Eddie Whitlock's Blog: Reader and Writer, page 2

Cold and Creatures

I'm reading Volcano Weather by Henry and Elizabeth Stommel. It's the story of 1816, the year some called "Eighteen Hundred and Froze to Death." Only one person apparently died in the event - and it does not seem definite that his death was caused by the weather; it may have been a heart attack.

The eruption of Mount Tambora put enough ash into the air that it darkened the area, making day appear night. The ash cloud drifted and apparently changed the weather in Western Europe, Eastern Canada and New England. Significantly lower temperatures killed crops and ultimately altered dietary habits, the economy and population shifts.

I don't know a lot about the event, but I find it interesting as an actual episode of climate change in our recent history. I have no interest in using it for any political goals. I'm interested in using it - maybe - as portending a similar event in the future.

Suppose a bigger volcano erupted in a different location and the ash cloud lowered temperatures world-wide by several degrees?

This book is good, but another book on the subject was released earlier this year. I've put it on hold at the library and I'm looking forward to seeing what it adds to my knowledge of this.

Damn, but I do love a good WHAT IF?!?

One other thing: The novel I just finished, Frankenstein, was written by Mary Shelley. She and her friends were sitting around, suffering through the uncommonly cold summer of 1816, when they decided to write horror stories.

I Shall Be with You on Your Wedding Night

Several times in the latter part of the novel Frankenstein, the monster tells Frankenstein, "I shall be with you on your wedding night." The implications of this threat are wonderfully horrific and handled in a way that may have been typical of the period it was written, but that now lend a subtlety that is often missing from modern horror.

Stephen King says that if you're going to write horror, eventually you have to show them the monster. Mary Shelley certainly showed us the eight-foot-tall monster vividly, describing him:

His yellow skin scarcely covered the work of muscles and arteries beneath; his hair was of a lustrous black, and flowing; his teeth of a pearly whiteness; but these luxuriances only formed a more horrid contrast with his watery eyes, that seemed almost of the same colour as the dun-white sockets in which they were set, his shrivelled complexion and straight black lips.

Still, it was his threat to his creator that makes him a monster.

Never mind that he has killed the narrator's little brother (leading to the execution of an innocent for the crime) and a fellow named Clerval, the monster's threat about the wedding night suggests so very much more.

(I found it interesting that Victor Frankenstein marries his cousin and childhood playmate pretty much on the suggestion of his father with no hint having been made of it before. Still, I am a modern reader of this 195-year-old story.)

I found myself thinking of a more twisted ending for the story, an ending that has the monster inseminating Elizabeth and bringing about his race of creatures. It's no wonder so many writers and movie-makers have launched ideas from this story for the past two centuries.

Absalom Weather

The wisteria is in bloom and I think of Dr. McAlexander telling us that Absalom! Absalom! was the greatest American novel. So I graduated shortly thereafter. Intent not to be one of the people who graduates and never reads another challenging book, I rushed out and bought this William Faulkner novel.

Challenging? Yes. Worth it? Oh, hell yes.

Life-changing? Well. Yes. Yes, it was.

First, the story of Col. Sutpen and his "rise" probably helped me put in perspective the way that we - especially men, but really everyone - use other people while we need them then we set them aside and move on. My funky inner voice says, "You need to think about that shit. That shit don't go away. It comes back on ya'."

Second, I was reading this novel while substitute teaching in Pike County, Georgia. It was the fact that here I was, a grown man reading for pleasure, that caught the eye of Beth Allison. She was the beautiful librarian at the middle school there. I didn't figure I had a chance with her and tried to fix her up with a friend. She turned it back on me and suggested that we go out. Wow. That was 31 years ago.

One of the great things about this story - well, other than having been married to Beth for 30 years - is that in my current job, I sometimes see Dr. McAlexander, who still lives here in Athens.

And this time of year, as I drive across the countryside, I see the wisteria in bloom and I think about Quentin and Col. Sutpen and the widow and Faulkner. Good times, good times.

Frankenstein

I'm struggling right now to listen to the audiobook for Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. It is a struggle, but it is much easier than my repeated attempts to read the book.

Like so many folks, I loved the Frankenstein Monster created by James Whale and Boris Karloff. To struggle through the original source material hurts. I really want to like this book. I love the Old Monster.

The book, though, is less a horror story and more of a reflection on our nature as the abandoned children of God. Created and then set free to find agony in the rejection of others and the recognition of our own hideousness, we are angry Adams, challenging God to give happiness to His creation.

I realize the book was really a short story originally and was probably more exciting in that format. In its published form, it is padded with unnecessary meandering that doesn't do a lot to further the plot nor our understanding of the characters. Instead, we - at best - may see the horridness of the life of the Monster because it is juxtaposed with those of various "normal" folks.

Despite this, I have all the more respect for Shelley's having written this, the first science fiction novel. Never once do I question the "science" behind the creation of the Monster. (Btw, it's done with chemistry and without lightning.)

I'm about halfway through the book at this point and it's been a long journey. I'm determined to make it. And then, well. Lookout, Dracula.

If Opinions Are Like Anuses

If opinions are like anuses (everybody has one), then what are ideas like? I don't have a good analogy for that yet.

Here's the problem: Sometimes I come up with great ideas, but someone else comes up with the same idea and is successful with it before I can get my act together with it.

Case in point: Blindword. This was the idea I had for a horror film a few years ago. Basically, I have always had a fear of going blind and I thought it would make for a good horror story. I wanted - at the time - to make a short (30 minute) film so I wrote a script that could be shot very inexpensively. Here is the opening of the script:

Blindworld
by
Eddie Whitlock

Scene: Alfred, our protagonist, is sitting down on the floor. We see him from behind. He fumbles for a can of food and, using a can opener tied around his neck, opens it.

We see him putting his fingers into the can and bringing them to his lips to taste. He then begins to eat the food as we view the area around him.

We are in a food pantry where groceries are bagged and distributed to the needy. There are shelves of canned goods, a sorting table and a metal folding chair.

As Alfred finishes the can of food, we return to him and see him staring ahead. We can see now that he is blind. He is messy from his eating. He wipes his mouth on his sleeve. He stands up and feels his way toward the door. We see him exit.

(Dissolve/transition with red bugs to form title credit.)

Scene: Alfred is outside. We see him in a squatting position behind an obstruction. There is a noise that prompts him to jump up and pull up his pants.

Alfred
(Yelling) Paki! (He staggers forward and stumbles. He almost falls.) Paki?! (A large dog crosses the yard, stops for a moment to look at Alfred, then continues out of our field of vision.) Paki! (For a long moment, he stands quietly listening for a response)

Scene: Alfred is inside the food pantry again. He is lying in a makeshift bed. He is dozing off. We close in to a close up of his face.

The story then backs up and shows us Alfred before the plague - it was started via a bioweapon - and his attempt to prepare for it. He has a girlfriend named Paki.

Their story of trying to hold on to one another in a world without sight was, I think, the best thing I have written.

And as I was working toward getting it to film...

A good friend tells me he has heard a movie is being made very similar to my idea. It turned out that Jose Saramago had written a book about this idea ahead of me (barely) and it was being filmed with Julianne Moore as the lead.

Dammit.

I put "Blindworld" on the shelf, totally disgusted that a well-known author had beat me to the idea and that now - with a movie version being done - my story would seem to be a rip-off of his.

I finally did get around to seeing the movie. This is what Rotten Tomatoes had to say about the film version of BLINDNESS: This allegorical disaster film about society's reaction to mass blindness is mottled and self-satisfied; provocative but not as interesting as its premise implies.

"Not as interesting as its premise implies" is accurate, unfortunately. It's also the kiss-of-death to my desire to make this idea work. I think there's nothing worse than being an also-ran to a failure.

I still don't have an answer to my quest for an analogy for ideas. I'm kind of afraid that if I come up with something, it will turn out that someone already beat me to it.

A Major Award (that I won't get)

“Well, why aren’t you excited?” Priscilla asked me.

“I am.”

“Well, you don’t act like it. If my book was up for an award, I’d be excited.”

“I’m happy about it. I’m not going to win because my book is such a downer.”

“Are the others upbeat?”

“I don’t really know, but I gotta figure some of them are.”

My book, Evil is Always Human, is a finalist in the General Adult Fiction category for the 2013 ForeWord Reviews contest. I told Priscilla about it because she has been supportive of my writing and her mother actually read the book. She expected me to be excited. I am pretty pleased with that fact, but there’s no point getting excited about it. I kind of think excitement is for suckers because ultimately nothing works out and you’re going to die anyhow. I mean, you can be pleased because something good happened, but by no means should you somehow think that the other shoe will hover in midair in perpetuity.

“Oh, look,” she said. “Here it is on their website.” She was online throughout this conversation and we only made eye contact twice and then briefly. That's how I like my conversations: brief and distracted.

“Yeah,” I said. “There’s not a picture of the cover because apparently I effed that part up.”

“Still, it’s pretty cool.”

“Yeah.”

“So when will they announce the winner?”

“I think it’s in June,” I said, but I really didn’t know. “It’s judged by people in the field in some way. I don’t remember exactly who judges, but I remember thinking it was a group of people who knew something about writing and reading and books and stuff.” There I went, being all eloquent with words and stuff.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “Well. My mom really liked it.” Priscilla still hasn’t read it. “You might win.”

“I’m working on the sequel.”

I don’t recall her reply to that. I think by then, she was surfing Pinterest for shoes or something.

“I have had a lot of people want me to write the sequel,” I told her. Then I did the math in my head and realized that “a lot of people” was probably twenty, max. Well. That was still twenty people who actually verbally told me that they wanted to know what happened next to my miserable main character.

I can go ahead right here and tell you: Nothing good. At least, not a lotta good. But it’s okay because he doesn’t get really excited about things either.

Not writing because... I'm Writing!

I haven't updated the blog here on GoodReads lately because I have spent most of my free writing time working on the sequel to Evil is Always Human .

So far, so good. The current rough rough rough draft is over sixty thousand words. The story is not finished. I have another one-forth to go, if my estimate is correct.

The tale is not in chronological order this time. It starts in 1951, jumps back to 1930ish, moves forward a few years and then - well. The plan is for it to jump as far forward as the 1970s before ending in 1952 or so.

My hero now has a name, though I may change it, and will be addressed by the name throughout. It was easy enough NOT to name him the first time around, but now I need to name him. He's a grown man, after all.

The story deviates greatly from the family tales that drove the first one. This one really incorporates some true-life stories along with some totally fictional ones.

I am writing this on Thursday, February 28, as I prepare to go to Winterville to do a presentation on "Urban Folklore." That comes to mind because urban folklore is a mix of beliefs and storytelling that yield fiction that people would rather fight for than deny. In writing this sequel, I have said some pretty negative things about humanity. Although I wouldn't fight anyone who disagreed with my cynicism - I'm a coward - shooting someone in the back is not beyond me.

At least not in a fictional setting.

Hyde Park on Hudson

Today I saw the new movie "Hyde Park on Hudson" at Cine Athens. The movie stars Bill Murray as my hero Franklin D. Roosevelt. The advertisements suggest that the film is all about the weekend in 1939 when FDR hosted the King and Queen of England at his New York home.

The movie is really more about the brief romance between FDR and his distant cousin Daisy Suckley. It's kind of based on the book Closest Companion, which was a compilation of Daisy's diaries that were published after her death.

The movie-makers use the book as a jumping-off point, I guess. They put in a few events that are not in the book - like Daisy giving FDR a hand job and Daisy discovering a naked Missy LeHand having a tryst with the POTUS at a secret hideaway.

I have read a few books about our 32nd President. I am more intrigued by his private life than the public stuff. In particular, I like to read about how his paralysis impacted his life and made him a better person than he would have probably been otherwise.

I was watching for how the paralysis was dealt with. Overall, it seemed accurate to me. There were a couple of times when FDR got around better than he really could have. Still, the paralysis was neither ignored nor trivialized. It was even something he was able to use when talking with the King to say that his stuttering was simply a facet of him and not a terrible thing to be ignored or denied.

I was also pleased with how the film dealt with the busy-ness of FDR's life as President. He relied on a lot of people to be his legs. Two of these, Missy and First Lady Eleanor, are given prominence in the film. Eleanor, interestingly, is treated as if her homosexuality were a fact of which most inner circle folks were aware. I don't really know that this was the case.

Bill Murray did not do an imitation of FDR. He captured many mannerisms, but he never seemed to be attempting the upper-crust New England dialect of Roosevelt's.

In appearance, they chose to make Murray look like FDR in 1943. By then, he had lost weight and the possibly-cancerous mole over his left eye was noticable. In the movie, that mole is a little too prominent. By the time it was that size, FDR had secret surgery to have it removed.

I was disappointed that the movie chose to diverge from reality at a few points, but I cannot complain a lot about that. The fact that this movie gives an inside view of the life of FDR is pretty amazing.

Chemical Imbalances in the Brain

I am pretty sure that Stephen King gave me the idea of calling Kurt Vonnegut "Uncle Kurt." Vonnegut was a philosopher king for many of us, his writing opening our minds to ideas and concepts beyond the worlds we came from.

Vonnegut introduced me to the idea of "chemical imbalance in the brain" in his book Breakfast of Champions. It was phrased and described in such a simple way that even I could understand it. Over the years, I have seen it to be a hidden motivation behind almost everything: the trickster god in scientific form.

When I taught ninth grade, I would see chemical imbalances in the brain alter the behavior of my students. It would make some overly aggressive and others overly emotional.

Working with at-risk children, I came to see how those chemical imbalances hurt the poor much, much more than they hurt the affluent. A rich man can get away with being an asshole towards others; a poor man will go to jail.

I tried to get a mental health project going when I worked with the Hope Health Clinic, but we didn't have the money to pull it off. Progress in mental health takes time. It takes commitment. Rich men do not seem to understand this. Rich men make the rules.

I worked a couple of years with a mental health non-profit, but that was futile.

I am entirely out of the field these days, but chamical imbalances continue to impact me personally and you, too, whether you know it or not.

My efforts to write a sequel to Evil is Always Human has been impacted by my mood, which is driven by these brain chemicals. I write this on a Sunday morning, sitting on the sofa, being sad for no good reason and being thankful that I am rich enough to be sad here and not in a jail cell.

A Note From the Future

Every now and then I have an idea for something that I want to put into a book, I just haven't started that particular book yet.

Here's today's note from the future: "The Book of Life is chock-fucking-full of disclaimers."

Sorry that this is not a longer entry, but it's the holidays. Between working and "celebrating," I've not had a lot of time for writing.

I hope you are well and - in the words of Bob & Ray - write if you get work.