Hostages to Fortune
Spoiler alert, and what I’m going to spoil is your mood. But it won’t last. Our moods come and go. Like everything. We come and go. Everything we love comes and goes.
The Greeks and the Romans knew well that the goddess Fortuna will eventually take back everything she gives. Every. Single. Thing. They concluded from this that fortune is a bitch.
“He who has wife and child has given hostages to fortune,” Francis Bacon tells us. Bacon was not a nice man: his objection to giving the hostages was that they might interfere with the giver’s chance at achieving great deeds. People who quote him, though, are almost always thinking about death.
One of my best friends died yesterday. You might say he had been Fortuna’s plaything for years.
The new millennium brought him a raging case of lymphoma. It responded to no treatment. The game was over. Then the cancer, all on its own, converted itself into what they call an ‘indolent’ cancer. No one knew why it converted. It progressed, but slowly, and when it caused trouble, chemo and radiation could whack it back into invisibility.
He suffered from the treatments. His family and friends grieved for his distress. I never heard him talk about it, except technically. (He was a doctor himself.) From my point of view, the result of his disease was a vast expansion of his already great appreciation of his life. It wasn’t just gratitude. He seemed to be in a constant state of amazement at how wonderful other people were. Not just their kindnesses to him, which were many, because he was a nice man. He was dazzled by their achievements, their brilliance, their wit, their own prospects for greatness. He wanted to tell you all about these wonderful people.
He went on this way for a decade and half. Then the cancer stopped responding to treatment. He qualified for a promising clinical trial. Administrative and bureaucratic snafus delayed the trial. It still hasn’t started.
He kept on with his own work. He taught medical students about the human heart, the red one in our chests and the other one. He had grave doubts about the course of modern medicine, ‘evidence-based’ medicine, because the kind of evidence perceived by the heart could not be entered into the computer. In the fullness of time, these students will stand as a bulwark between their patients and the dullards who want to treat statistics rather than people.
And now, he is beyond our reach. The words ‘never again’ echo in our minds. I feel my words are becoming romantic, or maybe I mean romanticized. The fact is, I want to throw up.
Whether I throw up or not, the seconds tick by. I am here; Arnie is not. Every memory of him, every impact he had on the world is here; Arnie is not. The me whom Arnie taught, amused and blessed is here; Arnie is not.
You tell me: is Fortune a bitch?
R. I. P.
Arnold M. Katz, M.D.
N H W P
N H W P
Three of us from our Thursday night writing group have signed up to attend the 2016 New Hampshire Writer’s Project, an event that will take place exactly three months from today.
Why? What’s the rush? It’s New Hampshire’s largest literary conference for one. For another, if you dally the sessions you want will be filled. And even if it is a two hour drive away from our little boony town, it’s still closer than a long long drive to an airport, a flight, and a subway or taxi or bus ride still further and arriving exhausted and out of sorts.
I would have done just that to attend the Icelandic Writer’s Conference also taking place in April, but it was too darn expensive.
I would have done just that if Jasper Fforde was at the end of the journey, but his speaking engagements are as elusive as Thursday Next’s father’s appearances.
Anyway, I got the two dozen or so conference offerings narrowed down to four and registered this morning. Something to cross off my list today, right before taking down the Christmas tree. Sigh. It’s so much fun putting it up, and so sad taking it down. I could never deal with the sight of much beloved trees littering front yards the day after Christmas. But, even if you don’t agree with my tree ethics I did cross off both items today.
For my first session I’m taking a class called ‘IN THE MIDDLE’ because I happen to be working on a middle grade short story right now. That I’ll have to be finished with the story way before the conference is of no import, really.
Second session is ‘SIGHT ON SCENE’. Sounds good. I like good scenes. I want to make mine better.
Lunch. That was as hard to decide on as the sessions but I finally went with a garden salad with yummy things on top. Also included with lunch is the opportunity to sit at a table with like-genre-minded people. I chose Fantasy. Who knows who I’ll end up eating with. Hope it’s Jasper Fforde.
Third session is about the sentence. See comment on session two, please.
Fourth and last. Short Stories. Ahh. Sounds great.
Busy day. There’s a lot going to happen in all our lives in the next three months, but the day after the conference I’ll be glad that that happened.
See you there?
Wait, wait! It’s a mystery!
I should be writing Gothic fantasy, not mysteries. When I consult my pocket notebook (which I often do, because, as Oscar Wilde said, one should always have something sensational to read on the train), I seldom find jottings about sinister strangers or mysterious events. I seem to be attracted by weirdities. I overhear remarks that suggest the speaker is not living a boring life. My passersby live in an alternate universe.
So today I present a quiz, modeled on the radio news quiz, “Wait, wait! Don’t tell me!” The deal is, in each section, I give you three scenarios. One is from my notebook; I witnessed it. The other two are my efforts to create a similar, but more plausible, fiction. Your job is to guess which is the true event.
No prize; the answers are at the bottom of this post.
[Spoiler alert: I have no idea how to make the answers at the end show up upside-down. So don’t scroll past the fourth question till you’ve committed yourself to an answer.]
A London perfumerie in the exclusive Burlington Arcade has premiered its latest original scents. These are:
A. Breath of Bristol and Liverpool Breeze. “The tang of salt, seaweed and steamers to the Orient. The scent of Empire.”
B. Blasted Bloom and Blasted Heath. “Experience the Wild Scents of the British Coast.”
C. Rosalind and Lady MacBeth. “Are you a charmer or a femme fatale?”
Cutting edge European fashion in hair style currently includes:
A. The Angela Merkel short page boy
B. Thin, wispy curls arranged with scalp showing, a la Princess Charlotte
C. The Lisbon pony tail: a shaved head except for a long pony tail growing from the crown.
In his keynote address at Magna cum Murder XXI, author Simon Brett discussed:
A. The new Jane Austen app. It tracks all Jane Austen meetings, conventions and re-enactments worldwide, and lets users chat about their costume plans.
B. Sense and Sensuality, JA’s only attempt at a pornographic novel.
C. An academic article on a murder near Austen’s home at Chawton.
A British gentleman in business attire is walking down Piccadilly with a similarly dressed lady. She gives him a perky smile and says,
A. “So, they exhumed his body?”
B. “She stabbed him. But only with a fish knife.”
C. “My, what a tightly rolled umbrella!”
AND THE ANSWERS ARE:
B, C, B, A
So, what do you find in your pocket notebook?
Shakespeare Encumber(batch)ed
Hamlet (or Mr. Cumberbatch), in the throes of madness
(christmaswarehouse.com)
Last night, I didn’t see Benedict Cumberbatch play Hamlet in HD at Dartmouth’s Hopkins Center. He certainly played Hamlet, the melancholy Dane, only the play wasn’t Hamlet. It was a three-hour performance of pieces of Shakespeare’s play, sliced, diced, and chopped. The meal was tasty. But I went for a dinner of Hamlet and got several interesting “small plates” instead.
I don’t call in the Holy Inquisition whenever anyone alters a word of Shakespeare. New views of old masterpieces occur each time anyone first reads/sees/hears them. Experiments with the text can be fine. And Cumberbatch is a perfect Hamlet for our times: a man trying to do the honorable thing in the face of enormous evil and confusion. Cumberbatch also treads the line between verse and ordinary speech so well you don’t notice he’s doing it. The play would have been comprehensible to an intelligent high-schooler, which is not always true of more conventional productions.
But why open with Hamlet in an attic, listening to a portable record-player spew out Johnny Mathis? Well, all right, if Horatio will then appear and we can get right out on the battlements and see the ghost. But no. Horatio’s first business is to get Hamlet to for Heaven’s sake come downstairs to dinner with the court. When he gets there, everybody else is dressed in Edwardian style. (I suppose Downton Abbey now defines “the olden days.”)
When the ghost finally appears – oh, dear. He speaks his lines very well. He even disappears at one point down a very Shakespearean trap door. But he also rips open his shirt to display a precise plastic imitation of mouldering human flesh. Just like in the movies. The camera closes in, so the HD audience gets a better view than the theatregoers did. And there is a musical (?) sound track, just like in the movies, that conventionally roars its instructions to the audience: Be horrified! Be grossed out! The sound track banged on through most of the play, often drowning out the actors, while the lighting effects mimicked sharp camera cuts.
Hamlet, in case you’ve forgotten, pretends to be mad while actually being driven almost mad by his impossible situation. Poor Cumberbatch, whether willingly or not we may never know, enacts this strategy by trying on a Hallowe’en costume or two, then settling on the uniform of the traditional toy soldier, complete with snare drum. He then marches the length of the banquet table – that’s on the table – drumming. This fools everyone.
Other business is equally incomprehensible. Ophelia has hobbies: she take pictures with a Mathis-era camera and she plays the piano. And your point is? Her final madness causes her speech to soften and accelerate so greatly that she might be listing the deadly side effects of some newly advertised drug. We certainly can’t hear her.
Then, in the final scene, as we try to weigh up the pros and cons of the production, Cumberbatch gives us a performance that absolves him of all offenses. He believes entirely in his reconciliation with Laertes; he behaves and fences like the Elizabethan gentleman, athlete and scholar that he really is, and he dies reconciled to death.
I’m no tekkie, but I hope some computer nerd somewhere will make sure that this performance will be preserved for the ages.
Do what you love
I’m still hard at work on the short story (“The Intruder”) that takes place in my daughter’s house in Virginia. I reduced the word count and simplified the convoluted plot line and am now ready to smooth the rough edges, increase the word count, and add complexity to the plot line. I plan to have a draft to submit to my writing group “soon” after we arrive in Arizona. Warning to my group: do not expect it the week we arrive (next week).
Recently I read on a writing blog (not certain which one) that a writer (obviously) keeps a journal for each writing project that she works on. I promptly went to Barnes and Noble, purchased one of their ubiquitous,
Journal for short story, “The Intruder
always “reduced price,” journals, and started recording my experience revising my short story. I have two entries.
This is the year (I hope) that we get FaceTime functioning so that I can participate in our Thursday night writing group from Arizona. Even if we are only able to communicate via the phone, I will be satisfied. Without the structure of my group to motivate me, I spend my time there basking in the sunshine, resting, and exploring. Add being a spectator at the numerous sports and activities that our three active grandchildren participate in and you can see why I haven’t gotten much writing done these past two winters.
Something that has limited my writing in Virginia is that, as a Christmas present to myself, I renewed my subscription to Ancestry.com. My daughter and I have been researching rabidly various branches of my husband’s family. She’s traced his paternal grandfather’s ancestors back to hanging out with William Bradford, a Pilgrim governor of Massachusetts. (I thought I had done well to determine my fifth great-grandfather was a Minuteman!) It’s an addictive–and at times frustrating–hobby.
Last year in Arizona I participated in an online support group for writers, “Creative Monsters Club,” with other members from around the world. Our mentor, Marcy Mason McKay, has published (among other writings) an award-winning novel, “Pennies from Burger Heaven.” She soon plans to start work on the second book in the Burger Heaven series. I am going to post a review of her book on Goodreads and Amazon, which I have never done before. The quality and detail of the reviews I have read prior to deciding to purchase a book have deterred me from contributing my own paltry review. But I’m going to take the plunge and submit a brief review of this book. Please read her book–my review is optional!
Try this on your readers
If you can read this OUT LOUD you have a strong mind. And better than that: Alzheimer’s is a long long, way down the road before it ever gets anywhere near you. 7H15 M3554G3 53RV35 7O PR0V3 H0W 0UR M1ND5 C4N D0 4M4Z1NG 7H1NG5! 1MPR3551V 7H1NG5! 1N 7H3 B3G1NN1NG 17 WA5 H4RD BU7 N0W, 0N 7H15 LIN3 Y0UR M1ND 1S R34D1NG 17 4U70M471C4LLY W17H0U7 3V3N 7H1NK1NG 4B0U7 17, B3 PROUD! 0NLY C3R741N P30PL3 C4N R3AD 7H15!
If you can raed this, you have a sgtrane mnid, too. I cdnuolt blveiee that I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd what I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid, aoccdrnig to a rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno’t mtaetr in what oerdr the ltteres in a word are, the olny iproamtnt tihng is that the frsit and last ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can still raed it whotuit a pboerlm. This is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the word as a wlohe. Azanmig huh?
THE WEATHER OUSIDE IS FRIGHTFUL
. . .but it could be a lot worse.
Inside, it’s delightful. There are plenty of Christmas leftovers, mostly the dessert variety, and numerous books to read.
My daughter was given a book for Christmas (which I wrestled away from her), called, Quack This Way. It’s an interview of David Foster Wallace by Bryan A. Garner. It’s a fun, but short read. Its fast pace makes it seem even shorter as the two men take a romping, lolloping, constitutional through discussions of writing, language, and usage. The interview was conducted in Los Angeles in 2006, two years before DFW committed suicide.
Who could resist a chapter called, ‘Crummy, turgid, verbose, abstruse, abstract, solecism-ridden prose’, or one simply called, ‘You need to quack this way’.
Our writing group read a short story by Wallace last winter entitled Mr. Squishy. I loved it. I’m loving Quack This Way, and decided to go whole hog (duck?) and downloaded Wallace’s Infinite Jest to put the icing on the holiday-reading cake.
I’ve only just begun this almost 1,000 page tome. It’s a North American dystopian novel taking place in the giant corporation subsidized years of ‘The Depend Adult Undergarment’, and ‘The Trial-Sized Dove Bar’, where our cold (weather outside is frightful) New England States have become Canada’s waste dump.
Yes, it’s a humorous novel, but only as it is written. Underneath it could become melancholic, but I haven’t gotten there yet.
One critic for the New York Times called Infinite Jest a vast encyclopedic compendium of whatever crossed Wallace’s mind’. That may not be so bad. Years later that same critic backpedaled and hailed it for having enriched today’s literary landscape.
Wallace himself said that his heavy use of end notes in Infinite Jest were a method of disrupting the linearity of the text while maintaining some narrative cohesion. There are plenty of them.
Well, I’m off to a lolloping romp through Infinite Jest this Year of the ‘Whisper Quiet Maytag Dishwasher’, or maybe it’s the ‘Year of Glad’. I’m not sure yet, but I imagine that I’ll enjoy the outing.
Stockings filled with coal
When you get to be my age, it’s amazing what an almost fourteen hour trip to Virginia, in steady rain, in a rental car with tires in need of replacement, with GPS directions that you find out are not taking you the way you think you are going until it’s too late to change direction, can do to you the next day. And I was only the passenger. The driver started the trip at six a.m. getting thrown to the ground after being hit in the head by the garage door on its downward trajectory. I think you may get the picture why this post will be short and disjointed!
The good news is we made it to Virginia safe and sound, our suitcases already unpacked and clothes hung in the closets with care, the driver still lively and quick. The last leg of our journey to Arizona will be by sleigh, er, airplane, that is.
I survived, and won, NaNoWriMo, with time to spare but not a creative thought lurking anywhere. I’ve printed my 2014 and 2015 winning submissions and lugged them with my original printed book (“Anne”) with a plan to ignore the Arizona sunshine this winter and return home with a completed draft comprised of an amalgamation of all three novels. We shall see…
Over a year ago I wrote a short story that
Christmas at the Omni Mount Washington Resort
partially is set in my daughter’s house in Virginia. (You may recall the experiment with the weed whacker string.) Another unfinished work. As I walked into her garage last night, after the exhausting trip from New Hampshire, the story engulfed me, reminding me of characters and story lines left hanging, like stockings hung on the mantle filled with coal. They deserve better than that. I just may finish that story this trip.
And Santa just may bring me everything on my list.
A Writer’s Twelve Days of Christmas
On the first day of Christmas, my karma brought to me:
A manuscript in a mad tangle
I’m grateful to have a complete first draft. Really. But the tangle starts on page 2.
Two hackneyed plots
It’s not that I’m a plagiarist. It’s just that my memory gland is too strong for my imaginary gland.
Three foreign phrases
I don’t use them myself. So where are my characters getting them?
Four dimpled darlings
Such adorable turns of phrase! Why do my readers get that gag-me-with-a-Smurf expression?
Five false starts
Once, you got a litter of crumpled paper on the floor, signifying writerly despair. Now it’s just delete…delete…delete….
Six friends kibitzing
I rely on their advice. And there’s so much of it! But I like to share my toys.
Seven cocktails calling
My protagonist knocks back Scotch. F. Scott Fitzgerald was drunk more than he was sober. Why do I have to stick to coffee?
Eight deadlines looming
I should be so lucky.
Nine unanswered queries
See above.
Ten howlers howling
Last week I left the same corpse in two places at once.
Eleven critics carping
See Eight and Nine above.
Twelve distractions dithering
E.g., Christmas. Happy holidays, all!
GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
GET OUT OF THE HOUSE
It’s not so much exercise that we need in the winter to keep us going, but light. Natural light.
Studies show (and I won’t belabor you with links and names of studies here, those you can easily Google yourself) that sleep improves with natural light. Thinking improves with light. Creative abilities improve with light. Your health improves with light. Everything improves. It’s a win-win situation getting natural/sun light every day.
I go through a definitive slump in the winter. Poor sleep, less writing oomph, less able to think through a problem. The works.
However, El Nino, the rainy weather blessing for California and the benign winter weather blessing for us here in the Northeast, is passing through. There is dim sunlight evanescing beyond the cloud cover this morning, and I am fighting an almost sleepless night’s inertia to hie myself out into the great outdoors and get some of it. Will it work? I don’t know, but I’m going to try. The outdoors here is great, and in the absence of the usual cold and snow this couch potato should take advantage of it, at least in the name of scientific experimentation.
After walking a couple miles I had definitely worked up an appetite but, I wondered, had the sunlight, trapped as it was behind that lone cloud, been strong enough to permeate into the melatonin producing area of my brain? That’s a good question. I’ll let you know if I sleep any better tonight.
In addition to the fresh air, sunshine, and exercise, I noticed that my brain was twinkling awake. It was telling me about things that should go into my stories. About a contest I was interested in entering, about a change I needed to make in my novel. I took deep breaths of mid-December air that had been mollified by the El Nino winds that perchance blew everyone some good, and thought, wow, this is heady stuff.
This nina is going to take advantage of El Nino’s sojourn in the cold climate of New England and get out of the house more. There’s too much to lose not to.
Eleanor Ingbretson
Karen Whalen
llandrigan
Heidi Wilson
Mike M
Thursday Night Writes 