1910: Too Weird to Be Fiction

One thing I've learned while trying to write weird historical fiction is that my imagination is pale and spindly compared to stuff printed in the newspaper in 1910...

Hypnotizes Grangeville Girl 

Is Unable to Bring Her From Spell

Grangeville, Idaho, June 3, 1910

Miss Hildegarde Almem, a prominent your society woman, is lying at the home of her sister, Mrs. Walter Crosby, in a critical condition, resulting, it is alleged, from the attempt of a traveling hypnotist, calling himself Alburtus, to get her under hypnotic control, and after he had partially succeeded, being unable to restore her to consciousness.

Alburtus has been demonstrating his power here for several days and Miss Almem has taken a great interest in his exhibitions. To friends she announced her belief that she could not be brought under the hypnotic spell, and contrary to their advice, today agreed with Alburtus that if he could hypnotize her she would allow him to exhibit her in a down-town store window. The challenge was accepted, but fearing the results, after getting her partially under control, he decided to restore her, but found he could not. The girl was immediately taken to her home and is still in condition alternating between consciousness and coma.

Another thing I've learned: They enjoyed commas, the journalists of 1910.

Made of Words: Two Moles Are Sitting in a Beaker

"In my opinion, short words are preferable to long ones; the fewer the syllables the better, and monosyllables, beautiful and pure like 'bread' and 'sun' and 'grass,' are the best of all." 
           --Barbara Tuchman, "In Search of History"

I'm not good with language. 
If I were good at language, I don't think I would spend so much time thinking about it. It would come more naturally, like steering a spoon to my mouth instead of my eye. We all know these things--eating with a spoon, asking for a kitten, riding a bicycle--take practice, and, with enough practice, become sort of automatic. But I have a lot of trouble attaining that state. Language is anything but automatic for me. I read and I write because language isn't easy; the technologies of written language let me slow down and re-examine the phenomenon of words. 

The archaeology of words
The headlines are delightful: "You hear me! No spitting in the ashes, mother!" and "Thou old black worm, I spit fire on your ashes!"  I haven't read the original research paper by Pagel et al. yet, but I've been as delighted as anyone with the lists of ultraconserved words. These are the lexical tuataras*.

thou, I, not, that, we, to give, who, this, what, man/male, ye, old, mother, to hear, hand, fire, to pull, black, to flow, bark, ashes, to spit**, worm

"Worm." ! A steady word, right to hand, dependable--and beautiful and pure as bread (I think we ate a lot of worms) or sun (strange engine so unlike) or grass (where worms rise up and dance). 

Two Moles and a Walrus

So, "I F#cking Love Science" posted this on Facebook. I found it enchanting, and then...well, I completely failed at communication with the word thingies is what.

This is exactly what I find funny.

• 
  
• • Genius Editor: Are they walri?

    Me: Smart people like puns. That's my theory. Best. Jokes. Ever. Puns....

    Genius Editor: I'm clearly not smart people.

    Me:  Oh. Dear. Puns are a sort of rhyme. They make language transparent and goofy.

    (Note I have now insulted the intelligence of a person much smarter than I am TWICE! I ignored her question and  I propound my theory of puns.)

    Me:  And also, I was just today thinking of walrus ivory.

    (Note how I drift off into non-sequiter; that's helpful.)

    Me:  But these are moles, two per liter.

    (Note how I am not making things better at all.)

    Me:  In the cold light of dawn, I realize that I leapt to the defense of all puns when it was a matter of these specific moles. My apologies to my editor.

    (Note how, after the passing of hours, my tuatara* thoughts arrive, but there is no saving me from myself. I've already made a mountain, or at least a walrus-sized dune, out of a molehill.)

    
    

Thus ends the evidence. I believe I've proved my thesis.

*Tuatara: A nocturnal lizard sometimes called a "living fossil" because it hasn't changed in 225 million years. 

**My thoughts on spit are found elsewhere on this blog. 

Using Reviews to Write Better Books

Some authors advocate avoiding reviews. I am here to advocate using them. I'm not talking about hiring sock puppets to gin up some gush—I'm talking about using reviews to gain insight into how books succeed and fail. I try to use reviews to make me a better writer.

Before going any further, I need to mention that I am not a reviewer. I pulled the plug on my own Goodreads account a long time ago because I realized I wasn't contributing to the community there. I don't publish reviews on this blog, although I sometimes mention books that I find especially compelling and worthy of attention. I do read reviews though, and I respect those readers who spend time and effort thinking about books.

Black Helicopters has been out for almost a month, which provides me with a pool of data—it isn't deep or wide, but it is a pool. Now, personally, I find the 1-to-5 stars system offers me no useful information at all. The narratives, though, those are worth examination. How? Well, reading the reviews provides a gestalt, but I know it is inherently subjective. Ideas that pop are ideas that are significant to me. 

Still, I don't want to suggest the gestalt stuff is useless information. I gained a lot from it. 

I note that the issue of re-reading comes up often. I find that very positive. Another review mentions that the book will have a niche audience—and that seems true enough. A number of readers complained of lack of development and laid that to the short length. That makes sense, and it is very valuable information to me since the terse style and over-all brevity were intentional, not accidental. I do tend to write short. Part of that has to do with my theory of reading and reader engagement. A sort of creative conspiracy of author and reader is my holy grail—both as a reader and a writer. I think the reader dissatisfaction indicates that I haven't accomplished that. 

So I have all those things to consider.

But I also wondered if there might be some way to push past my subjective reading of those reviews. So I tried. I often make Wordles of works in progress* to see how things are shaping up. This time, I made a Wordle of the text of the review. After seeing the first one, I realized that I needed to filter out proper names, words like "book" and "story," and a few other relatively common words that aren't included in Wordle's common word list. (Arguably, screening those terms out reduces the objectivity of the results.) Here is the review wordle...

* The Wordle below was generated from the first pages of a work in progress. The proper names—Bun, Carl, and Texanna—are naturally most frequent.  It cracks me up that "cheese" is a big deal. The book will outgrow that phase. I think. Or maybe not.

Darkness too Visible: 1910 Edition

The more time I spend in 1910, the more familiar it seems...

EVIL OF FLASHY FICTION—The dime novel or its descendant seems to be still exerting its degrading influence, notes the Boston Pilot, which call attention to the recent Congress of Psychiatria held in Berlin, where Professor Pick, of Prague, told of two boys who ended their lives as a result of reading certain cheap novels with flashy covers. "The young mind is full of fantastic activity, and when this is nourished upon such literature it conduces to a pathological state whose final end is crime."

The Literary Digest 
November 19, 1910

Do you need something beautiful? The music of Lubomyr Melnyk

Lubomyr Melnyk

His music is available from Erased Tapes.

My Book is About Terrorism

Black Helicopters is the story of a terrorist, a suicide bomber.

Today, in the shadow of another act of terror, the thought of writing--or reading--a book about terrorism stinks of sadistic voyeurism. At least that is how a part of my heart feels. 

But the day I began writing that book, way back in September of 2011, the shadow of terrorism was every bit as dark. It is a long shadow that extends deep into history and all around the globe. 

Terror can be used as an instrument of coercion and control. 

Many hands have used that instrument. 

In order to dismantle it, we need to understand it. 

In order to understand it, we need to think about it, not once and in a single way, but from many perspectives. 

Black Helicopters is a small effort toward that end. 

It might not be that helpful.

But that is how it was intended. 

Black Helicopters (BEST D&MN BOOK TRAILER EVER)

Wow...



This trailer was made by Helen Marshall and her sister Laura.