More Not-Really Classics

I think my attention span is failing.

And my reading rate.

And my vocabulary.

And, maybe, my ability to analyze and interpret the deeper, more philosophical and cultural meanings under the layers of story and allusion in literature.

Because even though I started reading Vanity Fair for fun after finding a cool eighty-year-old copy at an estate sale, I haven't really gone back to it in the last several weeks.

Instead, I'm making more recommendations for reading classics that aren't really classics. This time, though, we're going to the board book section.

One compound word, folks: BabyLit.

A series of colorful primers based on classic literature. Don't expect a story, but your small child will learn colors, numbers, opposites, weather, and ocean words.

Personal favorites:

Wuthering Heights is the ideal place to learn about weather. Lots of atmosphere.

Wonderland: the most colorful place in all of imagination.

Two very different sisters are the greatest teachers of opposites. Let's hope each one learns her lesson by the end.

I'm really looking forward to some of the new primers that have just come out, particularly Jabberwocky: A Nonsense Primer.

Every child should be primed for nonsense.

Find more titles at http://www.babylit.com/

How to Read Classics without Orphans or Undiscovered Uncles

Imagine a world where people actually cared about literature. A world where an entire government agency was created to protect literature.

In this world Baconians knock on doors and hand out pamphlets that explain why Sir Francis Bacon was the real author of Shakespeare's plays. And people could easily give evidence as to why he was not. For a few cents, one can watch puppets recite a scene from a Shakespeare play.

This is a world in which no one would ask, "What do you do with a B.A. in English?"

Maybe a few of us would like this kind of world--despite the cloning of extinct creatures like dodos and mammoths, and the overbearing corporation that pretty much runs everything. Well, maybe not.

But I, like most others who have whiled away the hours with Dickens, Melville, and the Brontes, would like a little more credit for the power of literature. Except we don't actually want to keep reading classics over and over. And really, we might not want to read Bleak House or The Mill on the Floss. Man, life is too complicated now to get bogged down in all of that misfortune and infidelity.

Thank you, Jasper Fforde, for coming along with a quirky alternate 1985 and giving us Thursday Next of England's Special Operations Literatech Division.

The series starts with Thursday Next jumping into the original manuscript of Jane Eyre to stop a supervillain from murdering Jane and destroying the book forever. Instead, Thursday manages to change the ending of the book (from the bland ending in which Jane joins St. John in India), and facilitates the destruction of Thornfield Hall, the blinding of Edward Rochester, and the dramatic death of Bertha Rochester.

Oh, the great Gothic romance has never been greater than Jane Eyre.

We later spend time with Miss Havisham in during Thursday Next's Jurisfiction training, hang out with Hamlet, get to know Miss Tiggywinkle, and listen to Beatrice and Benedick bicker in high Tudor English.

I am on book five of seven, which is Thursday Next: First Among Sequels. Confusing, I know.

If anyone is interested in reading about classics, but not reading classics, or reading about writing, but not actually writing, then I recommend Thursday Next. Since it took me a while to figure out the order of the books, I will list them for you here:

The Eyre Affair
Lost in a Good Book
The Well of Lost Plots
Something Rotten
Thursday Next: First Among Sequels
One of Our Thursdays Is Missing
The Woman Who Died a Lot

Now, I need to go back to the world where earning advanced degrees in English literature means grading punctuation worksheets and giving advice on MLA format.

Sigh.    

Being Undead Really Bites

Did you read Dracula when you were a teenager?

I started the book. It scared me so much I quit. Then I didn't sleep well for several nights afterward. I removed the paperback from my bedroom and finally relaxed.

For some people a good scare is enticing: shivering around a campfire while telling ghost stories; watching a movie about a mysterious murderer who creeps around a corner and slashes his next victim; screaming on the Tower of Terror at California Adventure.

And even though I've done all of these things (and I'm a big fan of Tim Burton and his morbidly imaginative movies), I'm not really a scare seeker.

Maybe that's why this vampire craze that has taken over bookstores and movie theatres perplexes me. But the thing is that, as scary as Dracula is, people seem to see vampires as romantic heroes rather than terrifying monsters that eat people.

Have you seen the young adult fiction section of a bookstore lately? It sort of looks like Hot Topic without the super-loud, crappy music. Since Twilight it seems like vampire romance novels are all over the place: Vampire Diaries, The Morganville Vampires, Eighth Grade Bites, City of Bones, etc., etc., etc.

All right. I confess: I've never read Twilight or even seen the movies. My sister and sisters-in-law all read them, but I really can't force myself to read sub-par prose. (My husband read the first book as a talking point; my sister quit in fury when she found out that the third book was not, in fact, the conclusion of the series.) So I didn't understand the Team Edward and Team Jacob thing until people stopped to explain who the characters are. Oh, right. Vampire and werewolf. Great guys for a high schooler to date.

And I guess the fact that this teenage girl (or is she twenty by the fourth book?) marries a 200-year-old undead, sparkly vampire gives me the creeps. But women love this Edward. I've heard weird stories about women who are looking everywhere for a man like Edward: sneaking into your window to watch you sleep, deciding what's best for you without asking your opinion, suicidal journeys upon hearing of your (false) death, leaping out of windows while carrying you in his arms, and skin as cold and hard as marble. 

One adult woman's obsession with Edward inspired her to ask her husband to bathe in cold water so he was cold to her touch.

Is it just me, or is that nasty?

I think while people are busy romanticizing vampires, they forget one important element: death.

Not only do vampires kill people, but they are actually dead people.

The truth is, being undead couldn't be anything but awful. Let's say you're bitten at fifteen: you stay in your awkward fifteen-year-old body forever, always wishing you could grow into your adult figure. You can't go out into the sunshine: the sun burns you up. You have no reflection (maybe that's why Edward's hair looks so weird in the movies). Your diet is based on human blood. If you don't kill the humans around you, you outlive them anyway.

It sounds really lonely.

I think that's why my nomination for best vampire story ever is Life Sucks by Jessica Abel, Gabriel Soria, and Warren Pleece.

Imagine you are the undead, slave to the owner of all-night convenient store, forced to watch pathetic wanna-bes pretend they're vampires.

And no one has a freaky undead baby at the end.

Now that's a vampire story worth reading.

Romantic Gestures

Last month my sister-in-law called to ask if I knew any good poems under twenty-five lines. I was at work and didn't have my 1997 edition of Perrine's Sound and Sense with me, so I started searching for poems online.
I found a poem I felt compelled to share with James.

To My Dear and Loving Husband
By  Anne Bradstreet   Nicole*

If ever two were one, then surely we.
If ever man were loved by wife, then thee;
If ever wife was happy in a man,
Compare with me ye women if you can.
I prize thy love more than whole mines of gold,
Or all the riches that the East doth hold.
My love is such that rivers cannot quench,
Nor ought but love from thee give recompense.
Thy love is such I can no way repay; 
The heavens reward thee manifold, I pray.
Then while we live, in love let's so persever,
That when we live no more we may live ever.

The subject line read, "I wrote a poem for you . . . sort of."

This was James's response:

"I plagiarized a poem for you" sounds less romantic than it is. ;)

This was unexpected, so I replied,

So the gesture is still romantic?  

He wrote back,

Absolutely. :)  

Tonight James and I are going on a date. We're homebodies, so we're cool making dinner each night and hanging out with our children, so going out to dinner and to a party together is quite exciting. But even without Valentine's Day or date nights, I'm glad to know we can still keep romance in our lives through plagiarism.

Standing on a Soapbox

Usually people don't listen to me: I'm used to this.

As the fourth child in a loud and raucous household, I learned to shut my mouth.

My three older siblings would yell, "Shotgun!" and race for the front seat. I would say, "I want the back."

My sister continually cajoled me out of sodas and sweets by insisting that she have the larger portion. At the time she thought she was tricky; she knows now that I was just complaisant.

My daughter has recently developed an attitude of argumentation. "Why?" passes her lips instinctively after I ask her to go do something.

"Put away your sweater."

"Why?"

"Would you rather I throw it away instead?"

Whenever I tell my son, "Let's go change your diaper!" he runs away, laughing maniacally. Pajamas are a wrestling match.

But today I'm standing on a soapbox.

On our Everyday Mormon Writer website (where you can find a lovely new literary work at artwork every Friday), we've pulled out the soapbox. Unfortunately, it's only a metaphorical soapbox, a menu option on a website, not that good old fashioned wooden soapbox that would lift one above the crowd just enough to get the message out.

I'm hoping that my voice will carry. Maybe someone will listen.

Go ahead and argue with me, if you want.

Blitzing Out

James and I were talking (as usual) one night and discussed the possibility of a web magazine devoted to short Mormon works.

We were really excited about the possibility of heading up this project, but who would contribute? Would people read it? How do we get writers and artists involved?

James posted about this on the Association for Mormon Letters blog, and Scott Hales came on board. They devised the Mormon Lit Blitz, a contest to feature works of 1,000 words or fewer that would appeal to an LDS audience.

Pass-along card by Scott Hales

The response was awesome.

We received about 230 submissions.

Scott, James, and I read through them and picked the top 32.

Then our everyday readers picked up packets of eight works and ranked them.

We ended up with thirteen finalists.

They've all been featured on the Mormon Artist blog, and now it's time to vote.

We've had thousands of visitors the last two weeks, but we need you to speak out. Not just to see who wins the contest and the Kindle, but come show your support for a compelling field of literature that needs to know there are people out there ready to read.

Then, you should keep reading when James and I get that magazine going.

A Mythic Life

Myth is one of the most misunderstood concepts in our vocabulary. We have, unfortunately, equated it with untruths or lies. A more generous definition is a system of outdated beliefs. Most of us willingly accept Norse, Greek, or Roman gods as mythology, but we don't see that our own beliefs fit within a mythological system.

I believe in a complex mythology that spans from the creation of the earth by the hand of Jehovah under the direction of His Father God. The mythos that inspires my day-to-day life is deeply rooted in beliefs of a premortal and postmortal existence with God the Father. Prophets, scriptures, and good people all contribute to my family and people's belief system or mythos.

N. Scott Momaday explored his family and people's mythos through his autoethnography The Way to Rainy Mountain. The book is laid out in three distinct sections: "The Setting Out," "The Going On," and "The Closing In." Within each section he tells stories, three parts at a time. The first part is the mythos, the experience or believe of the Kiowa. The second part gives a historical context, often drawn from anthropological records. The third part is his own. Here is a sample from the very beginning of Momaday's inspiring work:

You know, everything had to begin, and this is how it was: the Kiowas came one by one into the world through a hollow log. They were many more than now, but not all of them got out. There was a woman whose body was swollen up with child, and she got stuck in the log. After that, no one could get through, and that is why the Kiowas are a small tribe in number. They looked all around and saw the world. It made them glad to see so many things. They called themselves Kwuda, "coming out." 

They called themselves Kwuda and later Tepda, both of which mean "coming out." And later still they took the name Gaigwu, a name which can be taken to indicate something of which the two halves differ from each other in appearance. It was once a custom among Kiowa warriors that they cut their hair on the right side of the head only and on a line level with the lobe of the ear, while on the left they let the hair grow long and wore it in a thick braid wrapped in otter skin. "Kiowa" is indicated in sign language by holding the hand palm up and slightly cupped to the right side of the head and rotating it back and forth from the wrist. "Kiowa" is thought to derive from the softened Comanche form of Gaigwu.

I remember coming out upon the northern Great Plain in the late spring. There were meadows of blue and yellow wildflowers on the slopes, and I could see the still, sunlit plain below, reaching away out of sight. At first there is no discrimination in the eye, nothing but the land itself, whole and impenetrable. But then smallest things begin to stand out of the depths--herds and rivers and groves--and each of these has perfect being in terms of distance and of silence and of age. Yes, I thought, now I see the earth as it really is; never again will I see things as I saw them yesterday or the day before. 

Dr. Suzanne Lundquist, my master's thesis chair and a good friend, taught me how to bring students to an understanding of their own mythic experiences through this same pattern Momaday uses. She called it "Mythos, Logos, Ethos." Sue encouraged our small class to write our own three-part Mythos, Logos, Ethos stories. Here is one of mine:

Exposure

After rising from intelligence and dust, man and woman dwelt within the Garden naked and unashamed. They ate freely of all of the fruit save the fruit of the tree in the midst of the Garden. God had warned them that death awaited them if they ate or even touched the skin of the fruit. Without curiosity or interest in the fruit of death, man and woman tarried in the garden until the beguiling serpent exposed the power of the fruit to the woman. “Naive one,” the serpent beckoned, “the fruit does not bring death but the knowledge of good and evil.” After she and her husband ate the fruit and opened their eyes, they discovered their nakedness and were ashamed. Desperately, they gathered fig leaves and sewed them into aprons to hide their sexuality. For once they understood good and evil, they discovered that nudity is fearful, shameful, and evil. When the man and woman later heard the voice of God in the garden, they hid their nakedness from their God. Having never before known opposition, their fear exposed them. “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” God asked, knowing His creations had transgressed. They were cast out; man and woman would suffer greatly on the earth outside of the garden.

Christian European colonists generally assessed a nation’s progress on few premises: agriculture and industry, technology, written communication, and  the traditional dress of its peoples. The elaborate costuming of Europeans during the Colonial Era reinforced the supremacy they had granted themselves over the “savages” of the so-called third world. Women in corsets and layers of petticoats signified the apex of civilization while men in starched collars and silk ties epitomized industrial progress. Peoples in arid nations whose clothing was scant and technology appeared less developed were categorized as primitive. The Primitive, the Oriental, the Noble Savage–all acted as symbolic binaries posed against the Civilized European. Exhibitions of “primitive” peoples whose torsos were bare especially fascinated the sexually repressed Victorians in England whose empire spanned the globe. In 18th and 19th century Europe nudity was equated with indecency, and the primitive was associated with sexual promiscuity. Sexual repression was indicative of devotion to God, as embodied by celibate Christian leaders and the image of the Holy Virgin Mother, and such repression maintained the binary between primitivism and civilization.

I am standing before the mirror, naked and ashamed. The skateboarding and playground scars haven’t yet faded; years later they will be lost in the translucence of my skin. The roots of my shame are buried under skin and scars, unattainable and untraceable. I run my fingers over my hips, wrists, and palms, begging for an indication of the origin of my disgust. My mother never told me to despise the curve in my waist, to feel unquestionably dissatisfied with my appearance, or to loathe the inexplicable sexual impulses that sometimes inflict themselves upon my being. Through my mother’s refusal to weigh herself at the doctor’s office, the emotional escapade of clothes shopping, and the mournful loss of her slim thighs, she shows me every day the value of body-hate. Periodic church lessons and firesides on sexual purity reinforce my shame. Standing naked in the steamy bathroom after a shower proves my indecency. Studying the whiteness of my hips and smooth, round belly feels sinful. I am fourteen, virginal, unintentionally preoccupied with sexuality whilst curiously detached from sensuality. The guilt that drives my life begs me to cover my nakedness, clothe my body, hide the white curves. I close my eyes and picture myself standing before God unclothed and unconcealed. Mortified, I reach for the towel. My God tenderly asks me, “Who told thee that thou wast naked?” I search the map of my blue veins under my skin, longing to find the source of my humiliation. My veins tangle like roots, for I have inherited the fruit, the fear, and the sorrows. The legacy unfolds in my flesh, yet I cannot remember the fall.

For two consecutive semesters I taught an experimental service learning section of first-year writing and incorporated The Way to Rainy Mountain into the curriculum as a way for students to displace themselves as the "givers" and reconsider their positions to be more inclusive of the people with whom they served. When students turned in their own stories, I was amazed. Here is one I've never forgotten:

2nd Corinthians 4:8-9 8.We are troubled on every side, yet not distressed; we are perplexed, but not in despair; 9. Persecuted, but not forsaken, cast down, but not destroyed. Proverbs 3:5-6 5. Trust in the Lord with all thine heart and lean not unto thine own understanding. 6. In all thy ways acknowledge him, and he shall direct thy paths.

Untreated depression is the number one cause of suicide, and suicide is the third leading cause of death among teenagers. Sometimes untreated depression and other struggles lead to unhealthy ways in which we try and deal with the hurt and pain we are feeling. We try and find anything that we can do to take away the hurt, painful feelings, or negative thoughts we are experiencing, such as self-injury. Self-injury is also termed self-mutilation, self-harm, or self-abuse. It can be defined as the deliberate, repetitive, impulsive, non-lethal harming of one’s self, including but not limited to 1) cutting, 2) burning, 3) picking or interfering with wound healing,4) infecting oneself, 5) punching/hitting self or objects, 6) inserting objects in to skin, 7) bruising or breaking bones, and 8) some forms of hair pulling. While these behaviors pose serious risks, they may be symptoms of a problem that can be treated.  Experts estimate that 4% of the population struggle with self-injury. It has the same occurrence between males and females, even though in popular culture it appears to be more prevalent among girls. Those who struggle with self-injury may have many different reasons for their behavior, some of which may be feelings of emptiness, inability to understand or express what they are feeling, loneliness, fear, past abuse, depression, as well as many others. Self-injury, is sometimes a way to cope with emotional pain and suffering.  While self-injury may be someone’s way to cope with or relieve painful or hard-to-express feelings, relief is always temporary, and usually only perpetuates a destructive cycle that continues the struggle. This cycle often means that those who do not get help can become more depressed and shameful, adding to the pain and need for relief, thus perpetuating the cycle.

My battle began in high school. The acrimonious remarks to my face and behind my back from catty girls shattered my already fragile self esteem. Turmoil raged in my life, and I was out of control. I told myself I was searching for answers, but God seemed to have turned His back on me. I had to abate my inner pain, or else I was going to explode. So, I turned to physical pain to lessen my emotional pain. The pressure of the cool metal from the knife against my wrist was a welcome relief. Whenever life became Hell, I would turn to cutting. I was proud and I convinced myself that God didn’t care and I didn’t need help, that I was in control. I felt that God had let me get past my breaking point, and so I had to deal with my depression on my own. I felt ashamed that I had turned to such a harsh form of what in my mind was relief. I thought that I could stop cutting myself at any given time. I couldn’t have been more wrong. My body soon started to crave that physical pain when things in my life went wrong. It was a form of addiction. I was becoming baneful to my own self.  I had to find inner halcyon before it was too late. I swallowed my pride and turned my whole soul over to my Heavenly Father. I begged him for the help I so desperately needed. My parents became lachrymose as I admitted my problem to them, yet they supported me fully in my journey to recovery.  God blessed me with the strength to overcome my battle with self injury. I acknowledged that I needed His help, and he assisted me in my darkest hour.  God will let us get cast down, but not destroy us.

Each of us has a complex mythic life. Our inner lives. We can take time to explore our own mythologies to better perceive that which drives our choices, disappointments, and hopes.

Please share your own Mythos, Logos, Ethos. Even if it's only a glimpse into your mythic life.