D.G Myers has a list of American novels who won major literary awards. You won’t want to read through this list, a “flapping, gobbling, squawking turkey” of books.
All posts by Phil
Five Myths About Reading
Robert Bruce talks about five complaints he has heard about reading over the years, complaints like you can’t learn from fiction, reading certain genres aren’t really reading, no time to read, and others.
Maidenhood May Be a Good Fit for You
Gina Dalfonzo, editor of BreakPoint.org and Dickensblog, explains how Joss Weldon’s Much Ado About Nothing undermines itself in the opening scenes by depicting Benedick and Beatrice having a one-night stand before the play begins. This is a play about a betrayal plot to ruin a man’s life by ruining his finance’s virtue. She is a maiden, that is, a virgin, and her friends vehemently defend her.
“Hero’s father hints at one point that an already-engaged couple yielding to temptation wouldn’t be such a grave offense. But a drunken one-night stand–that would have gone against everything that Beatrice had ever been taught.”
This may be a good example of many retellings of old stories, Shakespearean and non. The plot is established and relatively unchanged, but when modern writers attempt to add modern backstory to the characters, they do so within their own moral framework, not recognizing the contrast between their world and the original writer’s.
Avoiding Message Movies
Writer Bill Kauffman and director Ron Maxwell both hate heavy-handed message movies, so they worked together to give us a Civil War story that doesn’t paint in primary colors. Christian Toto writes, “Copperhead… examines an aspect of history Kauffman says is often ignored—the side of the argument told by those who lost the war.
“‘We tend to sweep the losers down the memory hole as though there was only one side in any debate,’ he says. ‘The guys who lost … we paint Snidely Whiplash mustaches upon them.'”
Cover Versions of Shakespeare's Play
Author Jeanette Winterson, who loves cover versions of established stories, is writing a prose version of Shakespeare’s The Winter’s Tale as part of Random House’s effort to rewrite all of the bard’s plays for his 400th anniversary.
“The Shakespeare purists,” she says, “miss the point about his exuberant ragbag of borrowings thrown into the alchemical furnace of his mind and lifted out transformed. He sums up the creative process, which is not concerned with originality of source but originality of re-making.”
I understand retelling stories, but while West Side Story may be based on Romeo and Juliet, it isn’t the same story. Play it cool, boy. And we all know you can retell essential stories again and again. People like cliches, but they will love one story over another because of the details around the essentials. When contemporary writers retell Shakespearean tales, it’s usually like telling a good joke wrong.
Unsuitable for Children
Just overheard: a reviewer complaining that Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs
Is Christian Martyrdom a Myth?
Carl Trueman reviews Candida Moss’ book, The Myth of Persecution: How Early Christians Invented a Story of Martyrdom.
Her argument is simple: the myth of the persecution of Christians has fuelled a paranoid victim mentality on the political Right that imperils intelligent civil discourse. Ironically, as she makes this case, she herself engages in precisely the kind of myth making that she rightly decries. On page 252, she recounts her shock at hearing two students at Notre Dame expressing no sympathy for a nine-year old rape victim who had had an abortion. She was right to be shocked; but if her point is that the Christian mythology of persecution polarizes the world around and destroys civil discourse, then she herself here provides a good example of how alternative myths do much the same.
What Your Coffee Says About You
You’re fun, energetic, serious, and focused on what’s important. You may not have the world by the tail, but you’re going to look like you do, by gum.
Whoa! Another earthquake. They seem to come every morning about this time too. Did you feel it? It isn’t just me, is it? (via David C. Cook)
Bad Poetry Is Like A Flea
How? It makes me itch.
Ron Charles reviews the next Harper’s Magazine, which asks why all modern poetry is bad. Several poets are named. “Anne Carson may be Canadian, but that’s no defense; her verse ‘is so obscure, mannered, and private that one (this one, at least) cannot follow its windings.'” I wasn’t aware that being Canadian was a defense for anything, but perhaps in some literary or academic circles, someone from Canada is perceived as standing on a higher plane.
I believe Charles concludes that these complaints are not new, that contemporary poets are often criticized for pioneering obtuseness, and that some modern poets, who were not named in the Harper’s article, are quite good. S’up wit dat, as the poet might say.
Mommy, Why Is That Man Changing in a Phone Booth?
Anthony Sacramone talks about the newest take on Superman. He likes it.
“Sitting in a church pew with a stained glass image of Christ in Gethsemane over his shoulder, Clark agonizes over his fate. And what does the minister say? “What does your gut tell you?” Right. A very American minister, he. No other otherworldly advice does he offer. I mean, Clark may be from Krypton, but he was raised by Kansans, and his earth Mom (Diane Lane) has that cross around her neck. SOME talk of another kind of savior must have reached earshot in his 30-plus years…
But the overall themes are strong, he says.
“Man of Steel brings home the message that Superman isn’t great because he has X-ray vision and flies like an eagle and can withstand bullets. He’s great because of the old-fashioned values he learned from his adoptive parents on a farm in Kansas. He’s our hero not because he’s strong but because he’s good.”