Austen marketed to vampire market

I didn't know whether to laugh or cry when I saw an advertisement for Pride and Prejudice in the Scholastic Bookclub brochure that the kids bring home from school. The new edition is being marketed to lovers of the Twilight series. It has a black cover, with a red and white rose, with the promo: 'Love isn't always at first sight', and the trivia alert: 'This is Stephanie Meyer's favourite book!'

Of all the teenage girls I know who've read Twilight (and yes, I read the first book) I've asked if they have read Bram Stoker's Dracula, and they all said no.

An approach worth trying, I suppose.

Advice about writing

Over the years I've read quite a few tips from writers. Advice like, avoid adverbs (it means you have chosen the wrong verb, says Stephen King), be careful using metaphor and similes, report dialogue with the word 'said', rather than anything more descriptive (eg, complained, whined, exclaimed, blurted). The Guardian has published quite a list of tips from writers of fiction.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/books/2010/feb/20/ten-rules-for-writing-fiction-part-one

Their advice seems to be in direct contrast to what children are taught at school. Be descriptive. Never use 'got' or 'said'. Use metaphor and simile. Use adverbs.

I must say I see the consequences of how writing is taught in school, mostly in children's books, and find it jarring, and frankly, try hard. Poor writing.

It seems that to write well as an adult we need to unlearn all we learnt at school, and say what we mean as simply and accurately as possible.

A favourite classics teacher I had a university said good writing requires brevity, a voice, and something else I can't remember.

What do you think are the rules for good writing? Should these rules be taught at school? Or do we need to know the terms, then learn to use them sparingly?

I'll have a think and reply to my own questions.

2010 Topic List

Month Topic and Question

Jan
Romantic Poetry
Are these poems about romantic love or the romance of ideas?

Feb
Ancient Roman Literature
Was the story more accessible than you expected? Did anything surprise you?

March

Fan Fiction (novels based on other novels)
Was the writer trying to copy the writing of the original, or do something else entirely?

April
Irish Plays
Did the dialect get in the way of the story? What did you learn about Ireland and the Irish?

May
Mothers Rights and Mothers in Fiction
How realistic is the portrayal of the mother in fiction? In the media?

June
J D Salinger
Does he deserve his cult status? Do you think his more recent works (unpublished) will continue in the 50s New York style?

July
Russian Classics
What makes them classics? Are their themes still relevant?

August
Revisiting books of your youth
Do they read the same? Has your impression of the books changed with time? What do you think now of your younger self?

Sept
creative non-fiction
How firmly is the writer in the story? Does this add or detract from the reading?

Oct
Short Story Collections
Are the stories long enough to be satisfying? Does the collection as a whole say something overall?

Nov
Magic Realism
Is the magic realistic?

Jan 2011
Rewriting Fairytales
Is this just having fun with fairytales or is something else going on?

Literary Terms

How many of these literary terms are you familiar with? Look up any you don't know.

allegory
alliteration
allusion
analogy
anti-climax
anti-hero
archetype
apology
argument
assonance
atmosphere
audience
ballad
black humour
Bloomsbury
Burlesque
Byronic
cadence
Canon
caricature
characterization
chorus
chronicle
classic
cliche
comedy
comedy of manners
conceit
conflict
convention
criticism
denouement
dialogue
drama
droll
elegy
eclogue
edition
epic
episode
epilogue
epistle
epithet
essay
exposition
fable
fantasy
fiction
figurative
flashback
foil
free verse
gallows humour
genre
gothic
humour
hyperbole
imagery
intertextuality
irony
journal
juxtaposition
lament
legend
lyric
magic realism
meaning
melodrama
memoir
metaphor
motif
mood
Modernism
monologue
mythology
narrative
narrator
novel
non-fiction
nemesis
ode
oxymoron
paradox
personification
plot
point of view
post - colonial
Postmodern
prologue
puns
purple prose
realism
rhyme
rhythm
satire
semiotics
setting
simile
slice of life
stream of consciousness
subplot
syntax
symbol
synesthesia - cross sensory metaphor
tableau
texture
theme
thesis
tone
tract
tragedy
trope
understatement
unity
utopia/dystopia
unreliable narrator
vehicle
verisimilitude
verse
vignette
Victorian
voice
wit

Considerations when reading a work of fiction

These questions can be asked of any novel you read.


1. The circumstance that sets the book in motion is called the inciting moment. What was the inciting moment of this book?     

2. Describe the character development. Who did you identify with? Did your opinions about any of the characters change over the course of the novel?     

3. How does the author use language and imagery to bring the characters to life? Did the book's characters or style in any way remind you of another book?     

4. What do you believe is the message the author is trying to convey to the reader? What did you learn from this book? Was it educational in any way?     

5. Why do you think the author chose the title? Is there a significant meaning behind it?     

6. Is there a part of the novel you didn't understand? Are you confused by a character's actions or the outcome of an event?     

7. Do you think the setting, both time and location, played a large role in this novel? Could it have happened anywhere, at anytime? If so, how would the novel have changed?     

8. In your opinion, is the book entertaining? Explain why or why not.     

9. What is your favourite passage?     

10. How did this book touch your life? Can you relate to it on any level?

11. How does the book leave you feeling?

12. How does the physicality of the book, ie, the size, weight, font, white space on the pages etc, impact on your reading?

13. What is the social and political context of the setting, and of the writer's time? How does this inform your reading?

14. How does the book compare to others by the same author or on the same themes or topic?

15. How was your reading informed by what you knew of the book beforehand?

July 2010 Russian Classics

July 2010 - Russian Classics

What makes them classics? Are their themes still relevant? Are there any characters, or situations, you can identify with?

Examples include:

Aleksander Pushkin - Eugene Onegin

Nikolay Gogol - The Government Inspector

Mikhail Lermontov - A Hero of Our Time

Sergey Aksakov - A Family Chronicle

Aleksander Herzen - My Past and Thoughts From the Other Shore

Ivan Goncharov - Oblomov

Ivan Turgenev - A Month in the Country, etc

Fyodor Dostoevsky - Crime and Punishment, The Idiot, The Brothers Karamazov

Leo Tolstoy - War and Peace, Anna Karenina

Nikolay Leskov - Tales

Aleksandr Ostrovsky - The Storm

Nikolay Chernyshevsky - What is to be Done?

Anton Chekov - The Tales, The Major Plays

The Master and Margarita - Mikhail Bulgakov

Boris Pasternak - Doctor Zhivago, (My Sister Life - poems)

June 2010 J D Salinger

June 2010 - Works of J D Salinger

Born Jerome David Salinger 1 Jan 1919, aged 91, raised in Manhattan. Last published in 1965. A famous recluse. Said to have been writing every day since and has works ready to be published upon his death. Died Jan 2010.

Catcher in the Rye (1951)

For Esme With Love and Squalor/Nine Stories (1953)

Franny and Zooey (1961)

Raise High the Roof Beam, Carpenters/ Seymour: An Introduction (1963)


1941 - Slight Rebellion off Madison - short story re Holden Caulfield
1949 - film version of Uncle Wiggly in Connecticut released as My Foolish Heart - bastardisation of story - Salinger swear to never sell story to movies again.

• fought in WWII
• into Zen Budhism, then Advaita Vedanta Hinduism, then Kriya yoga, then Dianetics, Christian Science, homeopathy, acupuncture, macrobiotics, taking mega doses of Vitamin C, urine therapy, speaking in tongues etc
• insisted on no dust jacket illustrations
• other stories published (mostly in The New Yorker) but not anthologised
• married twice, had two children, and a year long relationship with a student, who wrote about their life together, as did his daughter
• famous legal battles
• Catcher in the Rye has sold more than 65 million copies worldwide
• writing style - always about adolescents, good with dialogue, using phone calls, letters and interior monologue.

Does he deserve his cult status? If the works that are likely to be published on his death are in the same vein, do you think they will be relevant to modern society?

An article in The New Yorker upon his death. For me, this is the most insightful commentary on his work. I should say here that I've always been a big fan of the Glass family stories.
http://www.newyorker.com/talk/2010/02/08/100208ta_talk_gopnik

Here is a quote from the article that I agree with - just beautiful:

The message of his writing was always the same: that, amid the malice and falseness of social life, redemption rises from clear speech and childlike enchantment, from all the forms of unself-conscious innocence that still surround us (with the hovering unease that one might mistake emptiness for innocence, as Seymour seems to have done with his Muriel). It resides in the particular things that he delighted to record. In memory, his writing is a catalogue of those moments: Esmé’s letter and her broken watch; and the little girl with the dachshund that leaps up on Park Avenue, in “Zooey”; and the record of “Little Shirley Beans” that Holden buys for Phoebe (and then sees break on the pavement); and Phoebe’s coat spinning on the carrousel at twilight in the December light of Central Park; and the Easter chick left in the wastebasket at the end of “Just Before the War with the Eskimos”; and Buddy, at the magic twilight hour in New York, after learning from Seymour how to play Zen marbles (“Could you try not aiming so much?”), running to get Louis Sherry ice cream, only to be overtaken by his brother; and the small girl on the plane who turns her doll’s head around to look at Seymour. That these things were not in themselves quite enough to hold Seymour on this planet—or enough, it seems, at times, to hold his creator entirely here, either—does not diminish the beauty of their realization. In “Seymour: An Introduction,” Seymour, thinking of van Gogh, tells Buddy that the only question worth asking about a writer is “Were most of your stars out?” Writing, real writing, is done not from some seat of fussy moral judgment but with the eye and ear and heart; no American writer will ever have a more alert ear, a more attentive eye, or a more ardent heart than his.


The Guardian also paid tribute.

I agree with a comment about Catcher in the Rye, that on rereading as a adult (as I have just done), the book is no longer about adolescent angst, but about not dealing with loss. Holden's younger brother has died. Holden didn't go to the funeral because he hurt himself in a rage. The boy at his school died. The other boys at fault were expelled, but not charged. America suffered great loss during the war. His older brother gives a clue to how the personal damage to soldiers who survived was irreparable. There seems to be no acknowledgement or attempt to heal - just a 'carry on' attitude - go to college, earn money and enjoy your opportunities. What was the fighting for?

And something to amuse:

http://www.theonion.com/content/news/bunch_of_phonies_mourn_j_d