Farewell, Seamus Heaney

Ireland's foremost poet Seamus Heaney died today, leaving the world with over half a century of moving poetry, plays and prose.  In honor of Mr. Heaney, I'm re-posting a piece from earlier this year that I shared on the 1995 Nobel Prize for Literature winner.  His poem Digging is among my favorites as it speaks to me as a writer.  The world is sure to seem less beautiful without Seamus Heaney in it...or at least less beautifully described.

A Survey of English Literature: William Blake to J. K. Rowling: Seamus Heaney - Digging:                     Irish poet, playwright, and winner of the 1995 Nobel Prize in Literature Seamus Heaney has been called the great...

Kate Rusby: First Lady of Contemporary English Folk Music

http://prezi.com/_7mlgxg0fcwk/kate-rusby/?kw=view-_7mlgxg0fcwk&rc=ref-38036675

Hogwarts Called, I'm In!

Not a day goes by that I don't check my mailbox and feel a pang of rejection for not having received a letter from Hogwarts asking...no, begging...for my presence at the start of a new term.  I know that I'm thirty-five, far older than the eleven-year-old First Years, as newbies to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry are called; possess no magical abilities, I'm muggle in every sense of the word; and, perhaps most regrettably, not even British; but a girl--even an almost middle-aged girl--can dream, can't she?  I LOVE ME SOME HARRY POTTER!  J. K. Rowling and her enchanting seven book series changed me as a reader and writer of juvenile fiction and she didn't stop there--Harry Potter changed the whole-wide-world.

The Phenomenon of Harry Potter began in 1997, when struggling single mother J. K. Rowling published the first installment of the fantasy, Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone (titled Sorcerer's Stone for the U. S. release the following year).  By the release of the second book Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets, toy shops and book stores were overflowing with witch hats and Bertie Bott's Every Flavor Beans.  The Prisoner of Azkaban, Goblet of Fire and Order of the Phoenix followed, and by 2003 the boy wizard was everywhere.  The sixth novel, Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince sold 9 million copies the first 24 hours of its worldwide release in 2005 according to BBC News, only to be topped by 11 million copies of the seventh and final installment Harry Potter and the Deathly Hollows being sold during the first 24 hours of its release two years later.  The collection constitutes the most popular series of children's books EVER.  The impact of Pottermania on the world is wide and includes the following:

1.  It Made Reading Cool  (Even Reading Fat Books)

Rowling's books have been praised and embraced by parents who watched their kids turn off the TV and read.  And because the content is so irresistible, these kids haven't been deterred by the whopping sizes of the novels that mostly run over 700 pages.  With themes that include death, power/abuse of power, love, and prejudice, readers--even young readers--become entrenched in the plots.

With over 450 million copies of the books being sold worldwide, Harry Potter turned book releases into major events, with children and adults dressing as their favorite characters.  Professor Sprout, anyone?  The anticipation of the next installment turned fans into voracious readers.  Even I waited in line for the midnight release of Order of the Pheonix and I stayed up for 48 hours straight to consume Half-Blood Prince.

2.  It Propelled the Rise of Young Adult Lit

The great demand for Harry Potter books motivated the New York Times to create a separate best-seller list for children's literature in 2000.  By June 24, 2000, Rowling's series had been on the regular best-selling list for 79 straight weeks.  (wikipedia)

Ever hear YA titles being called "the next Harry Potter"?  There's a reason.  I can remember a time when there were no books aimed specifically at young adult readers.  In school I read Ray Bradbury and J. R. R. Tolkien, but Fahrenheit 451 and Lord of the Rings weren't part of their own little sub-genre targeted at teens.  Today, there are entire sections of libraries and book stores where shelf after shelf is reserved for young adult titles.  Without Harry Potter there may have been no Hunger Games, no Mortal Instruments, no Percy Jackson and the Olympians. (DeVera)

3.  It added "Quidditch", "Muggle", "Squib" and "Mudblood" to our Lexicon

Rowling's world building skills are amazing, right down to the language the inhabitants of that world use.  Her character names are fun, place names inventive, and titles of uniquely magical elements of the wizarding world she's created are no exception.  In 2003, the word "muggle"--a term Rowling uses to describe non-magical folk--was added to the online Oxford English Dictionary.

4.  It Made Young Adult Movies Possible

Before Harry Potter children's books were rarely made into movies.  The success of the Harry Potter film franchise paved the way for the Chronicles of Narnia movies and even the Twilight films.  The recent retellings of Oz the Great and Powerful and Alice in Wonderland also owe their success, at least in part, to the Harry Potter movies who built them an audience.  It seems more and more that movie makers are turning to current YA best-sellers for their next projects.  And I, for one, believe the movies based on such works make for great entertainment.

5.  Robert Pattinson aka Cedric Diggory aka Edward Cullen  (Okay, maybe just for me)

Pattinson owes much of his popularity to Dumbledore's Army, who followed him after his demise in Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire movie as Cedric Diggory to brooding vamp Edward Cullen in the Twilight film.  Ol' Rob is smokin' hot and we all know how Twilight has influenced pop culture.  The other young actors in the series Emma Watson, Rupert Gint, and Daniel Radcliffe have also risen to popularity, but I dare say not one of them has ever sparkled like diamonds in direct sunlight or stopped a speeding van with one arm, so I don't have too much to say about them.

Critics of the Harry Potter books have argued that they aren't classic literature because their plots are too predictable, their characters underdeveloped, and Rowling's writing style too full of adverbs.  The books have inspired legions of young readers and been the topic of countless dinner conversations and road trips making it a classic in my home and millions of others.  Forever more, J. K. Rowling has changed the world with Harry Potter.


References:

Harry Potter.  Wikipedia.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Potter.  Origins and Publishing History.

De Vera, Ruel.  How Harry Potter Changed the World.  2011.  http://lifestyle.inquirer.net/5583-how-harry-potter-changed-the-world.  web.

July date for Harry Potter book.  BBC News.  21 December 2004.

V for Vagina Hater



I was looking forward to reading Alan Moore's graphic novel V for Vendetta (1988) as an example of dystopian fiction, my current favorite genre.  The story takes place in a fascist England after the rest of human civilization has been wiped out in WWIII, but the greatest tragedy of Moore's dystopia, at least in my opinion, is what this new world order is like for its female inhabitants.

"As a geeky kind of girl," writes the anonymous author of Remember the Ladies, a wordpress blog aptly titled Tyranny of the Petticoat, (http://tyrannyofthepetticoat.wordpress.com/2012/06/20/v-for-vendetta-everything-thats-wong-about-women-in-comics/) "I tend to approach comics with caution, afraid of how they treat women.  And the classic graphic novel [V for Vendetta] has done nothing to assuage these fears."  The bloggess goes on to say that Moore's first longform work with original characters is "everything that's wrong with women in comics."  While not a huge comic reader myself--The Walking Dead graphic novels are about the only such works I've read as an adult--I'd have to say that I agree with at least the assertion that Moore stomps the female gender into the dirt in V for Vendetta.

The reader first meets Evey Hammond, V's female sidekick and eventual replacement, when she is wrongfully detained by the secret police:  officers called Fingermen.  The Fingermen are preparing to sexually assault Evey, when she is rescued by V, a faceless terrorist in a Guy Fawkes mask.  V's pursuit of two goals:  revenge on those who imprisoned and experimented on him, and bringing down the government will now include the torture of Evey.



"All the women in this comic are hypersexualized to an absurd degree, and made into permanent and willing victims," writes the author of Remember the Ladies, V for Vendetta:  Everything that's wrong about women in comics.  But none so much as Evey.  The methods that V uses to bring Evey to herself, at least that's the motive I saw for Alan Moore's treatment of the character, are unforgivable.  "I'm a baby,"  Evey says to V in one panel of the comic.  "I know I'm stupid."  The goal behind Evey's torture seems to be for Evey to discover who she really is.  "What was done to V was monstrous, and it created a monster."  (Remember the Ladies)  Once V has broken Evey, he's able to rebuild her as he chooses.  It's infuriating to me that in the graphic novel Evey forgives V and never considers leaving this man that has abused and abandoned her.  I did find some satisfaction that the film version of Evey isn't as dismissive of V's torture and refuses to offer forgiveness.

Isaac Butler of The Hooded Utilitarian writes in a post called V for Vile, "[V for Vendetta] manages to be brazenly misogynist, horrifically violent, and thuddingly dull all at the same time."  (http://hoodedutilitarian.com/2012/09/v-for-vile/)  I don't know if I would call the story dull:  the panels are beautifully drawn and I enjoyed some of the thought-provoking sequences about individual and political freedom, but it is definitely misogynistic.  As Remember the Ladies puts it:  "Evy is V's dog.  He picks her up when she's wandering the streets.  He gives her a bed and some food, pats her head and doesn't tell her shit.  When she starts to ask the wrong questions, he abandons her like a puppy.  When he takes her back, against her will, he punishes her in order to train her."

The dystopian world of V for Vendetta is violent and harsh, particularly for the women...and especially for Evey Hammond who is repeatedly brutalized.  If she didn't thank her capture profusely for his bad behavior, I might be able to forgive her and her creator Alan Moore.  As it is, I detest them both, and I'm only half kidding.

Waiting & Waiting & Waiting for Godot

          Let me say right out of the gate that I have never had a firm grasp on the whole idea of existentialism.  I'm just not that deep, people; it's a character flaw I'll admit.  Reading Samuel Beckett's two-act play Waiting for Godot (1953) this week and the research project I embarked on afterwards have helped me understand the concept better as well as identify the work's influence on other absurdist fiction, but don't look for me to be seeking out other examples just for kicks.  Even Kevin Smith's 1994 low-budget film Clerks, which follows a Godot-esque model, left me feeling confused over a lack of meaning.

          "Samuel Beckett never gave much information about his Waiting for Godot, which premiered on January 5, 1953 in Paris," writes the Existential Absurdist in his/her blog titled Modern Literature:  Is Samuel Beckett's Work Existential?  "This has left many people wondering what the play meant, exactly."  While the work has been labeled everything from avant-garde to just plain boring, the Existential Absurdist argues that the play is existential above anything else.

          So what is existentialism?  Philosophyparadise.com defines the term as:  a philosophy that repudiates the idea of religion bringing meaning to life and advocating the idea that individuals are instrumental in creating meaning in their lives.  In an article titled Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot, a site contributor writes "Waiting for Godot shows that the individual must take action instead of just sitting around waiting for a God that may or may not bring salvation."

          In the film Clerks, main character Dante Hicks, a young retail clerk at a New Jersey Quick Stop convenience store is called into work on his day off.  Dante's day is spent in the purgatory of serving a stream of customers while complaining relentlessly that he's "not even supposed to be here today."  Dante passes time in wide-ranging conversations with his friend Randal, much in the way Vladimir and Estragon pass the time they spend waiting around in Waiting for Godot.  Clerks supporting characters of Jay and Silent Bob also mirror Pozzo and Lucky from the play.

(Jay & Silent Bob)

(Pozzo & Lucky)

          A part of existential thought includes the belief that a loss of identity causes mankind's helplessness.  Blogger Existential Absurdist argues that this is why existentialists emphasize giving one's life a purpose.  He/she writes,  "[Existentialists] would argue that God has not given your life a purpose, and therefore it can mean nothing, unless you give it meaning yourself.  Beckett's play serves as a warning to its readers:  do not do as Vladimir and Estragon do.  Beckett warns against wasting one's life by 'waiting' instead of 'doing'."

          In Waiting for Godot, Estragon and Vladimir are called only by their nicknames:  Gogo and Didi.  The two do not seem to know who they are or even remember their pasts.  In  Clerks, Jay's friend is known only as Silent Bob and the pair are stoners, notorious for short-term memory loss, procrastination and lack of motivation.

          In Clerks, Dante blames the day's misfortunes and problems on his friend Randal, whom he claims does nothing for him but make his life miserable by getting him fined, offending his customers, and ruing his relationship.  Randal answers that Dante's actions are to blame. (wiki) This same situation of allowing oneself to be controlled can be seen in the way Lucky allows himself to be tied up and controlled by Pozzo in Waiting for Godot.  Lucky lives without meaning or purpose because he allows himself to be controlled by another.  Dante misses out and loses his girlfriend because he doesn't take responsibility for himself and his life.

          Waiting for Godot has been called the "most important English-speaking play of the 20th Century".  This may very well be true, but I can tell you it doesn't even rank in my top 20 as far as enjoyability.  I'm a terrible person.  Probably an even worse critic.   Clerks made me laugh with its never ending sexual humour, but I felt a little dumber for having watched it.  I will say that I agree in part with the philosophy of existentialism.  I believe we are responsible for creating true meaning in our own lives.  That doesn't mean that I don't believe God isn't rooting for us from on high or that we shouldn't seek to better understand His will and hopes for His people.  I just think that if we wait for Divine intervention in our lives, we'll be waiting and waiting and waiting just like Vladimir and Estragon.


References:

Existential Absurdist.  Modern Literature:  Is Samuel Beckett's Work 'Waiting for Godot' Existential?.  http://existentialabusurdist.blogspot.com/2010/01/is-samuel-becketts-work-waiting-for.html.  2010.  web.


Samuel Beckett's Waiting for Godot.  http://www.philosophyparadise.com/essays/waitingforgodot.html.  web.

Clerks.  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clerks.  web.

A Study in Pastiche...Say What?

          I was thrilled to see a title by Neil Gaiman on my English Literature syllabus.  I have a mad crush on the British fantasy and graphic novel author dating way back to the early 1990's when singer/songwriter Tori Amos started talking about him in several of her songs.  Gaiman is an utterly fabulous writer.  If you've never listened to him narrate one of his works on audiobook, you are missing out ladies--his voice is magic!  As a writer of juvenile and young adult stories, I find myself more drawn to his titles for children:  The Graveyard Book and Coraline are my favorites.  However, I have also greatly enjoyed Gaiman's Neverwhere, Stardust, American Gods and now A Study in Emerald.

(Neil Gaiman)



          From the opening paragraphs of A Study in Emerald (2003) the reader is able to draw very direct similarities between one of the main characters "London's only consulting detective" and another, well-known, character from English literature, Sherlock Holmes.  The story is, in fact, a Sherlock Holmes pastiche. A pasti-what, you say?  Well, that was precisely my reaction, too, as I was previously unfamiliar with the pastiche [pa-steesh].  Dictionary.com defines the term as 1.  a literary, musical, or artistic piece consisting wholly or chiefly of motifs or techniques borrowed from one or more sources.  2.  an incongruous combination of materials, forms, motifs, etc., taken from different sources; hodgepodge.  A Study in Emerald is an award-winning short story written in the style of a classic Holmes pastiche and roughly follows the plot of the first Homes novel A Study in Scarlet while mixing in a little of the Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror writer H. P. Lovecraft.  (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AStudyInEmerald)



          "As a Holmes pastiche, A Study in Emerald borrows strongly, liberally and enjoyably from the Holmes mythos to produce a tale that is a ridiculous amount of fun," says Ian Holloway of The Steam Punk Review.  While none of the characters are explicitly identified in the text, it is strongly hinted that the detective and his veteran friend are Professor James Moriarty and Colonel Sebastian Moran (who, in Doyle's original stories, are the criminal mastermind arch nemesis of Holmes and his right-hand man/accomplice).  (http://enwikipedia.org/wiki/A_Study_in_Emerald)  Some similarities include:

• The detective character has written a paper on "The Dynamics of an Asteroid".  In Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's original, Moriarty is the author of this paper.  (Doyle, The Valley of Fear)
• The narrator signs his name a the end of his story, which takes the form of a Victorian periodical or newspaper in its online version, with the initials 'SM', indicating that he is Sebastian Moran.
• The 'detective' character is described to have a 'thin smile', a physical characteristic Doyle repeatedly used to describe villains in his stories.
• The narrator mentions on several occasions what a crack-shot he was before being injured.  In the original story, Moran is described as an expert marksman.  (Doyle, The Return of Sherlock Holmes)
• In Gaiman's story, 'Sherlock' is a gifted actor.  In Doyle's A Scandal in Bohemia, Sherlock is said to be a master of disguise and Watson laments "The stage lost a fine actor, even as science lost an acute reasoner, when he became a specialist in crime."

          What makes the story brilliantly Neil Gaiman, however, is his infusion of another genre, namely H. P. Lovecraft's Cthulhu Mythos universe of horror.  Cthulhu mythos is another odd term I was unfamiliar with.  It was coined by writer August Derleth to describe the works of H. P. Lovecraft and writers influenced by him including Neil Gaiman.  (http://www.yog-sothoth.com) The world in which Gaiman's A Study in Emerald takes place is one that has seen war between humanity and the Great Old Ones (an alien race and Lovecraft example), who now rule Earth.  The detective's investigation surrounds the death of a member of the Bohemian royal family and leads him to a "restorationist", an anarchist who believes that the "Old Ones are not the benevolent rulers they are portrayed as, but vicious, soul-destroying monsters feeding on madness and death, and that humanity should be master of his own affairs." (wikipedia)

          At its core, A Study in Emerald is the continuation of a "great game", one that has been going on for decades, in which various authors come up with creative and absurd ways of placing Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's beloved Holmes and Watson in "new" adventures.  (Britt, Ryan) By introducing some of H. P. Lovecraft's classic trophes, perhaps Neil Gaiman does this amongst the best of them.

References:

A Study In Emerald-Television, Tropes & Idioms.  http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AStudyInEmerald.  web.

Holloway, Ian.  A Study in Emerald.  The Steampunk Review. August 2008.  http://thesteampunkreview.blogspot.com/2011-08-study-in-emerald-html.  web.

Doyle, Arthur Conan.  The Valley of Fear.

Doyle, Arthur Conan.  The Return of Sherlock Holmes.

Doyle, Arthur Conan.  A Scandal in Bohemia.

Britt, Ryan.  The Great Pastiche Game:  Notable Non-Doyle Holmes Books.  http://www.tor.com/blogs/2011/12/the-great-pastiche-game-notable-non-doyle-holmes-books-html.  web.

Grace Nichols, Fat Black Women & Other Real Women of the World

As a woman it can seem as though you can’t go anywhere or do anything without having some ridiculous and unattainable standard of beauty shoved in your face.  Our culture is and seems to always have been inundated with messages to young girls and women that we aren’t enough.  Our skin isn’t smooth enough or appropriately hairless enough.  Our eyelashes aren’t thick enough.  Our teeth don’t gleam bright enough to be seen from outer space.  Our stretch marks from carrying say a kid or five can never be masked or surgically altered enough.  And we are never ever thin enough. 

Should you happen to be of a minority race and female, be prepared for a multitude of other ways in which you just don’t quite measure up to what’s most desirable and fashionable according to television, magazines, movies, billboards, etc.  Grace Nichols's poem The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping (1984) addresses the plight of a "fat" immigrant woman facing such criticisms in London.

Shopping in London winter

Is a real drag for the fat black woman

going from store to store

in search of accommodating clothes

and de weather so cold

Look at the frozen thin mannequins

fixing her with grin

and de pretty face salesgals

exchanging slimming glances

thinking she don’t notice

Lord is aggravating

Nothing soft and bright and billowing

to flow like breezy sunlight

when she walking

The fat black woman curses in Swahili/Yoruba

and nation language under her breathing

all this journeying and journeying

The fat black woman could only conclude

that when it come to fashion

the choice is lean

Nothing much beyond a size 14

                On its surface, the poem appears to be simply about the difficulties of a plus-sized woman shopping for clothes in fashionable London.  She trudges from store to store where she is mocked not only by “pretty face salesgals” but also the “frozen thin mannequins” in the stores that offer nothing in the way of something either “accommodating” or better yet “soft and bright and billowing” for someone of the speaker’s size.  With further analysis, however, one can also deduce that the poem is also a criticism of how minority women in particular were treated by London society during the 1980’s. 

                The language of the poem does much to convey to the reader that the speaker is an immigrant to England.  For example “de” is used several times instead of “the” and the speaker talks about cursing in “Swahili/Yoruba and nation language” under her breath.  Additionally, she refers to a desire for clothing that is “soft and bright and billowing to flow like breezy sunlight” giving the impression, at least in my mind, that the speaker is African or Caribbean and longing for their native climates as opposed to the frigid English Winter.

                Written during the 1980’s when London had seen riots caused by racism and social discrimination, The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping was part of a compilation called The Fat Black Woman’s Poems, and  has been seen as criticism of the conditions that black women, especially immigrant black women, found themselves living under.  (http://www.swopdoc.com/the-fat-black-woman-goes-shopping-by-grace.html)  The message in the poem doesn’t speak to me specifically in that way, though.  I understand that an English standard of beauty may have differed vastly from an African or Caribbean standard of beauty, but I think the last line of the poem also makes the discrimination the speaker feels universal to other women of her size.

                In the consumer culture in which we live, we aren’t likely to hear any messages from the media that the average American woman at 5’4” with a waist size of 34-35”, weighing between 140-150 pounds and wearing a dress size between 12 and 14, is the picture of feminine perfection.  (http://www.blogs.webmd.com/pamela-peeke-md/2010/01/just-what-is-an-average-womans-size-anymore.html)  The producers and manufacturers of the world will never stand for us feeling happy and comfortable in our own skin for very long—no matter how slightly flabby and probably utterly fabulous that skin really is.  Poems such as Grace Nichols’s The Fat Black Woman Goes Shopping can help us see size discrimination for what it is:  unfair and mostly unattainable standards of beauty that have little if nothing to do with what the average real woman of the world looks like.