The Hive
The official blog of science fiction / horror author Terence West.
William Gibson Blog
Famed author of Neuromancer and Johnny Mnemonic: The Screenplay.
The Word Foundry
Joe Clifford Faust's "blog of a working writer: tracking writing projects, musings on the
creative process, occasional side trips into music, media, politics, religion, etc."
A Writer's Diary
By Cynthia Harrison, who has the good sense to quote Virginia Woolf: "The truth is that writing
is the profound pleasure and being read the superficial."
The American Sentimentalist
"Never has any people endured its own tragedy with so little sense of the tragic." Essays by Mark W. Anderson.
Screenwriting By Blog
David C. Daniel writes a screenplay online. "I've decided to publish the process as a way to push myself through it.
From concept to completion, it'll be here."
SeanAlonzo.com
Official site of occult fiction author Sean-Alonzo, exploring symbolism, alternative
history, philosophy, secret societies and other areas of the esoteric tradition.
Crafty Screenwriting
Maunderings of Alex Epstein, tv scribe, about life, politics, and the tv show I'm co-creating.
Stealing Heaven From The Lips Of God
Writer & Artist, Dee Rimbaud reflects upon politics, religion, art, poetry, the meaning of life,
the nature of God and why toast always lands butter side down on carpets.
Robert Peake
Heart and Mind, Fully Engage ... a poet's website.
Sidestepping Real
By Ren Powell, poet, children’s writer, essayist and editor.
A small step Got a small bit of writing done this morning out on the deck. Found the little I did pretty exhausting. But it's a start. Onward.
7/30/2003 10:53:00 AM |
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Tuesday, July 29, 2003 Update I'm coughing much less but my energy level is very low. Still not back to writing but I continue to get reading done for the next project. Onward.
7/29/2003 04:20:00 PM |
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Monday, July 28, 2003 A book and a tape The tape of yesterday's show of very high quality, I'm delighted. Making copies for the actors and the composer. And the mail brought a copy of Ger's book, which looks splendid. A good job if I say so myself. Onward. (Still coughing but not as frequently, which I suppose is progress.)
7/28/2003 12:12:00 PM |
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Sunday, July 27, 2003 Curtain call Actors and singers did a great job, and the large audience loved it. Perhaps the best show I've done yet for the Unitarian church. Onward.
7/27/2003 04:28:00 PM |
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Saturday, July 26, 2003 More on historic drama My best historic drama, in my view, is Sad Laughter, based on the life of Moliere (and later adapted as a screenplay, which my agent thought was the best screenplay I'd ever written although he couldn't sell it). This work evolved slowly, in a process much like the one described by Peter Shaeffer for Amadeus, i.e. an evolution of versions, each less "historic" and more "dramatic" than its predecessor.
My play was originally commissioned by the New Rose Theatre when I was their resident playwright. What was unusual about the commission is that it came with the four actors of my cast -- and I could use only them. My decision to use a narrator who plays a variety of roles came directly from this restriction, as did the highly theatrical style of the play (i.e. the narrator would "change roles" in view of the audience). So did my use of such theatrical devices as the "carnival paintings" with head holes for the actors. The four actors thus play about a dozen roles, with only the actor of Moliere playing no one else.
The resulting play was called The Comedian in Spite of Himself. The artistic director who commissioned it loved it. However, I did not. First, the artistic director discouraged me from exploding the facet of Moliere's life that fascinated me most -- the possibility that he married his own daughter. Second, the play at three acts was longer than I was used to writing and longer than I myself liked to watch. I was able to strike a deal with the director that led to the most unusual run of my playwriting career -- he let me rewrite after we opened. Consequently I rewrote every week, and every week of the 6-week run the audience saw a different play! By the end, I had cut almost 30 minutes from the script.
Audiences and critics loved it, but I still didn't. Several years later I returned to the script, rewrote it into two acts emphasizing the focus I wanted in the first place, and this is Sad Laughter. I consider it one of my best works now (and it recently has garnered the fancy of a director from London, who is visiting a U.S. university and saw the script through a friend, who hopefully will not forget it when she returns to London).
7/26/2003 02:41:00 PM |
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Dress rehearsal Excellent dress this morning -- just enough tech glitches to keep us honest and know we can do better tomorrow. John Nugent's music, heard for the first time by the actors today, is first rate and adds a fine new dimension to their performances. This should be a first class show tomorrow. A few scattered observers watching the dress were blown away.
7/26/2003 02:26:00 PM |
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More on Seabiscuit Some critical observations I agree with:
There has already been a PBS documentary about Seabiscuit (another one, on A&E, will be shown on Sunday), but Mr. Ross has nonetheless chosen to punctuate his film with lofty voiceovers read by the popular historian David McCullough, whose sonorous disquisitions accompany black-and-white archival photographs of automobile assembly lines and dust bowl refugees. The words and images tie the lives of Seabiscuit and his human handlers to the rise of the automobile and the ascendancy of the New Deal, but they feel both ponderous and glib, weighing down the more intimate human and equine dramas and denying the characters time to emerge as individuals. This is a shame, since the human cast includes some of the finest actors working in movies today.
A.O. Scott, New York Times
Using McCullough to narrate makes "Seabiscuit" feel like a combination narrative film/"American Experience" documentary. That's a hybrid that might have been interesting had Ross chosen to take it all the way. As it stands, the use of these documentary passages seems unintegrated and clumsy -- not obnoxious, certainly, but inartistic.
Mick LaSalle, San Francisco Chronicle 7/26/2003 01:39:00 AM |
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Friday, July 25, 2003 And the winner is ... Just back from seeing Seabiscuit. It's a good movie but not a great one. I'd give it a B. I was hoping for an A, of course. It didn't reach greatness for me by trying to do too much, unable to decide if it was a documentary or a drama. Consequently, I prefer the documentary that's been playing on public television. The docu-quality in the movie never let me suspend disbelief enough to get into the human story as a story, it always felt like an illustrated history. The movie is gorgeous to watch, however. Great historic movies, like Amadeus, aren't afraid to tell a fictional story to dramatize history in the spirit of the times, rather than being literally true to the detail of the times (the job of the documentary). This movie tries to get it all ways and so falls short of greatness as a documentary or as a drama. Yes, I was disappointed because there is a great drama in this material. Someone else will have to tell it.
7/25/2003 01:46:00 PM |
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Thursday, July 24, 2003 Seabiscuit I have a ticket to the 10a.m. first showing of Seabiscuit tomorrow. Really looking forward to it and am going partly in memory of my grandfather, who loved the horse and introduced me to horse racing. Last time I did an early morning first showing was for Pearl Harbor (my mother's brother died there) and the movie, of course, was disappointing. But it hardly matters on such a pilgrimage. Much more than going to a mere movie is involved in such a ritual.
7/24/2003 11:07:00 AM |
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Passing the baton There are many satisfactions in being a writer. One of the greatest, for me, always has been when I get a sense of passing the baton, of inspiring someone to continue the literary tradition of which writers are the prime movers. Here is a recent example. Thanks, Dan.
7/24/2003 10:59:00 AM |
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Wednesday, July 23, 2003 Emerging strategy My emerging strategy in the next project is to use the historic event, known to everyone, as a subplot. Use the fictional protagonist in a created main plot, that informs the historic event or historic major character in it in some way. It appears to be shaping up into a coming of age story and black comedy. I'm taking the laptop when we go camping in Montana in August and may try to find its structure then. I also still hope to finish a prose draft of the novel so I can take a print out along and fill it with red ink. Onward.
7/23/2003 05:31:00 PM |
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Reading Coughing and reading, reading and coughing. Not back to writing yet. Barely keeping up with my few summer obligations.
7/23/2003 05:26:00 PM |
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On this day
1846, Thoreau spends night in jail for refusing to pay $1 tax because he opposed Mexican war, subject of play The Night Thoreau Spent In Jail.
1847, Brgham Young looks over great Salt Lake basin and says, "This is the place." My 2nd wife, though not a Mormon, was raised in Utah. Once we were sitting on the porch in our house in the country. About 150 yards away, two very tiny figures on bicycles appeared. "Oh my God," she said, "here come some Mormon missionaries." She was right! I was very impressed.
Tuesday, July 22, 2003 Rehearsal Really good rehearsal this evening before a small audience. Gave the actors a chance to adjust to laughter, etc. They are ready. Nothing left but the dress on Sat. morning, their first time performing with the music, and the performance on Sunday. I am optimistic this will be a very good show. Now if I can just get well ...
7/22/2003 09:03:00 PM |
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Ta da! Just found that book in a small bookstore in Scottsdale, AZ, for only $15. Amazing! Being shipped tomorrow. I think this may prove to be the most important part of my research -- in fact, this material was only discovered in the late 90s, despite all that's been written about this historic period and episode. It seems to match my emerging point of view perfectly. Very excited about this find! Onward, yes. (Nice cheer me up.)
7/22/2003 03:16:00 PM |
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Onward? Actually made it to the deck with my laptop today but within fifteen minutes I back inside and in bed. Rehearsal tonight, our first with an audience, will be the major challenge. Meanwhile, found out about a book I simply must get for the next project, a collection of letters published in late 90s, only 500 copies from a small press, and looks like it will be hard to find ... but it sounds perfect for what I need. I did manage to find a copy in a Univ library and have requested it to be sent to my Univ library, so I should be able to read it even if I can't own it. It's only about 100 pages so I can make a copy if need be. This may be incredible stuff for my uses.
7/22/2003 02:53:00 PM |
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Tuesday... No writing done yesterday. Spent a lot of the day in bed, even sleeping through an appointment. Try again today.
7/22/2003 07:32:00 AM |
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Monday, July 21, 2003 Monday! A new week, and I'm determined to write today and get back to normal. Feeling a tad better, still ... supposed to be 95 today, will sweat it out on the deck with the laptop. Meanwhile, read several books over the weekend for the next project. First big decision will be point of view for this story. Have months to make it. Meanwhile, I'll keep reading. But the current project goes back to front burner. With a good week, I could finish the prose draft this week. A noble goal.
7/21/2003 07:27:00 AM |
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On this day
1796, Robert Burns dies.
1855, Emerson congratulates Whitman about Leaves of Grass (one of the few).
Sunday, July 20, 2003 Update Man, this virus is a tough one to ditch. In the words of Jerry Lee Lewis, I'm hangin' in like Gunga Din! Getting reading done for the next project and ideas just exploding for this story. This will be a very fun project. First, however, I have to finish the current project! Mustn't forget that. Need to get the prose draft done before we go camping in early August so I can take a print out with me to cover with red ink. Except for the virus, all is well. Onward.
7/20/2003 03:35:00 PM |
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On this day
1869, Mark Twain's Innocents Abroad published.
1881, Sitting Bull surrenders to federal troops.
1924, Thomas Burger (Little Big Man) born.
1969, Neil Armstrong steps out onto the surface of the moon. I was a graduate student in Eugene, walking down the street with my wife in the evening, eating an ice cream cone, looking up at the moon. I said, "A great poetic symbol will never be the same."
Dylan's "Like A Rolling Stone" released. Many folkies thought Dylan had gone nuts to turn electric. I wasn't one of them. I dug his new sound.
Ranting Against Cant "Depending on one's ideology, Bloom can be perceived in one of two ways: as a Don Quixote tilting at the whirring blades of social progress or as a noble Sir Lancelot, defending a literary kingdom whose nobility includes Homer, Milton, and Dante."
The changing world of publishing ''When I started in publishing, in 1946,'' Roger Straus of Farrar, Straus & Giroux recalled, ''it was a very different business. It was a profession for gentlemen, and they weren't running their businesses for large profits. They were interested in good literature. Now, the goal is to get larger. The easiest way to increase the look of your balance sheet is to buy another company.''
---
''Do I still have a job?'' Toni Morrison, the Nobel Prize-winning novelist, asked Peter Olson. She was standing at the bar of a restaurant called Campanile, having a glass of wine before the annual Knopf author dinner at Book Expo America. Morrison was dressed in black, her long gray hair braided like an enormous challah. ''I hear you're firing people,'' she said. ''Maybe you're firing me.''
Olson ignored the jab. ''I haven't read 'Love' yet,'' he said, changing the subject by deftly mentioning Morrison's soon-to-be-published book. ''I hear you think this one is really good.''
Morrison nodded. ''It's perfect,'' she said. ''The main character is a bit of a con artist. He's attractive, and he ruins everyone's life. Like all you guys.''
Friday, July 18, 2003 Midnight Cabaret Midnight Cabaret: The Writings of Ger Moran, the posthumous collection of my friend's poetry (primarily), was released today. Ordering information.
7/18/2003 03:44:00 PM |
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Parker Another good rehearsal last night. I wish they were performing this Sunday, not a week from Sunday. What they need now is an audience, so I've opened up next week's rehearsals, hoping they get a few people to watch. There are a lot of laugh lines in Parker's work, of course, and laughs will change the rhythm. (Someone challenged Parker to use "horticulture" in a sentence. "You can lead a horticulture, but you can't make her think.")
7/18/2003 03:45:00 AM |
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On this day
1906, Clifford Odets born. My first dramatic role in Portland was in his play Waiting for Lefty.
1933, Yevgeni Yevtushenko, the Russian poet, born. I saw a documentary about Yevtushenko, who would draw a hundred thousand to a poetry reading in a soccer stadium.
Thursday, July 17, 2003 Kid in a candy store Doing background reading for next project and feel like a kid in a candy store -- every time I turn the page, I find something to use to comic effect, something I couldn't have invented better ... so far, this is a blast.
7/17/2003 06:05:00 PM |
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Wednesday, July 16, 2003 Parker Really good rehearsal last night, despite my lack of energy. The show looks like it will be ready to go. Meanwhile, a tad better today, though I cut short morning errands because I was tired. Will relax today, read, maybe watch a movie.
7/16/2003 10:28:00 AM |
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On this day
1945, Trinity, the first atom bomb test explodes.
1969, Apollo 11 blasts off, to land men on the moon.
1951, Salinger's The Catcher in the Rye published.
Baghdad Bulletin "The Baghdad Bulletin is Iraq's only English-language newsmagazine and one of the country's only independent publications. The third issue (published Monday, July 7) is now being distributed across Iraq and in Jordan. The magazine was created specifically for local reporting from Iraq and to provide a forum for guest writers to debate issues related to the redevelopment of the country." Access now.
7/15/2003 03:07:00 AM |
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Health update The good news is that I'm not any worse, and the bad news is that I'm not any better.
7/15/2003 02:58:00 AM |
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Utopia on the Internet "The word UTOPIA stands in common usage for the ultimate in human folly or human hope -- vain dreams of perfection in a Never-Never Land or rational efforts to remake man's environment and his institutions and even his own erring nature, so as to enrich the possibilities of the common life." (Lewis Mumford). Links to resources.
7/15/2003 02:57:00 AM |
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Monday, July 14, 2003 Oops Earlier I referred to Frank DeFord's comic novel as Casey at the Brink. The correct title is Casey on the Loose, which I discovered when I checked it out from the library for a rereading.
7/14/2003 10:35:00 AM |
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Update Very under the weather, but so much I feel like or need to stay in bed. Will go about my usual business but at less than full speed. Strange early morning -- coughing, sweathing, hallucinating a strange merger of scenes of Ruins and the next project, a surrealistic collage, as if both wanted my attention but the order of my brain had gone askew. If I were healthy, I think I could finish the first prose draft of Ruins this week. We'll see how I do. Only real "social" work I have to do are rehearsals Tues and Thur and online class chat tonight. Onward.
7/14/2003 08:42:00 AM |
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On this day
1798, Congress passes Sedition Act, later rescinded (worse than today, folks).
1842, Melville shocked by forwardness of girls in South Seas.
1933, all German political parties except the Nazis are banned.
1965, Adlai Stevenson dies.
1912, Woody Guthrie born. Through the 80s, I performed my one-man show Ramblin' -- the songs and stories of Woody Guthrie up and down the west coast from Seattle to L.A. Memorable performances at Artquake in Portland, later at Powell's Books in Portland, Seattle Community College, a lunchroom at a mill on the Oregon coast, Pomona College (with L.A. friends I hadn't seen in ten years in the audience), a campground on the Oregon coast (with Ken Kesey singing along off-key), a benefit for an alternative newspaper in Bend, a coffee house in Eugene to a standing-room only crowd, and many others. It was a great gig.
Sunday, July 13, 2003 All in the family Harriet got real sick last week ... and naturally passed it on to me. Soar throat, little energy, etc. Remembering Linus Pauling, my campus bench advisor at Cal Tech, I am overdosing with vitamin-C. Onward.
7/13/2003 10:10:00 PM |
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Dreams and writing I've talked before about how cooperative my dream life is, often attaching itself to my work life. This happened this morning when I awoke with the first scene of my next project in my head. Last night I had been doing some research on the net, quickly, saving web pages, but I stumbled upon a minor character in the history of my focus who is perfect for a major relationship with my fictional protagonist -- in fact, I couldn't have invented a better character for my purposes. Talk about being excited! So my subconscious apparently chewed on this through the night and delivered what strikes me as the perfect opening scene, a strong hook, comic, quickly establishing the historical environment. Love it. I am a tad apprehensive about all the excitement I'm giving to this since I have a project to finish first, about which I need to be just as excited. But I should have Love in the Ruins finished by the end of the year, and so can start the new one with the new year. I'll write it first as a screenplay to tighten focus and story, even though this lends itself to a sprawling epic treatment like Little Big Man, with which it has several things in common, but I favor short novels and so am using the much shorter Casey at the Brink as my model. Many, many challenges ahead on this material ... but I have an opening, I think, and the 2 major characters, one of which plugs me into the Big Historical Event and the Major Historical Characters, all of which I can have fun with, coming to it from the comic slant I'll be developing. I just thought of another book in the family: Norman Mailer's Why Are We In Vietnam? In fact, thematically, this may be a Why Are We the Policemen of the World? kind of book, though never will this be stated explicitly. But I'm dealing with some of the historical events and myths from which the position developed. An exciting beginning, at least in theory. Onward.
7/13/2003 08:27:00 AM |
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On this day
In 1793, Charlotte Corday stabs Jean-Paul Marat in his bathtub, giving Peter Weiss his material for Marat/Sade.
In 1798, Wordsworth visits Tintern Abbey and composes a poem in his head.
In 1865, Horace Greeley advises, "Go west, young man."
In 1881, Billy the Kid is shot.
In 1960, the Democrats nominate John Kennedy to run for President.
Saturday, July 12, 2003 48 hours later It feels pretty good to have an agent for the memoir -- mainly because it offers the opportunity for a growing relationship for future books. I've had a dozen agents over the years but only a handful developed into really good relationships. I'm overdue for one again.
7/12/2003 04:41:00 PM |
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On this day
Thoreau was born, 1817.
Lord Byron's funeral, 1824. Here's a good subject for a contemporary movie.
God tells Joseph Smith that polygamy is cool, 1843.
Buckminster Fuller born, 1895.
Pablo Neruda born, 1904.
16th Amendment approved, income taxes, 1909.
Elvis signs his first record contract and quits his job as a truck driver, 1954.
Research and writing I've written a lot of historical drama, enough to have been invited a few years ago to lecture on the subject at Washington State University (Vancouver campus). I've also written about the process (see my essay Writing the History Play: Why Dramatists Lie in the Pursuit of Truth).
This all comes to mind because I suddenly am doing research on two new projects, the Paul Robeson drama being produced in February and my next short novel project. So my reading for the summer looks like it will be monopolized by these two projects.
In the beginning, I just blindly read everything I can on the subject at hand, taking notes of things that strike me as useful in a drama. And a lot of this stuff will end up in the first draft of the script. But after that, I throw history away. I've done enough reading so I know most of what I need to know, enough not to make any egregious historical errors, but my focus shifts from history to drama, and I make changes in the best interest of storytelling, not of historical accuracy.
Peter Shaeffer has written on this subject eloquently, tracing the drafts of Amadeus as it moved from the London stage to the New York stage to Hollywood, with major changes along the way, each making the drama better and the content less historically accurate. It's the way we do things. We are not historians, through we strive to be true to the "spirit" of our material.
As I mention in the essay above, this approach has caused clashes with historians when a project has been funded by a grant with an historian as consultant -- sometimes amusingly so.
At any rate, the blind reading stage is a lot of fun because everything is possible. I've already been discussing the Robeson project with the music director at the Unitarian church, and we plan to make this much more music-centered than my usual drama presentations there, which have several songs to break up the action. In Robeson, I want to strive for an almost film-like approach, using choral music as a kind of sound track throughout.
For the other project, I know what I need in terms of the story I am going to invent within the context of the actual historical event. I am researching the "environment" of the event more than anything, to fill in details convincingly. But also I am hoping to stumble across minor characters I can put to use. The event itself is so well known that it's frequently been dramatized, and there would be no interest in this at all except for my zany and comic point of view, which hopefully will shed fresh light on everything. At least, that is my task and challenge. The book will be in the tradition of Ragtime and, even closer, Frank DeFord's absolutely wonderful Casey at the Brink, his invention of the writing of "Casey at the Bat." In fact, this is exactly the "genre" for this new story -- inventing the circumstances of a well-known historical artifice. Obviously I'm quite excited about it.
7/12/2003 10:01:00 AM |
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Greer and young boys "Asked on Canadian television what attracted her to 'boys' rather than men, she said: 'Sperm that runs like tap water will do.'" Germaine Greer's new book The Boy is bound to cause controversy. Miranda Devine objects to the book: "I would rather wear a burqa than have my eight-year-old child become a sex object." Access article. About the book.
7/12/2003 05:54:00 AM |
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Friday, July 11, 2003 The next project I was rather mindlessly channel surfing the other day when I chanced upon a documentary on the history channel. As I watched, a zany idea of a novel based on the same period hit me -- but I thought it was such a natural idea that surely someone had done it, probably Robert Coover or somebody like that. But after doing some research on the net and in libraries, the particular jazz riff on a certain famous moment in history apparently hasn't been touched. Best, it's the kind of extreme, zany, risky idea I especially enjoy developing, and I haven't written anything "crazy" in a long time. Most of my favorite works from over the decades are crazy and reckless, yet somehow work. It feels really good to have a nutty idea again! It's my next project, right after Ruins is done, and I'll begin background reading this summer.
7/11/2003 08:50:00 PM |
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Grunt work It's been one of those days full of grunt work, preparing some material my new agent needs, bringing my composer up to date with recent scenes from the libretto, updating the novel file with stuff I've written on the laptop recently, a trip to the post office, and so on. Not a bad day at all actually -- it's been a productive week, especially considering I started it on jury duty. Rehearsals went especially well this week -- I have to make sure now that they don't peak too early! Today I even tossed off a lyric to send to another composer, the one Ger was working with. I've been sending him some, figuring it would be cool if he found something he liked well enough to put music to. Onward.
7/11/2003 04:32:00 PM |
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Done deal Well, I signed the contract with the agent and stuck it in the mail. We'll see what happens.
7/11/2003 09:45:00 AM |
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Bookish cities What are the most literate, book-friendly cities in the U.S.? My city, Portland, prides itself on literacy. We are, after all, the home of Powell's Books. Well, the list is out -- and Portland will not be happy that northwest rival Seattle beat them out. Here's the top ten on the list:
The Making of a Physicist A talk with Murray Gell-Mann. When I was at Cal. Tech., both Gell-Mann and Richard Feynman were talked about as if they were gods. Feynman loved to bang on the bongos. Once, in the men's room, I was sitting on the toilet when someone entered the compartment next to me. Suddenly he started banging on the partition separating us! I thought I was in the men's room with a madman. The walls literally shook, he was pounding them so hard. I quickly finished my business. As I was washing my hands, an upper classman doing the same grinned at me and said, as the banging on the wall continued, "I see you met Feynman."
Thursday, July 10, 2003 News Well, the agent who read the complete memoir manuscript wants to rep it. Onward.
7/10/2003 05:56:00 PM |
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Happy birthday, Saul Bellow! Two novels of his I really like are Seize the Day and Henderson, the Rain King (#21 on the Modern Library's 100 best novels of the 20th century list). He won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1976.
Making a living writing Who actually supports himself/herself totally by writing? Well, I did for about 15 years -- but it was far too stressful and busy a life than I would want to live now (about 80% of my writing income was commerce writing, about 20% art writing). Making a living by writing books alone is really tough -- it's estimated only 600 writers do this. (There are 800 major league ballplayers). Here's the story of someone trying. Access now.
7/09/2003 03:40:00 PM |
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Summer workshop Monday I started a new online class, an intense 5-week workshop called Power Workshop for Screenwriters. New classes are always something of an experiment but already I can see how this class fills a real need, so I'm sure to repeat it often.
I read in the neighborhood of 100 student scripts a year and keep seeing the same mistakes repeated over and over again. The new workshop focuses on five of these common mistakes, focusing on one a week and working with scenes the students already have written. In the first three days of class, I think several students already have improved their craft immensely. Yes, this class looks like it's going to work out just fine.
Summer may have arrived for good here in the gray and green Northwest. 85 is the forecast for today, with continued good weather beyond. I'll spend a lot of time writing on the deck, where in fact I am now. Primarily on the novel but maybe a new scene to the libretto as well. Onward.
7/09/2003 11:05:00 AM |
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Tuesday, July 08, 2003 Update A very productive day! At jury duty, reread The Great Gatsby in the morning. In the afternoon I was selected to a jury pool but didn't get on the jury -- so they sent me home early, and my service is finished. Then tonight, just back from a fine rehearsal of the Dorothy Parker show. I expect this one to be pretty good, thanks to my cast. Onward.
7/08/2003 08:57:00 PM |
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Ann Coulter & Michael Moore Fanatics of the right and left deserve one another. "In fact, it's worth thinking of Coulter as a kind of inverse Moore: where's he's ugly and ill-kempt, she's glamorous and impeccably turned out. (Her web-page, AnnCoulter.org, has a gallery of sexy images.) But what they have in common is more significant: an hysterical hatred of their political opponents and an ability to say anything to advance their causes (and extremely lucrative careers)." Access now.
7/08/2003 05:24:00 AM |
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Northrop Frye The darling of literary criticism when I was in graduate school. An article about his collected works: "Perhaps the most far-reaching revelation in the diaries and notebooks is the extent of Frye's intellectual ambitions. Throughout these works, he shows great faith in his own abilities, referring on several occasions to his own "genius." Although Frye's published books dealt with weighty topics such as the nature of literary criticism and the relationship between the Bible and literature, these tomes turn out to be mere cobblestones of Frye's much larger design: Nothing less than a systematic survey of all human knowledge." Access now.
Harry Potter and the Childish Adult "Ms. Rowling, I think, speaks to an adult generation that hasn't known, and doesn't care about, mystery. They are inhabitants of urban jungles, not of the real wild." Hear, hear! An article by A.S. Byatt. Access now.
7/08/2003 05:05:00 AM |
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Busy day Jury duty, my final day (unless I get on a prolonged trial), then rehearsal of Parker show tonight -- busy, busy! Not much time to write here these last few days.
7/08/2003 05:01:00 AM |
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Jury duty Was uneventful ... well, except for being able to watch the Women's U.S. Open, which was exciting. And I got some reading done. And didn't get selected for anything. Back tomorrow.
7/07/2003 06:00:00 PM |
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Sunday, July 06, 2003 Out of sync I always get out of sync during a holiday, which is why I seem to enjoy them less the older I get -- because it takes me longer to get back into sync. So today is "get back in sync" day. However, disruption again tomorrow since I begin jury duty. I should get a lot of reading done.
I haven't served on jury duty for almost forty years. In fact, the last and first time was a big break through for me -- I ended up writing about the experience, and this was my first sale to Northwest Magazine (the weekly Sunday supplement in The Oregonian newspaper) and the beginning of a long relationship with editor Joe Bianco, for whom I wrote over 100 features over the years. The jury article also got reprinted and anthologized. Opened a lot of doors for me.
7/06/2003 07:45:00 AM |
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On this day From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar
1687, Sir Isaac Newton published his monumental Principia Mathematica.
William Faulkner, the most critically acclaimed of American writers, died in Mississippi on this day in 1962. His wife Estelle had put him a private hospital for alcohol detoxification, and he died in that clinic. Faulkner was buried from St. Peter's Episcopal Church in Oxford. Faulkner's funeral took place during civil unrest in Oxford concerning the desegregation of the University of Mississippi.
Charlie Chaplin's picture was on the cover of Time magazine on this day in 1923. He was the first actor to be on the cover.
Early rock star Bill Haley, who with the Comets made a hit with "Rock Around the Clock," was born on this day in 1925 in Michigan.
The first All-Star baseball game was played on this day in 1933 in Chicago's Cominsky Park. The American League beat the National League 4-2. Babe Ruth connected for the first home run in All-Star history.
Actor Ned Beatty was born on this day in 1937. He is most famous for his role in Deliverance.
1957, Althea Gibson won the Wimbledon women’s singles tennis title. She was the first black athlete to win the event.
The radicalism of the American Revolution... ...and how it shocked the Founders. "Even Jefferson, sanguine and optimistic as he had always been, was reduced to despair in his last years and to what seems to us today to be an embarrassing fire-eating defense of his South and states' rights. He hated the new democratic world he saw emerging in America--a world of speculation, banks, paper money, and evangelical Christianity that he thought he had laid to rest. [...] More than any of the revolutionary leaders, he had relied on the future to take care of itself. Progress, he thought, was on the march, and science and enlightenment were everywhere pushing back the forces of ignorance, superstition and darkness. The people in a liberal democratic society would be capable of solving every problem, if not in his lifetime, then surely in the coming years.
"But Jefferson lived too long, and the future and the coming generation were not what he had expected. Jefferson was frightened by the popularity of Andrew Jackson, regarding him as a man of violent passions and unfit for the presidency. He felt overwhelmed by the new paper-money business culture sweeping through the country and never appreciated how much his democratic and egalitarian principles had contributed to its raise. Ordinary people, in whom Jefferson had placed so much confidence, more than his friend Madison, were not becoming more enlightened after all."
Saturday, July 05, 2003 A genealogy of anti-Americanism An essay by James W. Ceaser. "Anti-Americanism rests on the singular idea that something associated with the United States, something at the core of American life, is deeply wrong and threatening to the rest of the world. This idea is certainly nothing new. Over a half-century ago, the novelist Henry de Montherlant put the following statement in the mouth of one of his characters (a journalist): 'One nation that manages to lower intelligence, morality, human quality on nearly all the surface of the earth, such a thing has never been seen before in the existence of the planet. I accuse the United States of being in a permanent state of crime against humankind.' America, from this point of view, is a symbol for all that is grotesque, obscene, monstrous, stultifying, stunted, leveling, deadening, deracinating, deforming, and rootless." Access now.
Finito The installment below ends my memoir, It's All Material: The Education of a Marginal Writer. I've been revising and adding to it along the way. And what next? Two agents are looking at it. I doubt the commerciality of this project, however, in which case I will end up publishing it as a print-on-demand paperback for the few libraries that will order it. An email to me with MEMOIR INFO in the subject line will keep you informed of its future.
I've enjoyed serializing this -- so much, in fact (just the discipline of it, ha ha), that I am thinking about serializing my novel Emmett's Gift here next. We'll see. Onward.
7/05/2003 07:08:00 AM |
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A Day in the Life [concluding a memoir that began on 4/13/03]
I am closing this memoir with a disclosure of my typical day.
I wake up. The first thing I do when I wake up is to reflect on how lucky I am to have another day on the planet. I am alive. By odds, I shouldn’t be. Although I quit before drinking myself to death, I still could have killed myself with an automobile. I shiver to recall all the times I’ve been behind the wheel while intoxicated. I never even received a drunk driving citation, let alone killed anyone. The only two car accidents I’ve had as a result of drinking were both solo affairs, one time taking out a farmer’s fence in Maryland, which I replaced, and the other time apparently hitting some object or other, perhaps a telephone pole or a parked car, which in fact I don’t remember. I woke up the next morning to discover a front fender missing on my car. I assumed I had hit something on the way home. There was nothing in the paper about dead bodies or wrecked cars. I don’t know what I did, but evidence showed it was an accident, not a theft.
After I wake up and give thanks for life, I give thanks for sobriety. I woke up so many mornings (over 10,000 of them) with a hangover that I expect the absence of one to be a great joy for the remainder of my days. Not only am I alive, I am in a condition in which I can appreciate it.
Next I am aware of Harriet beside me. I reflect on how fortunate I am to have her in my life. She travels a lot and when she is gone, when I wake up alone, I miss her.
Recently our dog Sketch also is on the bed, and when he is aware that I am awake, he may move close to greet me. The morning has begun.
If it’s after four in the morning when I first wake up, I am likely to get up and go to my basement office. I turn on the computer. I may work on my front burner writing project or I may go online and check my email first. But I usually write for at least an hour. Depending on the time, I may return to bed for an hour or two more, or I may stay up. If I stay up, I usually do the dishes from the night before. Then I make breakfast.
Harriet may or may not be up yet. We usually have some kind of hot cereal for breakfast. Harriet gets up between eight and nine, and her breakfast is usually waiting for her. By then, I may be downstairs working again, but when I hear her, I usually climb the stairs to greet her good morning.
Harriet is usually in a rush in the morning. She stays in bed for as long as possible before whatever class or meeting has her hurrying out the door. She’s far busier since she retired than she was while teaching. After she leaves the house, I go back downstairs and get back to writing – or I read student scripts and get ready for my Tuesday or Thursday afternoon class at the university.
Two days a week, then, I leave for the university early in the afternoon. I usually drive to a park-and-ride and take the bus. I love buses. I steal a lot of dialogue and speech cadences from eavesdropping on the bus.
I have my office hours before class. When Ger was alive, we’d grab coffee together before they began. I miss this.
After my office hours, I teach my class. I come home.
On days when I don’t teach, I write some more through the morning. I typically am working on more than one project at once. Today, for example, there are four projects I am involved in: this memoir, a novel, the libretto to an opera, and a dramatic reading from Dorothy Parker’s work, which I am assembling and directing for a presentation at the Unitarian Church in July.
Harriet usually comes home from her morning activity before noon, and we have lunch together. She tells me what she’s been up to. My remarks about what I’ve been up to are short and monosyllabic.
In the afternoons when I don’t teach, I rewrite or work on projects that are not on the front burner. Or I may do my writer’s chores then – buying supplies, going to the post office. The opening monologue in My Dinner With Andre captures in a wonderfully comic way how writers can stretch out their chores to last longer than they should.
Harriet’s busy schedule may have her off in the afternoon, too, for meetings or voluntary activity, such as leading tours at the Performing Arts Center. She gets out into the world much more than I do. She usually is home for dinner but sometimes she may dine with women friends first, before going to a dance concert or lecture that I’ve declined to attend.
During the day or evening, of course, I may read or listen to music. There’s a wonderful scene in a Woody Allen movie in which a character lists the reasons why life is worth living, including a number of books and songs. Here is my list off the top:
· Ramblin’ Jack Elliott singing the songs of Woody Guthrie.
· Little Walter playing and singing the blues.
· Doc Watson picking guitar.
· The Weill/Brecht opera, The Rise and Fall of the City of Mahagonny.
· Gerry Mulligan and Chet Baker playing “My Funny Valentine.”
· Frank Sinatra singing “It Was A Very Good Year” and so many others.
· Graham Greene’s novels, The Quiet American and The Human Factor.
· Evan S. Connell’s novel, Mrs. Bridge.
· John Steinbeck’s short novel, Of Mice and Men.
· John O’Hara’s short novel, Andrea.
· Gilbert Sorrentino’s short story, “The Moon In Its Flight.”
· Lew Welch’s “Chicago Poem.”
· Friedrich Durrenmatt’s play, The Physicists.
· Edward Albee’s play, A Delicate Balance.
· Peter Weiss’ musical play, Marat/Sade.
· John Guare’s screenplay, Atlantic City.
On Friday or Saturday nights, Harriet and I often go to a movie. More rarely we might go to a play, or an opera, or a classical concert. We used to go out to hear music and dance but in recent years my tolerance for being in bars has shriveled into significant distaste. If we are going out, we often go out to dinner first.
When the weather is good, which in Oregon means from late spring to early fall, primarily in summer, we may go for a drive to a scenic spot or to a place, like Astoria, we are especially fond of. Sometimes the writing business will take us somewhere, to a reading in Baker or to see a play in Corvallis or Eugene. This summer we plan to camp at Flathead Lake in Montana, which we haven’t done in a few years, but which is one of our favorite spots.
I like routine more than Harriet does. She is far more adventurous than I am. I love staying home. I love the small cottage we are buying. I love mowing its large lawn with a push, reel mower. I love sitting on the deck and watching meat cook on the grill. I love sitting on the deck with my small radio and earplugs, listening to a Mariners game. I love sitting on the deck and reading. In summer, it is hard to get me off the deck.
There are a few interruptions that I welcome. Harriet may come home earlier than I expected. The phone may ring, I may actually answer it (or more likely Harriet is home and she answers it), and it is Brad, Crooks’ oldest son. Brad calls often these days, which I appreciate. He is almost like a son to me, certainly like a nephew. I’ve known him practically all his life, and in many ways, the good ways, he is his father’s son. (Kass, the younger son, inherited most of Dick’s demons, and he still wrestles with them.) I visit Brad and Dick’s mother every summer.
No matter what I am doing, or when, or where, my thoughts return to writing, to whatever it is that I am working on. I am never far from this. I am never wholly, completely, divorced from this. I could no more stop thinking about writing than I could stop breathing. Some things are too close to one’s being to remove by an act of will.
My life has its dark moments. I have my demons. Most have to do with a sense of failure, both personally and professionally. Most echo from the questions, So what? and Who cares? (often phrased as, Who gives a shit?). A larger perspective usually keeps my demons in check.
The balance sheet of my life looks something like this. On the one hand, my life has been far from perfect:
· I hurt many people, especially women who cared for me, during my drinking days.
· Because I ignored her, my own daughter knows nothing about my character. She believes things about me that are not true.
· Carol, whom I still care about, won’t talk to me.
· Dick and Ger have passed away.
· I stopped writing short fiction just as I was being recognized for it.
· I neglected to go to New York as a playwright, which is where playwrights belong.
· I neglected to go to Hollywood as a screenwriter, which is where screenwriters belong.
But I’ve had and still have many blessings in my life as well:
· My parents gave me unconditional love and support, even when I made decisions they didn’t understand.
· I grew up without TV as a babysitter, the last generation to do so. We didn’t bring television into the house until I was a teenager.
· I was a teenager during the birth of rock-n-roll.
· I did my military duty between “hot” wars.
· Today, on most mornings, I get to wake up beside Harriet.
· Linda and Zeena remain close friends.
· I am writing better than ever. Along the way, I received enough success and awards to keep me from feeling totally isolated. Today I feel only marginally isolated, as in fact most writers do.
· I’m alive and I’m sober.
When I analyze this balance sheet, I must conclude that my life by and large has been a failure, both personally and professionally. In each instance the root of failure is disconnection. Personally my life is a failure because I have no experiential connection to children and grandchildren, no legacy of shared family experiences that continues the energy my parents passed on to me. Professionally my life is a failure because I have no significant audience for my work.
But being a failure does not mean I am unhappy. I am happy much of the time and content almost all of the time. The last ten years, my sober years, have been the best years of my life. I have not felt less disconnected but I have felt more at peace with myself and more at peace with my chaotic past. Never have I enjoyed writing more. Never have I enjoyed waking up to greet the day more. But I do spend most of this enjoyment alone.
To an observer, I imagine my life today must seem dull. It is never dull to me. It is a perpetual engagement and a daily, renewable miracle. It is, after all, the only life I have. I feel blessed to have it.
IN MEMORIAM
Chick and Flo Deemer
Charles L. Deemer
Aunt Dot (Deemer)
Aunt Hilda (Deemer)
Matt Couch
Donald Deemer
Billie Bache
Betty Minorics
Bob Trevor
Phil Fuqua
Tom Campbell
Dick Crooks
Levi
Ger Moran
7/05/2003 07:00:00 AM |
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Sounds good If you go to the website for Scaramouche Productions, and click on projects and then on Earthly Desires, you'll learn that yours truly wrote this script that is on their "development slate." Sounds pretty impressive -- unless you know anything at all about the film industry. All this really means is they are trying to raise money for the project. Somebody or other has been trying to raise money for this for about five years now. In other words, nothing happening (in fact). Here is the screenplay.
7/04/2003 09:41:00 AM |
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On this day From Dr. Mac's Cultural Calendar
The Continental Congress approves the Declaration of Independence.
Both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams die on this day in 1826, the 50th anniversary of the Declaration of Independence. 5 years later James Monroe died on July 4.
Thoreau moves to Walden Pond, 1845.
Marx's Communist Manifesto is published, 1885.
Whitman self-publishes Leaves of Grass, 1855.
Joyce legalizes his common-law marriage to Nora, 1931.
Honky tonk women From a series on American music that began on NPR today. "Kitty Wells captured the nation's attention with her 1952 recording "It Wasn't God Who Made Honky Tonk Angels." Performers like Wells, Rose Maddox and Jean Sheppard offered, for the first time, a woman's point of view in their songs. In doing so, they paved the way for female country singers to become full-blown stars. It wasn’t easy; these pioneers faced challenges that no female stars have to contend with today." Go to the website.
In 1952 Hank Thompson had a huge hit with a song called THE WILD SIDE OF LIFE:
THE WILD SIDE OF LIFE
Recorded by Hank Thompson
Written by William Warren & Arlie A. Carter
You wouldn't read my letter if I wrote you
You asked me not to call you on the phone
But there's something I'm wanting to tell you
So I wrote it in the words of this song
CHORUS:
I didn't know God made honky tonk angels
I might have known you'd never make a wife
You gave up the only one that ever loved you
And went back to the wild side of life
The glamor of the gay night life has lured you
To the places where the wine and liquor flows
Where you wait to be anybody's baby
And forget the truest love you'll ever know
REPEAT CHORUS
Almost immediately, a response was recorded and released:
IT WASN'T GOD WHO MADE HONKY TONK ANGELS
Recorded by Kitty Wells
Written by J. D. Miller
As I sit here tonight the jukebox playing
A tune about the WILD SIDE OF LIFE
As I listen to the words you are saying
It brings mem'ries when I was a trusting wife.
CHORUS:
It wasn't God who made honky tonk angels
As you said in the words of your song
Too many times married men think they're still single
That has caused many a good girl to go wrong.
It's a shame that all the blame is on us women
It's not true that only you men feel the same
From the start most every heart that's ever broken
Was because there always was a man to blame.
Why I Write [from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
The Catch-22 in my life is that I write for myself but still wish I had a larger audience than I do. It’s hard for me to be a closet writer, an invisible writer. Yet I appear to be just this.
But I don’t write to please an audience. I write to please myself. I wish there were a better way for my potential audience, those who would find my work interesting and moving, to find me. Maybe the Internet has done this already. I frankly don’t know. I do know that my archives average over 250 visits a day but I have no way of knowing if people actually end up reading or downloading anything or if they are just browsing.
I know I am not a commercial writer. But I also know there are people, readers, who share my interests and who would respond well to my work if they knew about it. I run into them from time to time, in the audience at one of my plays, or in an email sent to me about something I’ve written that the reader found on the Internet. The world is a very large place. Where there are several, there are many. But how do I reach them?
I don’t mean to give the impression that I spend a lot of time worrying about this or that I lose any sleep over it. I don’t. I’m too focused on the work at hand, too obsessed with whatever story, in whatever form, I have put on the front burner of my daily work routine. I live and breathe my work. This makes me a reasonably dull person to be around, I think.
Not that I want to talk about my work because I don’t. I refuse to talk about work-in-progress, ever, under any circumstances. I learned by observing Crooks that talking decimates the same energy used for writing. However, I will talk about past work if the discussion is with a student writer or someone familiar with my work or if the context makes such discussion appropriate, as at a reading.
I don’t give many readings, which means I enjoy the ones I do give. I especially enjoy reading out of Portland, in small towns in eastern and central Oregon, or on the coast, where people support such events in great numbers. By temperament, I’m much more suited to living in a small town than in a city. But I expect to die in Portland, or close by, because Harriet’s grandchildren are here. I’ve never been able to convince her to move.
I write almost daily. I think about writing all the time. My best time for working on new writing is early in the morning. I can rewrite anywhere, under any conditions.
I write because it is the way I exist in the world. To me, writing has become an existential act. I write, therefore I am. It is the way I digest, reflect upon, and make sense of my experience in the world. Since this process takes time, I often don’t respond to requests to discuss immediate experience. I haven’t figured out what to say about it yet. My oral skills are less developed than my written skills – or rather, I trust them less. I’ve learned that language is complex, that using it to communicate emotion is especially complex, and this makes me very resistant to enter oral discussion of experience that is fodder for later written expression, typically fictionalized and dramatized in a story, whether the story becomes structured as a stage play, screenplay, short story, or novel.
In other words, I write a hell of a lot more than I talk, especially about things that matter. This has become especially true since I stopped drinking. I found it easier to be social and to express myself orally while drinking. Today I sometimes have more intimate relationships with pen pals than with friends who live close by. I believe Crooks and I remained so close after the Army because I was able to write him a lot of letters, although we both also ran up very large phone bills with drunken calls.
The words I put into the mouth of Moliere – “Everybody knows me – I reveal myself to the world! … All it takes is the price of a ticket to know me.” – reflect my own attitude. I spend so much time being intimate in my writing that when I am not writing I prefer to be distracted by less engaging matters, such as watching sports or a movie, or barbecuing on the patio, or taking a walk, or simply staring into space. My least favorite activity in the world is to sit around talking about deep meanings of anything – the state of the world, the meaning of a movie, the health of a relationship, the behavior of a friend. I have opinions about all these things but what I have to say ends up in my writing, not in my conversations.
I am aware that this is not a very social way to be in the world. It does not make me easy to live with, at least not by someone who will not take the trouble to find my intimate self where it actually exists, in my work.
Since I find nothing wrong with being this way in the world, I am not interested in making compromises that may affect how I work. All writers have their superstitions and my major one is that talking out material compromises the writing energy that will develop this same material more carefully and deliberately in a process that takes time. This is probably why some people find me secretive. In the end, I will share far more dirty laundry, so to speak, than they will. Indeed, some people who know me are shocked by how much I reveal in my writing, in cold and permanent print, and low little I reveal in person. These people, who are in the majority of my acquaintances, do not understand the process of writing.
Thursday, July 03, 2003 Butterflies! Working on the deck this afternoon, writing a scene for the libretto, I saw something I haven't seen in years: two butterflies in the yard at once! I was afraid butterflies were becoming extinct (maybe they are) but a couple years ago Harriet planted a butterfly bush off the deck. Last summer, and again this, butterflies have come to visit the flowers but only one at time. Today I saw two at once! I believe they were Western Tiger Swallowtails.
I'm generally not big on zoos but one thing I like about the Portland Zoo is its Butterfly Garden. There's something magical about being surrounded by so many butterflies.
Incoming fireworks Ten years ago I spent July 4 in the V.A. hospital. It changed the way I look at this holiday forever. That night, a fellow in a bunk near me was wakened by fireworks and dove under his bed, screaming about in-coming mortars. He was a Vietnam vet and relived the war every time he heard or saw fireworks. As a result, I've looked at fireworks differently since then myself -- they remind me that some vet, in some hospital somewhere, is diving for cover as a result. Consequently, I don't watch fireworks much any more and so tomorrow am likely to spend my time comforting the dog.
7/03/2003 06:48:00 AM |
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Dreams and writing I've always enjoyed a close connection between my writing life and my dream life. When I was playwriting, I often would dream scenes from the script I was working on, rising to write them down. Sometimes I felt like a medium for some unconscious force or energy that was doing the actual writing.
When I returned my primary writing energy to fiction, a big breakthrough for me was to start dreaming in language again. Not in scenes, like a movie in the head, but in audio, in language, in turns of phrases and sentences. One morning I woke up with ninety percent of a poem in my head (this became Advice to an Artist on Choosing a Wife), and I knew the transition from playwright to fiction writer had begun because words, not visual scenes, were filling my dreams again.
I mention this because I awoke this morning with what might prove to be an insight into my novel, Love in the Ruins. I've got a solid story (thanks to the screenplay) but am still fiddling with point of view, voice, attitude. I awoke with a mixture of what I've been trying that may do the trick. Went back and tried it on page one, and I think this may be the tone I am looking for. We'll see. Onward.
7/03/2003 06:35:00 AM |
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The Teacher [from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
When I became sober, I decided to remove as much stress as possible from my life. This meant giving up the writing life as I had been practicing it because much of my income came from freelance assignments, which is about as stressful employment as one can have. I decided to return to the more secure employment of teaching.
This was not an easy decision. Teaching has both advantages and disadvantages for a writer. I had focused on the disadvantages in my 1969 short story “The Teacher,” which had appeared in The Colorado Quarterly. The story ends this way:
Is gloom a consequence of power, the power I have at the precise moment I hold their collective attention? Their faces are more alert than mine for the weary hour. Even where the class's countenance is fatigued, it is expectant enough to reveal the waiting, the waiting for me to begin. And what, in God's name, do they expect me to say?
There is an irony in this question--one of your cherished absurdities--that brings a smile to my lips. Immediately the class breathes more easily. In my hesitation to begin, they had read an unannounced quiz and now they know they are safe. I glance outside through the window, to the lawn crossed with lengthening shadows. With what acceleration does that shadow creep across the lawn? A problem to put away for later, I note. Nothing so serious now. The mood of the hour, born in the class's visible sigh of relief, no quiz, is too relaxed to violate with talk of physical phenomena. I must work them into it. And so I ask, "Who's going to win the game this week?" to which the reply is unanimous, "We are" Then for as long as I am able, I ride with them, letting them carry me through the seconds of this closing hour even as they approach their own destinies, which will take them so far from where they sit today. I tell a joke and they laugh, laugh heartily, and their gaiety soothes me. There will be time later to talk about physics. We'll need to soon enough, for I'll have walked into the spider web again, that web of gloom, and while in it I will ask myself what it is that I am doing there, standing up before their young minds and young bodies; what is it that I am expected to do?
The inquiry will be brief. With a shrug I'll step to the blackboard, draw a trajectory, begin an equation and hear behind me the scratching sound of pens on paper. At which time, in the words you prefer, the lesson begins.
I hadn’t taught since the University of Oregon days except for occasional workshops at summer writing conferences like Fishtrap in eastern Oregon and Moonfish on the Oregon coast. I often had enjoyed teaching but also knew it took energy away from my own writing. A writing teacher also spends too much time reading bad writing instead of good writing. At the same time, I’d had some memorable experiences in the classroom.
One term at the University of Oregon I had a dozen Black Panthers in my English Composition class. They marched into the room in military formation, stood at attention beside their desks in black jackets and berets, then sat quickly down on command. They were a formidable bunch.
During a discussion one class session, a young woman said something that upset one of the Panthers. He blurted out, “Do you really believe that mother-fucking bullshit?” The class fell into a tense hush. Everyone stared at me, waiting to see what I would do. I calmly asked the woman, “Did you understand the question?” “I don’t think so,” she said, her voice cracking. The Panther yelled, “What you said is mother-fucking bullshit!” As calmly as I could, I said to the woman, “He asked if you really believe that mother-fucking bullshit.”
The class’ collective sigh was almost audible. I’d said the m-f word! Suddenly everyone wanted to say it. Hands shot up, and everyone I called on had to use the m-f word. Now it was my turn to be shocked. I steered the discussion to what had just happened, and we talked about the magic of language and obscenity. It was a good discussion.
Months later, I was called into the department office by the Chair of the English Department. He informed me that charges of moral turpitude were pending against me. All I could imagine is that some coed said I had raped her or something. The Chair said I was accused of saying “mother-fucking bullshit” in the classroom. It took me a moment to remember the Panthers and the incident. When I did, I explained the whole story.
It turns out one of the young woman in class that day later had used the m-f word in front of her mother. When her mother asked where she’d learned to talk like that, the student said, “Mr. Deemer says it in English class.” I got away with a slap on the wrist and a promise to be more careful in the future.
Harriet used her influence to get me my first teaching job after getting out of treatment, an English Composition course at Clark College. I didn’t like it much but it beat the alternatives.
When I got on the Internet in the early 1990s, I soon realized that here was a perfect vehicle for distance education. I put together an online college screenwriting class and then looked for an institution to sponsor it and give it accreditation.
I approached every college I could think of. No one was ready yet to approve of an online college screenwriting class. Most institutions told me they were studying the entire online education issue in various committees.
One afternoon I was having coffee with an old buddy from graduate school, who was in town on business from Eastern Oregon College in La Grande. When I bitched about my failure to find a home for my online class, he told me to contact the Distance Education people at Eastern. He was optimistic that they might be interested.
I sent an email to the D.E. head. The same day I got a reply that they, indeed, were very interested in my screenwriting class. Could I teach it on the World Wide Web? Of course, I replied. In less than two weeks, I was in business. I started teaching screenwriting online for Eastern Oregon College.
A year or two later, another blessing dropped into my lap. Portland State University was beginning a new Masters degree program in professional writing and were looking for a screenwriter to become part of the program. A faculty member knew about my screenwriting website and recommended contacting me to see if I were interested. I was. I began teaching undergraduate and graduate screenwriting classes at P.S.U.
An online writing workshop website went online about the same time, called Writers on the Web. I contacted them about teaching online screenwriting workshops. They were interested, and I signed up with them as well.
On the Internet, the London Screenwriting Workshop calls me the pioneer online screenwriting teacher, and I suppose I was. I still do it, and I probably will do it after I retire at P.S.U., online teaching being more flexible and therefore the last educational activity I will drop.
I like teaching screenwriting better than any other subject I’ve taught. Screenwriting is more about storytelling than writing, and storytelling is largely about dramatic structure – and dramatic structure is something that can be taught. Screenwriting, being so much about storytelling strategy, lends itself to brainstorming and collaboration, natural activities in the classroom. The close study of films reveals most principles of good (and bad) storytelling, another activity that lends itself to classroom use.
I’ve enjoyed teaching screenwriting at Portland State more than I thought I would. But interestingly enough, I believe I come to know my online students better than my “live” students at the university. I believe this is because I spend more time in one-on-one dialogue with them, albeit via email. I may not know what they look like or recognize the sound of their voice but I better learn how their minds work.
I expect to retire from Portland State before I retire from online teaching, which is more flexible. In fact, I have a fantasy: traveling and camping while I am teaching online, stopping by a cyber café every few days to catch up, then hitting the road again, teaching on the go. It is perfectly doable.
I’m had some excellent students along the way. The students, of course, are the major reward of teaching. What makes screenwriting unusual is that the best students can come from surprising backgrounds – and those having trouble can be the ones who expected most to succeed. Good fiction writers in particular can have trouble with screenwriting, where their rhetorical talent for description becomes a fault, not an advantage. They must learn to write more simply and more generally, writing a blueprint for a movie, not a literary document. They are not used to either the collaborative nature of screenwriting or its “junior high” level of language.
Some of my students have optioned the scripts they wrote for me in class or won prizes with them in screenwriting competitions. Others have gone on to become filmmakers. Others simply have kept in contact. I was pleased to recommend one former student for my online teaching position at Eastern Oregon University (formerly College) when I decided to retire from it – and even more pleased when she got the job.
Although I’m at the age where I can retire at any time, I expect I’ll continue teaching for as long as I enjoy it. The classroom, in fact, has become my primary social arena.
7/03/2003 06:28:00 AM |
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Wednesday, July 02, 2003 New gig Just took on a new gig for the Unitarian church (before my usual summer spot), a Paul Robeson presentation of some kind next February. I accepted mainly in hopes of working with an actor in town, for whom I had hoped to write a Robeson play years ago but our schedules never coincided. The musical director at the church, who offered the gig, has a singer for that part of the role. Should be a cool gig. (Never had the next one lined up before the current one hit the boards.)
7/02/2003 12:19:00 PM |
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Just Call Me Unitarian Something I dashed off this morning ...
I am humanitarian
Am quite egalitarian
Find good in every hooligan
--Just call me Unitarian
I'm not authoritarian
A weak disciplinarian
Never totalitarian
--Just call me Unitarian
I reason with sectarians
And argue with barbarians
Support the proletarians
--Just call me Unitarian
I've chanted with Gregorians
Have dined with seminarians
And danced with Presbyterians
--Just call me Unitarian
I've dated vegetarians
Courted a few librarians
Married a libertarian
--Just call me Unitarian
7/02/2003 07:24:00 AM |
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Jerusalem Bilingual School An encouraging story on NPR this morning about this school, where Israeli and Arab children begin school together. "The Bilingual School in Jerusalem is revolutionizing Israel’s half-century old tradition of separate classrooms and segregated lives. It is building a new model: integrated, bilingual schools where Jewish and Arab children learn together, helping their families and communities live together." Access now.
7/02/2003 06:34:00 AM |
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The Myth of Sisyphus [from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
In my online literary archive, in the video section, I have an animated graphic that presents a dramatic representation of the story of Sisyphus [note: this animation can be found at the very bottom of this blog]. A character rolls a large ball up an incline. As soon as he gets it to the top, he loses control of it and the ball rolls to the bottom again. The man races back and starts the uphill pushing all over again and, of course, the same thing happens. The animation continues endlessly. I label it “The Writing Life.”
Writing is pushing a project uphill, losing control of it, and gaining control again to start back uphill, only to lose control again. I don’t think writing projects are finished. I think they are abandoned. I think a new ball looks more interesting than the old one, and so we switch focus in mid-action. But it’s still pushing the ball uphill, losing it, and going back to push it uphill again.
In his essay “The Myth of Sisyphus,” Albert Camus gives meaning to this endlessly repetitive turmoil:
All Sisyphus' silent joy is contained therein. His fate belongs to him. His rock is a thing. Likewise, the absurd man, when he contemplates his torment, silences all the idols. In the universe suddenly restored to its silence, the myriad wondering little voices of the earth rise up. Unconscious, secret calls, invitations from all the faces, they are the necessary reverse and price of victory. There is no sun without shadow, and it is essential to know the night. The absurd man says yes and his efforts will henceforth be unceasing. If there is a personal fate, there is no higher destiny, or at least there is, but one which he concludes is inevitable and despicable. For the rest, he knows himself to be the master of his days. At that subtle moment when man glances backward over his life, Sisyphus returning toward his rock, in that slight pivoting he contemplates that series of unrelated actions which become his fate, created by him, combined under his memory's eye and soon sealed by his death. Thus, convinced of the wholly human origin of all that is human, a blind man eager to see who knows that the night has no end, he is still on the go. The rock is still rolling.
I leave Sisyphus at the foot of the mountain! One always finds one's burden again. But Sisyphus teaches the higher fidelity that negates the gods and raises rocks. He too concludes that all is well. This universe henceforth without a master seems to him neither sterile nor futile. Each atom of that stone, each mineral flake of that night filled mountain, in itself forms a world. The struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man's heart. One must imagine Sisyphus happy.
The struggle itself is enough to fill a man’s heart. This is precisely what writing means to me.
7/02/2003 06:30:00 AM |
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Tuesday, July 01, 2003 The Word Book A guide to misused, misunderstood, and confusing words from Writers.com, where I do my online teaching. Access now (pdf file).
Ibiblio Ibiblio, the electronic library at the University of North Carolina that hosts my literary archive, adds new features every month. Recent additions of interest are:
America's Power "Ever since it was founded, the U.S.A. has been a subject of attraction and fascination for the rest of the world, but also of detraction and disapproval. However, it is only since the start of the cold war that people's attitude to the U.S.A. has been judged essentially in terms of approval or disapproval, and not only by the sort of inhabitants who are also likely to seek out "un-American" behavior in their own fellow citizens, but also internationally. It substituted the question 'Are you with the U.S.A.?' for the question 'What do you think of the U.S.A.?' What is more, no other country expects or asks such a question about itself." Essay by Eric Hobsbawm.
"It seemed Americans were preoccupied with themselves and their country, in ways in which the inhabitants of other well-established states simply were not with their own. American reality was and remains the overwhelming subject of the creative arts in the U.S.A. The dream of somehow encompassing all of it haunted its creators. Nobody in Europe had set out to write 'the great English novel' or 'the great French novel,' but authors in the United States still try their hand (nowadays in several volumes) at 'the great American novel,' even if they no longer use the phrase. "
"Our problem is rather that the U.S. empire does not know what it wants to do or can do with its power, or its limits. It merely insists that those who are not with it are against it. That is the problem of living at the apex of the 'American Century.' As I am 86 years of age, I am unlikely to see its solution." Access now.
7/01/2003 06:08:00 AM |
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Counselling can add to post-disaster trauma
"The counselling routinely offered to people in the immediate aftermath of a disaster seldom protects them from developing post-traumatic stress - and it could even delay their recovery." Article in the New Scientist. Access now.
My influences [from a memoir in progress, which began on 4/13/03]
I’ve been influenced by a handful of books I’ve read and studied over the years, books that challenged my beliefs at the time and introduced me to new ideas and new ways of looking at life and all the issues raised by it. These, too, have shaped my philosophy of life.
The first writer who had a major influence on me was Bertrand Russell. Early on I was influenced by his essay “Why I am not a Christian,” but the book that has stayed with me is the one that got him banned from entering the U.S. to teach at the beginning of the 20th century, Marriage and Morals.
Marriage and Morals makes the revolutionary argument that as an institution marriage exists only for the welfare of children. Managed properly, in fact, proof of pregnancy would be a requirement before a couple got married, which is to say, before the State got involved in the personal relationships among consenting adults. Marriage was necessary to assure that children got raised in a stable environment.
Today, of course, marriage exists for everyone but the children, and as a result most kids get raised in broken homes. This book challenged me not only in its ideas about marriage but about couples. According to Russell, cohabitation was an ordinary activity between consulting adults about which the only laws necessary were contractual ones concerning property rights. Russell demystified sex for me, making it an activity no more unusual than eating and drinking. Sex was a basic human need, and you should arrange society accordingly.
My next influence made the issue of sex more complicated than this. The book was Love in the Western World by Denis de Rougemont. Here is where I learned about the Greek’s using three different words for love – Eros, Fidelia and Agape. This made perfect sense to me. But de Rougemont’s main point was harder to grasp.
Romantic love, he argued, is based on sin, infidelity and what is forbidden. The concept fascinated me. It was as if passion required a sense of danger, required obstacles to overcome – and indeed, in western literature from Romeo and Juliet to Tristan and Isolde, from Anna Karenina to The Bridges of Madison County, it was forbidden love that fueled the hottest flames.
I grappled with this theme in my own work, perhaps nowhere more successfully than in an unpublished short story from the mid-1970s, which is in my archive, called “Threesomes, Foursomes and the Like.” This begins as a story of infidelity but one of longing more than execution. A married man fantasizes about having an affair with a married woman with whom he is cast in a community theater production of Our Town (the very circumstances, you will recall, in which I met Faye). Before he attempts to literalize his fantasy, he learns that the object of his desire is already having an affair with their director. This bursts his bubble, and he becomes interested again in his wife. The story ends with their lovemaking:
After a tennis club swim and barbecue in horrid, humid August, I set up the projector on the nightstand to show movies over our bed and onto the far wall. With each film Sarah and I, naked at the foot of the bed, paid less attention to the parade of women with their vibrators and dildos, strangers in threesomes and foursomes and the like, and more to each other, until finally Sarah sat on me and offered her breasts, my joy. We began the rhythm that led to climax.
Suddenly Sarah said, “Look at the wall.”
Turned, I realized that the film had ended, that behind me the reel was spinning aimlessly, and I saw within the screen’s frame our own silhouettes, dark against the blue wall, like anonymous shadows waiting to be filled into flesh. I bucked and settled, exhausted.
Later Sarah said, “Maybe there are no failures of marriage at all. Maybe there are only failures of the imagination.”
I said nothing, and on this we slept.
Maybe there are no failures of marriage at all. Maybe there are only failures of the imagination. The Don Juan myth, to seduce one woman after another, is an endless, impossible task. Moving from one woman to another, as I did so often in my drinking days, is not a strategy for finding satisfaction or happiness, any more than moving from one town to another (“pulling a geographical,” A.A. calls it) solves any problems for an alcoholic. When the disease is in the heart and mind, in the soul, then treatment requires that these are the very things that get addressed.
I believe western culture has fallen victim to a plague of literality. Metaphor and symbol no longer breathe life into our existence. What we think, we must do – literally. We are so afraid of what we are missing that we try everything, aiming at experience like a madman with a shotgun, never stopping to reflect on what we are doing. Experience must be new. We must keep moving.
But erotic energy is most powerful when driven by mystery. I believe it is no accident that the divorce rate has gone up statistic-by-statistic with the proliferation of relationship theories, talk shows focusing on relationships, marriage counselors, and all the other rational attempts to make sense out of something that is essentially mysterious. There is a reason a man betrays a woman who is his wife and best friend in order to have a brief moment of fucking with a secretary he wouldn’t want to have an extended conversation with. If sex loses its mystery in marriage, then erotic mystery is sought somewhere else. Hence the brilliant ending of the movie Eyes Wide Shut, in which the wife reminds the husband of one important thing that must be done before their relationship can recover from events that challenged it: “There’s one more thing we must do.” “What?” “Fuck.” This is not resolution by talking but resolution by fucking. Biology rules.
Resolution by fucking. Erotic mystery is an escape from consciousness, a momentary return to our animal roots. Biology rules. Another book that influenced me suggested an eroticism beyond literal fucking that could reach the same mystical place. This was Norman O. Brown’s Love’s Body.
I was introduced to Brown in a wonderful course in American Intellectual History that I took at UCLA. We read his earlier book Life Against Death and his essay, “Apocalypse: the Place of Mystery in the Life of the Mind.”
Love’s Body embraces metaphor and mystery as the true basis for authentic living. Brown writes like a poet, and his book is full of memorable, thought-provoking lines:
· “Personality is the original personal property.”
· “To be is to be vulnerable.”
· “It’s not true unless it hurts.”
· “Resisting madness is the maddest way of being mad.”
· “To rise from history to mystery is to experience the resurrection of the body here now, as an eternal reality…”
· “War is war perverted. The problem is not the war but the perversion.”
· “The mad truth: the boundary between sanity and insanity is a false one.”
· “The antinomy between mind and body, word and deed, speech and silence, overcome. Everything is only a metaphor; there is only poetry.”
Brown sees the error in western civilization as beginning with what he calls Protestant Literalism, with its subsequent loss of the sense of, and appreciation of, mystery, magic, miracle, and everything mystical in life. There is a similar sense of this loss in Andre’s long monologue in My Dinner With Andre. Where you don’t get a sense of it is in contemporary “new age” culture, which waters down the sense of revolution in Brown’s writing into a safe alternative ritual, just another religion, replacing good science with bad science. The existentialists, who were fashionable after World War II into the sixties, appreciate man’s condition as tragic, something to be overcome with heroic daring and self-definition, and are closer to Brown and his sense of mystical revelation and rebirth than new age culture.
A more recent summary of these matters is in the final book I will cite, The Reenchantment of the World by Morris Berman. Berman writes, “…there is no such thing as purely discursive knowing, and the sickness of our time is not the absence of participation but the stubborn denial that it exists – the denial of the body and its role in our cognition of reality.”
To give verbal lip service to this concept is to give verbal attention to it, not to give bodily attention to it. This is the problem I have with people who congratulate themselves for being able to talk about their feelings, as if this were some kind of medal for mental health. It is just what it is – it is talking. It is not feeling. It is intellectual, not bodily. It is articulate, not inarticulate. In fact, a feeling is a feeling because it can’t be expressed – once it is expressed, it becomes a thought.
I belabor this point because I believe the culture in which I live is based on these and other false philosophical premises that lead directly to the great instability of our selves and our personal relationships. We have lost our sense of mystery. We have lost our sense of the terror of existence. We have lost humility in the face of unanswerable questions. We even have lost the ability to ask the questions.
The title character in my short story The Epistemological Uncle is based on a real person. Dick had an alcoholic relative whom I met as an old man sitting at the bar at the Lumberman’s Bar in Orofino. When he got drunk, the old man would start howling like a wild animal, the beast of epistemology, “Do you really knnnnoooowwww?!” I regard him as one of the sanest men I have ever met in my life because he knew exactly the right question to ask of life.
7/01/2003 05:52:00 AM |
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_The Writing Life