Forgive me if this blog suddenly turns into a Gothic treasure trove through December. I think I've mentioned NaNoWriMo before. My first attempt at completing the challenge will be a modern Gothic novel. While I feel myself to be quite familiar with the Gothic aesthetic (especially the Victorian Gothic and Gothic Parody), I want to do as much research into the style and conventions as possible so that I can attempt to faithfully update them for 2008. Book Rec: Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber For all the horror films I talk about on this blog, you think I would get excited more often about horror fiction. After all, many of the films I love are based on the popular horror stories of that time. But it doesn't happen. All too often, I find myself wondering why some of the more popular horror novels are all tell the story, show the gore. No subtlety, little character development, just boring people thrown into horrifying situations to show some twisted idea of the author. Not with Conjure Wife by Fritz Leiber. Like all of my favorite horror novels, Fritz Leiber is a firm believer in providing only the slightest hints possible to what is really happening in the novel. If you guess one thing that's going to happen, you probably missed seven things also hinted at in the text. As the reader, you don't know what is going to happen until the characters know, an even greater achievement as the novel has survived for over sixty years and is still very chilling. Fair warning for the uninitiated: this was written in 1943 and some of the racial and gender rhetoric is dated to say the least. The story? A professor at a college discovers his wife has been practicing witchcraft for years in an effort to ensure his success. He convinces her to burn every magical possession she has and give up her silly superstitious nonsense. As his wife begins to flourish without the weight of the superstitions over her head, the husband begins to unravel as paranoid thoughts creep into his head. Could his wife have been correct in stating she wasn't the only faculty wife practicing for the benefit of their husband? If the story sounds familiar, it very well may be. The novel has been adapted for the screen three times: Weird Women, Night of the Eagle (Burn, Witch, Burn), and Witches' Brew (Which Witch is Which). This particular storyline is arguably an original notion by Fritz Leiber. Meaning, he was the first to tell this particular tale in the same way Jane Austen was the first (in Pride and Prejudice) to have two would be lovers meet and hate each other (the basis of many romantic comedies). Aside from the craft in plotting, the language is beautiful and clever. "He felt like he fell in love with her for the hundredth first time." Makes your heart melt, doesn't it? Give it a try if you can find a copy.
Welcome to the 50th Post Spectacular! But that's not all. It's your host's 23rd Birthday. In honor of this momentous occasion, I would like to take the time to bring attention to my favorite websites. It's the best of the best if you will. Midnight Rec: A Few Of My Favorite Sites Let's start at the very beginning. Pajiba – Their tagline "Scathing Reviews for Bitchy People" is accurate. Even with the greatest of films and media content they review and address, they aren't afraid to point out the flaws and do it with wit and intelligence. The site layout has been changing as the community expanded and the new subject areas are much appreciated. You visit for the reviews. You stay for the community. Craftster – What happen when a bunch of crafty people, not satisfied with simply sticking to existing how-to's, go out and form their own web community? Craftster happens. There are people doing things you never imagined possible with ordinary and extraordinary craft supplies. Every scale, every purpose, every style is mined and discussed for the advancement of craftwork. Penny Arcade - And now something for the nerds. This web comic provides over the top commentary on the state of the gaming industry shown through the twisted eyes of characters Gabe and Tycho. The comic has the potential to appeal to all fans of games because, though the style is consistent, the approach to humor can be as crude or sophisticated as the subject requires. Project Gutenberg – When a site says "free" anything, I'm skeptical. Many seem to push the boundaries of intellectual property rights law. Not Project Gutenberg. They provide free access to public domain works transcribed by users. It's a wonderful resource for looking into some of the classics of literature for research or leisure without spending a fortune for works that are out of print or continually reprinted just to turn a profit. Viddler – I'm not going to lie here. I think YouTube, while undeniably the most expansive, is the worst of the online video sites. The layout is confusing and the compression settings can make watchable videos (available on other sites for this reason) come across poorly. Plus the technology really hasn't advanced. Enter Viddler. Viddler is what YouTube should have been from the start. You can create working links sequenced to specific parts of a video. You can opt to have a small logo appear on all of your videos linking to another website. Facts can come up without having to manipulate the video footage to put them in. And user comments can be set to specific time-points in the video, coming up while the video is playing. Whether you opt for a personal or commercial (oh yes, its ppc/ad sharing) account, Viddler is the way to go for great looking personal videos. Please to enjoy five of my favorite sites.
Sorry. I'll fix it tomorrow when A) I'm sane again; B) I got this awful letter paper monkey off my shoulders; C) I return dead broke from Atlantic City. I'll make up for it, I swears. Beside, the 50th Post Spectacular! is my birthday, so you know I'm going to bust out all the tricks. Or spiral into a dizzying depression about how old I am (which is ridiculous, since I'm only turning 23, but that's past halfway to 25, which is a slippery slope to 30…). Either way, expect fireworks Saturday.Film Rec: Jackie BrownOK, I get it. Plenty of people just don't like this film. They think it's too slow. They think nothing of interest happens. They think it's just Quentin Tarantino masturbating behind the camera for two and a half hours. I get it. It's not for everyone. To me? It's the closest QT has ever come to producing a perfect film. The intersecting character dramas seem organic rather than forced, a huge pitfall of the common person embroiled in criminal/police procedure film. The dialogue is clever, but not so clever you're focusing on what was written rather than which character was saying it and why. Is it because the film's adapted from a novel? Perhaps. I can't speak for certain because I haven't read the book yet. What I do know is that a solid story is told on screen with a lot of style that had to be defined in the writing stage. It's so strange that of all the Tarantino films, this is the one I choose as my favorite. It doesn't have over the top camp (Pulp Fiction – look me in the eyes and tell me that dance sequence, or the burger sequence, or even Kathy Griffin doing her best Charlie Chaplin comedy walk isn't campy), or disturbing violence (Reservoir Dogs), or buckets of blood (Kill Bill Vol. 1), or sweeping multi-dimensional character arcs and non-traditional storytelling (Kill Bill Vol. 2), or even throwback exploit tactics and dialogue so dense you need a chainsaw to hack through it (Death Proof). No. It's a well told heist film. It's an interesting drama of total strangers working together to achieve a set goal while other try the same thing. It's entertaining and engaging without indulging in any gratuitous excess. Watch it if you haven't. It's a good story with interesting characters that still reads as fresh and different over ten years later.
Book Rec: Black Maria Poems Produced & Directed by Kevin Young If the peekaboo bullet hole in the dust cover doesn't give you a clear indication of the concept behind this poetry collection, the "Produced & Directed by" subtitle should:
Kevin Young pulled together a cohesive, noir-styled detective story told through poetry written like a shooting script for a feature film. Each of the five "reels" is introduced by a serialized summation of the events to come: "Boy meets girl. Girl meets/The City. Nights she sings for her/supper under the stage name Delilah/Redbone; days she avoids the super, and the/casting couch…Aliases and Ambushes…everyone's a suspect…Can anyone be believed?/Stay tuned." Young reveals the bare essentials of the plot to make the poetry easier to access right from the start. And what gorgeous poetry it is. "The Chase" introduces the dame, Delilah Redbone, capturing both the typical detective voice over style and the head-over-heels can't resist her charms moment: "I didn't have a rats chance./Soon as she walked in in/That skin of hers/violins began. You could half hear/The typewriters jabber/as she jawed on: fee, find, me,/poor, please." By committing to the noir style, Kevin Young is able to present a compelling detective story that reads like poetry. Each poem could be read individually and appreciated for the artistry and skill, but to truly experience the work, it has to be read all together. Young captures noir without sacrificing his identity as a poet. Yes, I know its out of stock at the Amazon link. It's a modern poetry collection, what did you expect? A mass printing? Enough copies to build one Harry Potter table? If you hunt around, you can probably find a copy. It's worth it.
You sometimes hear rumblings of a mysterious wind people fear will topple over slush piles and send manuscripts flying into an abyss with no chance of escape. While agents attempt on various blogs to assure would-be writers that this is not the case, the idea still persists because of something truly wonderful. Midnight Rec: NaNoWriMo Hi, friend. Are you like me? Afraid that you'll never write anything longer than a short story? Scared that you can't possibly sustain a work for long enough to ever really be published? Well have I got a remedy for you. NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, will be celebrating its 10th anniversary in November, when thousands of would be novelists agree to reach 50,000 words of writing in just one month. Through an online community willing to kick each other in the butts with a sense of cooperative competition, people go beyond the expectations of the event and wind up with complete first drafts of novels. Are they publishable yet? Probably not, as the rules state it must be new writing. Notes can be prepared, outlines drafted, characters sketched, but the writing must be new. This will be my first year participating. I've begun researching different aspects of the story that should be able to sustain 50,000+ words, easily, even though its mainly based on one character's unusual predicament. Will I wind up with a novel when I'm finished? I hope so, though knowing my editing habits, I'll be lucky to survive with a novella once I finish tearing it apart. And that's ok. It's the literary Mt. Everest: write a novel in a month. It seems impossible, but all boils down to one thing: 1667 words a day. That's it. I probably write that between all my different online venues every day anyway. The site will be shutting off new user registration and clearing out the forums starting tomorrow, but will reopen October 1, ready to accept any new challengers for the crown. I'll be there. Will you?
So, so sick. I'm ever so ill. And there are three suspects: my father, who took off from work on Monday, my brother, who has been complaining ever since someone threw up on him in NYC, and my eye doctor, who couldn't stop coughing in my general direction yesterday. Which one did it? I have no clue. I just know that breathing is a chore and my throat feels like a brillo pad caught in a drain pipe. Film Rec: Memento How do you make a mystery film even more thrilling and confusing? By telling the story completely out of order and actually making it work. How can you tell it works as a story? By watching the DVD cut where everything is put in chronological order under special features. It's hard enough to create a good mystery film, even harder when it's not based on a crime being committed. Try then maintaining the suspense and intrigue while chopping the story up and serving it out of order. Then, make sure its cohesive and all adds up in the end without revealing anything too soon. A short entry, for sure, but a relevant one. Memento is all about the writing. Watch it.
Book Rec: Rites of Spring by ModrisEksteins Surely there is no shortage of books about the events leading to World War I and, in turn, World War II. I know I had to acquire nine such texts for a class on Modernism last semester. I figure, if you have to choose one of these books to keep on your shelf and you're not a historian/researcher, it might as well be one that's a joy to read. Rites of Spring by ModrisEksteins is just as concerned with style as it is about the facts, providing both in as an enjoyable a fashion as a book that delves into war and genocide can be. The book opens with The Rites of Spring by Stravinski, introducing all the major players that brought them to life. Eksteins doesn't just stop at the simple facts (he choreographed, he danced the lead, she claimed their was a riot), he goes into historical references to the gossip of the time (he's sleeping with him, his wife left him when he went wacky). These diversions are so ingrained in the style of the text (and heavily referenced as well) that they don't act as distractions. The approach to the material remains consistent throughout the book even if the style shifts in appropriate ways to deal with the more somber topics. I know historians would disagree (this became a major debate with my historian/professor last semester), but I would say if I had to recommend one book that covers the basics of pre-War/WWI/interwar/WWII/fall of Hitler, it would be Rites of Spring by ModrisEksteins. This book is informative and a pleasure to read.
Midnight Rec: Sleep Sleep has to be one of the most undervalued resources in American society. Who needs sleep when they can go party all night long? Or watch a marathon of the lesser films in the Leprechaun series? Or after reading a particularly horrifying book? Or discovering a new topic so compelling they just have to wiki and Google it all night long? Frankly, I never developed a taste for sleep until very recently. Sleep was a forced upon attraction, the equivalent of having to pay a toll to be alive. It distracted me from my work and many times prevented me from completing it at all. And you know bosses/instructors/clients don't accept "But I had to sleep last night as an excuse." Sleep can be a midnight rec, for certain. It's relaxing. It's energizing. It's inspirational if you can remember your cracked out dreams come morning time. If I don't just sit there in a haze trying to figure out why the giant rolling pin was chasing me on the steam ship in a galaxy far far away, I make a note of any pertinent details on a big dry erase board next to my desk; eventually, I work my way down the list, trying to interpret what "BelLywohoper" or "Rewds_" could actually mean. When I figure that out, I wind up with a story. Which explains how messed up my writing is. The sleep rec stands, just ignore that whole write what you dream thing, myself included. Otherwise, I'll eventually wind up with a board filled with notes about Tyra Banks cutting me again and again and again.
