowed eyes (from being up all night reading), I see that the view is incomparably exquisite. I've made as much effort as the writer, by leaving my comfy bed of assumptions, and meeting her at some half-way point. The writer may have compromised to find me, too. If not, if it's not been an effort for both of us, I'm stuck where I've always been, and she's talking to God or Goddess.

Twitch on!   

What to read, what to read. I just finished Harold Bloom's "How to Read and Why", which is probably anathema to most of us on this site. Basically he says, only read the greatest tomes. Life is short! Then he tells you what's great, and don't argue with him!

I've always felt the urge to "take my medicine" and read classics. So I'm working my way up to Montaigne's "Complete Essays". Which can be tasted in discrete bites and nibbles. His recent biographer, Sarah Bakewell, got me enthused by looking at life through this work.

That was "How to Live, A Life of Montaigne".

I'll read anything by Graham Robb. So when he wrote a speculative book about the proto-scientific brilliance of the Celts, I couldn't resist. With most popular fiction, I just wait for the film. Because life really is short. And I'm a slow reader.

FLAME

Fires linger after men erupt.

E R U P T 

Who else thinks she got bitten by Zombie?