Dave Appleby's Blog, page 2
February 19, 2021
American Pyscho: horror or social commentary?
American Psycho by Bret Easton EllisMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A controversial novel which was made into a very popular horror/ slasher movie.
Late 1980s (the novel was published in 1991). Patrick Bateman, narrator and protagonist, is a 26 year old man with a private fortune who 'works' at an investment form on Wall Street; his life mainly revolves around eating at expensive restaurants in Manhattan while debating the finer points of food, etiquette, fashion and music. It is an utterly hedonistic lifestyle. He is angered and horrified by the beggars on the streets, often insulting them, sometimes teasing them by offering them money only to snatch it away. To compensate for the meaninglessness of his lifestyle, Bateman fantasises about extreme violence: another part of his life is his obsession with renting videotapes of hardcore pornography and slasher movies. These fantasies initially only intrude slightly into his long monologues: "For an appetizer I ordered radicchio with some kind of free-range squid. Anne and Scott both had the monkfish raguot with violets. ... Scott and Anne insisted that we all order some kind of black and medium-rare redfish, a Deck Chairs specialty which was, luckily for them, an entree on one of the mock menus that Jean made up for me. if it hadn't, and if they nevertheless insisted on my ordering it, the odds were pretty good that I would have broken into Scott and Anne's studio at around two this morning - after Late Night with David Letterman - and with an ax chopped them to pieces, first making Anne watch Scott bleed to death and gaping chest wounds, and then I would have found a way to get to Exeter where I would pour a bottle of acid over their son’s slanty-eyed zipperhead face. Our waitress is a little hardbody who is wearing gold faux-pearl tasseled lizard sling-back pumps. I forgot to return my videotapes to the store tonight and I curse myself silently while Scott orders two large bottles of San Pellegrino.” (Deck Chairs) These fantasies become more obtrusive and eventually degenerate into episodes of sex and violence getting progressively worse: a threesome with two prostitutes that ends in Bateman hurting, perhaps maiming them, the murder of a fellow worker with an ax, the attempted strangulation of another (Bateman is put off when this man assumes that this is an attempted homosexual pickup), the blinding of a beggar, the torture and murder of a girlfriend, the torture and murder and cannibalism of another girlfriend, and a multiple shoot-out involving a street busker, policemen and bystanders.
These scenes are graphically described and horrific and I understand why some publishers and booksellers have refused to deal with this book. The question always has to be: is the sex and violence gratuitous or does it serve an essential part of the artwork? The film toned down some of the most gruesome aspects. I suspect that there could have been considerably less detail without having a negative impact on the quality of the book.
But the graphic details are how the author achieves verisimilitude. This is also achieved by the inclusion of real people (Tom Cruise lives in Bateman's apartment block; they meet in the lift; Bateman is in the front row of a U2 concert and his women guests are propositioned by bouncers on behalf of the band; bizarrely Donald Trump, who never actually appears, is Bateman's idol) and real contexts. It is further developed by the minutiae of cultural references: Bateman describes the clothing worn by everyone he meets (see the description of the waitress above) in obsessive detail, especially when describing brand names. There are also a number of music artists whose life work is reviewed by Bateman, again in minute and obsessive detail.
And, paradoxically, this was the point at which I began to suspect a rat. No one could know quite so much about what someone was wearing. Its attempt at hyper-realism itself seemed unrealistic.
Other details began to niggle. Bateman complains to a laundry that they haven't properly cleaned his blood-stained clothes. As his crimes begin to mount up, there seems to be no hue and cry. He lugs bodies down elevators, unnoticed. He slashes the throat of a boy in the zoo and then pretends to be a doctor caring for the dying boy, unsuspected. His flat is covered with blood and body parts and his cleaner just scrubs away stoically. One of his victims appears to have been seen alive. Although the film treated Bateman's episodes of violence as fact, I began to suspect that they were psychotic episodes in which fantasy replaced reality and that Bateman was a highly unreliable narrator.
At which point the book begins to look a lot more like an extended metaphor for American society. Bateman represents yuppies, or perhaps Americans in general. His lifestyle is the ultimate in hedonism and he is obsessed with the minutiae of etiquette, and fashion, and food. But Bateman isn't happy. There is a deep emptiness when it comes to the meaning of life: this book is fundamentally nihilist. His pursuit of pleasure becomes more and more frenetic and he experiences huge anxieties when, for example, he can't book a table at one of the poshest restaurants, or when someone else has a higher credit rating than he has. His descent into psychotic violence could be seen as a metaphor for capitalist America exploiting, raping and destroying the environment. And, there is a fundamental lack of consequence. Bateman repeatedly gets away with one crime after another; even a confession is ignored and joked about.
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February 16, 2021
Peripeteia
Peripeteia
Towards the end of most classic plots there is a sudden reversal of fortune. A turning point. A twist. Something that confounds the reader’s (or viewer’s) expectations. Aristotle (in his classic work ‘The Poetics’) called it peripeteia.
It’s a staple of crime dramas. All the evidence points to the guilt of the hero, or the hero’s best mate, and then in an astonishing final chapter the single bit of evidence that didn’t quite fit is incorporated into a new narrative which proves beyond doubt that someone else is guilty. That’s peripeteia.
But Aristotle was quite strict. The reversal works best if the reader (or viewer) ends up saying: ‘of course that’s how it had to be’. In other words, the new narrative must be seen as being necessary even though it was utterly unexpected. It has to be seen as inevitable, given what is known (now) about the circumstances.
The classic example, used by Aristotle, is Oedipus Rex, the play by Sophocles. Towards the end of the play Oedipus, King of Thebes, discovers that he has murdered his biological father and married his biological mother, unwittingly committing both parricide and incest. The shock of this discovery causes him to blind himself (and his wife-mother to hang herself) thus evoking pity and fear, Aristotle's twin hallmarks of a good tragedy.
Towards the end of most classic plots there is a sudden reversal of fortune. A turning point. A twist. Something that confounds the reader’s (or viewer’s) expectations. Aristotle (in his classic work ‘The Poetics’) called it peripeteia.
It’s a staple of crime dramas. All the evidence points to the guilt of the hero, or the hero’s best mate, and then in an astonishing final chapter the single bit of evidence that didn’t quite fit is incorporated into a new narrative which proves beyond doubt that someone else is guilty. That’s peripeteia.
But Aristotle was quite strict. The reversal works best if the reader (or viewer) ends up saying: ‘of course that’s how it had to be’. In other words, the new narrative must be seen as being necessary even though it was utterly unexpected. It has to be seen as inevitable, given what is known (now) about the circumstances.
The classic example, used by Aristotle, is Oedipus Rex, the play by Sophocles. Towards the end of the play Oedipus, King of Thebes, discovers that he has murdered his biological father and married his biological mother, unwittingly committing both parricide and incest. The shock of this discovery causes him to blind himself (and his wife-mother to hang herself) thus evoking pity and fear, Aristotle's twin hallmarks of a good tragedy.
February 13, 2021
M J Hyland's How the Light Gets In and the concept of the outsider.
Colin Wilson's classic text 'The Outsider' analysed the role of outsiders in fiction. An outsider is someone who can see the phoniness of the world (much like Holden Caulfield in The Catcher in the Rye). Everyone around them is sleep-walking like cattle. They despise the world. This leads them to feeling estranged from the world. But being an outsider is an uncomfortable and lonely business; outsiders are shunned by society. At the same time as despising the world, they long to be part of it.
M J Hyland's debut novel 'How the Light Gets In' brilliantly uses the metaphor of insomnia. Lou wants to sleep but can't and wanders round the house at night looking at the others sleeping. Oh, and she's also an Australian in the US. And she's from a poor family and living with a rich one. How much more of an outsider can you get?
How the Light Gets In by M.J. Hyland
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
A young girl is desperate to escape her poor Australian family. She has a one year student placement in the United States where she stays with a rich family. But the parents expect her to conform to some rigid rules, the daughter resents her and the young son wants to have sex with her. She struggles to fit in and her 'bad' behaviour has consequences.
Perhaps the fundamental problem is that back home there has been petty squalor while everything in the US is too perfect. She feels the pressure to be perfect while being aware that she isn't, and the world isn't. The few friends that she does make are other misfits: the sin-exploring Mormon, the drug-addled millionaire's son, the rebellious Russian chess-player. When she has the opportunity to shine in the 'perfect' world, landing a part in the school musical (by auditioning with the savagely ironic song 'Anything you can do, I can do better'), she needs alcohol to cope. She is the classic outsider (in the Colin Wilson sense): she can see the short-comings of the world and yet she desperately wants to be a part of it,
"The carpet is so threadbare you can see through to its veins." (1.2)
"As I lay there, I could smell the dirty dishcloth Mum uses to wipe the lino." (1.2)
"After years of exposure to this advertising frenzy, people must start to despise each other for being ugly, for having so much as a birthmark on their chin with hair growing out of it." (1.5)
"There are so many healthy, good-looking teenagers, that a few crooked teeth, or short, fat fingers, suddenly take on the proportions of deformities." (2.11)
As a metaphor for this, she has endemic insomnia. Something else that everyone can do which she can't (although she can sleep fine in other people's beds, just not in her own). And of course the metaphor is perfect because she can wander around the house at night and look at everyone else while they are sleeping, another outside seeing the rest of us sleep-walking through our lives.
"Within minutes of closing my eyes, my brain springs open, like a flick-knife." (1.2)
"The wave of sleep has washed up on the shore of my unhealthy skull." (2.15)
"It's like sitting down to a plate of food, only to find that you have no mouth to eat it with. Even worse than that, it happens when you are hungriest, when the food is of most use to you, and when you are quite sure you have a mouth. ... In fact, only yesterday, you were sure that your mouth was working very well indeed. You even saw it there on your face when you looked in the mirror." (3.20)
A classic tale of a teenage misfit.
View all my reviews
M J Hyland's debut novel 'How the Light Gets In' brilliantly uses the metaphor of insomnia. Lou wants to sleep but can't and wanders round the house at night looking at the others sleeping. Oh, and she's also an Australian in the US. And she's from a poor family and living with a rich one. How much more of an outsider can you get?
How the Light Gets In by M.J. HylandMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
A young girl is desperate to escape her poor Australian family. She has a one year student placement in the United States where she stays with a rich family. But the parents expect her to conform to some rigid rules, the daughter resents her and the young son wants to have sex with her. She struggles to fit in and her 'bad' behaviour has consequences.
Perhaps the fundamental problem is that back home there has been petty squalor while everything in the US is too perfect. She feels the pressure to be perfect while being aware that she isn't, and the world isn't. The few friends that she does make are other misfits: the sin-exploring Mormon, the drug-addled millionaire's son, the rebellious Russian chess-player. When she has the opportunity to shine in the 'perfect' world, landing a part in the school musical (by auditioning with the savagely ironic song 'Anything you can do, I can do better'), she needs alcohol to cope. She is the classic outsider (in the Colin Wilson sense): she can see the short-comings of the world and yet she desperately wants to be a part of it,
"The carpet is so threadbare you can see through to its veins." (1.2)
"As I lay there, I could smell the dirty dishcloth Mum uses to wipe the lino." (1.2)
"After years of exposure to this advertising frenzy, people must start to despise each other for being ugly, for having so much as a birthmark on their chin with hair growing out of it." (1.5)
"There are so many healthy, good-looking teenagers, that a few crooked teeth, or short, fat fingers, suddenly take on the proportions of deformities." (2.11)
As a metaphor for this, she has endemic insomnia. Something else that everyone can do which she can't (although she can sleep fine in other people's beds, just not in her own). And of course the metaphor is perfect because she can wander around the house at night and look at everyone else while they are sleeping, another outside seeing the rest of us sleep-walking through our lives.
"Within minutes of closing my eyes, my brain springs open, like a flick-knife." (1.2)
"The wave of sleep has washed up on the shore of my unhealthy skull." (2.15)
"It's like sitting down to a plate of food, only to find that you have no mouth to eat it with. Even worse than that, it happens when you are hungriest, when the food is of most use to you, and when you are quite sure you have a mouth. ... In fact, only yesterday, you were sure that your mouth was working very well indeed. You even saw it there on your face when you looked in the mirror." (3.20)
A classic tale of a teenage misfit.
View all my reviews
February 12, 2021
The very first locked-room mystery?
The Murdered Cousin by J. Sheridan Le FanuMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
This is stylish gothic romantic thriller fiction.
A very short novella, scarcely longer than a short story, from a classic author who deserves rather more recognition than he has received. Another of this author's work (A Chapter in the History of a Tyrone Family) is thought to have provided Charlotte Bronte with the 'mad woman in the attic' element of Jane Eyre.
It starts with a locked-room mystery. The narrator's uncle is accused of murdering a guest in his house but cannot be prosecuted because no one can see how the crime could have been committed.
Then the narrator's father dies and she is sent to live with her uncle who will be her guardian. He then proposes that she marries his brutish son. She realises that the pair are scheming to get their hands on her fortune ... and that the alternative might be to be murdered by them. And then one night ...
Rather neatly, the denouement of this clever book reveals the solution to the locked-room mystery.
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February 11, 2021
The Twenty-Two Letters by Clive King
The Twenty Two Letters by Clive KingMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is a children's book. It gives a fictionalised account of the birth of the alphabet in Gebal-Byblos, a historical town in Phoenicia on what is now the Lebanese coast where the alphabet does indeed seem to have begun. The invention is ascribed to an apprentice scribe called Aleph who is captured and enslaved by Egyptian soldiers. His brother Nun learns the secret of navigating by the stars on a sea voyage to Crete. His other brother Zayin, a general in the army, goes on a scouting mission north and is captured by horsemen..
Despite a surprising amount of description, this has everything a good boys' adventure yarn needs. All three brothers have to escape if they are going to warn their home town about invasion plans. And the stay-at-home sister Beth also has a part to play.
I loved this when I was a kid and even re-reading it there was a moment of catharsis near the end when a lump came to my throat and tears to my eyes. If it can still do that to a cynical sexagenarian it must be a great book.
Some of my favourite moments:
“'Call yourselves soldiers!' Zayin jeered. 'I’ve collected eggs in the farmyard from creatures with more guts than you! I’ve seen them clip wool from animals with as much sense!'" (Ch 2)
"Calculations, to Nun, were a matter of fingers and toes or pebbles, or beads on strings; but the stranger seemed to be able to perform them instantly." (Ch 3)
"The two men exchanged looks in the obscurity, as soldiers do on the battlefield when a casualty occurs." (Ch 10)
“I counted the trees, Father,” (Ch 11): the sniffle moment.
A much-underestimated masterpiece. February 2021
Clive King also wrote Stig of the Dump.
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February 10, 2021
The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing by Mary Paulson-Ellis
The Inheritance of Solomon Farthing by Mary Paulson-EllisMy rating: 4 of 5 stars
In the dying days of the first world war a squad of British soldiers with orders to undertake a highly dangerous river-crossing wile away the days before the attack by gambling. A greenhorn lieutenant eager for his first taste of action sows dissent among the men. One of them is killed, his legacy a pawnbroker's ticket. The soldiers are all representative types: the 'old sweat', the gay couple, the captain weighed down by his responsibilities, the coward, the wide boy,
In modern-day Edinburgh, Solomon, grandson of the officer in charge of the squad, tries to find the heir to an old man who has died in a nursing home, his clue being a pawnbroker's ticket. His search takes him to a foundling home in Northumbria.
The story shuttles between these two narratives; there are also snippets telling what happened to some of the soldiers after the war.
I found the first world war storyline a very slow build. One knew at once that someone (maybe more than one) had died because that is given ion the very first page. This hook was necessary because the soldiers did nothing for a long time except gambling and worrying and squabbling. This was tremendously authentic and the interplay between the characters was fascinating, but it was slow.
The modern storyline was significantly more surreal, though narrated with everyday and sometimes gritty reality. A trio of women sitting around a coffin appear at the start and the end. Solomon, in debt to a loan shark, escapes prison because a police officer wants him to do him a favour. On his journey south to find the heir he seems to have a charmed existence, turning up evidence wherever he goes and never questioning the most obscure clues. Characters from the first-world-war story keep cropping up in their descendants and coincidences abound, including resonances into his own murky past. Companions (a dog and a schoolboy) join him for portions of his quest. And I think the word quest explains what is happening. This storyline has a mythic quality. It is as if when Solomon leaves Edinburgh he enters a world which, for all its everydayness, is not quite real. It seems like a 'hero's jounrey' sort of story.
So back to the WWI storyline: is that also mythic? The farmhouse they find themselves at, in the last days of the war, with peace just around the corner and annihilation available just over the river, is more than once referred to as Eden and at least one of them acts as an Iago-like serpent. And, of course, they are all, in the present-day of the Solomon narrative, already dead.
So it seemed to me that the book was not just a simple whodunnit-style Heir Hunting story but one which offered totally unexpected resonances.
Some memorable moments:
"Some men were born to give instruction and others to take it. That's just the way it is." (The Debt, 1918, 2)
"Heir Hunting was full of false trails, but Solomon knew from experience that there was never a dead end on a family tree, only another branch to explore." (The Pawn, 2016, 2)
"Edinburgh, a city in which one often reached the destination one wanted, without ever quite understanding the route." (The Bet, 2016, 3)
"What was it about a society that called them heroes ... when all it ever did was use boys as fodder for the guns." (The Charge, 2016, 1)
View all my reviews
February 9, 2021
The Hero's Journey
The Hero's Journey is a twelve step story structure first identified by Campbell (1993) and modified by Vogler (2007, 8 - 9).
I propose a 'four part' structure which splits the act 2 of a three act structure down the middle (act two always has a turning point in its centre). I will then integrate this with the Hero's Journey:
Part One:
Ordinary World
Bronzite says: "This is where the Hero's exists before his present story begins, oblivious of the adventures to come. It's his safe place. His everyday life where we learn crucial details about our Hero, his true nature, capabilities and outlook on life. This anchors the Hero as a human, just like you and me, and makes it easier for us to identify with him and hence later, empathize with his plight."
In Star Wars: A New Hope (SW) these are the scenes showing Luke, the moisture farmer;s boy on Tattoine. In 1917 this is the scene showing the hero sitting with his back against a tree against a pastoral landscape.
Call To Adventure
This is a challenge which will shake the hero out of his rut. In SW this is the message delivered by R2D2. In 1917 there is an order.
Refusal Of The Call
Fear and self-doubt prompt the hero to decline the challenge. This is the response of the 'normal person' so the reader should identify with the hero; we all have fears and self-doubts. The refusal of the call may have consequences, making the quest more difficult than it would otherwise have been.
Meeting The Mentor
In SW Luke meets ObiWan Kenobe. The mentor gives the hero something which will help in the adventure: a gift, a skill, advice or just self-confidence. This meeting prompts the hero to being the quest.
Entr'Acte 1: Crossing the Threshold:
This is the first turning point. Marks (2009, 323) describes it as “awakening”.
This is a key moment of liminality. So many stories have a threshold. It is the Mos Eisley spaceport in SW, the crossing of No Man's Land in 1917, the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (LWW) (Lewis 1980) leading to the magical world of Narnia, the whirlwind in The Wizard of Oz (Baum 1994) which transports Dorothy to Oz, the rabbit hole in The Adventures of Alice (Carroll 1992) taking Alice to Wonderland, the time machine in The Time Machine (Wells 2005), the Tardis in the television science fiction series Doctor Who, n Doctor Who. The hero experiences some sort of initiation, they begin to be transformed.
Booker (2005, 105 - 106) subdivides this liminal stage into three substages: “puzzling and unfamiliar ... frustration, difficulty and oppression ... nightmare.”
Part Two
Tests, Allies, Enemies
The adventure proper starts as the hero encounters a set of challenges and tests. He may recruit assistants (this is where Luke hires Han Solo and Chewbacca in SW, in LWW Lucy meets Mr Tumnus) but he needs to learn whether and to what extent they can be trusted. He may meet enemies; Luke and pals are pursued by Storm Troopers in SW, Edmund meets the white witch in LWW. Each test is a test of his character, so we learn more and more about the hero.
Marks (2009, 323) describes this is the "push to breaking point"
Approach To The Inmost Cave
This may be a real place or metaphorical. It is a short respite. The scale of the challenge is made clear. Doubts and fears resurface; the hero may reconsider his options and gather up his strength.
In SW Luke finds out about the Death Star, a seemingly impossible challenge.
The approach to the inmost cave ends with a moment of enlightenment (Marks 2009, 323)
Part Three:
Ordeal
Again, this can be physical or internal. The hero faces his greatest fears and deadliest enemies. In order to survive he has to draw on all that he has learned on the journey so far. This is the ultimate moment: the hero will fail and all his hopes will be destroyed but at the last moment he will snatch triumph from the jaws of defeat.
In SW this is the rescue of Princess Leia. But there is sacrifice: ObiWan is killed by Darth Vader.
Marks (2009, 323) suggests that the Ordeal involves a "death experience"
Reward (Seizing The Sword)
"After defeating the enemy, surviving death and finally overcoming his greatest personal challenge, the Hero is ultimately transformed into a new state, emerging from battle as a stronger person and often with a prize." (Bronzite)
The Reward can be physical (a treasure) but it is often something spiritual such as knowledge or understanding.
In SW Luke's reward is to be enrolled as a fighter pilot in the rebel fleet,
Entr'Acte 2: The Road Back
The hero goes back across the threshold into the 'real' world. However, there will still be a further challenge, one that will be tackled by the new hero, the one who has grown as a result of all the experiences he has had. This may mean that he has to "choose between his own personal objective and that of a Higher Cause" (Bronzite).
Part Four:
Resurrection
The final encounter with his enemy who has now penetrated the real world. Failure will therefore have consequences, causing suffering to his real-world friends and neighbours.
In SW, ObiWan is resurrected (in Luke's memory) and Luke learns to trust the Force which enables him to destroy the Death Star.
Return With The Elixir
The Elixir may be a treasure or it may be something internal. The hero has grown as a result of his experiences.
References:
Bronzite = Dan Bronzite undated "The Hero's Journey - Mythic Structure of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth" in Movie Outline available at http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/... accessed 9th Feb 2021)
Fortune et al 2014 = FORTUNE, T., ENNALS, P. and KENNEDY-JONES, M., 2014. "The Hero's Journey: Uncovering threshold barriers, dispositions and practices among occupational therapy students" in C. O'MAHONY, A. BUCHANAN, M. O'ROURKE and B. HIGGS, eds. In: Fourth Biennial Conference on Threshold Concepts: From personal practice to communities of practice, 28-29 June 2012 2014, NAIRTL, pp. 56-61.
Marks 2009 = Dara Marks (2009) "Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc" Bloomsbury, London
Schmoop: "Star Wars: A New Hope Hero's Journey" available https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/m... accessed 9th Feb 2021
Vogler (2007) = Christopher Vogler (2007) "The Writer's Journey" (3rd ed), Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City California
I propose a 'four part' structure which splits the act 2 of a three act structure down the middle (act two always has a turning point in its centre). I will then integrate this with the Hero's Journey:
Part One:
Ordinary World
Bronzite says: "This is where the Hero's exists before his present story begins, oblivious of the adventures to come. It's his safe place. His everyday life where we learn crucial details about our Hero, his true nature, capabilities and outlook on life. This anchors the Hero as a human, just like you and me, and makes it easier for us to identify with him and hence later, empathize with his plight."
In Star Wars: A New Hope (SW) these are the scenes showing Luke, the moisture farmer;s boy on Tattoine. In 1917 this is the scene showing the hero sitting with his back against a tree against a pastoral landscape.
Call To Adventure
This is a challenge which will shake the hero out of his rut. In SW this is the message delivered by R2D2. In 1917 there is an order.
Refusal Of The Call
Fear and self-doubt prompt the hero to decline the challenge. This is the response of the 'normal person' so the reader should identify with the hero; we all have fears and self-doubts. The refusal of the call may have consequences, making the quest more difficult than it would otherwise have been.
Meeting The Mentor
In SW Luke meets ObiWan Kenobe. The mentor gives the hero something which will help in the adventure: a gift, a skill, advice or just self-confidence. This meeting prompts the hero to being the quest.
Entr'Acte 1: Crossing the Threshold:
This is the first turning point. Marks (2009, 323) describes it as “awakening”.
This is a key moment of liminality. So many stories have a threshold. It is the Mos Eisley spaceport in SW, the crossing of No Man's Land in 1917, the wardrobe in The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe (LWW) (Lewis 1980) leading to the magical world of Narnia, the whirlwind in The Wizard of Oz (Baum 1994) which transports Dorothy to Oz, the rabbit hole in The Adventures of Alice (Carroll 1992) taking Alice to Wonderland, the time machine in The Time Machine (Wells 2005), the Tardis in the television science fiction series Doctor Who, n Doctor Who. The hero experiences some sort of initiation, they begin to be transformed.
Booker (2005, 105 - 106) subdivides this liminal stage into three substages: “puzzling and unfamiliar ... frustration, difficulty and oppression ... nightmare.”
Part Two
Tests, Allies, Enemies
The adventure proper starts as the hero encounters a set of challenges and tests. He may recruit assistants (this is where Luke hires Han Solo and Chewbacca in SW, in LWW Lucy meets Mr Tumnus) but he needs to learn whether and to what extent they can be trusted. He may meet enemies; Luke and pals are pursued by Storm Troopers in SW, Edmund meets the white witch in LWW. Each test is a test of his character, so we learn more and more about the hero.
Marks (2009, 323) describes this is the "push to breaking point"
Approach To The Inmost Cave
This may be a real place or metaphorical. It is a short respite. The scale of the challenge is made clear. Doubts and fears resurface; the hero may reconsider his options and gather up his strength.
In SW Luke finds out about the Death Star, a seemingly impossible challenge.
The approach to the inmost cave ends with a moment of enlightenment (Marks 2009, 323)
Part Three:
Ordeal
Again, this can be physical or internal. The hero faces his greatest fears and deadliest enemies. In order to survive he has to draw on all that he has learned on the journey so far. This is the ultimate moment: the hero will fail and all his hopes will be destroyed but at the last moment he will snatch triumph from the jaws of defeat.
In SW this is the rescue of Princess Leia. But there is sacrifice: ObiWan is killed by Darth Vader.
Marks (2009, 323) suggests that the Ordeal involves a "death experience"
Reward (Seizing The Sword)
"After defeating the enemy, surviving death and finally overcoming his greatest personal challenge, the Hero is ultimately transformed into a new state, emerging from battle as a stronger person and often with a prize." (Bronzite)
The Reward can be physical (a treasure) but it is often something spiritual such as knowledge or understanding.
In SW Luke's reward is to be enrolled as a fighter pilot in the rebel fleet,
Entr'Acte 2: The Road Back
The hero goes back across the threshold into the 'real' world. However, there will still be a further challenge, one that will be tackled by the new hero, the one who has grown as a result of all the experiences he has had. This may mean that he has to "choose between his own personal objective and that of a Higher Cause" (Bronzite).
Part Four:
Resurrection
The final encounter with his enemy who has now penetrated the real world. Failure will therefore have consequences, causing suffering to his real-world friends and neighbours.
In SW, ObiWan is resurrected (in Luke's memory) and Luke learns to trust the Force which enables him to destroy the Death Star.
Return With The Elixir
The Elixir may be a treasure or it may be something internal. The hero has grown as a result of his experiences.
References:
Bronzite = Dan Bronzite undated "The Hero's Journey - Mythic Structure of Joseph Campbell's Monomyth" in Movie Outline available at http://www.movieoutline.com/articles/... accessed 9th Feb 2021)
Fortune et al 2014 = FORTUNE, T., ENNALS, P. and KENNEDY-JONES, M., 2014. "The Hero's Journey: Uncovering threshold barriers, dispositions and practices among occupational therapy students" in C. O'MAHONY, A. BUCHANAN, M. O'ROURKE and B. HIGGS, eds. In: Fourth Biennial Conference on Threshold Concepts: From personal practice to communities of practice, 28-29 June 2012 2014, NAIRTL, pp. 56-61.
Marks 2009 = Dara Marks (2009) "Inside Story: The Power of the Transformational Arc" Bloomsbury, London
Schmoop: "Star Wars: A New Hope Hero's Journey" available https://www.shmoop.com/study-guides/m... accessed 9th Feb 2021
Vogler (2007) = Christopher Vogler (2007) "The Writer's Journey" (3rd ed), Michael Wiese Productions, Studio City California
February 8, 2021
The Portfolio Novel
Some novels are written as if they are a portfolio, or a gallery, of paintings, a photo album full of snapshots, or a collection of short stories which have been organised so as to tell an overall narrative. I have read a few of these recently and they had very different effects on me. I want to try and understand why this was so.
All three of the novels is told from multiple perspectives, each section being narrated as if from the point of view of a different character. All three jump backwards and forwards in time so that the sequencing of the extracts is less to do with chronology and more to do with the structure of the story. The one in which this is most obvious is Notes from an Exhibition in which the impetus of the book is driven by the reader wanting to know what happened to Petroc, the child who died.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. This jumps backwards and forwards in time (and has one rather brilliant) section which is told as a sort of PowerPoint presentation. It won the Pulitzer in 2011 so it was highly regarded; she said she was aiming at "polyphony" and that she was influenced by Proust (who also jumps around in time). I found it difficult to read, describing it as "literary tag". I think what was hard was the number of characters. In this sort of situation you start with a story with just a few characters but the next story has different characters (though usually overlapping) and unless you are very careful you can end up with a large cast but not a single one of them dwelt upon sufficiently to really develop them. And then a character occurs which you have a vague feeling that you have met before (though possibly, since the chronology isn't linear, this is a character you met before but in the future) but you can't find them again because at the time you first encountered them you didn't pay them that much attention because you weren't sure if they were key or transient.
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward. This was very similar in structure to the Egan novel but I think I enjoyed it more because the number of characters was better controlled.
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. The premise of the structure for this book was the central character being an artist and each section was introduced by the notes for a picture in a post-mortem retrospective exhibition of her work. This was the most successful of the three and I think that was because the central cast (the artist, her sister, and her four children) was so carefully controlled.
So my initial response is that the success or failure of a novel, for me, is dictated by whether there is a cast of characters small enough for me to keep tabs on. My novel Motherdarling is told from multiple perspective though it is a chronologically sequential narrative and I deliberately kept to just four central characters (though there are another 5 who have walk-on parts).
All three of the novels is told from multiple perspectives, each section being narrated as if from the point of view of a different character. All three jump backwards and forwards in time so that the sequencing of the extracts is less to do with chronology and more to do with the structure of the story. The one in which this is most obvious is Notes from an Exhibition in which the impetus of the book is driven by the reader wanting to know what happened to Petroc, the child who died.
A Visit from the Goon Squad by Jennifer Egan. This jumps backwards and forwards in time (and has one rather brilliant) section which is told as a sort of PowerPoint presentation. It won the Pulitzer in 2011 so it was highly regarded; she said she was aiming at "polyphony" and that she was influenced by Proust (who also jumps around in time). I found it difficult to read, describing it as "literary tag". I think what was hard was the number of characters. In this sort of situation you start with a story with just a few characters but the next story has different characters (though usually overlapping) and unless you are very careful you can end up with a large cast but not a single one of them dwelt upon sufficiently to really develop them. And then a character occurs which you have a vague feeling that you have met before (though possibly, since the chronology isn't linear, this is a character you met before but in the future) but you can't find them again because at the time you first encountered them you didn't pay them that much attention because you weren't sure if they were key or transient.
Love and Other Thought Experiments by Sophie Ward. This was very similar in structure to the Egan novel but I think I enjoyed it more because the number of characters was better controlled.
Notes from an Exhibition by Patrick Gale. The premise of the structure for this book was the central character being an artist and each section was introduced by the notes for a picture in a post-mortem retrospective exhibition of her work. This was the most successful of the three and I think that was because the central cast (the artist, her sister, and her four children) was so carefully controlled.
So my initial response is that the success or failure of a novel, for me, is dictated by whether there is a cast of characters small enough for me to keep tabs on. My novel Motherdarling is told from multiple perspective though it is a chronologically sequential narrative and I deliberately kept to just four central characters (though there are another 5 who have walk-on parts).
February 7, 2021
Epistolary novels
Most reviews fall into two camps: those that tell you the plot, which can spoil the experience for a new reader, and those that describe the experience of the reader, which is often just a dressed up version of 'I liked it' or 'I hated it'. How can you make a review better?
There is a lot of information you can give about a book which won't spoil anything. For example, you can talk about the structure of the book. This is separate from genre. For example:
Pamela by Samuel Richardson, one of the first, and longest, novels in English, is an epistolary novel, which means that the narrative is contained in a series of (fictional) letters. Epistolary novels have the advantage of giving the reader little clue about the ending (traditional narratives written in the past tense presuppose that the narrator has survived the adventure thus removing one source of dramatic tension).
Pamela is of the genre that we would probably today call romantic fiction (though it is a little ruder than Jane Austen). But not all epistolary novels need to be in this genre. Dracula (which I read when I was eleven and is so brilliantly scary that I dared read it only in broad daylight and while surrounded by other people), for example, a horror novel, also uses this technique.
So one way of reviewing a book would be to say how the narrative is structured.
Other epistolary novels?
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, at least in the early stages, is made from emails.
There is a lot of information you can give about a book which won't spoil anything. For example, you can talk about the structure of the book. This is separate from genre. For example:
Pamela by Samuel Richardson, one of the first, and longest, novels in English, is an epistolary novel, which means that the narrative is contained in a series of (fictional) letters. Epistolary novels have the advantage of giving the reader little clue about the ending (traditional narratives written in the past tense presuppose that the narrator has survived the adventure thus removing one source of dramatic tension).
Pamela is of the genre that we would probably today call romantic fiction (though it is a little ruder than Jane Austen). But not all epistolary novels need to be in this genre. Dracula (which I read when I was eleven and is so brilliantly scary that I dared read it only in broad daylight and while surrounded by other people), for example, a horror novel, also uses this technique.
So one way of reviewing a book would be to say how the narrative is structured.
Other epistolary novels?
Salmon Fishing in the Yemen, at least in the early stages, is made from emails.
February 5, 2021
You don't get famous by sitting on feathers
I'm reading Dante's Inferno in the original Italian. That sounds impressive! I don't speak or read Italian! So I'm using Google Translate and, when that fails which is fairly regularly (you can't blame Google: Inferno is written in mediaeval Tuscan) I use wiktionary and when that fails too I fall back on the Mandelbaum translation and sometimes even Dorothy L Sayers's translation although hers is written in such poetic language (because she keeps to the original's scansion and rhyme scheme) that I prefer the mangle Google. This cumbersome procedure means I am proceeding very slowly at about a dozen lines a day. It's hard work.
And there are a lot of boring bits. Dante spends a lot of time in Hell meeting old acquaintances and political enemies from Florence and having a chat with them. Often, he doesn't name them (libel laws? -but they were all dead by the time which is how he can meet them in hell) which makes it even more difficult.
But sometimes it is very rewarding, such as when you encounter a vivid (and often timeless) image or a nugget of information about mediaeval Italy or a neat little proverb. Today I met:
seggendo in piuma,
in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre
which I translate as: 'you don't get famous by sitting on feathers or lying under the blanket'. So very true.
And there are a lot of boring bits. Dante spends a lot of time in Hell meeting old acquaintances and political enemies from Florence and having a chat with them. Often, he doesn't name them (libel laws? -but they were all dead by the time which is how he can meet them in hell) which makes it even more difficult.
But sometimes it is very rewarding, such as when you encounter a vivid (and often timeless) image or a nugget of information about mediaeval Italy or a neat little proverb. Today I met:
seggendo in piuma,
in fama non si vien, né sotto coltre
which I translate as: 'you don't get famous by sitting on feathers or lying under the blanket'. So very true.
