Tag Archives: Writing

ALICE MUNRO – Disconnect

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Everyone praises Alice Munro for writing her short stories about human situations – conditions, feelings, emotions, beings. I’m tired of this praise. None of Munro’s writing is relevant or applicable to our world.

Did anyone look at what’s selling in book land? Vampires, Monsters, science fiction, science fantasy, Machines, aliens, disasters, deviancy. No one wants to read about human beings; they’re passé. Their problems, issues and moods are annoyances. They successes come about through luck or connections. I want to read about an out-of-the-galaxy life form destroy the Space Station (people on board are saved) and at the same time, clean up the space junk and solve the global warming issue.

If anyone wants an example about how widespread are our interests in human being, witness Tom Hanks. What is the difference of Tom Hank’s characters in his Island movie and in his Pirate movie? Answer: Two degrees of separation.

It is obvious the Nobel committee is removed from reality. They should get with it and give the next prize to the the Black Being from the Black Hole in the center of the Milky Way. He is living on Earth and writing this blog.

JUNKETS

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Junkets, Michael Ulin Edwards, $.99 iBookstore

I’m amused by anyone exorcised by Ed Snowdon, prime moron proven traitor, who downloaded crap from the National Security Agency. Everyone reading this post should comment, “You’re a nut,” if you do NOT believe that when you download anything from the National Security Agency, you don’t also download a bunch of stuff the NSA wants on your computer or in your storage systems.

Those readers who would never download anything from the NSA because you don’t want to invite the NSA into your life, signal your agreement by liking this post.

It is likely, probable, a certainty that when Snowdon removed stuff, he took a few things the NSA didn’t want to share with the world; he took a a lot of stuff the world already knows; and he took a bunch of stuff that the NSA wants people and countries to put into their storage systems and computers.

JUNKETS is about the next American intelligence mission, to one of the two targets: China. A middle aged woman on a tour is the operative. The first chapter follows. The remainder at 41,500 words are on the iBookstore for 99 cents, under my name, Michael Ulin Edwards.

CHAPTER 1

Gladys Goode was happy the garbage man had come early. It was noon on her walk to the street. Usually she had to drag the trash container up her long, unpaved drive in the evening. June 2013, no mud, she would get gravel delivered and spread before the fall rains.

She pulled the can toward her, and it slumped right and fell. She stepped around and looked at the rear – a wheel had fallen off. With a foot she moved the container a few feet. There was no wheel.

“They took the damned wheel with the garbage!” she yelled and kicked the container. It moved some but didn’t roll. She kicked it again, again, and again!

She looked across the street, and those neighbors‘ container was fine.

Mine was all right when I wheeled it out, she thought. He wheeled his lame-ass can over and stole mine. He – his whole family was disgusting and despicable. He had had a large boulder on his undeveloped side lot, and always during high water and drenching rains, water rolled off his property onto the street and took out the front of Gladys‘ yard. She had asked politely and offered to make improvements. NO. Secretly, she got tests and solutions, drilled holes and filled them and cracks in the imposing boulder. After the next storm and water, big rocks from the boulder, cracked off and rolled down the street smacking cars, lamp posts and mail boxes. Those neighbors filed claims, all within the last year, and the neighbor across the street had more than a foot of topsoil covering his front yard.

Gladys believed that guy hated her but had no reason to. She had done her work quietly. Now he had traded his defective container for hers.

To feel better she looked uphill at the neighbor’s side lot where the rocks and earth had moved and spread. Coming over the crest was a car, a late model American SUV. She recognized the vehicle for what it was – two men.

She glowered and stared.
The car stopped.
“That’s Gladys Goode,” said the middle-aged man in the passenger seat. His nickname was Honcho except to Gladys. He had been around – around the block, around town, around country, around the world. “Don’t think she’s been drinking. Looks pretty good.”

“What’s she doing?” asked the young driver, Ashton, two years out of the Ivy League, from a wealthy family who always considered Bill Donovan an honorary member. He was green so asked, “Why is she staring at us?”

“She knows I’m in the car, or someone more senior. She waiting for me to flinch.”

The driver looked at his supervisor. He didn’t know much. He had been moved to personal development testing – already he had identified five employees with Jason Bourne tendencies. Now he was on a road trip, chauffeur into the sticks.

He took his foot off the brake.
“Stop!” the older man ordered. “She can’t win this easily.”
“She doesn’t look that tough. I can talk to her,” the novice advanced.

“She’ll only talk to me or someone higher. And never underestimate her intelligence or adaptability. ” He looked ahead. “I’ve known her 23 years. She is a cat now – sit, be patient, relax, watch our gas gauge go lower.”

“How does she know how much gas we have?” the apprentice asked looking at the gauge near empty.

“We drove from Washington. It’s noon. She knows how much fuel the tank holds, the mileage we get and the time. We didn’t stop for gas. She also knows I have to take a leak.”

“I also suppose she doesn’t want to talk to us,” the young man said.
“Certainly, but don’t be offended by anything she says.”
The boy looked at Honcho – chief, supervisor, boss. It was supposed to be a privilege to drive him into the wilds, but the kid didn’t know which state he was in. Honcho had been known to drop personnel off at no where, completely forlorn to find their own way home. So Ashton would do everything he was told.

He interpreted a hand gesture – roll ahead, and releasing the brake, drove the car down the hill.

Gladys Goode watched it come like she would stop it on her own. But it stopped, and Honcho got out.

“Hello, Gladys. Hello, hello, hello.”
“There’s a urinal in the public park down the street, Bosco.”
“I’m very happy to see you’re so well.”
“I don’t want you taking a whiz anywhere near my property. It will confuse the dogs.”

“How long’s it been? Five years?”
The assistant got out, and Gladys looked at him disgusted. She asked, “Which shit-for-brains Ivy did you pull him out of?” She peered at Honcho, “I left because too many Ivys were coming in – they’re so innocent and incredulous. I bet that little girl, smiley-face, tiny-voice, big- busted wench has been promoted!”

“When’s the last time you had a vacation?” Honcho asked.

“I don’t consider seventeen days getting back here, using every chance to rinse my clothes because I had to leave my luggage, a vacation!” she looked and shook a finger at Mr. Ivy. “You fly a 1950s vintage Beechcraft across the Gulf of Guinea and have a good time.”

“Why don’t we talk inside?” Honcho suggested.
“Have Ivy bring up my trash container.”
“Mr. Ashton is my assistant…”
“I’m demanding because I can, Bosco!” she spit a response and stepped toward the car.

Her eyes left his and looked behind him.
Ashton turned and saw the neighbor’s trash container, and the neighbor and kids were driving from their driveway. As they passed, they looked at the people on the street, and their expressions changed.

Ashton looked at Gladys and saw the meanest countenance he had seen on any human being. It was scary.

Gladys noticed him and walked up her drive. Honcho accompanied her. She asked, “Why did you hire him? He’s too pretty to be of use to anyone.”

Out of earshot Honcho said, “We’re looking for someone to be a high school biology teacher, from the Mid-West.”

Her house was functional and looked lived in without dirt or dust. The front porch shaded a wide picture window. The wall underneath, inside, was taken up by a couch and a chair. The wall opposite supported a humongous TV purchased the month before. At the end of the room were two rocking chairs and foot stools with a lamp between them. Opposite them was small wall with paintings hiding the hallway between the kitchen and the bathroom, now in use.

Gladys turned on the TV news, muted. She waited sat in a rocker, no cushions, wooden flat slats giving an instant back massage with rocking. She shut her eyes to feign dosing.

Honcho came from the bathroom, and noticed the TV. He didn’t want to sit on the couch, and not in the other rocker. The easy chair was too small for him, but he headed to it. He said, “You’ve made this home very comfortable.”

“I turned on the TV to see what was happening worldwide to cause you to come see me.”

“There’s no crisis. I’m visiting an old friend.”
“Let me get this out. Those clowns running the show are incapable and incompetent! Let’s have more revelations, more screws loose, operate by trusting, be completely naive and promote unsupervised innocents. I thought the previous administration was bad. Who do I berate most, because it needs doing: Moron One! Idiot Two! Jackass Three! Asshole Four! Why would I want to work for you again? I’ve seen your beaming mouth and blinding teeth. I have a big screen TV. Football season’s about to start.”

“You’ve never been a fan.”
“It’s in the package.”
“We’re paying: Your pension gets a thousand-dollar a month boost.”
“No taxes?”
“Everything you’ve ever done has been done in war, so no. And your neighbor doesn’t have to know about your tests and analysis of their boulder and your purchase of various acids.”

“Too cheap.”

He noticed on the floor under a small table a plastic box filled with books – software, programming, were words in the titles.

“Are you studying for a new career?”

“That deluded sap who stole all that NSA data. First, most of it is nothing – email addresses and telephone numbers. Trolling for words, phrases, and once anyone realizes its insignificance, he’s toast. I can buy more complete information from Google, Facebook and Link-in as well as get the buying habits for any American from Amazon, Yahoo, the credit card companies, box stores, the local grocery store, pharmacy, art and auto supply shops and nursery companies. What’s that fool thinking?”

“Every American has a right to privacy, except every commercial transaction tells the political parties how you’re going to vote. And he’s now committed treason! No one, our side or theirs, will ever trust him. He’ll end up in a village of peons, probably an elementary school teacher, or he’ll be stuck checking the sewers and flood control channels for the remainder of his life in the middle of Asia, living under repressive regimes until he’s ninety! Howdy-doody to the rest of the world. That kid saw too many Jason Bourne movies! He even gave information to The Guardian newspaper!”

Ashton stood in the kitchen, looking into the living room.

“Ivy, the toilet is to your right, down the hall. Lift the seat! That kid is so innocent, he’s committed every bone-headed mistake.” She looked at Honcho who was non-committal. “Unless he’s a plant.”

“I don’t know,” Honcho responded.
“Or a dupe.”
Honcho shrugged.
“Otherwise, this kid’s experience has been seen and told, and is what every American should have learned from the after-traitor troubles of Benedict Arnold.”

“Other than the TV and your course work, what’s life like here?”
“Killing neighbor’s pets, shooting at the cops every so often. We have a lot of fun. My pharmacist knows me.”

“Other than pay, what do you want?”
“Details – itinerary, how long, whom I’ll see, whom I’ll be with. It’s been twelve years, and the body doesn’t respond as well as it did once.”

Honcho grimaced. He knew her recent medical check up was sterling. “Is much changed since your Peace Corp experience in 1976?”

“When my parents thought the university was making me a revolutionary, a feminist, a liberationist, a communist and a drug addict?”

Ashton came into the room and stood.
Gladys spoke to him: “I told my parents I wanted to be an anarchist, another “ist” noun, whether Communist or Christ. So the Corp sent me to Bolivia. I found a boy, sex and no love; we never married. It was convenience. I wasn’t a college grad, but had an ear for music and words in language and could remember a lot. So Ivy, are you shocked at the casual way I entered the rat race?”

Ashton hesitated. He didn’t expect to be addressed or to hear her history. She wasn’t the sort the agency was made of today.

“So what did you do?” Gladys demanded of him.

“I considered the neighbor’s barrel, but they had seen me. There was a telephone number on each container, so I called about getting a new container. I figured they owned each one. They said it would take two weeks, so I got emotional and said how you hurt yourself trying to move it without a wheel. You had fallen down. I didn’t know your name but I told them I was married to your niece, and everyone was at the hospital but me. I had the undesirable assignment of calling about the defective container. So they said they’d get a new container to you in two days.”

Gladys looked at Honcho and said, “That’s a good lie.”
“We’d like the up-front expense to be the same, but we can pad the pension.”
“Is that going to be paid at all, in full?” she coughed disregarding that flummery.
“Your articles about local plants have been fascinating.”
“If we can come to larger terms, and I like it, I may do it. Do you boys want something to drink, or eat? Save your per diem for something special.”

“She a sleeper?” Ashton said driving from Gladys house.

“The best agent I’ve ever worked with. Has always known how everything works. And she’ll know what we’re asking her to do. She reads a lot – has a huge library in the back rooms. That’s her family and company, knowledge. There are no kids, but a sibling sister with brats.”

Trying to get the true message Ashton looked at the road.

“You notice how she dropped in, ‘I want a dog.?’” Honcho asked. “That’s the way to say, ‘NO,’ to me. Old people with dogs never go anywhere.”

“She really doesn’t want a dog? But I asked, ‘Which breed?’”

“Not the first person to be confused. I’ve had conversations with her since the beginning, and I thought she was tizzy, but she knew what was happening – the goals and approximately how to do it.”

“Is that why she was talking about buying the contents of storage bins and ebaying everything?”

“That may have been an entrée to learn about the assignment, but I haven’t figured that out. I mostly never do, but I know she understands and will act independently and appropriately.”

Ashton looked over, so long that Honcho pointed to the road.

“Let me explain. I complained to her once about roundabout, beating around the bush, never-getting-to-the-point conversations. She likes those. There are no specific instructions. And what’s going to happen if anyone ever interrogates her? Nobody has told her anything. She works on her own doing a specific job. It’s part of who she is: Gladys.”

“Gladys?”

“She brought in a book with definitions of names, and Gladys is is from the Welsh, ‘of unknown origin, of uncertain derivation.’”

“She likes to be in and solve puzzles?” Ashton asked.

“A whiz at crosswords. Never get into a contest with her. She’ll take all your money; she didn’t leave me with carfare. And that’s why she’ll do this. You see the way she was kicking the can? The puzzle solving in her neighborhood disappeared with the boulder.”

Michael Ulin Edwards, 99 cents, iBookstore

NO BRAINER – SEQUEL

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“Titanic.” Why no sequel? Anyone with half a mind would have written and made one. Another two billion in the bank. Of course, Leonardo could not be in the second, unless he had a twin. But Kate would have been perfect, as she frequently is, unless she’s dying.

STORY: No title yet. I want suggestions.[Send your suggestions plus $25 to this blog and a return-addressed stamped envelope, and I’ll consider each.]

Kate lands in New York. (Forget about that lame-ass ending on movie one.) Billy finds her. All is forgiven. They set up the married life in and around New York City, an early version of “The Great Gatsby.” Kate find New Yorkers dull, excitable and deleterious. It’s a taxing, tiring life. Rather than an existence of “Gangs of New York” crossed with anything written by Edith Wharton, Kate is looking for “Downton Abbey” without Shirley MacLaine. She has to learn how to turn on the electric lights.

It’s rough living among upper class New Yorkers, the mucky-mucks, swells and others. She decides to return to England but promises to return. Traveling with girlfriends, they have a wild time – the usual stuff. The ladies have friends, Tom, Harry, Dick, Leonardo and Bill. The audience learns the many innuendos suggested by the adage: “A slice off a cut loaf is never missed.” A story twist – to spy on his wife Billy hires on the ship as a common seaman. Being lower class he easily gets into Kate’s circle and becomes a favorite dispensing favors.

The powers that be, the captain and upper classers are distressed by the improprieties, the improper priorities, the lack of social comportments and failures of grace. Ill-repute will be cast on the ship and the shipping company. No one wants to think of their vessel as “The Love Boat.”

The Captain calls Kate and her common seaman in. He dresses her down and upbraids him. But Billy saves the day. He professes true love for Kate, and reveals who he is.  Kate is lovey-dovey; the Captain is surprised but relents. AT THAT POINT two torpedoes hit the ship. It sinks quickly.

I don’t know who should survive this sinking of the Lusitania.  

“GRAVITY” – Sequel, Duh!

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The movie, “Gravity,” got the largest U.S. box office last week. It is about two astronauts [George Clooney and Sandra Bullock] floating in space after their space craft or the space station is destroyed, or after their Virgin Atlantic spaceflight went awry. Ed Harris is in the movie as flight control, Houston, I suppose. After being in “The Right Stuff,” Harris adds credibility to any space movie. I have not seen the movie, but after the big October box office, it’s never too early to talk sequel.

Missing from Movie One because I’ve heard no ditties, is a song. This is outer space so Andy Williams or Perry Cuomo have to sing it. No one can have Janis Joplin belt it out – she’s too down to earth. The song not in the movie but should be is, “Dancing on the Atmosphere.” When an object enters the Earth’s atmosphere, it burns up. When “Gravity” causes our astronaut duo to get close to the atmosphere, they perform movie tricks, bounce off and don’t burn. That move and song are called “Dancing on the Atmosphere.”

The atmosphere is separate and apart from the burning, the chemistry, that the youngsters, Sandra and George have for one another. [This is all from press reports. We know how accurate that is. Marriage tomorrow, divorce by the weekend.]

The SEQUEL. George and Sandra have not been impaired or traumatized enough. They’re on a second space flight together, which is also jinxed. A sun flair destroys their spaceship, but [a contrivance] they avoid death by riding a wave of energy. [The accompanying music and song “Radiation Waltz.”] During the waltz they are protected in a thermal blanket, where fortunately everything including all movement remains uncover. The audience never sees the ill-effects of gamma [not grandma] rays.

Passing by a comet and our astronautic duo grabs the tail and rides. [SONG – Catch a comet by the tail.] Two songs, they ought to make this a musical. JOB OPENING: Seeking songwriter. Good platform. Lyric and music for movie/musical. Contact this blog.

After the music ends George and Sandra realize they’re going the wrong way and they’ve gone too far. They are in the Astroid Belt beyond Mars. They got off on an astroid and disagree. He wants to put all the rocks in the Belt together and form a planet; she want to return to mother earth. It’s the first time George has taken a good look at Sandra; she is shriveled. [Song: Summer Peach in the Fall] They locate a supply of oxygen in the astroid. With released energy the rock races toward Earth, the only bullseye in the Universe.[SONG: Target Earth] As they fly by the moon, hydrogen bombs explode near them. The countries with nuclear capabilities are sending bombs to blow up the astroid.

ALTERNATIVE ENDINGS:

1. George and Sandra die in a nuclear explosion. [Song: Direct Hit – I love you.] This is a bad way to kill off a movie franchise. The audience wants to see George and Sandra in space again, and again, and again. Also, there’s no happy ending for a big musical flourish. 

2. It’s a nice astroid, darting among H-Bombs. It finally stops and drops George and Sandra off near a space station. [Song, Welcome Home] The astroid becomes a new earth satellite which hosts network equipment from Time, Warner Cable & Internet.

3. The most exciting ending [Song: Jump Off] As they approach Earth, George and Sandra jump off the astroid and float to a space station where they knock. They get on and watch: The astroid skirts the Earth and the atmosphere and heads for the Sun. It smacks that burning orb, [Song: Space is a Blast] causing a massive flair to stream toward earth but missing it. However, the Space Station/craft? Sequel 3.[Song: History Repeats.]

If all this sounds silly and stupid, remember it is the magic of Hollywood, and we’re talking big bucks: Platforms, actors and sequels!

 

 

 

THE WRATHFUL GRAPE – John Steinbeck

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THE WRATHFUL GRAPES

The Grapes of Wrath, John Steinbeck.

The first chapter of this novel was excellent. It is three pages long.

Chapter 2, Chapter 3, Chapter 4 – at the end of that reading I had a hint, becoming suspicions, impressions and conclusions that if an editor did a hard read of this novel, they would shake 50,000 words from it, lose no content and make it more intelligible and comprehensible.

I had a sharper reaction. It seemed written by a government employee or someone working on a government program. So I checked, and I was correct. John Steinbeck spent time during the 1930s on the Federal Writers Project. No telling what he did, but government writing did do very little for him. It left Steinbeck very undisciplined. The only discipline he had was writing an outline which he followed but didn’t know how to use. This novel is the result of any government activism in the arts – poor works of literature, badly composed music, ill-conceived sculptures and paintings by applying colors identified by numbers.

Should anyone write a novel like The Grapes following an outline? It is impossible to figure out at the beginning. The length of this novel is about 200,000 words. Notating this point, explicating that point and figuring out the relationship between them is important, and how to express each, but a detailed outline [I. A. B. 1. 2. a. b.]? Idiots believe they can use microscopic analysis to make every point, identify every adverb and specify every comma and period for 200,000 words.

Indeed, reading WordPress blogs for two months, I’ve come across posts acclaiming the benefits of outlining without the writers telling what their outlines consist of, or how they are used or how the outline prompts their imaginations to produce any passage, chapter or book making the novel, story or writing memorable and excellent. Moreover, I’ve seen a blog advertise a “Storyboard” for novelists, like film writers do so they have illustrations they can show actors, art directors, directors and producers [people who do not read]. This is outlining at its worst, and removes the imagination of any writer from the process. These Storyboards reveal the accuracy and truth of George Owell’s analysis (my previous blog READ ORWELL):

“It would probably not be beyond human ingenuity to write books by machinery…Even more machine-like is the production of short stories, serials and poems for the very cheap magazines. Papers such as the Writer abound with advertisements of Literary Schools, all of them offering you ready-made plots at a few shillings a time. Some, together with the plot, supply the opening and closing sentences of each chapter. Others furnish you with a sort of algebraical formula…” (Orwell, “The Prevention of Literature,” January 2, 1946.)

Chapter 5 of The Grapes starts with 2,000 words of presentation. [Chapter 5 itself starts 10,000 words into the novel]. I suppose readers are to pay attention to identified parties – landowners, tenants, spokesmen for landowners, the Company, the banks. Steinbeck attempts to set up the relationships of all the people, and their visceral reactions to one another. In all those 2,000 words is not one character, no one to sympathize with, no one to hate, just Steinbeck’s raw, clunky social propaganda. The outcome to this outlined argument might be, tenants should remain on the land for free, although neither they nor anyone else can farm the land or otherwise live there without public assistance.

The beginning of Chapter 5 begins raw, didactic, cold and unfeeling:

“The owners of the land came onto the land, or more often a spokesman for the owners came. They came in closed cars, and they felt the dry earth with their fingers, and sometimes they drove big earth augers into the ground for soil tests. The tenants, from their sun-beaten dooryards, watched uneasily when the closed cars drove along the fields. And at last the owner men drove into the dooryards and sat in their cars to talk out of the windows. The tenant men stood beside the cars for a while, and then squatted on their hams and found sticks with which to mark the dust.

“In the open doors the women stood looking out, and behind them the children – corn-headed children, with wide eyes, one bare foot on top of the other bare feet, and the toes working. The women and the children watched their men talking to the owner men. They were silent.”

Let’s help Steinbeck out of this passage:

Tuffs of dust blew across the farms like last year, the dry earth yielding nothing to the red-brown sun. Closed cars motored among the farmhouses sited in the wide fields. Everyone knew these men, met by tenants in their yards while their women and children watched from the doorways of the houses. Men rolled down the windows and looked: the hard life in the faces of the woman and children, wide, blank eyes, some barefooted, always thinking before moving.

These seven lines pick up the substance of the dozen lines of Steinbeck and provide the same impact. If readers need the children’s “toes working,” [I don’t know why that is important other than to show the kids were minutely active], it can be dropped in later. How about “the tenant men” squatting “on their hams and found sticks to mark the dust.” Other than being unclear, it is out of place where it is in Steinbeck’s paragraphs. It should happen after the conversation has gone on a while.

But as it is written, Steinbeck has no movement by any human being, no one is uncomfortable, no one reacts to anyone else. Steinbeck paints a poor still-life. Everyone is robotic, which makes his passage and the 1500 following words inhuman. There is point after point, point-of-view after point-of-view. Purportedly, humans adhere to some of them, but how many? How are they said to other human beings in that setting? Which points-of-view bring sadness or laughter? [For readers who say none of this is important, you are not fiction writers and likely you are poor non-fiction writers. Your strengths are in law, advertising and other PR pursuits.]

In reality ending tenant relationships and foreclosing on land produced very human situations during the 1930s. No one made money with the dust, drought and kicking tenants and other farmers of the land. In the 1930s America, there were thousands of local banks, and many representatives of landowners as well as landowners themselves. Most tenant farmers and farmers were part of the small community. Tenants knew the bankers, owners and representatives. They and indebted owners knew why they were in debt and that they would have to leave. They knew they could not make the land productive. It is also true that the tenants and land owners lived in communities for years or decades, knowing one another, socializing and sharing community responsibilities: Church, government, schools, community events.

These is no indication in The Grapes that the landowners “in closed cars” knew anyone they were driving out to see. Likewise, did the tenants or debt-ridden landowners know anyone who was arriving “in closed cars.” Steinbeck conveys no community – a banker or owner having extended credit or forgiven a loan, or knowing something about the tenants, gone to school together, to church together, played sports together, knew about health problems in the family and knew about marriages and events affecting that family from the outside. The 1930s American midwest presented a cruel environment, once kind for so long and then taking away lives and livelihoods. And the bankers and owners were not detached; they were unhappy about the destruction of their local communities.

However, The Grapes fails to respond to these circumstances. The next writing from Chapter 5:

“Some of the men were kind because they hated what they had to do, and some of them were angry because they hated to be cruel, and some of them were cold because they had long ago found that one could not be an owner unless one were cold. And all of them were caught in something larger than themselves. Some of them hated mathematics that drove them, some of them were afraid, and some worshipped the mathematics because it provided a refuge from through and from feeling.”

I wouldn’t blame mathematics for a novelist’s inability to explain human circumstances within his medium. Nor would I give mathematics the burden of motivating owners, banks and companies. Mathematics are convenient to Steinbeck because they were abstract and let Steinbeck inaccurately describe the whole situation in a non-human way. Steinbeck is not a novelist. Novelists have told about much more complex situations: Riots, wars and meetings, and successful novelists relay thoughts and feelings. Steinbeck is guilty of the exact faults he attributes to the Banks and the Companies: There are no “thoughts” and no “feelings” in this passage. Perhaps Steinbeck gives those thoughts and feelings attached to characters later, but why is he repeating this passage later by adding human beings? He has to delete this passage or be consistent and delete the next.

There is a reason why Chapter 5 begins without an identifiable human being, 12,000 words into the novel. and goes on without any sense of story telling. Steinbeck merely goes from point to point. This is obviously someone used to writing for the government entities, stating out-of-date motives, craving money for sloppy work, but unconcerned about human beings.This passage displays no traits of a novel, but it characteristics are more like a government story or a textbook.

The film with Henry Fonda is far superior to this novel. Screenwriters have never had to luxury of writing distractions, big generalizations, insignificant minutae and off-point scenes. Henry Fonda was the ideal actor – bitter on demand and an instant sulk as he lived and griped his way on the road from Oklahoma to California. In some ways Henry got typecast to these roles. [I prefer Henry Fonda in “Once Upon A Time in the West.”]

For Schools, it is not acceptable to assign a fat book for students to read for any class, especially English. It the writing – use of language, characters, story, vocabulary – that should recommend a book to students. However, The Grapes is poor; students have nothing to learn from it. It should be marginalized, although it was once considered socially significant.

Today, the grapes are sour and outdated. Knowledge about debt and losing property is much better understood. Millions of people lost their houses or are now underwater. The shenanigans by buyers and sellers abused the whole system that will not be cleaned up. No one is innocent and many are completely guilty of raping a corruptible system. My favorite passing-the- buck-story was about loan forms signed by a woman in Florida through 2006, I believe. She signed thousands of loan forms, the basis for the debt instruments providing security [collateral] to the lenders. I can’t remember which bank or loaning company she worked for, but she didn’t get paid for her years of service because in 1995, she died.

Today, Steinbeck would call the banks, money givers, loan owners: MEANIES. Poor old so-and-so lost her husband just before losing her house (she’s been married six times, is eyeing number 7). She now has to work at a convenience store. Job training has taught her to smile during hold-ups. Security tapes reveal she has lost her front teeth. [Dental Care is not covered by Obamacare – screw everyone with bad teeth like Harry Reid and Ted Cruz.] The widow-lady can no longer pronounce fricatives; she walks around all day saying “uck,” “uck,” “uck.” She’s fired for swearing uncontrollably but brings a disability lawsuit for unjust unemployment. That’s the problem because Obamacare cannot fix the housing market.

MORAL to this story: It is easy to write a character even if the writing is nonsense. 

READ IT AGAIN, AMERICA

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TO KILL A MOCKING BIRD – Harper Lee

 

I was young when this book came out, and was older when the movie was released. That’s how I saw and remembered the book – Gregory Peck as Atticus Finch, a drama about law.

I’ve now read this book. Two passages are memorable and bear reproducing. The first is about the use of terms to denigrate a class or group of people. Atticus explains to Scout,

“…it’s just one of those terms that doesn’t mean anything …It’s hard to explain –

ignorant, trashy people use it when they think somebody’s favoring Negroes 

over and above themselves. It’s slipped into usage with some people like 

ourselves, when they want a common, ugly term to label someone…

“…it’s never an insult to be called what somebody thinks is a bad name. It just

shows you how poor that person is, it doesn’t hurt you. (Lippincott, 1960, p. 117-118, Chapter 11)

The person who has been using the bad terms has troubles of her own. She is addicted to morphine and before she dies, she wants to end the craving – meet her maker straight. Atticus explains to Jem why he’s required to read to Mrs. Dubose. The old woman, 

“was going to leave beholden to nothing and nobody…”

“She had her own views, about things, a lot different from mine, maybe…I wanted

you to see something about her – I wanted you to see what real courage is, instead

of getting the idea that courage is a man with a gun in his hand. It’s when you 

know you’re licked before you begin but you begin anyway and you see it 

through no matter what. You rarely win, but sometimes you do…(page 120, 121

Chapter 11)

Of course, it is also an explanation why Atticus has taken on a very disagreeable, unpopular case he cannot win and which will only damage his career and standing in the community. He knows all that going in. It is not a matter of money. It is not a matter of a man making a reputation. It is simply doing the right thing at the time no matter the consequences. 

[Coming upon the trial I was reminded of John Adams who was defense attorney in the 1770 trial for the British soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre (March 5, 1770). That representation was very unpopular, and I imagine Adams took a lot of grief especially because the defendants were acquitted.]

If that is all To Kill A Mockingbird was about (courage and using language), the author would have made her money in good conscious. But the author made the book thorough. Throughout are details of Southern society. Authors have done it before,  Mark Twain and William Faulkner: Trial and reaction of the town’s people, negro church society; standing and reputation within the town; family relations and ties to the past; ties of the family’s past to the town; a widower raising two children on his own; the sister (aunt) coming to live with them. The aunt adds stability as well as protection as the son enters puberty and sometimes the girl should not wear overalls. When the aunt has an afternoon social and Scout attends, the reader can fear that Scout will forever be contaminated. Finally, the people most feared, denigrated and hated by the society, Negroes, are not dangerous. Whites themselves are the most dangerous to one another and to other people.

None of the sociology is separated in chunks, where the reader has a dose of history, family ties or social standing. Indeed, very effectively some social standing is told in a classroom setting. The students know and watch the teacher make mistakes as she is introduced to pupils, the range of society. This feat of narration keeps the book in a child’s voice, without the child running here and there, or hearing this or that, or repeating gossip contrived for the novel. Maintaining the child’s voice (certainly an intelligent child) is very hard for any novelist to do with steady consistency and true telling. [Twain in Huckleberry Finn lets Huck be young, 8-9 years, but frequently older.] Harper Lee is very careful. To Kill a Mockingbird is an example of how to write a novel – a controlled voice telling a simple story and telling of actions and interactions all centered in a small setting. There is great movement by the growing awareness of the children in their world coupled with mischievous curiosity, seeing the world of grown-ups and blundering into disturbing adult situations.

To Kill a Mockingbird, set in the South, is about those people. They and their situation – ruled by bias, distrustful of the grand outside world, limited by ignorance, misperceptions and incomprehensible reason, using logic confounded by prejudice, harboring hates and suspicions and always controlled by conventional wisdoms – go beyond that little town. They are circumstances and characteristics shared by many Southerners. They are also traits and faults confronting all Americans. In this country are settlements, neighborhoods and communities that are prone to the same debilities as this novel describes for its town. It may not be race, but religion, economics, culture or any other force that becomes embedded into minds of human beings supported by obstinate certainty. Americans like to believe, but have not always demonstrated enlightenment or reasonableness. The South provides the setting for this story, but America is the canvass that has been painted.

There is a observation about the book, personal to the author: How much of Scout came from Harper Lee, a girl growing up in a small town in the South? And how much of Truman Capote, Harper Lee’s neighbor when growing up, is reflected in the character of Dill?

 

BAD TV: Lord of the Flies

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I got to the end of Lord of the Flies by William Golding and found the whole problem with the book in a few lines:

“We saw your smoke. And you don’t know how many of you there are?”

“No sir.”

“‘I should have thought,’” said the officer as he visualized the search before him, “I should have thought that a pack of British boys – you’re all British, aren’t you – would have been able to put up a better show than that…”

In the last analysis it is not the fault of Britain or the British boys on the island. It is the fault of William Golding who did not write a novel, but structured this book to support this phony conclusion, a condemnation of Britain or of something equally nonsensical.

Lord of the Flies is not a novel. It is a fable advanced as reflecting reality which is only possible on paper. How does a novel differ? There is setting, characters and what happens (story). There is an element of time – something happens before something else, and the reader understands that or the reader appreciates some order of events.

Lord of the Flies differs. The setting is a tropical island, I assume in the Pacific. The identified characters are primarily older boys, biguns Golding calls them. What happens on the island without adult input or supervision is questionable, inconsistent and in the end unreal. Time, the relations of events to one another, is scattered to the winds – the only means the reader can tell that something happens later than an earlier event is become it comes later in the text. It should be noted some events can be read before others, and it makes no difference to the reader’s comprehension or understanding.

The book begins with Ralph and Piggy, pampered fat boy with asthma, arriving on the island. They wonder how many boys survived the plane crash into the sea. As the reader learns at the end, no boy on the island has ever counted. Thinking back to my childhood, counting would be the first thing boys would do to know whether everyone survived each day. But Golding neglects this boyish whim; he wants no count. Indeed, he calls the young boys, littlums, and bigger boys, biguns. As events happen littlums and biguns are here and there when Golding needs them in increasing or decreasing numbers.

The island is explored, and the kids seem to know where they are going when they walk around, but no one knows how large the island is: Two miles, four miles, six miles long. The island is large enough to have remote areas and to support feral pigs which have not devastated all the plants. But it can only be inferred that it is small – there is one pit with a fire to cook hunted pigs [dead pigs are difficult for boys to move a great distance], and a signal fire. When Ralph is running for his life at the end, he thinks and acts like there is no place to hide (although the pigs hide pretty well) so the island is small. However, another boy Jack, breaks away from Ralph and Piggy and takes his “tribe” to another settlement on the island, so the island is larger. At best there are mixed signals about the size of the island.

Fat boy, Piggy, is on many pages but remains a mystery. Golding reports he has “brains,” but there’s little indication of them. It is suggested he is a bigun who likes to hang around with the littums, but I’m not sure how long that lasted. Piggy is fat because he is an orphan raised by Auntie who allows him to eat “sweets” and bon-bons all day from her candy shop. He also has asthma which limits his activities. Piggy remains fat throughout the pages, I suppose. His behavior doesn’t change. He is obstinate and obnoxious especially when his glasses are used to start fires [magnifying sun to get leaves and wood to burn].

It remains a question, how long are the kids on the island. Long enough to know hunting pig is real work; building huts is real work; maintaining a signal fire which always peters out [and Piggy’s glasses must be used again] is real work. Hair grows long; clothes are ripped, frayed and disintegrate. Golding doesn’t tell the reader how long, but it seems four months, perhaps six. Why is this important? Piggy. I was a fat kid once, and despite eating everything in sight at a one-week summer camp, I lost five pounds. Piggy is away from the candy shop for a time, and he’s eating fruit and occasionally pig but nothing else. [British kids are on an island and no one thinks to drop a line into the water to catch fish.] I figure after four months Piggy would lose 40 pounds, if he needed to lose that many. For a kid – lose weight, become more active, have more energy, perhaps the asthma symptoms are alleviated or eliminated – there is character development: “No one will call me Piggy, any more!” HOWEVER, William Golding has no sense of time or setting. Piggy is a person who is static, worthless, nonsensical and someone to kill, which Golding does.

Who is important in the book and disposed? Jack, the hunter, who invents the competing “tribe,” and who raises fears about the island “beast.” Somehow, Jack got most of the biguns and littums, how many no one knows (10, 12, 50) to join him. Activities Jack organizes include putting on paint (symbolizing primitive man) and dancing around a fire (when available), a primitive man activity. But how did Jack get the others to join him? Still no one knows; there is no reasonable or plausible explanation. What we know is the littums were worthless when work was necessary; they want to play, interacting with one another in that arena of a fantasy/reality world. Will they put on face paint and dance if there’s no Halloween candy? Will they abandon huts built in one place to go to another? None of this reality is spelled out in an organized, regular and straightforward manner. It seems Jack’s activities are planned but involve work, not play. A reader can infer elements of fear and terror are part of Jack’s tribe: Simon, Jack’s fellow hunter is killed, Jack raids Ralph and Piggy’s encampment, Jack organizes his encampment so it is defensible and Piggy is killed. There is no reason to stay with Jack’s tribe.

There is no part of Lord of the Flies which represents reality. There are holes, lacunae; there is no character development; after Jack breaks away and lives in his own camp newly invented biguns (Roger, Robert and Maurice) show up. The tale is myth and fantasy. What does it have to tell us about human beings? There are better novels, studies and histories to read to learn about the stuff which William Golding conjectures.

There is a curious feature about the book. The characters are set and remain the same throughout; the setting is the same although undefined; the activities don’t differ greatly from one another; one activity does not progress easily from one chapter to the next. The dialogue is very mediocre and somewhat repetitive. Early in the book I had the sensation that each chapter was a episode of a TV show: Arrival on the island. Getting organized. Signal fire. Hunting – hut building. Looking for the beast. Successful pig kill. Painting bodies, dancing, tribalism. So episodic are the chapters that they suggest the reality TV shows today, whether set on a tropical island or in a house. What William Golding has written is a TV show for a season.

There are novels which are episodic and can be told in a series of episodes. Lord of the Flies is not one of them. In those books an episode is presented, and a second episode set out, adding to, developing and telling of the characters, although the time and the setting may be static. When I read that the biguns were searching for the beast, I thought, they have no memory, no experience and no knowledge of where they came from[British society] and what they learned there. They and the story are contrived. None of those kids has ever heard of a snipe hunt. Lord, this is a bad TV show.

Another static fixation at the beginning is the conch. Piggy and Ralph find a conch shell which Ralph learns to blow and make sounds. Island Rule One: When the conch sounds there will be an assembly; the person holding the conch has the floor. Golding sets this rule into cement for the remainder of the text, but in reality any group, even biguns and littums will change or modify the rule. The rule in cement is a reason why Jack splits, forming his “tribe.” The group psychology of that is not part of the text. Golding is interested in making an unsupported fantasy point. He does not want to represent reality. He is remarkably unsightful about the politics and the psychology of anyone or any group on the island, an extraordinary coincidence considering that the whole mess is coming from his mind. This is a bad TV show.

There is one setting, transplanted to the island, that might support Golding’s story: A private British Boarding School. I sense a lot can be written about those schools and those places, the horrors that are perpetrated and the demented boys they matriculate. They are not best represented by “Good-bye Mr. Chips.” Possibly, Golding wrote but didn’t want to identify the school. He thought, I’ll drop the kids on a tropical island. They won’t know why they are there, just use the word “evacuate,” like World War II. There will be no adult supervision; the kids can go hog wild. Using those bases the book is incomplete and imperfect. It is bad TV.

I suspect the boys are not British, despite Golding’s nationality and identification at the end. Nowhere among the thousands of words is “queue” mentioned. The world knows (especially in the 1950s) that queue and queuing were part of the genetic makeup of every person living on those islands. This omission gives the book no anchor, leaving the words adrift seeking the safety of land. Golding maybe writing about Latin American boys, or Chinese or Russian but certainly not British. He is not writing about Americans who are trained to numbers: 68. Look at the counting-box, 36. That’s a long wait, but the solution is obvious. As the clerk finishes one customer, he looks ahead and asks, Who’s next? Someone points to the counting-box, and everyone waiting learns the clerk can read and count: “37, 38, 39…61.” Suddenly life becomes more sensible and manageable.

There should be more sense and order in Lord of the Flies. 

PREPOSITIONS

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I’ve not written about this subject, but I’ve seen blogs and more needs saying.

Prepositions AT THE END OF THE SENTENCE. When one of his sentences was corrected on this point, Winston Churchill responded: “This type of arrogant pedantry up with which I will not put.”

There is a common usage in American to ADD A  PREPOSITION to indicate direction, although the direction is inferred from the verb; the preposition is not necessary. The usage should be “stand,” rather than “stand up.” Likewise, usage should be “sit” rather than “sit down,” unless you’re giving instructions to an obstinate dog or a troublesome kid.

Prepositions can simplify paragraphs especially when giving the RELATIONSHIP of a thing, a person or a place to another. Consider: below, above, behind, ahead, under, with, beside. Prepositions can be used LIKE A VERB to connote motion or activity: up, through, from, along, over, to  and toward.

In University studies of FOREIGN LANGUAGES (French, German), I learned that this preposition was used only with this verb. Other prepositions used with that verb were wrong. English is more relaxed. I’ve never seen a list or a reference book. The rule apparently is, just like the controlling rule for all writing in this language, use which ever preposition that makes sense and conveys the meaning you want.

Tender is the Night – 1

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I’m currently reading for another criticism, and it’s tough going. Who would have thought Tender is the Night is heavy lumber? I bought the book at an estate sale. The people were moving from California to the East Coast (cheaper). They packed and took what they wanted and left the remainder to the public: 17 boxes of books. No one needs Tender is [anything] in their library. Indeed nothing in California is tender except people’s feelings and sensitivities.

I made the mistake of glancing at the Introduction. Sentence One: “To the end of his life Fitzgerald was puzzled by the comparative failure of Tender is the Night, after the years he spent on it and his efforts to make it the best American novel of his time.” I decided to read something else. Chapter One. My first thought – Fitzy has to stop writing about the lives of Ivy League trash, their troubles and tribulations. His books have Yalies, Crimson boys and Tiger Tims. He should write about a car mechanic instead of killing in in Gatsby. Write about a minister, mining engineer, but no more of good-for-nothing-Ivy-League-brats, people and characters that are indistinguishable in Fitzy’s mind, identical characters in his books and a uniform lump of mush. After all, Fitzy doesn’t want to write a string of romance novels. He’s purportedly writing “the best American novel of his time.” So the Ivy League is why he failed.

It’s difficult to go to a clumsy sentence after a nonsensical line of dialogue. The problem is voice – narrative, third person, third person familiar, stream of consciousness, etc. Fitzy mixes voices and voice. Sometimes the voice isn’t consistent from participation to participation.

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