Devon Trevarrow Flaherty's Blog, page 30

Cookbook Review: Cooking for Wizards, Warriors and Dragons

Image from Amazon.com

It was October when I was at a great Southern Pines, NC bookstore called The Country Bookshop with a coupon, so my choice of Cooking for Wizards, Warriors and Dragons by Thea James (co-author of the award-winning The Book Smugglers fanzine) was not just about enjoying fantasy books nor just about me having a project in the works that is similar to this book, but also about it being Halloween and so many of these recipes fit the mood of the autumn. Wizards. Warriors. Dragons. The fall is the time for imagination of a certain sort, amiright? The book was on display as a sort of recommended read. (It was just published in the summer of 2021). I had never seen it before, but it appealed to me and made me wonder about the project I was already working on. So I bought it.

Since then, I have seen it around. Apparently a cookbook is the sort of thing many fantasy fans would enjoy, or at least bookstores think that readers of fantasy would like it. Or maybe booksellers are just enamored by the book itself. I wouldn’t blame them. Though not particularly thick, the book is a pretty one (pretty being a strange choice here, but still). The cover is nice, but inside it’s a treasure trove of stylized, black and white illustrations scattered amidst pages full of graphics, patterns, epic borders, and appropriate font, not to mention that the pages are made (clearly just for fun) to look like old parchment. Is it a spell book? Is it the history of a secret, magical land? Or is it a cookbook? The designers behind this book really should win some sort of prize.

Image from The Book Smugglers, the booksmugglers.com

Each recipe (or set of recipes) has a brief introduction to tell you where the recipe was inspired from. Every recipe in the book is inspired by a specific bit of literature, and while that may excite you fantasy readers, there is of course a limited catalogue. Thea James wanted to include some up-and-coming writers as well as minority and women writers, so it’s not a recipe book for the classics. She did include some The Lord of the Rings, A Song of Fire and Ice, The Earthsea Cycle, and one or two small things for The Hobbit and The Once and Future King. Other than those obvious ones, though, less of the standards and more of the new and underrepresented. (I am reading the Daevabad series, which she includes.) There is an index that make finding these recipes easy. (Beware: some of them are only a drink recipe.)

I have tried some of the recipes by now, which were written my Isabel Minunni. (Strangely enough, Minunni is a cookbook author mainly for special diets (including Mediterranean and vegan (and pegan?)), and there’s not even a whiff of that here. There couldn’t be: these are mostly hearty, trail-life nourishing, often medieval foods from books that traditionally have hunting and roasting in them.) I have marked recipes to try from Rice, Pickles and Miso Soup, to A Soup to Keep the Wolf Away, from Roasted Pork Shoulder with Rice and Plantains, to Mixed Berry Bubbly Tarts. The recipes run the usual gamut from breakfast to dessert (including cocktails and feasts) and the more unusual gamut of European to Asian to Middle Eastern, from ancient or simple or traditional to more innovative and imaginative (as do the books used to inspire them). The recipes are not completely “true” to the books, as in they are often extrapolated from the text or even a play on words or ideas (like Mordor’s Lava Cake. Get it?). I imagine some cosplay types howling that they aren’t authentic enough.

I made A Simple Hunter’s Stew (inspired by The Farseer Trilogy) which my teens loved and I thought was a little boring. The recipes appear to work, though many of them are quite involved and also many of them are recipes which I already have and use (like coq au vin or shepherd’s pie or lemon poppyseed bundt cake with a (sometimes) new name). As far as planning a fantasy supper club or bibliophile event, you could use this cookbook, though I imagine it gets used more to peruse through or submit families to manic-eyed suppers with speeches on more usual nights. It makes a good coffee-table book, though it could help you wrap up an especially involved book club (which would have to include food cards and more food speeches). Whatever; it’s a beautiful and thoughtful book that might not be exactly what you expect and so both excite and (a little) disappoint (I’m a bibliophile and a foodie) at the same time. Still, worth the purchase for a fan of fantasy, I think.

Mid-Series Review: Harry Potter Minalima Pop-Up Edition

Image from Amazon.com

I read the Harry Potter series almost every Halloween-time. Last year I started the series by reading and then reviewing the illustrated version. This year I am doing the same thing with the Minalima pop-up edition, just it’s taken me a couple months to get around to reviewing it. (And, in fact, I waited for the second book to be available and was waiting in queue with my pre-order.)

Image from Amazon.com

Minalima (website HERE) is Miraphora Mina and Eduardo Lima (thus “minalima”), theater designers from London who started working together to come up with the graphic side (/props) of the Harry Potter movies for Warner Bros. They have continued this relationship with the Harry Potter franchise by designing the Wizarding World of Harry Potter and other marketing materials. Several years back they started publishing interactive versions of literary classics at a rate of about one per year—Peter Pan, The Jungle Book, Beauty and the Beast, The Little Mermaid, The Secret Garden, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The Adventure of Pinocchio, and now The Wizard of Oz—and a few years ago started work on a line of interactive version of the Harry Potter series. These, too, come out at a rate of about one per year and they have only published the first two. I can find nowhere where Minalima has committed to publishing the whole series or even made an announcement about the third, but I can’t help but think this is their intention. I mean, their business is built on this very thing. It’s not like they have a lot of other projects going on and when you get the green light to tap into the Wizarding World for revenue…

As you can see in the photos, Minalima does beautiful, stylized work. There are reasons their books only come out once in a blue moon: they’re shooting for perfection and they get pretty darn close. Though there is a simplicity to their illustrations—they’re almost like silhouettes—there is also a complexity with pattern and visual texture. Their illustrations are saturated, moody, atmospheric, and imaginative, as well as playful, innocent and containing a bit of levity, which makes their graphics a perfect fit for the Wizarding World. They make me want to do art, but instead I just sit there drinking in the details of the page before I move on.

Images from Minalima.com

So is it worth it to buy these books? It’s not like they’re cheap. (Also, I find myself wondering how on earth they will manage a pop-up version of the giant books later in the series.) And what if I’m already collecting the illustrated versions by Jim Kay (which is two books ahead of Minalima, review HERE)? Well, like I said with the Jim Kay versions, it would be a great series to start with when you introduce kids to the series. Other than that, you just have to be a superfan (and there are millions of those) or a bibliophile (or both) to want three (or more) versions of a sometimes-expensive book on your shelf. The Minalima illustrations are completely different in style from the Jim Kay illustrations, as are the books themselves. They are squatter and more papery, by which I mean they are matte and not sleek and shiny like the Jim Kays. And of course there is the pop-up/interactive elements, which though they be few, they do not disappoint. The work that must have gone into printing such things! It’s like magic.

Personally, I made myself wait until I was going to re-read it to really look through it. I mean, I wanted to be surprised as I went through the story. And I will continue to collect both the Jim Kay and Minalima versions. In fact, that’s what I would recommend. If you are going to get something different from the version of Harry Potter that are cheaper at your nearest bookstore, I would recommend going with one of these (and which one depends on your aesthetic, I suppose, though mine fits more closely with Minalima). Having these two sets and/or one “normal” one is all that any already-half-crazy fan would need. And I only add the “normal” one because you won’t really be toting these giant editions around town, especially if you are handling them with kid gloves, like I am. Still, enjoying them.

Book Review: The Witches

I know most of you can empathize, but it has been a busy season. I hosted Thanksgiving for thirteen and I go all out (and then multiply what you were thinking by ten), my daughter’s birthday fell the day before this year, we are still in a pandemic, I have Christmas to make happen on a budget and for two kids plus a large extended family, I love to bake for others, I had to wrap up homeschool and co-op for the calendar year and rehearse and record for our church’s TV Christmas Eve service, and, quite frankly, we have our own personal stuff going on amidst all of this. So that’s where I’ve been. (I started NaNoWriMo, again, and strong, again, but I am always amazed that anyone ever chose November to write a novel. The first week or two—fine. But then the second half of November? Fuggetaboutit. Why not September or October? Or any of the months from January to May? The holiday season and the summer is always the busiest.)

So I can’t believe it, but I still have reviews waiting to be written from Halloween. (I also have Thanksgiving and Christmas waiting in the wings, so I’ll rush through the holidays before the new year.) One of the books I read for Halloween this year was (a re-read of) The Witches by Roald Dahl. I have done most of my Roald Dahl reading as an adult, but I just love his stuff. Matilda is my favorite, and I have long thought The Witches was my least favorite. I dunno. I think I would now switch that to The Twits. The Witches—though still not my favorite—isn’t quite as disappointing as I remember. I think there are a few issues here that get in the way of Dahl’s usually magical, kid-geared edgy, fantastic writing and story-telling.

The Witches is a dark, children’s fantasy story about an English boy (no name given) whose parents die (no surprise there) and he moves in with his grandmother in Norway. According to the parent’s will, however, they have to return to England for his education but Grandmother brings her Norwegian knowledge of witches with her and makes sure he is also educated on that front. When the pair vacation at a swanky hotel, the boy must use the knowledge she has given him to figure out that they are in the presence of the Grand High Witch and the annual conference of English witches, the scheme the witches are brewing, and how to escape with his life and—hopefully—the lives of the children of England.

Here are the issues: one is how scary it is. For some people, writing about the occult or any sort of witch is going to be a bridge too far for them. More generally, many kids are going to be scared by this book because it’s about witches killing little kids. Of course, Dahl presents things in his own completely forward and yet funny and child-oriented way (and kids are squished or vanished or turned into chickens instead of whatever gruesome things might be more realistic). Two, I’m sure there are people who object to this book on the basis of how the witches are portrayed. Sure, there are modern people who call themselves witches and they are not bald, cruel, or child-hunting, but “witches” is one of those words that is stretched too far, anyhow. Witches are, technically, female humans who do magic and so it can refer to fantastical, bad magical ladies or fantastical magical ladies in a more neutral sense or it can refer to any number of historical groups of women through time. Obviously, this book is a fantasy about witches of a certain stereotypical vein and Dahl gives them random flourishes to make the whole thing more interesting. (And now that I think about it, some people might get riled up about how this book deals with more serious themes, like kidnapping or missing children. But that is Dahl’s usual: taking something real and serious and giving it a spin that both drives it home and makes it light enough to talk about. Not that he would put it that way. I more get the sense from him that he just wants to tell a great story and he doesn’t care what feathers he’s ruffling. When the book was published in the 80s there was also objections made regarding misogyny, which I could see but not necessarily agree with.) And three, the ending is a bit nontraditional and can read as unfulfilling/disappointing. He does things along the way to get the reader ready for this, but I am still hoping for something else every time.

And still, the story is riveting, the imagination soaring, the chuckles abundant. Dahl is a master of story-telling and this story is not exception. It’s not my favorite and it probably won’t be yours, but as for a fun Halloween read for heartier families, this is a good family story.  

MOVIES

There is a 1990 version starring Angelic Huston that gets decent to good reviews but the cinematic effects are quite outdated. The newest version, which I reviewed HERE, was not well received despite all the anticipation, though the CG is great.

Articles Review: Sarah Twombly

Image from sarahtwombley.com

While a fellow at Martha’s Vineyard Institute of Creative Writing’s annual conference earlier this year, I ended up hanging with the other parent-writer fellows and parent-writers (like in the Zooms and chats, because the conference was Pandemic-virtual). One of these people was the impressive Sarah Twombly. There was just something about her… she did give me a few compliments but somewhere along the line I felt it would prove interesting to look into her. (It could also have been some of the writing that she shared as we all shared impromptu stuff and did nightly readings.) Sure enough, online, I found that she has authored a number of articles, increasing in frequency and in impressiveness of publisher, over the past half-dozen years. I was interested enough I read a couple and then looked her up again when I got home, read the rest of what I could immediately find.

Pay attention to this one. Though perhaps her style doesn’t fit you exactly—she specializes (so far) in motherhood, aging, and other very vulnerable states of humanity. Most of her stuff (so far) is nonfiction with the exception of creative nonfiction (in one case). But her writing is brilliant. It’s beautiful, melodic, introspective, real, and interesting. Most of her stuff even includes some sort of unique gimmick. (Gimmick probably isn’t the word I want here.) Anyhow, it’s good stuff. (Her most famous article reminds me of one that a friend of mine—Theresa Blackinton—wrote for The Washington Post: “Thanks, Barbie for Making Me a Better Parent,” but with a different voice. Maybe that’s because all the hip writing for parents is blood-letting and antidote-to-social media.)

Here is the list of what I read:

“What We Want Is Simple,” The Atticus Review, 2020“Juggling My Children, Their Alcoholic Sitter, and My Own Sobriety,” The New York Times, 2021“The Strongest Cookie,” Hippocampus Magazine, 2016“I Hate Those Moms,” Scary Mommy, 2020“Dear Parents, Know This,” Contrary, 2021“I Am Here and Here and Here and Here,” Complete Sentence, 2020“The Mass of Invisible Labors,” Waterwheel Review, 2021

There is more to come, and soon, which makes me think that Twombly is a star on the ascent. (I feel like I am a star on the ascent (or at least a writer on the ascent) but I’m like a year or three behind Twombly). I believe she has something forthcoming in Prairie Schooner. Until then, if you would like to read a handful of very well-written articles (but article isn’t the right word for it) about parenting, aging, and alcoholism, then head on over to her website (HERE) where there are links to the writing. Or you could just search for them and you should be able to find them on your own. I might even say Twombly and I have similar styles, but that seems presumptuous. If you like my stuff, or if you like the kind of stuff I like, or if you just recognize good writing when you see it… “The Strongest Cookie” and “I Am Here and Here and Here” really stood out to me.

And enjoy.

Book Review: The Song of Achilles

I have been reading Greek mythology lately. I have been teaching mythology to a small classroom of approximately-ninth-grade boys and I have, as a rabbit trail, plunged into book after book of Greek mythology. It was always a subject that interested me. (The truth is that just about everything in English 1 interested and still interests me (except grammar) but I don’t have time for all the rabbit trails. I’m drowning in rabbit trails already.) I have made a list of Greek mythology titles I want to read which is longer than the books which I have bought and lined up on the shelf to read which is more than I could possibly get around to reading right now. So where am I? I have read Gods and Heroes, Mythology, Medea, an Odyssey graphic novel, an Iliad graphic novel, a couple children’s books on mythology, and a number of shorter articles and chapters from the mythology books in my home library. That’s enough to make my point.

Image from Amazon.com

When I was on my writing residency this year, I actually didn’t bring enough books. I kept the bibliopacking list slim but it turned out that my late evenings were spent mostly reading. If I had put in enough hours writing on any given day, I chose slowly winding my brain down most nights instead of burning the midnight oil and then crashing with a buzzing cerebrum. (I did do that a few times, too.) So mid-week, I had out-read the few books on the bedside table. It was okay, though, because not only did I have a bookstore within walking distance, I also had a coupon left for me on the dresser for said bookstore. Ten per cent off everything, suckas! I walked up to the bookstore and with my wishlist in hand I pulled three titles from the shelves that were near the top of the list. One of them was an extremely popular title that also happened to fall within the Greek mythology theme: The Song of Achilles by Madeline Miller. (Circe was also on that list but I already had a shiny, new copy at home so I couldn’t buy it again. We’ll get around to reading and reviewing that someday.)

Song of Achilles was Madeline Miller’s breakout novel. (Circe has also been published, now, and is also very successful.) It was published in 2012, but keep in mind that Miller does extensive research to write her “historical” fiction and on top of the usual history research she also has to have an exhaustive understanding of Greek and Roman mythology which is sort of like an alternate reality. Two universes. So she takes a long time to get a story right. I suppose that part of the success of her writing is the meticulousness and the accuracy/understanding. But I’m pretty sure most people are in it for the characters and the specific, compelling story.

Alright, so The Story of Achilles is a retelling of Homer’s Iliad, which is the story of the last year of the legendary Trojan War. Much of the original story does actually revolve around Achilles, but Miller’s version not only zeroes in on this one character, it also stretches out the timeline a bit. In fact, we head all the way back to Achilles’ childhood, but time slows down the closer we get to the end, so there are just some touches at first that lead to a fluidity. And, surprise!, this is the song of Achilles whose praise is not sung by himself or from his own perspective, but straight from the pen/lips of Patroclus. Who is Patroclus, you might ask. To simplify things, he’s Achilles’ BFF. But it’s not that simple, or at least not always that simple. There was always some speculation that Patroclus and Achilles might have been a little more than BFFs, if you know what I mean. Some of the early writers portrayed Achilles and Patroclus as lovers and some did not. There is no “reality” to it because Achilles and Patroclus were never real people, but it is impossible to know what the original storyteller’s conception of them was. Even Homer is not particularly clear about it. In The Iliad they are very close friends and comrades but there is no indication that they were more (which may have been due to a more nuanced conception of same-sex relationships in ancient Greece). Then again, at the given time in Greece (yes, they were in Troy but they were Greeks) male homosexual relationships were somewhat normative though along lines that were often different from what they might be today (like in apprentice-tutor “relationships” or on-the-side arrangements). I also find it hard to believe many of the modern interpretations of these relationships because of the nature of the dual-lens reading of “history” and everything that was left unsaid and is therefore assumed or speculated.

In Miller’s retelling, then: sure, Achilles’ and Patroclus’ relationship—because it is sexual and, perhaps more importantly, romantic—is a big ideology draw for some readers, but it is also a huge part of the story. Achilles and Patroclus as a storyline has always orbited around their friendship and fidelity, their loyalty and love, so the book’s main thread is their growing and enduring love. In that sense, even with all the fighting and even gore, Song of Achilles is a love story. Readers end up weeping at the end and there are many touching moments where the two are tested and the reader sympathizes, learns from them, roots for them, and marvels at them. It’s a fascinating story, anyhow. From the opening sentences we are driven deep into the ancient world of Greece and the world of gods and goddesses, beasts and magic, though interestingly enough those things are underplayed. It’s a more realistic world that we are lost in, one with very complex and intricately drawn characters who exciting things happen to. Patroclus sets out adoring Achilles, a demi-god, and he never stops. He is the most constant of Achilles’ admirers, even though he is also the closest of all his intimates.

And this book is intimate. I mean that sexually, so be prepared for graphic (and yet not really gratuitous) sex scenes (same- and opposite-). But I more mean that emotionally and relationally. Song of Achilles is a book that it is easy to get lost in. True story: after my first night staying up way too late reading this, I had to hand it off to one of my fellow residents, asking him to keep it from me all day. He said, “I’ve been there,” and took it. It’s certainly easy to read, and engaging, and interesting, and whatever else. I am not a battle-scene gal, but I made it through all those, too. And, let me remind you, I knew the outcome of all of these stories since I’d just read them all about five different ways. And still I was biting my nails and couldn’t put it down (maybe partly because I wasn’t sure how she would manage a narrator who was… well, perhaps you don’t already know).

This is not the most amazing book I’ve ever read, and it’s not even totally my style (it’s a bit book-candy-ish), but it is a great read if you’re looking for a gripping, sweep-you-off-your-feet experience and you’re on board for a homoerotic retelling of a Greek myth likewise steeped in legend and period history.

Book Review: Beowulf Graphic Novel

Image from Amazon.com

Ya’ll like gore? Blood? Torsos ripped in half by dripping, in-side-out monsters? Go no further than Beowulf in almost any iteration. The original epic. The 2007 movie. And this Gareth Hinds graphic novel, though it’s probably the easiest to swallow because it is cartoon-y and meant for a younger audience. Still…

Beowulf is a true epic, which means it’s a really, really long poem about a bigger-than-life hero and an eye-popping adventure or ten. Beowulf is also really old. The bits and pieces of it that we still have constitute some of the oldest bits and pieces of the written English language and come from the 400s. It’s really famous. It’s really classic. And it’s been translated and adapted many times (because Old English needs to be translated for most people) including into multiple English editions (some in verse), movies, and graphic novels. Yes, there is more than one graphic novel but I’ve been on a Gareth Hinds kick lately and apparently so have bookstores.

I read Beowulf (whole or in part) when I was in high school or maybe even middle school. What I remember was feeling muffled and dark—confused and the presence of evil. There is definitely something wooly about reading old language and there is definitely something evil about this story. On the surface it’s about a hero (or a couple of them). But simmering right underneath this hero story is the larger-than-life monsters, Grendl, Grendl’s mom, and the dragon. Honestly, just saying “Grendl, Grendl’s mom, and the dragon,” sounds like no thing but a chicken wing. But these monsters are nasty. They are the very thing of nightmares on steroids. They are ruthless, bloodthirsty, and violent. They are dark and evil and if you really get to thinking about them your knees might get to knocking together. In other words, they are exactly the kind of monsters that could make a truly epic hero. But they’re also scary as heck and even a little bit nasty. And don’t you even think about getting attached to a character because as soon as you do they’re going to have their limbs ripped off and their guts splattered on the wall.

[image error]Image from Fandom

Not that characters are exactly why you might read this epic poem. The story was originally meant to inspire, to put on display the kind of character that one would need to survive and even thrive on the ancient British Isles. Meaning, the kind of person who had more testosterone than brain cells, was inordinately large and had a matching ego, stood up for his or her neighbors and family, etc. Nowadays, you’re more likely to read Beowulf under compulsion, as the modern life is a much more rounded, nuanced place. From this experience, besides confusion and terror, you might gain an understanding of ancient man, of history, of anthropology, of human nature and desire, of the origins of things… Certainly the story has some dramatic moments (though we were still hundreds of years away from a solid Hero’s Journey), some suspense, some emotional weight, but the style, pacing, and other things are pretty far removed from what most of us are comfortable with.

And after I’ve said all that, let me bring you back to the reality here: I am reviewing a graphic novel version, specifically the one by Gareth Hinds. Well, I thought it was pretty good. Still gory, still dark, and completely busting with rippling biceps, it was what it should have been. I especially liked the way Hinds used black ink to make Grendl seem even eerier and more sinister. He was also first, solid on the page, and then artistic on the page. Hinds usually has these illustrative flourishes and here they turned a late night read of a very short story into an interesting time. I still have issues with following a story well in graphic novel form, but I was already familiar with the story of Beowulf, so that might have helped.

If you are going to have to read Beowulf, this would be a good companion volume. Otherwise, it’s a good way to introduce ancient literature to a teenager who is ready for violence and gore. Just tell him or her not to expect any redemption or any neatly packaged, familiar stories.

I couldn’t help it. I thought this was so funny. A cartoon from School Library Journal titled “Teaching Graphic Novels”[image error]

Book Review: Medea

Perhaps I’m cheating. No, I’m not. I just wanted to buy a couple of the books that are on my TBR that are not already on my shelf at home. I chose some shorter ones. So sue me. Medea was up near the top, anyway, since it’s Greek mythology and that’s what we’ve been studying in home school co-op.

Image from Amazon.com

I read this in high school. I’m sure I hated it. Why? I mean, I liked Greek mythology and still do. But the subject matter—it’s too tough. Of all the Greek and Roman myths to turn into a play, this is one of the last ones I would choose. Wife is jilted for a princess. In retaliation, she decides to go out in a blaze of glory by killing her two children by said husband. So, if you are familiar with such things, the story of Jason and Medea, the witch-woman he brought back from his little spree on the Argo.

She’s a bloody character to begin with, though she’s also tragic because—if I recall correctly—she ended up following Jason because she was magicked into love by the gods. She was the detritus of the quest, but she came with guns a-blazin’: she ran off in the dead of night and murdered her brother. Jason never really loved her, valued her, or treated her right, either, from the looks of it. And then we pick up after Jason has found himself a more lucrative deal with a local princess and so he’s told Medea he’s moving outward and upward. She’s mad.

She’s also, remember, a witch (or sorceress or magician or what-have-you). She’s always been tough as nails. She’s a woman of passion and of motivation. These poor kids don’t stand a chance and we, as the audience, get to watch the thing unravel. We even end up feeling a little sorry for Jason or even Medea, which I suppose is the point of the play. The ancient peoples knew the outcome, after all. These were familiar stories. But Euripedes has survived because of the language (probably) and the exploration of Medea and those around her. What would make a mother do such a thing? What led up to it and what made the tragedy inevitable? Can this sort of thing happen to me? Can I dodge my own fate? So by watching Medea go down in flames, we learn about humanity and we learn about ourselves.

If you’re ready to give 47 pages to hating (that’s a strong word) a play, then I would recommend this as part of your classical reading. You do get a lot of bang for your buck. It’s not modern story-telling (we don’t even find out the names of the kids(!)), but there is still something to be read here. Short and bitter.

(By the way, I read the Dover Thrift Edition with Rex Warner’s translation.)

QUOTES:

“What’s strange in that? Have you only just discovered / That everyone loves himself more than his neighbor?” (p4).

“I would like to be safe and grow old in a / Humble way. What is moderate sounds best, / Also in practice is best for everyone. / Greatness brings no profit to people” (p5).

“Of all the things which are living and can form a judgment / We women are the most unfortunate creatures” (p8).

“Do not consider painful what is good for you, / Nor, when you are lucky, think yourself unfortunate” (p19).

“Mortals must bear in resignation their ill luck” (p33).

“The childless, who never discover / Whether children turn out as a good thing / Or as something to cause pain, are spared / Many troubles in lacking this knowledge. / And those who have in their homes / the sweet presence of children, I see that their lives / Are all wasted away by  their worries” (pp36-37).

“Many things the gods / Achieve beyond our judgment. What we thought / Is not confirmed and what we thought not god / Contrives. And so it happens in this story” (p47).

Revise and Resubmit

As I have said before, since I was a little girl I have been looking forward to the milestones on the journey of the writing life. This summer I encountered a milestone that I didn’t see coming. Indeed, I didn’t know it was a thing to look for. Maybe you do and that makes you smarter or cooler than me. Personally, I hadn’t heard of this one and so was surprised by it.

And it is the revise-and-resubmit. Not the accepted-and-now-you-have-to-edit. No. The well-we-see-something-in-your-piece-so-we-don’t-exactly-want-to-throw-it-out-but-it-also-has-to-be-different-before-we’ll-say-we’re-going-to-publish-it. Zero commitment on their part, and a glimmer of hope for you. Because, honestly, after flopping about on the shore of my writing career for the last two decades (I was so busy being other things, most of the time) that I was not a little tickled that someone had sent back a response to my very few inquiries (it always seems like I’m sending a lot but then I count) with more than a polite rejection. (Actually, I was even celebrating the polite rejections as a step up from ignoring me under a slush pile of epic proportions (and perhaps a mediocre cover letter). I was told in the past year that you should aspire to 100 rejections per year.)

In case you find yourself in this same surprising situation, then, I wanted to have a little chat about it.

Before we react, what is a revise-and-resubmit? It is the editor of a publication (or maybe even an agent) asking you to make certain revisions to a story and resubmit it. In other words, they’d like to take another look (and perhaps see how good you are at working with a team, being cooperative, and correcting your own mistakes). In most cases, the editor is going to give you a list of things that don’t jive between what you’ve done and what they’re looking for. (This can range from very specific (I don’t like that phrase) to general (the ending is too vague).) It is the editor saying they don’t want to take a hard pass, but they’re also not wanting to go into a contract with you, yet—there are some serious issues to resolve before a happy marriage of piece and publication can happen. There might be some time constraints, there might be some must-haves and options. It’s not the most likely of responses in the fiction world (academic papers are another thing, altogether), but it’s pretty sensical and straight-forward. You can say “No.” You can say, “Sure,” and then they don’t like the changes and say back to you, “No, thank you.” Or you can say “Sure,” and you wind up with a “Sign on the dotted line!” From what I can tell, the chances are about fifty-fifty (assuming you are doing your best to both meet their needs and be true to your art. We’ll talk about that in a sec.)

The first thing to do (as in many situations) is to remain calm. This is a thing. It happens to writers. You are not a freak. You are not being rejected (again). You will live to see another day. Now,

The second thing to do is to take this as a good sign and an opportunity. These are different things, but both of them should be considered and embraced. It IS a good sign: authors (in case you didn’t know) get something like a bazillion rejections during the course of their careers and a revise-and-resubmit is not a rejection which means that someone saw something in your work. They saw potential. They saw something they liked which meant they didn’t want to walk away from it. Woo-hoo! Celebrate. Do a happy dance or just a bunny hop. Which leads us to: it IS an opportunity. As long as this editor or these editors aren’t jerk-holes (and it’s as likely as not that they’re not), you might actually learn something from both them and the process. Here are some of the things you might learn from the revise-and-resubmit process:

How to work (play) well with others. How to cooperate. How to interact with people, again. And all this while your tender ego is on the line. (Bonus note: If you don’t want to loll about in vast hinterlands of self-doubt, then perhaps the writing field is not the choice for you.)The technical side of walking through the submission and publication process, or at least some more experience of it.How to choose what is important to you about a story, because you are going to have to do this during this process (unless by some miracle their issues are exactly what you were hoping to change, anyhow. Ha!). They’re going to put their finger on something and you’re going to have to ask things like, “Is this me or is this the story?” “Is this integral to what I was trying to say?” “Does this change the story too much?” “Are we getting stronger or weaker?” Etc.To agree with truth. You know? You can feel it like a letting down somewhere in the solar plexus. Ouch, but totally. That correction rings true. I should have killed that darling, myself.To disagree with lies. Maybe flash fiction doesn’t need a resolution and I’m willing to die on this hill to make that point. Maybe Jenny doesn’t get the guy. Maybe adverbial clauses are my voice. And now brace for the consequences.You should have just revised a million times yourself, first (and with friends). Perhaps this whole almost-embarrassing process didn’t even need to happen. You didn’t actually revise it twice (or once) yourself. The story was all shiny and new and with stars in your eyes you shoved it out there into the world. Well, this was a poor choice and you should learn not to do this.To say what you want to say. It is entirely possible that you will find yourself saying “Well, that’s not what I meant,” or “That’s not what I said,” or “It was the size of the tsunami that I was connecting to her father’s personality in that metaphor.” But here’s the rub: if the editor didn’t read it that way, it’s likely you have not clearly communicated what you thought you had. Maybe you had some pretty words. Maybe people even liked them. But if you are in left field and your readers are in right, well, you might want to examine your techniques and detail choices more carefully. Put a few more tools into the ol’ writing toolbelt.

There is more, I’m sure, but this is some of what I found myself learning during this process. Now let’s walk through the process one step at a time. Begin at #1 when the process has been initiated.

Take a deep break. Step away. DO NOT DELETE THE EMAIL. DO NOT REPLY WITH FIRE IN YOUR EYES OR TEARS ON YOUR CHEEKS. Just wait, please, until tomorrow at the very least.Seek some advice. This blog entry may be enough. Honestly, I couldn’t find a whole lot of advice about this except in the field of scholarly publication and much of this wasn’t applicable. So I took the issue to my writing group, first via email and then in person. Google it, if you want. Give all your writing books a peruse and let me know if you come across something. Call up an old editor friend and ask them. Likely, the advice is going to boil down to my step one with a dash of hopefulness and bolstering.Decide if what they have asked you to do is something you can do and if it’s something you want to do. If you submitted there in the first place, then try not to second-guess yourself.Respond to them and do it in a professional, courteous, respectful, and positive way. Thank them for the opportunity.If they want a deadline or an approximate deadline, choose wisely but don’t spend all year on it. Let them know quickly. I got advice for this that ranged from a week to months for a rewrite on a flash fiction piece. I wanted to communicate to the editors that I was willing and professional but I also didn’t have limitless space and time at the drop of a hat. It was going to take some time to get to it. On top of that, revisions should take time. They should be considered carefully and revisited a few times with some breathing space in between. It’s possible that you might even need a friend to give it a look-see. I went with a little more than a month the first time because that corresponded with some time I would have to myself at a residency.Gather the notes that they sent. Read them over carefully. Make notes of your own. Also give it a think.Do the revision in a fresh file. Make the tough choices. Yes, kill your darlings, but keep the integrity of the piece. The real deal, I think, is to clarify and tighten. Stay within those original word count (and other) requirements, which they may not remind you of.If there are issues that you have not yet resolved, something wheedling at you, a box you didn’t quite check, move that to the front of your mind and do some thinking. Take a drive. Take a shower. Do something creating like painting or scrapbooking or knitting. If you come up with anything brilliant or a breakthrough in that time: write it down!Give it some space. You may want a friend to read it or you may want to go for another walk to think or sleep it off or whatever. I would give it a few days, the beginning of which it would still be on my mind.Cross all the t’s and dot all the i’s, which you are used to doing as a writer, anyhow. In other words, make sure things are spelled correctly, have proper grammar, are clear and physically presentable (with proper margins, font, etc.). Don’t get all sloppy now that you have a foot in the door: they’ll have no problem slamming it on you if you’re careless, scattered, etc.Do at least one more revision and then call it a day. “Calling” art is a tightrope walk, whether a collage or a story. When is it done? Should you keep fixing things? Can you polish until you have nothing left? Have you added one too many layers? Have you removed the chaff? Are you about to run out of time, sanity, or passion? Meet the deadline. Seriously. (Then again, still don’t panic, even if it’s a little late. Apologize and move forward. If it’s a lot late, just apologize. On second thought, don’t be a lot late.)Resubmit. Thank them again for the opportunity and perhaps share a little about what you learned in the process.

In case you’re wondering, I got a revise-and-resubmit for a flash fiction piece from an online literary journal in August. I tried to meet their laundry list of demands/ideas and then got—surprise!—a second revise-and-resubmit. They said this rarely happens; I sighed and started the process—including the doubting and questioning—over again. After the second time ‘round I was pretty sure it was going to get the final boot but, lo and behold, they sent me a letter of acceptance and even had some really nice things to say about the story AND about my edits (which felt especially nice, to me). The story, “Pinned Up,” should be making a debut in Every Day Fiction in about a month. (Quick turnaround for a daily, internet publication.) Wish me luck and I’ll do you the same.

Book Review: One Thing (Storms)

So, I was a little confused when I picked up this book. Or, no, before that. I had put One Thing on my list for reading this year. Then when the time grew nigh, I looked the book up and bought One Thing by Gary Keller, some sort of self-help best-seller. I think I thought it was on there for my pandemic reading. But somewhere between that moment and the one when the book arrived, I figured out that I had intended to read One Thing by Sam Storms, a Christian hedonism book that was also popular back in 2004 but maybe not to quite the extent of the second book of the same title that I now owned for almost no reason. Sam Storms is actually more known, I suppose, as the pastor of Oklahoma’s Bridgeway Church or the founder of Desiring God Ministries. Maybe he’s not that popular at all, really. My pastor is a fan, I think.

Image from Amazon.com

So maybe this book came to me somewhere along the years because my pastor used it in a sermon series or at least recommended it. When I first cracked it, I was a bit taken aback. Storms dives right into that Christian Hedonism stuff without even mentioning John Piper or Desiring God. It came across to me like he thought he invented it, though I was relieved when he finally did give some credit to Piper. Not that other people couldn’t come to the same ideas, but it felt like a rip-off. I also wondered why I was even reading this book, when I had read Desiring God twenty years ago. Well…

I didn’t pick up a new philosophy or anything, but there were some chapters in the book that I really, really liked.  Besides reminding us to “develop a passion for the beauty of God,” Storms writes these long, detailed chapters—kinda out of the blue—about, essentially, outer space and chemistry. He goes on and on about the size and scope of the universe and how even though we can’t even imagine it, even a little, it doesn’t come close to the size and scope of God and in fact God made all that and He’s sustaining it all and it’s not even making Him tired. And as for the smallest particles that we so far know exist? God’s that detailed, He’s capable of knowing and working on a level that ridiculously small and even smaller, because He’s God. I liked sitting there and thinking about these things, going on these adventures in awe.

What I didn’t like was reading Storms’ lists of alliterative adjectives. You may roll your eyes when I say “lists” because sometimes it’s just a bit much in some regular writing but I’m not kidding—he also sometimes makes lists of adjectives, grouping them by alliteration. No joke. He seems to think that the more adjectives he uses, the more we will take it in, understand it. Like he’s giving us choices because, buddy, none of these words is actually doing it.

In the end, I was glad I had read this random, little book. It gave me food for thought and inspired some wonder and perhaps a little perspective adjustment. You can see the quotes below for some of the things that struck home. I certainly wouldn’t discourage you from reading it; there’s nothing really wrong with it besides perhaps being a little uneven or full of adjectives. At least Storms kept me guessing. The book’s not too long and it’s true, as far as I can tell. The application (if you can call it that) isn’t easy or even realistic for most of us (I almost had a panic attack one night after reading some of it), but still true.

A SMATTERING OF EARLY QUOTES:

“God is most glorified in us when our knowledge and experience of Him ignite a forest fire of joy that consumes all competing pleasures and He alone becomes the treasure we prize” (p12).

“So, here’s why you are: to relish and rejoice in the revelation of divine beauty” (p13).

“Happiness is the whole soul resting in God and rejoicing that so beautiful and glorious a Being is ours. Happiness is the privilege of being enabled by God’s grace to enjoy making much of Him forever” (p15).

“And we’ve been created to join the party!” (p23).

“God chose to create from the endless and self-replenishing overflow of delight in Himself” (p22).

“Christianity forbids us no pleasures, save those that lead to temporal misery and eternal woe” (p28).

“To be a ‘lover of God’ rather than ‘pleasure’ is to find in Him, not it, the satisfaction our souls so desperately crave” (p29).

“The ultimate reason God sustained you through the night and awakened you this morning and mercifully preserves your soul even now is so that His name might be exalted” (p34).

“Understand God is but a means to enjoying God” (p35).

“To think that we can decrease our affinity for sinful pleasure apart from a concentrated fixation on the spiritually sublime is simply delusional” (p37).

Book Review: The Catcher in the Rye

It’s not that I can’t see what others would see in J. D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye. But I’m not a teenager and I don’t live in the mid-century past. I can also understand that his writing was something fresh and special and that his insistence that it stay the way it was really opened up writing at the time and spoke to a generation. Or several. Noted. Old, hopeful, story-loving lady that I am, I just didn’t like the book.

I have to admit that as I got nearer to the ending I at least wanted to know what happened (though I had a pretty good idea just from being around books all my life and I’m sure this classic has been referenced many times around me). The first two thirds were a real slog, though. I was like, what is this book even about? And if I had enjoyed Holden Caufield’s voice or company, that might have worked. But he’s falling apart, man. It’s painful. And you didn’t even like him from the first page. And his generation-specific lingo and language idiosyncrasies? Some call it genius. I have very strong doubts. Maybe it’s just outdated.

Yet I’m told that Catcher still speaks to people, especially to young people. I guess. I’m not allowed to dissuade you from reading it or I’ll have my critic card revoked. But when I was several chapters in I asked my husband, “Is that what is going to happen the whole time?” and he, who had read it, said, “I’m pretty sure. That’s how I remember it.” Let me add, too, that my husband loves teenage boy angst books, but it’s hard when there is zero action, zero trajectory, and basically stream-of-consciousness writing. Because of the writing style, in fact, even the “action” is bracketed within lingo, repeated phrases, and explaining. In fact, having now seen the movie that I’ll talk to you about below, I feel like Salinger couldn’t have actually taken the advice given him by his professor: get your voice out of the way of the story. Catcher in the Rye is almost all voice, almost all character study.

I know not everyone loves this book, but I also know many people would rate this as their favorite book. There sure is a lot to talk about with some other literary-minded people when you’re done and some of that comes from Salinger’s actual life and his relationship with the book and the world. In case you missed it, Salinger was a young veteran and multi-school drop-out, New York City rich boy who actually snagged the front seat on the writer’s fame and success trajectory. But he hated it. He hated the experience, I think, but he also hated the morality and philosophy of the whole thing. As Caufield would put it, he hated the “phony.” So after some short stories, an anthology, and Catcher (and some obnoxious fans), he disappeared onto some land in New Hampshire and vowed never to publish another thing. He never did, though it is said that he wrote his whole life. (And in so doing became a sort of legend despite himself. See Finding Forester and any number of articles, spin-offs, and Google threads.)

The Catcher in the Rye is about a high school age boy, Holden Caufield. He gets kicked out of yet another school after failing almost every class and that’s about it. He wanders around New York for a couple days and the tension is built around 1) Is this guy real and relatable or is he a real dick? (Sorry. Best word.) 2) Is he going crazy? 3) Is he going to get himself hurt or killed? He is, after all, a kid, and you know that he has a family who doesn’t want him to wind up in a gutter though there are moments when you feel like he might deserve it. Characters from his past come and go and new characters emerge from the hotels, restaurants, movie theaters, and taxi cabs around him. Several of these characters are memorable but most of them are depressing and dark because of the way Caufield interprets them. Perhaps one of the more interesting things about the book is his comfortable interaction with the iconic downtown New York of times past and, bizarrely enough, with “innocents.”

Even as I write this, there is a part of me that wants to like the book, wants to appreciate it. Maybe I do, appreciate it, that is. But I didn’t enjoy it and I have my sneaking suspicions that it’s just not that incredible, that it is sadly overblown. I didn’t want to spend another page with Caufield and I was really, really bored of wandering aimlessly around in the freezing rain breathing down the neck of a basketcase.

__________

Image from Amazon.com

MOVIE: THE REBEL IN THE RYE

First, let’s just inform you real quick that there are NO movies of The Catcher in the Rye. J. D. Salinger wanted it that way, so that’s the way it is. Now, since he died in 2010 there have been two movies—one a biopic about this guy who went on a road trip in the 70s to have a chat with ol’, reclusive J. D. Salinger. The other is the one that I watched after reading The Catcher in the Rye, and that is 2017’s The Rebel in the Rye. Now, some people are irritated right out the gate. (Well, some of them see Kevin Spacey and since its after #metoo, they’re out. Okay. But that’s not the point of this review.) They think that making a movie about J. D. Salinger’s life and his writing of The Catcher in the Rye—which was, indeed, based heavily on his life—is cheating and is dishonoring of his wishes. They also love labeling this movie “phony” because that’s so clever that everyone’s doing it. I will admit to some writing and acting issues, but, actually, I thought this movie was really something special. Like the book, then, I am going against the current but now in the opposite direction.

First thing I have to say: within minutes I realized that this movie was a rarity—it was honest about the writing life. Movies about writers usually annoy the heck out of me. And while I see how some people look at it and notice the overdone conventions—like short cuts—that were used to communicate, the movie is still way more honest than all those other comedies and romances and bios about only the most successful of writers, like academic versions of the girl who takes off her glasses and becomes homecoming queen. Salinger was successful, yes, but his whole life questioned the validity of such a thing and I love the exploring of it here. I think people (and even critics) partly didn’t like it because it was just what Salinger would have wanted: it goes against the grain in about ten different ways, including the messaging in the end. To get there we have some eye-rolling triteness in presentation, yup. But then we get somewhere new and interesting, somewhere, I think, honest.

Yeah, I have a lot to say about the movie. The high points on the obvious side were music and cinematography as well as immersion in a historical time. The acting waffled between great and horrible. And the writing was… bad? But sometimes I wondered if even the flaws weren’t done on purpose. Now, hear me out. In Catcher in the Rye, Holden Caulfield talks about phony actors overdoing it, etc. He also talks about too-happy endings. He talks about the depravity of everyone and his general disappointment with life and the world. His brother is a Hollywood screen writer and he views him a a sell-out. Many of the “issues” with this movie felt like they might actually be a tongue-in-cheek bit of genius. I’m not positive, but it is one way to watch the movie and one that I think might work. I mean, the plot is super meandering and goes nowhere fast. It’s no hero’s journey. Sound familiar? See what I mean? Either way, I actually jotted notes as I watched, because my heart agreed with so many of the important moments, at least as a writer. And, dare I say it, it gave me an appreciation of the story that I most certainly hadn’t gotten from The Catcher in the Rye itself.

Proceed with caution around all the terrible reviews, but I say proceed.