Claudia Casper's Blog, page 3

Eco-Fiction Interview

Discussed: 


climate change,

PTSD,

war,

murder,

writing,

border wall

Mary Woodbury from eco-fiction.com and I had a deep conversation about literature, the future, climate change activism and what literature can bring to it. Here's the link to the interview, and check out the website. 

http://eco-fiction.com/interview-with-claudia-casper-the-mercy-journals/

 

Teaser: Mary Woodbury from eco-fiction.com and I talk literature, climate change, the future, war, border walls

Metaphor and the Sacred

Discussed: 


metaphor,

literature,

religion

My answer to a question at the Vancouver Writer's Festival Incite reading with Yann Martel at the Vancouver Public Library a couple of weeks ago. "For me the natural world is where I go to find the sacred, and that feeling that something is sacred is important in my life. I think that a religious sensibility is hard-wired into us, I don't think we have a choice, even if we're atheists, there is a part of our consciousness that transcends our day to day reality. And what religion and literature have so profoundly in common, and what both Yann's and my new novel really expand on, is thinking metaphorically about life and meaning because religion, at its best, gives us some of the most profound metaphors for what the meaning of our lives are and literature, at its best, does exactly the same thing."

Metaphor is how we deepen our sense of connection to the world around us and deepen our sense of the meaning in our lives. Metaphor is how we approach the sacred in life - you cannot look upon the face of God directly, only the reflection. You cannot know the explicit meaning of a work of literature, you can only feel it take shape inside you, and inhabit the air around. There is nothing literal about the meaning to be found in religion or literature, though both can spur you to good action. 

Writing, at its best, is like building a cathedral in the old days when the mason and the stone carver worked day in, day out, knowing that the completion of their work might shoot past their own lifespan, knowing they were dedicating their lives to creating a space for mystery, and that that mystery was in turn infusing their consciousness and their time on earth with meaning and with an ineffable feeling of connection. 

 

Teaser: Metaphor - path to the sacred in literature and religion

Publisher's Weekly Review - The Mercy Journals

Discussed: 


climate change,

PTSD,

post-apocalyptic fiction,

dystopian fiction

Another very good early review. I like the way the reviewer described the book (except the last 3 words, but who's to say?)

Money quote: "Part cautionary tale, part survival narrative...Casper employs clear, concise prose that moves at a steady clip, and the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed."

http://publishersweekly.com/pw/reviews/single/978-1-55152-633-1

 

Teaser: "part cautionary tale, part survival narrative... the exploration, through one man's account, of what it means to outlive one's purpose is tightly constructed (with) clear, concise prose."

First Review Out for The Mercy Journals

Discussed: 


The Mercy Journals

Money quotes:

"The Mercy Journals work on two levels: as a cautionary tale and as an examination of one man’s struggle to find meaning in life. The two levels work beautifully together."

"Casper has created a complex and unforgettable character in Quincy."

http://bit.ly/1S0puaR

 

Teaser: "Casper has created a complex and unforgettable character in Quincy."

New Novel Coming Out

Discussed: 


The Mercy Journals,

climate change,

new novel

I am excited to announce the upcoming publication (April, 2016 in Canada, May 2016 in the US) of my new novel, The Mercy Journals, published by Arsenal Pulp Press. I spent eight years, five or six days a week, working to make this novel a lean, mean, fighting machine. It's a novel for right now, a time I believe is a pivotal watershed in human history and human evolution. Here's a link to the publisher's catalogue page: http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=438 . And did I mention how much I LOVE the cover?

ADVANCE PRAISE:

“From the opening paragraph, I dove into the deep end of a dystopian world that was terrifying, familiar, and thrilling, and made me keep reading until the shocking end. The novel focuses on family and survival and love and humans’ nature; hunger, passion, possession, and murder. It’s a masterpiece.”

—Jamie Lee Curtis

“Claudia Casper's The Mercy Journals is a book of extraordinary vision. Part Lord of the Flies, part Romeo Dallaire's Shake Hands with the Devil, I came out of this book deeply touched by the characters who moved through it, but also more alert. There's a sense of the prescient in this novel -- of where we could end up if we're not careful. Great books make you ask questions about what you've learned between their covers and The Mercy Journals does just that. Taut, literary and compelling, this is a book that is, on one level, about a man trying to tell his story when there are no words for it; when the ways in which we tell stories are changing — though it's also about all of us: a book about humanity, accountability and justice, and where, in a world in peril, we might find forgiveness and hope.”

—Aislinn Hunter, author of The World Before Us

“Not since Margaret Atwood's Snowman in Oryx and Crake have we met such a desperate and compelling hero as Allen Quincy, doing his best to survive in a post- apocalyptic world. With spare, driven prose and sharp humour, Claudia Casper takes us into a chillingly believable landscape where love still clicks in on red high heels and brothers still engage in conflict of biblical proportions. “

—Merilyn Simonds, author of The Convict Lover 

 

Teaser: "Not since Margaret Atwood's Snowman have we met such a desperate and compelling hero as Allen Quincy, doing his best to survive in a post-apocalyptic world. " - Merilyn Simonds

New novel coming out soon

I am so pleased and excited to announce the upcoming launch (April, 2016 in Canada, May 2016 in the US) of my new novel, The Mercy Journals. I spent ten years of my life, five or six days a week, working on this very slim novel. To the best of my ability, I built it like a cathedral, stone by stone, and wondered if I’d finish it in my lifetime. In my mind, it’s a novel for right now, at this pivotal watershed moment in human history and human evolution. Here’s a link to the publisher’s catalogue page: http://www.arsenalpulp.com/bookinfo.php?index=438 . And did I mention how much I LOVE the cover?

Search for the Desired Ending

Discussed: 


endings,

desire,

nightmare

It's strange being a writer sometimes - well, strange a lot of the time. The borders between reality and words become as porous as I believe they are for philosophers. When in life I'm not getting the ending I want, I mean seriously not getting the ending I want, the impulse to rewrite and rewrite until I find the right ending is irrepressible, nightmarish. I wake up every morning with my mind reaching out for the desired ending, probing events for turning points, for missed themes, hidden metaphors, underlying character motivations I've overlooked, searching searching for the key to unlock the story and make it spread out like a sheet floating onto a bed, needing just to be tucked in at the sides. I wake up in the middle of the night to find my mind working feverishly away on the story, trying to twist it and shape it to fit, not just my personal desire, but my sense of how it should end, must end, does end. When reality bucks and balks, I question over and over if I just haven't told the story the right way. I find it impossible to let go and walk away.

Teaser: In life, the impulse to rewrite until I find the right ending is almost nightmarish

Search for the Desired Ending

It’s strange being a writer sometimes – well, strange a lot of the time. The borders between reality and words become as porous as I believe they are for philosophers. When in life I’m not getting the ending I want, I mean seriously not getting the ending I want, the impulse to rewrite and rewrite until I find the right ending is irrepressible, nightmarish. I wake up every morning with my mind reaching out for the desired ending, probing events for turning points, for missed themes, hidden metaphors, underlying character motivations I’ve overlooked, searching searching for the key to unlock the story and make it spread out like a sheet floating onto a bed, needing just to be tucked in at the sides. I wake up in the middle of the night to find my mind working feverishly away on the story, trying to twist it and shape it to fit, not just my personal desire, but my sense of how it should end, must end, does end. When reality bucks and balks, I question over and over if I just haven’t told the story the right way. I find it impossible to let go and walk away.

True Detective - Watch Like A Man

Discussed: 


True Detective,

HBO,

Nic Pizzolatto,

women

HBO’s True Detective is the most exciting program on television right now. The spare elegance and sly existential humour of writer Nic Pizzolatto’s dialogue grabs the breath in your throat and arrests it mid-craw. And the structural complexity of the two-tiered timeline Pizzolatto uses to feed information to the audience, like a multi-hooked fishing line, not only gets your complete attention, but laser-hones your focus onto the story's every nuance. The mucky, green-gray, hardscrabble mise en scène of Cary Fukunaga’s direction, the blank lonely skies and ribbon roads through vacant green swamp, imprint in your imagination. You can hear the grit sliding on the shovel as this show breaks new artistic ground.

Which is why this series’ girl problem simply isn’t acceptable. How is it possible, when everything else about the program is so spare and meta and cool, that it relies on such old-school paint-by-number tropes to stand in the place of female characters? Pasha Malla in his article examining the parodic aspect of True Detective in Slate Magazine (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2014/02/true_detective_is_...) writes, “And if True Detective’s vapid gender dynamics are intended to comment on the ways women are often depicted in these types of stories, they have yet to ripple, let alone puncture, the veneer of these portrayals. (The ex-hooker Mary screwed in Episode 6 should be cause of an eye-roll and a sigh). All the female characters are prostitutes, strippers, stay-at-home moms or unstable, revenge-driven single career women with beautiful breasts that we get to see whenever HBO sees an opening. Pasha Malla is right. The women in True Detective don’t scan as ironic, tongue-in-cheek, parodic commentary on the genre, they scan as old-school, cheap short-cuts. The female characters are never interesting or magnetic in the way the off-kilter, reinventions of cops represented by McConaughey and Harrelson are. They’re filler, place-holders for plot points.

I wrote a screenplay for a short film a number of years ago and had the pleasure of being on set during the shoot. At a certain moment during the proceedings the director got the sudden inspirational idea that the young female actress should bare her breasts in a scene that had never called for it. I remember the hushed wheedling discussion with her to see if she was willing, spoken as though it was tremendously important and a matter of raw art. She caved. I will never forget the silent, horny, fake-respectful atmosphere shooting the scene and the actress’s deeply ambivalent vulnerable bravado afterwards.

I’m still watching because True Detective is extraordinary, but the naked sexually tortured dead girls, the beautiful bouncing bare breasts, and the cornball, unironic stereotypes all make me feel like I have to set aside myself and watch like a man to enjoy it. Most women are practiced at this skill, but I am always surprised by how often I still need to employ it.

Teaser: HBO's True Detective - You can hear the grit sliding on the shovel as this show breaks new artistic ground.

True Detective – Watch Like A Man

HBO’s True Detective is the most exciting program on television right now. The spare elegance and sly existential humour of writer Nic Pizzolatto’s dialogue grabs the breath in your throat and arrests it mid-craw. And the structural complexity of the two-tiered timeline Pizzolatto uses to feed information to the audience, like a multi-hooked fishing line, not only gets your complete attention, but laser-hones your focus onto the story’s every nuance. The mucky, green-gray, hardscrabble mise en scène of Cary Fukunaga’s direction, the blank lonely skies and ribbon roads through vacant green swamp, imprint in your imagination. You can hear the grit sliding on the shovel as this show breaks new artistic ground.

Which is why this series’ girl problem simply isn’t acceptable. How is it possible, when everything else about the program is so spare and meta and cool, that it relies on such old-school paint-by-number tropes to stand in the place of female characters? Pasha Malla in his article examining the parodic aspect of True Detective in Slate Magazine (http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/television/2014/02/true_detective_is_…) writes, “And if True Detective’s vapid gender dynamics are intended to comment on the ways women are often depicted in these types of stories, they have yet to ripple, let alone puncture, the veneer of these portrayals. (The ex-hooker Mary screwed in Episode 6 should be cause of an eye-roll and a sigh). All the female characters are prostitutes, strippers, stay-at-home moms or unstable, revenge-driven single career women with beautiful breasts that we get to see whenever HBO sees an opening. Pasha Malla is right. The women in True Detective don’t scan as ironic, tongue-in-cheek, parodic commentary on the genre, they scan as old-school, cheap short-cuts. The female characters are never interesting or magnetic in the way the off-kilter, reinventions of cops represented by McConaughey and Harrelson are. They’re filler, place-holders for plot points.

I wrote a screenplay for a short film a number of years ago and had the pleasure of being on set during the shoot. At a certain moment during the proceedings the director got the sudden inspirational idea that the young female actress should bare her breasts in a scene that had never called for it. I remember the hushed wheedling discussion with her to see if she was willing, spoken as though it was tremendously important and a matter of raw art. She caved. I will never forget the silent, horny, fake-respectful atmosphere shooting the scene and the actress’s deeply ambivalent vulnerable bravado afterwards.

I’m still watching because True Detective is extraordinary, but the naked sexually tortured dead girls, the beautiful bouncing bare breasts, and the cornball, unironic stereotypes all make me feel like I have to set aside myself and watch like a man to enjoy it. Most women are practiced at this skill, but I am always surprised by how often I still need to employ it.