. Spinning .

Out of curiosity I looked back in time to some of the classic short stories and selected this one, The Murdered Cousin, by Joseph Sheridan LeFanu.

He wouldn’t pass an online critique of contemporary writers.  He starts with a tag:

And they lay wait for their own blood: they lurk privily for their own lives.  So are the ways of every one that is greedy for gain; which taketh away the life of the owner thereof…

Off to a bad start; this is a no-no in current writing.  And then, he proceeds to start out with backstory, and tell, tell, tell. 

This story of the Irish peerage is written, as nearly as possible, in the very words in which it was related by its “heroine,” the late Countess D——, and is therefore told in the first person.

My mother died when I was an infant, and of her I have no recollection, even the faintest. By her death my education was left solely to the direction of my surviving parent. He entered…

This background, while giving a feel for the character and situation, lacks something every wannabe writer has absolutely got to have in those first paragraphs:  Good grief, where’s the action!  While hinting at something that gives the impression that the narrator’s father is rather somber for a reason, LeFanu goes even further back into history:

Shortly before my birth an event occurred which had contributed much to induce and to confirm my father’s unsocial habits; it was the fact that a suspicion of murder had fallen upon his younger brother, though not sufficiently definite to lead to any public proceedings, yet strong enough to ruin him in public opinion.

And makes the most horrible mistake of taking another leap in time:

Before, however, I enter upon my immediate adventures, I ought to relate the circumstances which had awakened that suspicion to which I have referred, inasmuch as they are in themselves somewhat curious, and in their effects most intimately connected with my own after-history.

Well, I’m afraid poor Joe would’ve been sent a form rejection by now, having not produced a corpse, a tornado, a war–something to hold our interest one page into the story. 

Or anyway, an agent’s interest in the busy, dog-eat-dog world of publishing.

Thanks to Sycamore Review for reminding us of the American Library Association’s celebration of Banned Books Week, September 23rd through the 30th.

Proud to see that I’ve read quite a number of them, the latest being Nabokov’s Lolita, and that I have a good dozen or more of them on the hearth in the reading pile.

Another link is Google’s listing.

This brought to mind my mother’s questioning of my senior high school English teacher’s selection of Catcher in the Rye.  Guess thumbing through a few pages and seeing the language was enough to make her nervous, but my mother was all for arts and literature–though she’d only finished two years of high school herself.  She accepted and understood my argument that taking text out of context of the whole did not represent the value of the book.

Visit the sites–you’ll be surprised to find that so many are still being challenged and banned from school systems even now. Tell others about this, one of our most basic human rights.

And, read some of these classics.

Steve Gillis, author and founder of 826 Michigan, and Dan Wickett, founder of the Emerging Writers Network are pleased to announce the launch of Dzanc Books, a not-for-profit literary venture.

Dzanc Books is a 501(c)3 organization set up to operate exclusively for charitable, literary, and educational purposes.  Our mission at Dzanc is 3-pronged:  To assist literary journals in reaching the largest reader base possible; to develop educational programs within the schools in the areas of reading and writing; and, beginning in 2007, to publish two excellent works of literary fiction per year.

Up Next for Reading:  Just some catching up on lit journals, if I can keep my hands off the pile "on the hearth." 

Still Reading:  Hypertext 3.0, S/Z, Ethics.  Focusing on Ethics right now, in an attempt to comprehend using reason rather than emotion in dealing with others who I would strongly wish would be reading this book or something similar as well as I suspect they don’t use anything, even emotion as guidance. 

Need to finish up Book and Volume, the IF piece by Nick Montfort which I gave up on because while I completed the original tasks, I can’t seem to go back and pick up on clues that I should have been more alert to getting.  Also intend to try my hand at writing/creating an IF piece of my own, just to get the feel of it.  Though who knows, I may end up with something decent if I can stay in touch with my dark side.

Got to get my a.i.g. on the story/games.  Watchmaker is the one up right now, with about five others sitting there calling to me.

More thoughts on the hypertext format, in particular, Afternoon, A Story which I am calling finished.  It may be my personality type that precludes my total enjoyment of this style of reading.  While I love the idea of not knowing what lies ahead, especially when there are so many choices as there are with hypertext, my fear lies in losing what is past.  I seem to panic when the forks keep forking; stress level rises as the portions of text get further out of reach as I move ahead.  I will not be clingy.  I will not be clingy.  I will not be clingy.  Hhmmm.  That’s not exactly effective in changing a lifetime of clingy tendencies.

Learning some software; and in this I need to set aside some "classroom" time and sticking to it.  Unfortunately, I’m very good at talking my way out of deadlines set by only me.

Reading in an editing mode; a few of the latest short stories to get them off into the submission process and out of sight for a while.  Only problem is, is that new ones keep floating to the surface.

And last, reading and interpretation of an intricate set of directions given in symbols that will create a story complete with imagery, texture, color and pattern of interwoven themes.  In other words, I’m going to "read" myself a sweater.

I really need to say more about this piece.  Michael Joyce is a true creative writer, both in his exploration of the language as well as in its method of presentation, in this case, hypertext narrative.

When it is cold enough, perfectly incredibly cold, the trees moan and roar all the night.  And in the summer, ha!  then it is all sex with them, seeds by the thousands, the air full of sex, spermy light, and the scent of pollen everywhere…They assert their ascendency, trees do, just look at that place out west, what’s its name?  Mount-Something-or-other, where the volcano sheared the mountain top?  they grow in moon dust there, in the sterility of ash, don’t you see?  (p. ?)

Interesting; just clicked off into a strange world that I hadn’t seen before–just when I’d thought I’d seen it all.

And what I’m learning is not just about the form of the medium, but of myself as reader.  Despite the story, the beauty of the words, the interest of the changes I can–yet can’t–control, I’m still not yet taken with this text only interactivity.  For one thing, I found that the reader’s control is still limited to wherever the author allows him to go, and of course, just as in straight text, interpretation opening roads beyond.  But I personally found myself wondering and conjuring less because my thinking time was being usurped by this business of clicking.  Often I got very into the narrative only to to stand bewildered in a strange scenario; the feeling of walking off the stage and onto one adjoining where Shakespeare and Cats were playing side by side. 

It is me.  I like continuity unless I’m playing pinball.  Not quite that bad; when I’m involved in great story, I don’t want to lose the thread.

Believe I may have finished Afternoon, A Story, the hypertext by Michael Joyce.  I say "may have" because in truth I do not know.  Every now and then a new line comes up, and I follow it until it circles around again. 

I am not a good reader of this sort of interactive novel.  My natural mode is directionally dysfunctional so I never know just where I am, or where I am heading.  I roll along.  When the familiar becomes too much so, I flee. 

The prose is lyric quality.  Fragments just like those I spoke of earlier this morning; turning to poetry.  Time transcended by clicks that bring me forward, backward, deeper, then pull me out and back into the diner having coffee with Werth.  I don’t think I ever know exactly what has happened, except there is a lot of pain. 

What then, is my understanding?  I think it is that I may never, and Joyce’s characters may never too.