shire

Posted under Blog, Books on May 11th, 2005 by

I finished re-reading The Hobbit. It’s as good a read as it was when I was seven and my father read it to me aloud. As a book that was clearly written for young children, it’s always been an easier read than Lord of the Rings, particularly for non-Tolkien fans (though I recently came across an online discussion between Tolkien fans who said they didn’t like reading The Hobbit).

Whenever I re-read a beloved book, I tend to focus on things I paid less attention to in previous reads. This time around, I paid close attention to the development of the plot and Bilbo’s character. It really is an excellent children’s book, as the child-like Bilbo, who prefers to hide from the world in his little hole, goes out into the Wild and learns how to take care of himself. On that level, it works as well as anything by C.S. Lewis or Roald Dahl (or J.K. Rowling).

After writing Lord of the Rings–a novel ultimately geared more toward adults than young children–Tolkien went back and revised The Hobbit to better fit with the mythology he’d created. I suspect that when he first wrote The Hobbit in 1937, he thought of Gandalf as a traditional wizard–that is, an old (human) man with some magical powers. As The Hobbit is essentially an extended fairy tale, it makes sense that Gandalf’s role is primarily to get the hero out the door and meddle here and there when needed, but no more; it’s Bilbo’s adventure, not Gandalf’s.

Gandalf plays a somewhat similar role in Lord of the Rings, but he’s much more active. During this re-reading of The Hobbit, I couldn’t help but view the story from the perspective of the characters as I knew them from LR. From that viewpoint…what the hell did Gandalf think he was doing? He knows how dangerous Smaug is; Smaug is arguably more dangerous (perhaps much more dangerous) than any balrog, and yet Gandalf allows thirteen Dwarves and a hobbit wander blindly into the dragon’s lair?

There are really only two ways to view the situation. First, you can think of it in terms of Lord of the Rings, in which case Gandalf is apparently a rather cold (and sardonic) individual who thinks little of sending a few Dwarves and a hobbit to their doom. Or (and this is my interpretation) you accept that “the tale grew in the telling” of Lord of the Rings, and that The Hobbit has to be evaluated on its own as a children’s book, and not a true precursor of LR. The Hobbit is a fairy tale, while Lord of the Rings is an epic.

Okay, so those aren’t exactly new observations. But I found it amusing trying to figure out a way for the Gandalf of LR to have sent Thorin and Company on their way without seeming like a stone cold bastard. (Yes, I know he had pressing business with helping boot Sauron from Mirkwood, but it’s still awfully convenient, in terms of plot, for getting the all-powerful wizard out of the party.)

I was going to move on to reading LR next, but I need to re-read some of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories first, for writing purposes. After that, I have a class, so no more pleasure reading until July…and at that point, I don’t know. I’ve been wanting to re-read E.R. Eddison’s The Worm Ouroboros (which I highly recommend to high fantasy fans, though be warned, the diction is almost Middle English), or read the second book in George R.R. Martin’s Song of Fire and Ice series. Who knows? I’ve also got a book of Karl Wagner’s Kane stories I haven’t read yet…

Hwaet

Posted under Blog, Movies on May 10th, 2005 by

In college, I wrote my undergraduate thesis on the epic Anglo-Saxon poem Beowulf–or more specifically, on what happens to the narrative structure of the poem when it is adapted as Michael Crichton’s novel Eaters of the Dead, and then when that novel is adapted into the film The 13th Warrior.

The 13th Warrior was a huge flop, and so far, Troy, King Arthur, Alexander, and Kingdom of Heaven haven’t exactly been doing gangbusters. Of the huge sword-wielding epics, only Gladiator and The Lord of the Rings have warranted this slavish studio attention to these sort of films.

Now there are no less than two Beowulf films coming out this year. One, which supposedly comes out in October, I hadn’t heard anything about until today. Beowulf and Grendel stars Gerard Butler and Sarah Polley, so it isn’t necessarily going to be a B-film. From the photos and information on the site, it looks like it could be good. On the other hand, after a look through the site’s discussion forums, it looks like there may have been some significant changes to the story, so we’ll see. Having tried my hand at adaptating literary works to film, I have sympathy for the screenwriter.

It also seems there’s some question whether the film will even be released in the U.S.–here’s hoping. It may only get a limited release, but fortunately, I live in Boston, so there’s a good chance it will play here.

But that’s not all. Roger Avary and Neil Gaiman are also working on a script for a Beowulf film, currently scheduled for release in 2007. There are a lot of rumors floating around on the Internet, so I’m not sure what’s true and what isn’t, but allegedly the film will be animated.

Beowulf’s been having a pretty good run lately. I’m very fond of the “HBO Animated Epic” version of the story–a half-hour animated short that features Joseph Fiennes and Derek Jacobi as voices, among others.

I still may try my hand at some Beowulf-related writing, someday. Technically, I already have–but good luck tracking that down.

As for all these other films–why did Lord of the Rings and Gladiator succeed where the others failed? Well, in the case of Gladiator, I think Russell Crowe–an actor at the height of his popularity–helped an awful lot. Also, the story, while not exactly Shakespeare, had a lot of visceral, entertaining aspects–it was essentially the modern equivalent of watching real gladiatorial combat.

As for Lord of the Rings, well, I think those films are their own deal entirely. They’re well-made films with a great cast; they deserve their acclaim without need for talking about trends or audience psychology.

As for Troy and King Arthur–I think these films did themselves a disservice by neglecting the mythological or supernatural elements of the stories they were based on. Excalibur did well in 1981, so it’s not as if audiences don’t want to watch Arthurian films. As for Troy, I think avoiding the mythological elements was a bit cowardly on the part of the filmmakers. They wanted to make one of those sword-and-sandal epics from the fifties and sixties, and that’s exactly what they did–made a sword-and-sandal epic from the fifties and sixties. Being honest to the supernatural element, or finding an interesting and compelling way of making those elements work and be relevant to modern viewers, would have made for a braver and more contemporary adaptation. Just my two cents.

drysides

Posted under Blog, Games on May 5th, 2005 by

I’ve taken down “One of a Hundred” because I may be submitting it to some magazines for publication soon. I apologize for all the vanishing content–lord knows the site needs more. I’ll try to fill the space with some other work–perhaps an article, or a review or two.

One of the magazines I’m submitting to is Flashing Swords, an excellent online magazine of sword and sorcery. I highly recommend it to fans. In just two issues they’ve published some great stories, including long-forgotten reprints of stories by early pulp author Harold Lamb.

If you’re a fan of the genre, be sure to check out their anthology of sword and sorcery, Lord of Swords, which includes stories from Tanith Lee and E.E. Knight.

I’m in the midst of re-reading The Hobbit, to be followed by LOTR. It’s been more than three years since I last read them, and I find reading LOTR to be a rejuvenating experience. I always find something new in them; and while Tolkien wasn’t the best writer stylistically, his unlimited imagination and the Zusammenhang of Middle-earth (the way every aspect of it is painstakingly detailed and defined, such as language, geography, history, and even race relations) is endlessly inspiring. Few (if any) fantasy writers have been as talented at (or as obsessed with) world-building as Tolkien. And there are a few great characters in there, particularly Gandalf and Gollum.

When I read the novels, I always use the old Ballantine paperbacks my father bought me when I was in high school. I own nicer, collectible editions, but for reading purposes I find the paperbacks as comfortable as a worn-in pair of shoes.

In high school, I also played Middle-earth: The Wizards, the original collectible card game based on Tolkien’s work. The game had excellent mechanics and challenging gameplay, and it was a lot of fun. I was the undisputed master of it within our group (mostly because I enjoyed it the most and collected a lot of cards, including the One Ring). Best of all, it had beautiful artwork from all the big names in Tolkienian art. Many of those cards informed my mental vision of the people, places, and things in the novel. I’ve still got all my cards, and sometimes I wish I could find someone to play with again.

I remember my favorite trick involved a card called “Sacrifice of Form,” which allowed you to sacrifice your wizard to defeat some terrible threat–usually a Nazgul, though I think I actually used it on the Balrog once or twice. You received a load of marshalling points for beating the monster, then got to revive your wizard on a later turn–and he would be more powerful than before. It’s analogous to the Gandalf the Gray/Gandalf the White transformation from the novel.

Another interesting thing about the game was that it included two wizards not mentioned in the novel, Alatar and Pallando, known as the “Blue Wizards” (and actually mentioned in some of Tolkien’s writings, such as Unfinished Tales). I often used them just for the novelty of it.

Unbelievably, the website that I consulted for information about the game waaaay back in 1996 is still online: Middle Earth: the Wizards Guide.

griggles

Posted under Blog on May 4th, 2005 by

After a not-so-brief derailment, my thesis project seems to be back on track. I’ve decided to go with the Atreval idea again–largely because I already have nearly 100 pages written. The only question now is where to go from what I have.

One of the myths about writing (or any self-motivated creative endeavour) is that if you don’t have a burning desire to be doing it all the time–if you don’t find it near-impossible to pull yourself away from your keyboard–you’d best quit and go find a real job, because you’ll never make it in the biz.

This isn’t true. Certainly not for everyone. For instance, I know I have a hard time writing whenever I’m not reading (or when I’m reading material that doesn’t inspire me). Anxiety, depression, and many other issues can also put a damper on self-motivated work. It’s easy to work when you’re under the lash, but when you’re the one with the cat o’ nine tails, you have a tendency to cut yourself a wee too much slack.

I’ve been remiss for far too long now. The good news is, I think Tales of Atreval may be innovative enough to interest a publisher, despite not technically being a novel (the stories are chronologically linked and feature most of the same characters, so it’s sort of a novel).

waver

Posted under Blog on May 3rd, 2005 by

I’ve removed the “Projects” section, primarily because my writing plans change so frequently, having the projects section seemed rather useless.

Eventually I hope to add a “Bibliography” section–if and when the things actually get published.

revivification

Posted under Blog, TV on May 2nd, 2005 by

Another update–just to reassure my two or three readers who aren’t friends or relatives that I’m alive.

The writing is still in flux. I’m becoming a bit concerned–my mind flip-flops on what to do for my thesis project about every twenty minutes, and I’m going through my annual “Is this really what I want to do with my life?” crisis. As you can see, it’s got me writing personal blather here on the blog instead of staid updates on my craft.

I caught the new episode of The Family Guy last night. After some of the rather tame jokes in the ads, I’d been worried that the new episodes would be less edgy (due to Fox’s discomfort with creator Seth MacFarlane’s envelope-pushing). I was wrong–the show is as sharp as ever.

The same can’t be said for The Simpsons. Watching Family Guy after not one, but two new Simpsons episodes made me realize how I’m beginning to lose interest in the latter. It’s been on too long now. It’s still funny, but…

And then there’s American Dad, a new cartoon from Family Guy‘s Seth MacFarlane. I think MacFarlane conceived the show as a way to parody the current conservative political climate in America, but I’m not sure the concept is that funny. But more importantly, American Dad just wasn’t interesting enough. Family Guy survives its standard sitcom plots through its cutaways and asides. American Dad–or the first episode, at least–plays like a regular live action sitcom (much like The Simpsons in its first seasons).

It was a pretty noticeable contrast in the living room; I chuckled at The Simpsons, laughed my ass off through Family Guy, then sat in stony silence for most of American Dad.

If I had to guess, I think Dad will make it through one season, whereas Family Guy has a chance at not being cancelled (again). And to be fair, Dad might improve–the first episode of FG wasn’t nearly as good as the one last night.

truancy

Posted under Blog, Comics, Movies on April 14th, 2005 by

Sorry for the long absence–I’ve had a tough couple of months. But I’m back and, while not better than ever, I’m at least better than never.

Progress has continued on my Dunwich Horror screenplay, primarily because it has to (I’m writing it for a class). Fortunately, it seems to be going fairly well–I’m not getting bogged down anywhere, and I think I’m finally getting a good grip on the characters.

The big news is that I’ve changed my graduate thesis plans. Instead of writing Tales of Atreval, a collection of linked short stories, I’m going to write the first Jon Shade novel. I made this decision for two reasons. The first is pure self-interest; novels are easier to sell than collections of short stories, particularly for new writers. The second reason is, I recently read Dashiell Hammett’s Red Harvest and The Dain Curse (as well as re-reading The Maltese Falcon), and those books reminded me that I grew up on novels rather than short stories, and when I write, I have a tendency–or used to, anyway–to write longer works.

In other news, I finally got out to the theater to see a movie–Sin City. I’d read the first graphic novel (which matches the first story in the film, the one featuring Mickey Rourke as Marv). I enjoyed it, though by the third story, it all was getting a bit tiresome and repetitive. It’s a beautiful film and is probably as close as one can get to an image-to-image cinematic translation of a comic without resorting to animation; but it’s so faithful, it shook my long-held preference for uber-faithful movie adaptations of literary works.

As one reviewer wrote (I think it was in Newsweek), if adaptation is good enough for Jane Austen, it should be good enough for Frank Miller. I’m a big fan of both the Hellboy comics and the film version, but the film is its own entity, and both versions have their strengths and weaknesses. The same goes for the Lord of the Rings films; to say the film is better than the book, or vice-versa, is an apples-and-oranges comparison. I’m not sure the same could be said of Sin City.

Still, I recommend it. The second story, which stars Clive Owen and Benicio Del Toro, is particularly interesting. Visually, the movie is stunning, and I expect it will be fairly influential.

yaphy

Posted under Blog, Culture on March 6th, 2005 by

Here’s something troubling: Student Arrested For Terroristic Threatening Says Incident A Misunderstanding.

“My story is based on fiction,” said Poole, who faces a second-degree felony terrorist threatening charge. “It’s a fake story. I made it up. I’ve been working on one of my short stories, (and) the short story they found was about zombies. Yes, it did say a high school. It was about a high school over ran by zombies.”

Even so, police say the nature of the story makes it a felony. “Anytime you make any threat or possess matter involving a school or function it’s a felony in the state of Kentucky,” said Winchester Police detective Steven Caudill.

Poole disputes that he was threatening anyone.

“It didn’t mention nobody who lives in Clark County, didn’t mention (George Rogers Clark High School), didn’t mention no principal or cops, nothing,” said Poole. “Half the people at high school know me. They know I’m not that stupid, that crazy.”

When I was in seventh grade, I wrote a short story called C.H.E.T. (Cannibalistic Humanoid Education Teacher). It was a parody of the movie C.H.U.D. In my story, the teachers in our school (and I referred to them by their real names) get turned into zombies and run amok attacking the students (again, all referred to by real names). The kids get eaten, the teachers get blown apart with shotguns, and so forth. I was young and stupid. Most of the kids in the story were friends of mine–not enemies I wanted to kill by proxy. I was probably one of the nicer kids in my class. I just thought the idea of the story was funny. And it’s common to write for a very specific audience–e.g., your friends at school–when you start your career at that age, so I made my friends the stars and the teachers the bad guys, since the teachers were, after all, the ones made us do homework.

I shudder to think what might have happened to me in the same situation as Poole. Drawing pictures of your teacher with bombs dropping on them or whatever is a rite of passage for teenage boys. From the way it sounds, Poole’s story was even less specific and violent than mine was.

I know I showed the story to a couple of other kids, though I don’t think I showed it to any teachers. However, I also don’t recall being that careful to keep it out of teachers’ hands. I did show my English teacher a later story in which terrorists take over the school and my friends and I have to kill the terrorists to save everyone. A teacher or two may have bought it at the hands of terrorists in that story, but my teacher didn’t scold me. I don’t know what she thought of it, actually, but she continued to encourage my writing, so she must have seen something in that Z-grade Die Hard rip-off (thanks again, Mrs. Gill).

Of course, there may be more to the story. In this article, the school’s principal claims the word “zombies” doesn’t appear in the story, though that really doesn’t mean anything. Poole could have referred to the monsters by some other name. I just checked C.H.E.T. (yes, I still have a copy of it), and the word “zombie” doesn’t appear in it, either.

Neither article gives much information about the actual story itself–all we get are second-hand descriptions by Poole and the principal. But as of right now, I’m inclined to give Poole the benefit of the doubt, because there but for the grace of Mrs. Gill and a pre-Columbine world go I.

In other news, I’m taking the week off from work(s). It’s spring break at Emerson, and I could use some time to sleep and write.

Here’s a bizarre news story. Inexplicable dog suicides off an eerie bridge? How many short horror stories are being written about it at this very minute?

I came across this amusing Lovecraft pastiche by Neil Gaiman.

Until next time, Cthulhu fhtagn!

streek

Posted under Blog on March 1st, 2005 by

I’ve been busy writing, but there isn’t too much to update on at the moment. I’ve written the first ten pages of my screen adaptation of “The Dunwich Horror,” and am still working on the second Tales of Atreval story.

I’ve also started work on a new horror story. I’m going to keep it under wraps for now, as I hope to send it out once it’s done.

Other than that, the only writing-related issue I’m struggling with is whether to make the first Jack Sheed book a novel, a collection of short stories, or a progressive series of short stories that add up to a kind of novel (a la Tales of Atreval). Novels are easier to sell than short story collections. And the only such collections I can think of are by authors who have already established their universes in novels, like Le Guin’s recent Tales of Earthsea. Books like Leiber’s collected Fafhrd & the Gray Mouser tales–my model for Tales of Atreval–are made up of stories that, while progressing chronologically, were written and published at random over a number of years. Same goes for the collection of Robert E. Howard’s Conan stories.

I suspect I’ll end up keeping Tales of Atreval as a chronologically-linked series of stories, while Sheed will become a novel. But we’ll see.

logolatry

Posted under Blog on February 20th, 2005 by

I’ve added a new Projects section, where you can read about the various writing projects I’m working on.

I’ve also added Tom Bruno to my SOI section–Tom is a friend of mine and a fellow worker at Widener Library. He’s also a scholar of ancient history and languages and is currently working on a novel. It was Tom who informed me that the 1979 cult film The Warriors was based on Xenophon’s Anabasis.

1 … 33 34 35 36 37 … 41
Copyright © Jason F.C. Clarke
"Keepwriting" WordPress Theme by Blog Oh! Blog