Eleanor Arnason's Blog, page 60

Discouragement

Another editor bounced another one of my stories. I'm feeling discouraged, but then I have always been easily discouraged. And my work has never been especially easy to sell. I tell myself it usually sells in the end, except when I realize a given story has problems and retire it.

Iron Man and Marvel Action Flicks

This is a couple of posts from facebook:

Gregory Feeley suggested that Iron Man is the story of Hamlet: Stark's father is dead and his foster father is a monster, as he discovers. I wrote:

We were discussing Iron Man as a Hollywood version of Hamlet, Gregory's idea, which I can pretty much see. In that case, Thor is a Hollywood version of Othello -- the strong, simple hero tricked by a manipulative sneak. I saw Thor as similar to Othello, because Loki is played so much like Iago, though the movie gives Loki motivations, which Iago does not have. I can't see any play by Shakespeare in Captain America.

I saw Thor as the story of a god learning to be a decent human being, and Captain America as a decent human being learning to be an almost god. I'm less sure about Iron Man. At the start Tony Stark is rich, famous and brilliant, with everything except a human heart. At the end he has a damaged, vulnerable heart that is able to feel and an awesome suit. What does this mean? Stark is cognate with the Old Norse word sterkr, which means strong. In English, it means sheer, bleak, complete, desolate and a lot of similar terms. Stark mad. Stark naked. I think the primary meaning here would be bleak or desolate.

Josh Lukin pointed out that the comic's creators would have known the word "stark" from Yiddish, where it means strong. So Tony Stark's name probably means strong, with secondary meanings of sheer, bleak and desolate. His life in the movie is pretty desolate.

We saw Iron Man again last night. I think Jeff Bridges does a good job with his role (which is Stark's foster father). He is playing Obediah as a sociopath, and I think that works. The movie devotes most of its time to tinkering and action, so there isn't a lot of time left for character development and back story. There's a lot we don't know about all the characters. I am more troubled by the Magic Afghan, who helps Tony build the first suit and dies to save Tony; and I'm also troubled by Tony blazing his way around the world to save an Afghan village. It feels a bit creepy, given the extent to which current Afghan problems are caused by foreign invasions, including an American invasion. On the other hand, the moral ambiguity or darkness around Tony's line of business (armaments) is nicely done.

Tony is the merchant of death as a superhero, which is different.

NASA APOD

A nice barred spiral galaxy to stsrt the day...

Many spiral galaxies have bars across their centers. Even our own Milky Way Galaxy is thought to have a modest central bar. Prominently barred spiral galaxy NGC 1073, pictured above, was captured in spectacular detail in this recently released image taken by the orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Visible are dark filamentary dust lanes, young clusters of bright blue stars, red emission nebulas of glowing hydrogen gas, a long bright bar of stars across the center, and a bright active nucleus that likely houses a supermassive black hole. Light takes about 55 million years to reach us from NGC 1073, which spans about 80,000 light years across. NGC 1073 can be seen with a moderately-sized telescope toward the constellation of the Sea Monster (Cetus), Fortuitously, the above image not only caught the X-ray bright star system IXO 5, visible on the upper left and likely internal to the barred spiral, but three quasars far in the distance.

Short stories

I posted this on facebook:

I have been writing novelettes for a long time and am now trying to pull my length down to 7,500 words. It is really hard. The story I just finished seems incomplete to me. My experience of short stories -- this is a huge generalization -- is they tend to be folk tales or vignettes or gimmick stories, O'Henry stories. Boy, is that a huge generalization. I will reframe it, I can write short stories that are vignettes, gimmick stories or folk tales. To write a story that feels rich, I have to go longer. But many SF writers can write wonderful, rich short stories.

I'm being unfair when I talk about "gimmick" stories. What I mean is stories that focus on an idea or the plot. SF writers and readers love neat idea stories, as do I, though I don't usually write them, and our pulp history makes stories that rely on action and plot appealing.

It's really hard to get an idea, a plot and the qualities of a vignette -- mood, detail and character -- into a story that is less than 7,500 words. Something has to go. In some stories, it's character or detail, which leaves room for the idea or the plot.

I like writing stories that are 12,000 words or thereabouts. They have room for some of the richness of a novel, but they end before I and the reader get bored.

However, I have sent out six stories in the past year or so. The two that have sold are at or under 7,500 words. The other four -- all novelettes -- sit at magazines. I keep imaging the editors saying, "I like it, but it's so damn long."

Real Estate Law and Icelandic Sagas

I posted this on the wonderful economics and finance blog Naked Capital, in response to articles arguing that -- due to the criminal behavior of the large American banks -- the title to private and commercial real estate is now so clouded that no one can be sure if they actually own what they think they own, and also to an article on the MF Global bankruptcy. MF Global was an investment firm that stole money from customers' accounts and (apparently) put the money in a large New York bank, from which (it appears) the customers cannot recover their money. This was not money that had been invested. this was money in cash accounts, like money in bank accounts.

If I am understanding the various links correctly, property law no longer functions in the US, at least in re real estate, and investors can no longer be sure they have an right to the money they have put at investment firms. I guess my next question is, who owns the money in my bank accounts?

There is a wonderful line in the Icelandic Njals saga, spoken by the saga hero Njal: "With laws shall our land be built up, but with lawlessness laid waste."

The verb translated as "built up" means settle, inhabit or occupy and also means to let money out at interest. So the line could be a motto for real estate law or maybe for the Occupy movement. Though in the case of Occupy, the nouns should be revered, "With Occupation shall the land be made lawful." We hope.

For what it's worth, rich and powerful men broke apart the medieval Icelandic legal and government system, pushing the country into civil war. The Icelandic Republic collapsed and the Norwegian Crown took over. The Icelanders spent the next 600 years as a colony in poverty so severe that it almost extinguished the Icelandic people.

Njals saga was written in the 13th century, when the Republic ended amid civil war. The Icelanders knew what had destroyed their country. The tragedy of the Njals saga, considered to be the greatest of the sagas, was the breakdown on law.
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Gotterdammerung

On the other hand, I like the Ring Cycle. I sat through six plus hours of Gotterdammerung today and cried when Siegfried died.

What is interesting -- and deeply disturbing -- about the Ring Cycle is how much of it is about vulnerable women. Siegfried's mother Sieglinde was kidnapped and forced into marriage by the horrible Hunding. She is rescued by Siegmund, who is -- as they later find out -- her twin brother. They fall in love. It looks as if we might have a happy ending.

But Frikke, the goddess of marriage and queen of the gods, believes that Siegmund must be punished in order to maintain the sanctity of marriage and the family. According to Frikke the forced marriage between Hunding and Sieglinde is sacred, while the love between the twins is adultery. Granted the twins' love is incestuous, but compared to the awful marriage of Hunding and Sieglinde, it is touching and sweet.

Wotan promises to punish Siegmund, who is -- by the way -- Wotan's son. He intervenes in a fight between Siegmund and Hunding, making sure that Hunding wins and Siegmund dies.

Sieglinde flees and gives birth to Siegfried nine months later, dying in childbirth, so Siegfried never knows either parent. This is in opera # 2, Die Walkure.

Through Die Walkure, Siegfried and Gotterdammerung, we watch the degradation of Brunnhilde, a Valkyrie who defies her father Wotan by trying to help Siegmund and Sieglinde. As punishment, Wotan makes Brunnhilde mortal and casts her into an enchanted sleep. In this sleep, she will be prey to any passing man. She begs her father to surround her with a ring of fire, so only a hero can reach her and "win" her.

At the end of Siegfried, the young, clueless, arrogant hero passes through the fire and wakes Brunnhilde -- freeing her as his father had freed his mother. Siegfried and Brunnhilde fall in love, and this opera has a happy ending.

Then we get to Gotterdammerung. Returning to the world of ordinary people, Siegfried falls into the plots of an ambitious family. He is given a potion, which makes him forget Brunnhilde; and -- under the influence of the potion -- he helps another man "win" Brunnhilde, who is still on her mountain, surrounded by her ring of fire. Disguised as the other man, Siegfried goes back through the fire and grabs Brunnhilde, taking her from safety into a forced marriage: the same fate as his mother had experienced.

Brunnhilde is furious when she realizes that Siegfried has given her to his new buddy Gunther as a casual gift -- "Here, pal, have a woman I don't need." And she gets her revenge by helping to get Siegfried killed.

And then she kills herself by burning on his funeral pyre.

But think of a woman who has been a kind of warrior goddess, the favored daughter of the All Father, and then becomes an utterly vulnerable mortal in a society where women are property, kidnapped and forced into marriage and handed around as gifts. A creepy story.

But Brunnhilde is far more impressive than Charlotte, and Wagner's sympathies seem to be with the two pairs of lovers. You might call it a story of love vs. property. The lovers don't win. But neither do the owners. In the end, everyone dies, even the gods.

Werther

Well, I saw Werther. The music is fine, but the opera suffers from a problem.

There are three main characters:

Werther, a young man with a mood disorder, who zings back and forth between enthusiasm and deep depression. He falls in love at first sight with Charlotte, who is kind and sweet and does what she is told.

Charlotte is engaged -- and then married -- to Albert, who is solid, respectable, jealous and vindictive.

Charlotte sends Werther away, but tells him to came back at Christmas, which suggests she is a little indecisive. While he is gone, he writes her passionate letters, which she reads and keeps, although she is now married to Albert.

Werther comes back at Christmas. Albert becomes suspicious. Charlotte sends Werther away a second time. Werther then sends a letter to Albert, asking to borrow his dueling pistols.

Albert agrees and insists that Charlotte be the one to give the guns to Werther's messenger. (This is how we know he's vindictive.) Charlotte does as she is told, even though she suspects Werther is suicidal.

She married Albert because her dying mother told her to. She cared for all her little brothers and sisters, because it was expected of her. She handed the guns over, because Albert told her to. When she finds Werther after he has shot himself, she wants to go for help, but he tells her not to, and she doesn't.

She does what she's told to do. However, in act four, when Wether is bleeding all over everything, she decides she really does love him; and then he dies.

It is hard to like any of these people.

Wether

Well, I saw Werther. The music is fine, but the opera suffers from a problem.

There are three main characters:

Werther, a young man with a mood disorder, who zings back and forth between enthusiasm and deep depression. He falls in love at first sight with Charlotte, who is kind and sweet and does what she is told.

Charlotte is engaged -- and then married -- to Albert, who is solid, respectable, jealous and vindictive.

Charlotte send Werther away, but tells him to came back at Christmas, which suggests she is a little indecisive. While he is gone, he writes her passionate letters, which she reads and keeps, although she is now married to Albert.

Werther comes back at Christmas. Albert becomes suspicious. Charlotte sends Werther away a second time. Werther then sends a letter to Albert, asking to borrow his dueling pistols.

Albert agrees and insists that Charlotte be the one to give the guns to Werther's messenger. (This is how we know he's vindictive.) Charlotte does as she is told, even though she suspects Werther is suicidal.

She married Albert because her dying mother told her to. She cared for all her little brothers and sisters, because it was expected of her. She handed the guns over, because Albert told her to. When she finds Werther after he has shot himself, she wants to go for help, but he tells her not to, and she doesn't.

She does what she's told to do. However, in act four, when Wether is bleeding all over everything, she decides she really does love him; and then he dies.

It is hard to like any of these people.

A New Approach

I am also thinking of making my blog more human and personal.

So...

It's 10:30 am, and I need to shower and get ready for the Minnesota Opera. Today it's Werther, from the novel by Goethe. According to one of my friends, the tenor shoots himself in the head at the end of the first act and spends the entire second act dying and singing.

Student Loans

I got another comment from Foxessa, and I am reprinting part of it here, because it is awesome. This is about the cost of a college education:

Things changed very rapidly, beginning with allowing the same private institutions that brought you the sub-prime mortgage crisis, and all the rest of our current economic catastrophes to get into the student loan game while the federal money was used to secure them.

Even before that student loan money was excepted from the bankruptcy rulings, i.e. even if a person filed for personal bankruptcy, the loans would not be forgiven with other debt.

At the same time, because of the underwriting with federal money all those private lending institutions such as banks and others, tuition and other costs went sky high. Higher education became as much a financial bubble as the sub-prime mortgage ponzi scheme was.

So banks (and federal policy) have pushed the cost of education up, the way they pushed up the price of housing.

An awesome analysis, to which I add...

American industry -- and especially American governments -- are doing far less fixed capital investment than in the 20th century. (Most of the money governments spend on fixed assets -- highways and so on -- ends in the hands of private corporations, which do the actual work.)

This reduces the need for money capital, which means banks are less able to profit from traditional loans to industry. In addition, as corporations have increased in size, they are more and more able to pay for change and improvement (if any) with their own funds. Or so I have read.

So Wall Street roams like a pack of predatory dinosaurs, looking to make new kinds of loans and profit from them; and because Wall Street now controls the US government, it can shape laws in whatever way is most profitable.

In recent years, the loans have been to consumers: home loans, credit card loans, student loans. We are all feeding this useless section of the economy.