My Literary ABCdery

16th Century Illuminated Alphabet

A is for Austen, Jane Austen.

B is for Book Clubs. Really good book clubs, with challenging books, insightful discussion, passionate readers... and wine, of course. (I'm looking at you, Rediscovering the Classics members!)

C is for Canon. The literary Canon may be controversial, it may be weighted toward white European men, and it may sometimes be hopelessly stuck in the mud; but oh! It's filled with so much beauty, history and emotion! It simply can't be ignored, and at the very least it's a great place to start your journey.

D is for Dark chocolate, an end-of-the-day reading necessity.

E is for T.S. Eliot, whose "Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" has been the first and last word on poetry for me since I originally came across it at the age of fifteen.

            "I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker,     

             And I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat, and snicker,

             And in short, I was afraid." (It still gives me chills.)

The Little Acorn Girl

Once upon a time there was a girl who collected acorns and left them in a basket on the porch. 

The birds came to eat the acorns while the girl sat and watched. Soon she found she could understand the birds' whistles and songs; and so she watched and listened until the birds came to love her and visited for herself, and not just the acorns. Eventually the birds loved her so much that they each gave her a feather from their own wings until she had enough for wings of her own. 

Then, the little acorn girl put on the wings, spread her arms, and flew.

Words: A Love Story

Most readers and writers are, in the deepest parts of our souls, word lovers. We love how the right word can express with absolute perfection an elusive emotion; we love how certain words roll around in our mouths and drip from our lips; we love seeing sound and meaning put together to create a kind of linguistic music--whether in the form of poetry or prose or (for those who are particularly savvy) in everyday conversation. There are many things I love in my life, but I would have to say that words are my first love.

I was reminded of this love just recently by my eleven year old daughter, who in the middle of a conversation about a deep sea documentary we had just watched, suddenly pulled out a notebook and started writing.

"What are you doing?" I asked

"I'm adding 'phosphorescence' to my list of favorite words." She replied.

Rewriting Homer's Iliad

For the past few years I've been having a wonderful time teaching drama at my kids' elementary school. I am a big fan of exposing them to the best playwright out there, the Bard himself, so each year they've performed one or two Shakespeare plays, which I have abridged and edited to make them more kid-friendly. The kids have performed beautifully each year--and they love the stories the plays tell. This year they are studying ancient civilizations, and so it seemed appropriate to diverge from Shakespeare to do a little Greek Theater. I've been having such a blast re-writing The Iliad for the upper elementary class that I just had to share a little bit of it here. I hope you enjoy it as much as I have!

Homer's The Iliad (abridged for 9-12 year olds)

Scene 1

Chorus: Sing, O Muse, of the rage of Achilles, the murderous and doomed warrior who cost the Greeks countless deaths and losses. Begin our story not with the abduction of fair Helen from Menelaus, but in the middle of the war, with the clash of brilliant Achilles and strong Agamemnon, the leader of Greeks and men.

(The Greek army is lounging onstage.)

Achilles: We’ve been waiting in this cursed field for days, Patroklus, killed not in battle and with honor, but by the bright god Apollo’s arrows of sickness and death. Our campaign is lost, we should sail home if we can and escape this deathly plague.

The Sliding Mind (and a bit about what's in the mail...)

The Sliding Mind

Van Gogh's "Woman Sitting on a Basket with Head in Hands"

Last week was a very frustrating and frightening week for me because I temporarily lost the ability to write. Any writer will know that writing is not only something we do to pay the bills or entertain our friends, it's what we do to stay sane--or happy, or fulfilled, or whatever label we want to give it. So most of us write every day... But last week I couldn't write.

That looks so innocuous sitting there at the end of a paragraph. That last sentence should actually be accompanied by foreboding music: "Last week I couldn't write." Dun dun dun!

It wasn't writer's block (as far as I know). I didn't feel like I was banging up against a brick wall. Rather, last week, every time I tried to sit down at my computer to write for business, or with my yellow notepad and pencil to write for pleasure, my mind simply veered off ever so slightly to the side. Trying to write was very much like trying to catch a fish from a river with oily bare hands. I would sit down with a focus in mind and that focus would slip and slide just out of reach while I tried (with more and more fear and desperation) to catch it and make it stick. By the end of the week my mental health was shot. I was hovering somewhere between depression and insanity, trying mightily to look to the outside world like everything was normal.

W.W.T.D.? (What Would Tolkien Do?)

A good book will draw you in and hold your attention regardless of your knowledge (or lack thereof) of the political history surrounding the story. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy by J.R.R. Tolkien is a good example of this. Very few people love Middle-Earth enough to get through the textbook-like Silmarillion, and yet The Lord of the Rings is an almost universally appealing saga. This is because at its core The Lord of the Rings is about the characters—about Frodo and Sam and Strider—and their adventures right now, not about the dates and history that brought them to the Prancing Pony on that dark and stormy night. Sure all of those facts and figures have a bearing on our heroes, but it’s enough for Tolkien to allude to that history. What we as readers are really interested in is the thoughts and actions of our heroes in the here and now.

The same is true for just about any good adventure tale or romantic ballad out there. If the tale is told well enough, we can trust that the narrator is giving us the history we need to appreciate the story.

However . . .

As anyone who has read The Silmarillion will tell you, appreciation and immersion are two very different things, and Tolkien knew it. That’s why he wrote an entire history textbook for his fantasy world. Your enjoyment and experience of the story is expanded and enriched if you take the time to learn the history of your characters and their culture, to really immerse yourself in their world and understand it as they understand it; as the author understands it.

I am currently re-reading one of my favorite contemporary books, Kartography, for the third time. The author, Kamila Shamsie, grew up in Karachi, Pakistan, in the 1970s and 1980s, and this is where and when her story is set. The first time I read the book I was so blown away by the beautiful language and compelling story that it barely registered when I came upon reference to Pakistani history that I didn’t understand. All I wanted to do was devour the story in the book, and Ms. Shamsie gave me all the information I needed to fall in love with Kartography without knowing the history of Pakistan.

The second time I read the book, I couldn’t let myself off so easily. I was curious about the war the characters kept referring to, and why there was tension between the Punjabi and Bengali characters. I picked up on some new subtleties, and was not so quick to skim over the unfamiliar references. I looked up the words I didn’t know, such as muhajir (immigrant) and Ami (Mother). But still I must admit that I didn’t probe too deeply into the history of the story or the region.

This time, however, in my third reading of this excellent novel, I can’t seem to get enough of the history of these characters that I have come to know as well as I know my own children. My atlas is permanently open on my living room floor as I look up cities and roads that figure in the story. I have Wikipedia’s explanation of the Bangladesh Liberation War bookmarked in my internet browser, as well as the history of the British colonization of India. And I must admit, I now appreciate the book on a whole new level. My understanding of the main characters has much more depth, and even peripheral characters have taken on an importance I would never have seen in my first or second readings. My historical research increases not only my appreciation of the book itself, but also my appreciation of the author’s storytelling abilities. As much as I loved the book before, I understood only a fraction of the thought and subtlety that must have gone into the creation of Kartography.

If you’ve made it this far down in your reading of this blog post, I thank you. I won’t keep you much longer. What I’m trying to say with this lengthy diatribe is that the great books—the ones we love, that get a hold of our hearts and won’t let go—deserve to be read more than once; sometimes three or four times. Not only that, but they deserve a closer look. Do a little research into the setting, the time period. Find out as much as you can about the author, and the circumstances under which she was writing her novel. All of these things will enrich your reading experience ten-fold. It will bring you a greater understanding of literature, of writing, of human nature—and even of yourself.