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H.G. Parry | The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep

by | Jun 8, 2022 | Book Thoughts

Cover of The Unlikely Escape of Urish Heep, author photo of H.G. Parry, Map of London, fountain pen

“It tickled me that while I knew a certain thing had to happen, because that’s the trope or literary tradition Parry was representing, how she twists the representation into a unique thing is what makes it her story—which is precisely how literature works.”

H.G. Parry’s The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep (2019) is a delightful, splendid, maddening, curious, detailed, remarkable, tantalizing, intriguing, distancing, overexcited, cheering, and rewarding book. Pieces of it turned up in my dreams immediately after I finished reading it. This only happens if something—person, place, thing, or event—has done something unequivocal to me and my imagination. [1]

The dream pieces were partial images, those I recall seeing as I read but, as within Heep, disappeared and reappeared sporadically. There were a lot of words flying about, differently sized and mostly in serif font. (I think the cover of the book may have had something to do with that.) And there was a quality of light to most of the dreams which was unexpected, a kind of hovering glow of gold satin.

It is an unusual book.

THE STORY

First, the description of the story from Parry’s website:

For his entire life, Charley Sutherland had concealed a magical ability he can’t quite control: he can bring characters from books into the real world. His older brother, Rob—a young lawyer with a normal house, normal fiancée, and an utterly normal life—hopes that this strange family secret will disappear with disuse, and he will be discharged from his life’s duty of protecting Charley and the real world from each other. But then, literary characters start causing trouble in their city, making threats about destroying the world . . . and for once, it isn’t Charley’s doing. There’s someone else who shares his powers. It’s up to Charley and a reluctant Rob to stop them, before these characters tear apart the fabric of reality. [2]

The Difficulty of fiction

Getting into the book was an odd experience. Reading fiction is hard for me, magical realism even more so. My academic training had a goodly component of literary analysis. I did a large piece of research that involved heavy duty content analysis. Then I went on to teach writing and literary analysis for a time, and after that did and taught book and database indexing which requires that one objectify text in order to label its contents for intellectual access.

As a reader, I find it exceedingly difficult to turn off these various aspects of my mind that run at full tilt most of the day. This means reading is never simply that. Add to that fun, I am a long-time writer. The bulk of my career was professional writing with the occasional self-expressing poetry or fictional correspondences as private entertainment. For the last five or six years I have been writing fiction: magical realism, speculative fiction, and academic mystery. [3]

What is so fun about Parry’s book is that none of this mattered while at the same time it thrummed below like a bagpipe’s drone all the while I read. 

And none of this is needed to enjoy The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. It’s a fulsome, fat book that reads fast and fun and goes on and on.

 

IMPRESSIONS

Some thoughts on the book.

Heep takes a little time to get going. Older brother Rob is a bit of a pill in terms of personality. He has the arrogant know-it-all ways of an older sibling and Charley is a bit whiny at first to my tastes. Frankly, I found them both annoying but decided to give Parry benefit of the doubt. Also, analytical-me could see she was doing something. Who, what, and how these brothers are matters.

Parry has her own interesting take on their creation:

Charley because he’s seen mostly through other people’s eyes, so it was difficult to sift through that and see who he really is inside his own head; Rob because he’s so reluctant to get involved with anything outside the norm that he risked missing out on most of the plot! [4]

Once the actual adventuring begins the story takes off. Millie Radcliffe-Dix—a girl detective of Parry’s invention who is a bit of a mix of Nancy Drew and Pippi Longstocking—provides a strong, to my mind stronger, counterpoint to Charley than his brother. When Millie is on stage things seem more coherent. Then again, that is her role and the literary notion of role is central to the characters (those real and those read-in) to the plot, and to the larger tale Parry is creating.

 

Portrait of SHerlock Holmes by Sidney Paget

Sherlock Homes by Sidney Paget

Jane Austen

Jane Austen (based on sketch by her sister Cassandra)

Photo portrait of Charles Dickens

Charles Dickens (From the National Library of Wales)

Characters and creatures begin to appear, seemingly at random at first: Uriah Heep (from David Copperfield) running around Charley’s English Department and a most fiercesome and real Hound of the Baskervilles (from Conan Doyle’s book of the same name) attacking the brothers at Charley’s home. Then their authors start popping up and other authors, or their representations (there are multiple versions of Jane Austen’s Mr. Darcy, each manifesting a certain, different trait of the man as Austen wrote him). Dickens’ Dorian Gray is quite the devious charmer who both moves the plot onward while providing a seething uncertainty beneath the action.

There are coexisting universes, not unlike the mundane reality of a reader and the imagined reality created by the book she is reading. The shifting between the two is puzzling at first—I found myself wishing the book’s editing had been slightly tighter here as the imagery was a bit overwhelming (for me, that is). But the increasing overlap of space, places, and imagination becomes a necessary element of the plot and the story.

It’s difficult to describe further as it might compromise a reader coming fresh to this delightful book. I can say the ending was charming while also satisfying. Somewhere I read that Parry has been asked about writing a sequel and I don’t see how she could without simply repeating herself.  A sequel would simply rerun the tropes and story types she has broken apart this once and so successfully. There were some minor characters, some needed for the plot, some for a kind of comic sensibility, that I’d have edited out, but they do work. (I suspect that’s my English professor persona having a small fit.)

All in all, The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep is a book I will want to periodically reread, which I don’t often do unless something about the book took joyous hold of my imagination.

The personal book

I know I am not the only person who felt this but it seemed Parry wrote this book just for me, the one-time academic and academic librarian, the double English major, the been-reading-since-I was-three person. I got to use all my skills and training in cahoots with someone whose skills and training are enough above mine to make reading Heep a sort of game. Could I anticipate a certain next part of the story? Yes! Did I see the occasional inside literary joke? Yes! Did I know the ending because of what I know about how literature, criticism, and storytelling work? Yes.

But even better, not yes.

I knew what was going to happen pretty much all the way through because a close reading of the characters—the literary persons that exist or appear throughout the story and the characters that made the story itself—meant only certain things could happen. So although I knew X would happen or a certain person would do or be something/someone, it didn’t happen quite as I thought it might. I felt genuine childlike glee every time it happened as though Parry and I were playing a game of badminton tapping the birdie back and forth. I got to be Charley (!) who early on explains what reading is for him:

And while I am reading, the new words I’m taking in will connect to others I’ve already taken in . . . . They make a map, or a pattern, or a constellation. Formless, intricate, infinitely complex, and lovely. And then, at once, they’ll connect. They’ll meet and explode. Of course. That’s the entire point! That’s how the story works, the way each sentence and metaphor and reference feeds into the other to illuminate something important. That explosion of discovery, of understanding, is the most intoxicating moment there is. Emotional, intellectual, aesthetic. Just for a moment, a perfect moment, a small piece of the world makes perfect sense. And it’s beautiful. It’s a moment of pure joy, the kind that brings pleasure like pain. (pg. 26)

 

A page later Charley says,

That part is the magic, in that it’s a step further than most people’s reading or analysis goes. It all feels one and the same to me, but that’s where the line crosses from the accepted to the extraordinary. (pg. 27)

But for all that my lit crit and writing background had me primed, Parry often caught me off guard, often in the most wonderful ways. I won’t spoil anyone’s reading with specifics (and there are many opportunities for this). It tickled me that while I knew a certain thing had to happen, because that’s the trope or literary tradition Parry was representing, how she twists the representation into a unique thing is what makes it her story—which is precisely how literature works.

And why writing fiction is so hard! Writers are told to “be original” while also being told that, fundamentally, there are only seven types of stories. [4] So how does one manage? How does one make a type fresh?

In Parry’s case, it was a matter of taking that other adage—write what you know—and converting it to write how you know. About half way through Heep one of the character-people tries to explain something to Rob by saying “If you were in a certain kind of book . . . .” Parry, the writer with a PhD in English Literature, does a version of this. It’s as if she instead asked herself If I were a certain kind of book . . . .

In a 2019 interview, when asked what research did for this book she said “I cheated with this, because I deliberately wrote a book about everything I love and so I knew a lot already.” [5]

It must have been quite freeing to simply cut loose in a way that both honored the breadth and depth of English Literature as a formal field of study while also, in effect, kicking all the formal requirements of literary criticism and analysis right in the teeth.

Lady of Challot by Hunt shows woman standing in center of elbaorte room looking out an arched window
WOman weaving cloth on loom surrounded by suitors

Left: The Lady of Shallot by William Holman Hunt

Right: Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse

The fun I had with Heep has made my years in academe and lit crit so worth it! Witty, heartfelt, & just plain delightful. Parry is not simply a story teller, she is a story weaver: Ariadne unwinding her skein; The Lady of Shallot embroidering images seen in her mirror; Penelope weaving and unraveling her father-in-law’s shroud. She plays, deeply plays, and we and our imaginations are the better for it in so many ways.

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read. Sometimes I will write more formally, sometimes off the cuff, sometimes almost intimately. I write about what I feel like writing about. A book might have come out a month ago, a few decades ago, or a few centuries ago. I read as I please and when thoughts about the experience come to mind sufficiently, I write them here.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, June 8). H.G. Parry | The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2022/06/08/parry-uriah-heep/


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

Sherlock Holmes by Sidney Paget. Via  Wikipedia.

Portrait of Jane Austen, from the memoir by J. E. Austen-Leigh (1798-1874). Via Wikipedia.

Charles Dickens. From the National Library of Wales. Via Wikipedia.

The Lady of Shallot by William Homan Hunt. Via Wikipedia.

Penelope and the Suitors by John William Waterhouse (1911-1912). Via Wikipedia

 

SOURCES & NOTES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Parry, H. G. (2019). The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.  Redhook.

[2] H.G. Parry’s webpage for The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.

[3] See this section of my website for a rundown of my works done and in progress.

[4] The Quillery. (2019, July 30). “Interview with H.G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.” The Quillery website.

[5] Booker, Christopher. (2004). The Seven Basic Plots: Why We Tell Stories. Bloomsbury Continuum. (This link is to the 2019 edition.)

[6] The Quillery. (2019, July 30). “Interview with H.G. Parry, author of The Unlikely Escape of Uriah Heep.” The Quillery website.

Signs of Ideas

by | Mar 22, 2022 | Creativity

Collage of multicolored sidewalk bricks, a lightbulb in sand, the word Ideas in grey stone, & emoji-like images of lightbulbs

“For me it is a matter of seeing, a posture of mind.“

Writers and artists are frequently asked “Where do you get your ideas?” Googling the phrase just now came back with 508,000,000 results. Maria Popova, essayist and creator of The Marginalian website, has written a splendid piece on the question. She opens saying,

“Since long before the question of where good ideas come from became psychologists’ favorite sport, readers, fans, and audiences have been hurling it at authors and artists, much to their frustration.” [1]

Melissa Burkley, psychologist and author of the column “The Social Thinker” on the Psychology Today website, addresses the notion in a well-considered discussion of the conscious and unconscious sides, or aspects, of the human mind:

“So how is it that people who make their living writing can’t tell us where their story ideas truly come from? I think the reason has to do with the fact that the human mind is what psychologists call a “dual-process system . . . . Recognizing that ideas don’t just get consciously invented out of thin air is inspiring. Because we all daydream or get bored and find our mind wandering throughout our day. The only difference is that writers have trained themselves to listen to their inner mule rather than ignore it.” [2]

Burkley talks about  handing “the reins off to your unconscious brain.” Easier said than done, of course, given how everyday life and responsibilities can freeze us in the here and now.

At the end of this post I have a few thoughts about how one can shift one’s self from the conscious to unconscious modes (then back again). For me it involves associative thinking, seeing into things (i.e., finding stories in objects), and dreaming.

Associative Thinking

We moved not too long ago and our small house has a little front room we like to call the solarium. It faces west and is filled with plants, a cozy sofa, an early 20th-century secretary desk made of recovered barn wood, and an old stereo system that plays CDs and cassette tapes. I like to sit there in the morning and nosh on my breakfast before my husband wakes up. I look out the windows onto our minor neighborhood street and let my mind wander.

There a many dog walkers and, when it’s warm, people running or walking for their exercise. I recall a moment: a tiny, fierce-looking woman on her morning run. As she ran by a second time and I realized that her running course was just our small city block. I was struck with a fictional notion, an associative notion: I am a 19th-century invalid, one of those fragile ladies from history, like Ida McKinley, the wife of U.S. president William McKinley.

I imagine sitting in one of those elaborate wicker-back Victorian wheel chairs, gazing wistfully out, or perhaps resentfully, as people pass by. I imagine stories . . .

  • A couple, young and in love, the woman dark haired and small. Or perhaps they are older and also in love but for so long a time that the act of the man quietly offering his arm to his wife belies decades of passions spent and enjoyed;
  • A smallish woman with her hair in a proper updo pushing an elaborate pram, her child so longed for and now so deeply cherished; or perhaps she is a modern era wife, visibly pregnant with an infant never wanted, another forced pregnancy and the child-to-be resented;
  • A skipping girl, her hair ribbon flouncing about like a bird in flight, a girl who will go on to discover the first fossils in Dorset, or who will be struck down by a mysterious fever before the month’s end;
  • A man, dark-haired, young, and desperately handsome, walking with an older man, his father likely by the matching profiles; desperate in other ways as they appear to be debating, the younger man nearly in tears, pleading with his dear Papa to accept that he is a man now with his own mind, the father devastated to lose his son to heathenism.

All ideas captured, all stories imagined, all triggered by a small, intense woman with dark hair and a prancing runner’s gait who passed by one morning.

First Lady Ida McKinley circa 1900

Ida McKinley in the White House Conservatory (ca. 1900).

Historical Note: McKinley’s mother & two young daughters died within a short period of time leading to a physical breakdown. She developed migraine and epilepsy. Despite her ailments she provided valuable advice and insight re: politics to her husband. She was also an active supporter of woman suffrage. [3]

3 old fashioned ligh tbulbs

Stories from objects

Top: vintage science instruments in open box; Next: same items in smaller paperboard boxes within wood box: Next: Wooden box closed, it has some artsy brushed on images on top; Bottom: Box wrapped in borwn wrapping paper, tied with red yarn, and with vintage postage stamps & special delivery stickers.
3 old fashioned ligh tbulbs

Some years back I was part of a one-day LARP (“Live Action Role-Playing”) children’s theater event. The Harry Potter books were out then and we borrowed the notion of a first day at a magical school as our context. [4]  I played three different characters: an in-person postal delivery person, the six-month, pre-event author/editor of the monthly newspaper, and a Potteresque moving portrait character.

A good many props, sets, costumes, and the like were made. I was responsible for the “Owl Post” deliveries. Each child (there were 19, ranging in age from 9-14) received several letters and a package. I created them all, a total of 125 letters and 19 unique “magical gifts.”

I’ve written fictional correspondences over the years [5] so the letter writing was not easy but familiar. Creating the gifts was more of a challenge. What I ended up doing was wandering through thrift shops looking for things that might be made into something different. It was that posture of seeing again. If you’re looking for magical things then magical things appear.

The top left image shows the found objects assembled for one gift: a long metal tweezers, a scientific measuring device (an expanding spectrometer), a piece of obsidian, and an old wooden pencil box. As with each package, the items were boxed or wrapped or bagged within. And for each a personal letter was enclosed that described or told a story of the items. [6] Each box was then wrapped in heavy brown packing paper, tied with yarn or twine, and had vintage-era postage stamps affixed as well as various special delivery stickers or stamps.

The story for the letter came from the objects. The recipient for this package, the oldest kid attending, was still at that liminal moment where the child wants to believe but the almost young man is hovering. Knowing that, I selected these objects, and knowing that, a story came into my mind that the letter was from the  former “Head Boy.”

I am going to take the extra step and send you some stuff I know you will need . . . I wrote . . .  The professor of the mundane technology course always requires his students to gather examples of unusual technology.  I never got around to showing him these so I figure I’d save you some time up front by sending them on. I’m sure he’ll be delighted. I ended by telling him of another professor: Too bad Professor E – – –  (or E-cubed, as we upper levels refer to him!) is on sabbatical this year.  He teaches a mean Magical Metals class.  Tough as all get out but he has a great sense of humor which makes it do-able.

Postscript: A year later I heard from someone at the event that this package and letter thoroughly delighted this young man and that he thought the tools to be truly wizarding in nature!

 

dreamtimes

 

Cream brick famhouse and garage ca. 1930s
Cream brick farmhouse ca 1956
Cream brick farm house and barn seen from a distance looking east
2 men in farm carriage with white hourse pose in front of barn and cream brick farmhouse with garage, ca. 1930s

My childhood home was this farmhouse. The two upper left and lower right photos are from the 1930s, the lower left from around 1910, and the upper right from 1956. The house itself was built in the 1840s. Our family of twelve lived there beginning in the mid-1950s through the early 2000s. Surrounded by acres of farmland originally, during our time that land had been parceled out and the house stood magnificently alone among blocks and blocks of post-World War II houses.

Corner floor-to-ceiling cabinet made of wood. Upper door has 5 glass panes; lower third is a wood door.

The smaller, house-shaped section to the right of the garage held the kitchen in its entirety. Where the piano is in this photo to the left is where a cast iron cook stove would have stood. You can see just see the chimney for it in the upper images.

In the kitchen corner was this cabinet for the best dishes. My parents kept their small set of wedding china there. The little door below is what fascinated me. When I was four I dreamt I opened it and went inside. So vivid was the dream that I remember it to this day. The actual cupboard had a few shelves. In my dream, just inside the inside top was a small rectangular opening about two by eight inches. Brilliant sunlight flooded down onto what was then a linoleum-covered floor. In the way of dreams I pushed myself through the opening and found myself in our backyard. It was and wasn’t our yard, filled with many more trees and it shimmered with that same unearthly sunlight.

I have had dreams as vivid as this but except for one other none have stayed with me. That one was more recent (about five years ago) and more typical of the dreams I have now: detailed, visual to the point of cinematic, and rich in storytelling. This particular dream felt called out my subconscious. I’d been pulling together the underlying substance for the academic mystery series I wanted to write. As I cannot write with any focus or success until I see the place for a tale, I was doing a lot of image web browsing of campus maps and old photos of colleges from the late 19th- and early 20th-centuries.

One weirdly sleepless night I feel into a brief, very deep sleep. It seemed I dreamt for hours. I found myself both on an old college campus and watching it all as a non-participating observer. There were my buildings, the layout, the great oak trees that lined the old quad. And there was a nearby lake. I didn’t fly over it all but for all that it still felt like one of those cool flying dreams! I saw people, knew who they were and how they knew each other. Part way through it all I woke up, just enough to realize what was happening. I told myself to “look harder” and dove back in, now half asleep and half awake. Then I made myself truly wake up. I grabbed my sketchbook and frantically wrote up notes, recording in some places but in others letting the dream push my awake self to invent more. Just now, as I wrote this last sentence, I looked at those sketchbook pages again and had to laugh. I had labeled the pages “a screenplay.”

Holding on to OR MAKING ideas

In 1885 Robert Louis Stevenson had a bad dream. His wife Fanny spoke of it later: “In the small hours of one morning . . . I was awakened by cries of horror from Louis. Thinking he had a nightmare, I awakened him. He said angrily: ‘Why did you wake me? I was dreaming a fine bogey tale.’ I had awakened him at the first transformation scene.” [7]  Stevenson, ill and bedridden, subsequently wrote the book we know as The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde over the course of the next few days. [8]

While I rarely have nightmares this vivid, my dreams are typically as intense. I put it down to insomnia. (My mother used to joke that I had sleep issues even as an embryo.) I also have one of those brains that simply does not shut down visually. The proverbial counting sheep trick doesn’t work because the beasties are moving! The only way I can get to sleep is to visualize vast swaths of fabric simply hanging there, or to imagine I am looking at a night sky close up.

Megan Schmidt, writing for Discover magazine about who remembers their dreams and why narrowed it down nicely for me:

“. . .  it seems that brain differences, individual characteristics and aspects related to the dreams themselves all play a role.” [9]

Over time I have learned to be aware in my dreams. If I am relaxed enough I can dream lucidly, my insomnia is a version of the “wake back to bed” mode for encouraging lucid dreams. [10] But rather than engage in a quiet activity, such as reading, while awake as this method suggests, I imagine characters and scenes for the book I am writing. It’s a bit like sitting in that Victorian wheelchair again. I simply sit and watch people move and talk.

When I fall asleep again I may or may not dream my stories but I do tend to fall asleep with a kind of heightened awareness. That is, I almost always know I am dreaming. If I am close enough to that threshold of sleeping and wakefulness I can control or design the dream. More often, though, my observing self tends to say stuff like “this is important” and “don’t forget this one.”

WRITE IT OUT

In the final section of the Schmidt article, she cites Michael Schredl from Germany’s Central Institute of Mental Health. He states that “It’s really an ability where ‘practice makes perfect.’ In other words, if you keep trying to remember your dreams, you eventually will.” He recommends keeping a dream journal.

I don’t do quite that but I do keep my sketch book or note cards at my bedside. If there is a sentence or phrase I want to expand in in my next day’s writing, I’ll write it out but also write the context. Or, as in the case above where I dreamed my college campus into existence along with a few characters and the bare bones of a plot, I get up and go to the guest room next door that serves as my writing space. Then, since I am usually wide awake, I write out as much as I can of what I saw, what people said, and what the story was.

It’s hardly a perfect process as I often forget dreams between sleep interludes or am too sleepy to get up and write, but the more I do it the better it works. And I comfort myself knowing that if I forget one dream, there will be another that will likely be along similar lines. Dr. Jekyll and his counterpart Mr. Hyde did not appear from nowhere. Stevenson had noted that he’d “. . . long been trying to write a story on this subject, to find a body, a vehicle for that strong sense of man’s double being which must at times come in upon and overwhelm the mind of every thinking creature.” [11]

THINK ABOUT WHAT IF

We all have those moments: If only I’d said ‘this’ or if only that person lived here not there. We imagine what would be different if something else had been different as well. I find I can get some keen and sometimes fantastic ideas for characters or plot by tweaking things this way.

In my academic mystery there is a hockey player, a coach. She is cocky and self assured. She’s interesting and fun to write but she seemed flat. I need her to be somehow less perfectly the gold medal winner she is. What if she weren’t as good as people say she is? Or, what if she was once but isn’t now? If either of those, what made that difference? What if, I thought, what if she were injured in a way that changed who she is now. What do hockey players need besides physical skill and endurance? They need to see everything that’s going on. What if my golden girl was legally blind in one eye due to a recent on-ice accident? A little research into NHL player injury gave me some good ideas and now my character is something more as is my story.

When reading what I wrote I have other what if moments. What if ‘X’ happened two days prior? What if the murderer is not the only one? It means a boat load of rewriting, but then I have different versions to compare.

For another take on this, see this blog essay “Let’s Agree About Conflict” by writer KJ Charles. In the second half she talks about obstacles. Obstacles are a kind of what if. By tweaking something here or there, so much can change. As Charles put it when considering a set of obstacles for a set of characters, what if she had decided differently:

“All of those decisions could have worked. All of them would have led to the characters developing and reacting differently. And since plot is character in action, we’d have ended up with completely different books.” [12]

LET YOUR MIND WANDER

Fireplace video on vertical monitorIn this time of intense social media bombardment, of frantic and dangerous world events, of private personal and familial concerns, letting one’s mind simply go is not an easy thing. I try to turn away from social media at least twice a week. And by away I mean just that. It’s not easy since I am sitting at my desk with my several work monitors; which is why I can only manage it twice a week! I do much of my writing research online. But I force myself to do it—not open any new tabs on my laptop, shut down my phone. Sometimes it takes me several times to get myself to do this.

One trick I’ve found is running a relaxing video at full size on the monitor to my left. Right now it’s running a 10-hour burning fireplace, complete with crackling sounds. I find it immensely soothing. And when I need to let my writer’s mind wander, I turn off the other monitor and just look at the fire crackle away. Here are a few other channels I’ve found good videos on:

 

 

    • Ambience of Yesteryear (which they describe as a “collection of yesteryear-inspired cinemagraphs with historical themes, for ambience and ASMR.”)
    • The Silent Watcher (described as a collection of  “videos of beautiful and relaxing nature scener and sounds”)
    • Cat Trumpet (a collection of “videos . . . ideal for sleep, study, meditation and stress relief”)

More recently, I am learning more about deep breathing exercises. I am not trying to meditate though, for what I want is a daydreaming, associative floating experience, not the meditation goal of the empty or blank mind. I want to play, in a way, I want to see where my mind takes an image, like that woman runner, or a what if notion, or extrapolating a dream story. The breathing helps me slow down my comet-hopping visual mind. This info page over at HealthLine provides instruction for 10 breathing exercises.

Finding ideas for stories or the like is largely a matter of being open to what’s out there. If I try too hard I lose the flow of discovery. If I don’t take the time to relax, without judgment, and simply allow my curious mind to see, I can just as easily miss things. For me it is a matter of seeing, a posture of mind. The ideas are there for the taking if one but will.

 

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, March 22). Signs of Ideas. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).
https://jajablonski.com/2022/03/22/signs-of-ideas/

 

IMAGE CREDITS

Header Image:

First Lady Ida McKinley in the White House Conservatory (circa. 1900). From The White House Historical Association.

Three small old fashioned light bulbs. Modified version of this public domain image.

Vertical image set of found items-turned-magical-postal-gift. All photos by J.A. Jablonski. All rights reserved.

Cream brick farmhouse. On Milwaukee website. Kitchen corner image modified from realtor ad.

Fireplace video on vertical computer monitor. By J.A. Jablonski. All rights reserved.

 

SELECTED SOURCES | NOTES

[1] Popova, Maria. (2014). Ursula K. Le Guin on Where Ideas Come From, the “Secret” of Great Writing, and the Trap of Marketing Your Work. (blog post). Brain Pickings. [NOTE: Popova has renamed this site The Marginalian.]

[2] Burkley, Melissa. (2017, December 4). Where Do Writers Get Their Ideas? Blog post. The Social Thinker. Psychology Today. Burkley also wrote a blog from 2017-2019 called The Writer’s Laboratory Blog that I’ve found insightful.

[3]  Read more about Ida McKinley at this page from the National Park Service.

[4] I wrote about this wizarding event on my artist’s blog, Dante’s Wardrobe. Here is the link to that set of posts.

[5] Writing fictional correspondences is a blast! If you are interested in how to start one and how to make your own letterhead, mailboxes, faux postage, etc. see this collection of posts on my Dante’s Wardrobe site.  NOTE: This is a fun classroom activity as well as one for lovers, roommates, and families.

[6] The posts listed in note #4 here include a subset on what I referred to as the faux packages. You can find those at this link.

[7] Balfour, Graham (1912). The Life of Robert Louis Stevenson. Vol. II. New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, pg. 15.

[8] An e-version of The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde can be found on the Project Gutenberg website here.

[9] Schmidt, Megan. (2019, July 14). “Why Do Some People Always Remember Their Dreams, While Others Almost Never Do?” From Discover website.

[10] Nunez, Kirsten. (updated on January 5, 2022). “5 Lucid Dreaming Techniques to Try.” Healthline website.

[11] Luckhurst, Roger. (n.d.) “Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde.” British Library website. Accessed March 18, 2022.

[12] Charles, KJ. (2021, June 25). “Let’s Talk About Conflict.” Blog post. KJ Charles website.

3 Women | A Photo Tribute

by | Mar 8, 2022 | Women of Note

Closeup of 1914 poster for Women's Day by Karl Maria Stadler shows woman in long black dress proudly & strongly waving a large banner.

On International Women’s Day I honor 3 women who made me the person I am today.

Marion M. Jablonski

Harriet Offley Nelson

Ursula K. Le Guin

They were in their own unique ways astoundingly powerful & creative.

Portrait of Marion M. Jablonski. Shows a white woman in her late 70s wearing floral suit jacket, pink turtleneck, & silver earrings & eyeglasses. Text notes she was 1st of her family to attend college; Mother of 10 children; Academic Administrative Asst; Writer; & Poet
Collage of writings by M. Jablonski includes book covers of a family memoir & stories from her days as a child growing up on a farm, & partial views of a few of published poems. At lower left is black & white photo of the 1840s era farmhouse which was our family home.
men posing for picture. Both have short hair and are smiling broadly. Text on screen lists Ms. Nelson's career credentials: Head of Reference Services| John K. Mullen Library at The Catholic University of America, Wash D.C.; Librarian | College of New Jersey & Purdue University; BA Psychology, Swarthmore College; MLS Medical Librarianship, University of Chicago; MS Developmental Psychology, Columbia University
Ursula K Le Guin stands at a lectern. Shows an older white woman with short, bowl-cut white hair & glasses. She is smiling. Text below image lists some of her key credentials: Author, Poet, Essayist, Translator, Hugo & Nebula award winner (multiple), SFWA Grandmaster, Feminist, Activist
College image shows portion of a letter I received from Ms. Le Guin. A stone covers the return address. To the right is a partial view of the cover of the book Ursula K. Le Guin: Conversations on Writing.

  © J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, March 8 ). 3 Women | A Photo Tribute. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).

https://jajablonski.com/2022/03/08/3-women-photo-tribute

 

IMAGE CREDITS

Marion M. Jablonski. Author Photo. © Marion Jablonski Esate. All rights reserved.

Collected writings of Marion M. Jablonski. Images by J.A. Jablonski. All rights reserved.

Black & white photo, circa 1960s, of brick farmhouse. Photo by Louis S. Jablonski. All rights reserved.

Ursula K. Le Guin. Publicity photo by Jack Liu. © 2014 Jack Liu 

Letter by Ursula K. Le Guin. Unpublished. Photo by J.A. Jablonski. All rights reserved.

Character Morgues: Finding Faces

by | Feb 15, 2022 | Character Building

Intense woman with with short blond hair & blue eyes, smiling white teen with longish hair, older bearned black man

“The face is the mirror of the mind,
and eyes without speaking confess the secrets of the heart.”
~ St. Jerome

As part of my writing practice I create character morgues. At the beginning of a story I usually have only a general notion of what my people look like. Having more specific images helps me work out not just how they look but their psychology and their backstory. The idea for morgues came from my college days.

Undergraduates are famous for changing their majors and I was no different. I started out in theater because the most fun I had in high school was working on the school plays. I eventually ended up getting the BA in English Literature, but those first months crawling around the university’s theater building remain among my best memories.

The stage makeup class is something I still look to as a writer. We had to create a makeup morgue, a collection of pictures and photographs of examples people of various ages, unusual makeups, and hairstyles. They could be modern images or historical. The morgue served as your personalized reference book that helped you envision your characters’ look and makeup.

Person of indeterminate gender covered with thick gold paint
Geisha

Sample morgue images

Distressed woman

To find pictures for my morgue I often use Google Images, Unsplash, and Tumblr.

Google Images

I do straightforward searching with keywords for what I am looking for. As a librarian I get fancy with my search strings and use Boolean connectors. (More info on that below!). For instance, I wanted images of a nonbinary teen. Here’s what I searched . . .

(nonbinary OR non-binary OR “non binary”) AND (teen OR adolescent)

. . . and here’s a screenshot of the results:

Screenshot of Google Images search results

Clicking on the image brings it up on the side in a larger format. Then I right click to save it.

Unsplash

I tried the same search string as I used in Google Images but got some messy results. Not all the images matched what I had in mind. In Boolean searching “AND” means BOTH terms need to be in the results. But with Unsplash images the “AND” feature doesn’t seem to work as well. So I keep my searching terms more general. For instance, just searching nonbinary AND teen or nonbinary teen resulted in the one set of  images. Searching just on nonbinary resulted in a very different set, some of which were more personal in nature.

Screenshot of search results showing nonbinary teens

Unsplash results for
nonbinary AND teen and nonbinary teen

Screenshot of search results for nonbinary

Unsplash results for nonbinary

Tumblr

Tumblr is a microblogging social media site. To use it you need to be logged in. I have an account but
do not use it to blog. I use it solely as a writer- and artist-resources tool, for character and idea inspiration, for backstory and setting images, etc. So I mostly follow the blogs of museums, photo historians, so-called artist fan blogs, cities and archaeologists (for the architecture), and fashion historians. Here are just a few I’ve found super useful: 

NOTE: Tumblr has a search function that you can use to find feeds on specific topics. Look for the magnifying glass icon and/or the words “Search Tumblr.”

What Words to Use

So, you’ve a character in mind but are trying to find an image to help you zero in while you write. What words should you use in the search box? See those three at the top of this post? For the woman at the left—imagining now that my character is a woman who has perhaps been a little hard used by life so looks a little older than her actual age—I searched these terms in Unsplash: thoughtful woman, older woman, and tired woman. For the teen in the middle I just search for teen and smiling teen. And for the gent at the right I searched older black man and middle aged black man.

I make sure to have an images folder in each of my character folders so it is easier to find them later. When working I have a second monitor to the left of my writing laptop. Then when I am doing major backstory work or character development notes, I put the images of that character or character up on the screen.

Using Images

Something to keep in mind: Many images online are copyrighted. If you plan on making a public or online version of your morgues, you’ll want to make sure you are using images designated as public domain, or that have a Creative Commons license notice, or for which you have permission from the image owner.

Here are some info links about this:


Searching for Images Online (or anything else!)

I mentioned Boolean searching above. Fear not! The name comes from George Boole, a 19th-century English mathematician. He established the rules of symbolic logic. Basically, Boolean searching lets you combine keywords words and phrases to get more focused results. The combining is done by using the words AND, OR, NOT (known as Boolean operators). A search using these operators will  limit, broaden, or define your search. Knowing how to put together a search string (as it is called) using the AND, OR, and NOT operators really  is a superpower!  Click here for the MIT Libraries’ info on how to do Boolean searching.

 

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, Feb 15 ). Character Morgues: Finding Faces. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website).
https://jajablonski.com/2022/02/15/character-morgues/

 

IMAGE CREDITS

Marco Carocari | Blackout

by | Jan 6, 2022 | Book Thoughts

Cover of Blackout, blurred image of new World Trade Center, portrait of author Marco Carocari

“Having taken an end of year writing break I picked up ‘Blackout,’ read the first scene, and literally had to set the book down again. The setting so vivid; the energy an exquisite blend of melancholy and intensity; and a man so real and so briefly on the stage before me.”

It always strikes me when a book I hadn’t thought would strike me does. Especially when it is something I might not typically read. I love me a well-done mystery (not cozy though, thank you) but crime thrillers just don’t do it for me. Nor do roller coasters, horror movies, or watching a car accident happen before my eyes (which has happened three times, once somewhat gruesomely). I guess you could say I don’t do adrenaline very well.

And in some ways I don’t do reading very well. It’s extremely difficult for me to lose myself in a book. My entire professional life involved reading and analyzing text. Twice—once after finishing my master’s written comps exam in English then again after completing my doctoral comps—I was unable to read for pleasure for nearly eight months. Add to that years of book and database indexing where the sole purpose was to dissect content into its informational parts and labels; and years of teaching writing where my job was to help students work out how to express their ideas in clear, correct, focused prose.

White male nude in profile from waist up with tatoos on back Outdoor shot of old neon hotel sign. Roy's Motel. At base of sign are 3 small house-shapes and an old car. Black and white view out of the door of an old RV trailer. View is a desert with a beat-up metal chair in foreground, wooden fence midground, and sagebrush hills with sky and clouds above in background

Photography by Marco Carocari

So why did I immediately preorder Marco Carocari’s Blackout? [1]

The cover art, for one. Having been an assistant manager in a bookstore I tend to be immune to (or perhaps bored by is the better phrase) the often generic, repetitive designs. But the art by Mark Gutkowski, with its Art Deco echo, the NYC then-and-now silhouettes, and the colors—khaki, midnight blue, and rainbow flashing—caught my own artist’s eye and sensibility. Second, author Carocari is also a photographer whose work manifests technical rigor, intense focus, and artistic intimacy. [2] My own approach as a writer is to relentlessly visualize. If I can’t see a scene, can’t see the people moving about, I simply cannot write it.

THE STORY

Here is the overview of Blackout from Carocari’s website:

“Strait-laced forty-something Franco picked the wrong night to get freaky. A hook-up with a hot guy on his Manhattan rooftop, and a joint he’s unaware is laced, leaves him dazed. And —if memory serves him— the sole witness to a murder across the street.

 

Except, the cops can’t find a crime scene or a body, and Franco’s perforated recollections and conflicting testimony leave the detectives unimpressed. When days later the mutilated body of a philanthropic millionaire is discovered, he’s not only shocked to learn he knew him, but with Franco’s fingerprints all over the crime scene, he quickly graduates from unreliable witness to prime suspect.

 

Unsettled, and confronted with forty year old memories, when Franco’s father was murdered in front of him during Manhattan’s infamous blackout, a shocking revelation finally unmasks the man who pulled the trigger that night. And painting Franco the perfect suspect. With a target on his back and time running out, the truth will set Franco free, or earn him a toe tag at the morgue…”
Power, Precision, and Place

I don’t know why it took me this long to read Blackout—the book came out in March 2021. I am myself writing just now (a character-driven academic mystery as well as an involved speculative SF thing simmering alongside) and am one of those writers who dare not read certain other things when writing. I had a feeling Carocari’s book was one of them.

This is a compliment (I think) that I flinch at the potential power or influence of another’s work. Fiona Erskine’s Phosphate Rocks is sitting within my line of sight as I type this, also unread beyond the first few pages—those read thrice but no more than that, though her time is soon. [3] It’s a kind of respect in my universe to not want to read certain books until the moment is right.

Reader, this was such a moment. Having taken an end of year writing break I picked up Blackout, read the first scene, and literally had to set the book down again. The setting so vivid; the energy an exquisite blend of melancholy and intensity; and a man so real and so briefly on the stage before me. I was immediately caught by what I tweet-commented as the “quick, dark, graceful writing.”

And precise . . . which didn’t surprise me given the quality of Carocari’s photographic eye.

I’ve only been to New York City once and as a well-grown adult and even then for only two days. With the exception of similarly brief visits to London in the early 80s and San Francisco in the 90s, I’d never felt so immediately at home as I did in NYC. Reading Blackout gave me that same sense of familiarity and, in a way, of coming home. He didn’t have to world build for me. I was there! Sights, smells (the smells!), the pitch dark of the 1977 blackout, even the concrete beneath my feet.

HANGING TEN

Ocean wavesWhen I was a kid someone told me that waves always come in sevens with the last, seventh wave being the largest. I can remember sitting on the sandy edge of a small lake when summer-swimming with family, sitting and counting the waves as they came in. Maybe the theory doesn’t work in small lakes. I can only recall watching and watching as the rippled lines all looked the same as they hit the shore.

That image came to mind when reading Blackout, though here the waves did increase. I had this wonderful sense of being aboard a small boat or surfboard atop as each wave of the narrative pushed forward, rushing towards the shore with increasing intensity. Writer-Me noted “Oh, this is what they mean by a thriller.” Reader-Me just hung on surfer-like, for the ride.

Music is powerful element in Blackout and adds to the crescendo effect. Main character Franco DiMaso works at a club as one of his three jobs. There’s a lot of dancing and a lot of throbbing beats that surround the Franco and his friends. Although set in 2016, the musical vibe carried me back to when I was nineteen and first really fell in love; when I met my boyfriend’s gay friends who were the first out gay men I’d ever met; when I came into being in a way. The music of the Blackout’s characters and the deep sensibility that their music was the book’s own soundtrack gave me that sweet time back again. (Carocari includes a playlist at the end of the book and I have to say I wanted to hug him for that!)

The personable and the real

Ursula K. Le Guin. An older Caucasion woman with short white hair, face with creases, wearing glasses, stands at a podium. She is smiling genially.Invariably I read books on multiple levels, some of which have little to do with what the book is literally about in terms of plot or genre. That happened reading Carocari where I jumped both.

Blackout is as far away from speculative science fiction as you can get. Composing my thoughts for this post I was rather surprised, then, that two books insisted on resonating alongside: Ursula K. Le Guin’s The Dispossessed and The Left Hand of Darkness. [4, 5] Here are short descriptions for each:

The Dispossessed (1974): “This novel is about the radically different societies on two close planets. On Urras, there are multiple states, each with their own government. On Anarres, there is no government or economic system. Shevek, a physicist on Anarres, wants to break the rules of his world and travel to Urras, not only to speak with other physicists who understand and are excited by his theories, but to promote friendship between the two planets. . . . ‘ The Dispossessed’ is a novel of anarchy and individualism, of utopias and paradise.” (From Bookrags; link below)

 

The Left Hand of Darkness (1969): “The novel follows the story of Genly Ai, a human native of Terra, who is sent to the planet of Gethen as an envoy of the Ekumen, a loose confederation of planets. Ai’s mission is to persuade the nations of Gethen to join the Ekumen, but he is stymied by a lack of understanding of their culture. Individuals on Gethen are ambisexual, with no fixed sex; this has a strong influence on the culture of the planet, and creates a barrier of understanding for Ai.” (From Wikipedia; link below)

I say just now I was rather surprised, more like baffled. My goal of getting this essay posted earlier this week was put on pause while I let the matter marinate. Finally what surfaced had little to do with the plots or genres of the three books and everything to do with two critical notions: the especial connections people make with each other and the authenticity of persons.

I mentioned that crime thrillers aren’t my jam. Blackout almost went on my did-not-finish­ book stack at the moment Franco has to identify a body in a morgue. My reaction was pretty much the same as his and I wasn’t sure I could go on, much as I wanted to find out what happened. What kept me going was what kept Franco going: the anchor he finds in the tight, eclectic circle of his friends. Shevek and Ai, the central characters in Le Guin’s two books are similarly grounded and literally saved, emotionally and physically, by core friendships.

In all three books the friendships have been nurtured over time, challenged by events, and in the end, solidified into what is colloquially referred to these days as found family. I kept expecting Franco’s friends to offload him for his stubborn and occasionally flakey behavior but they never do. Shevek, who comes close to suicide through a combination of intellectual pride and loneliness, is saved by a long ago friend who has conquered his own pride and who offers the salve of love and friendship. Ai’s inability to see beyond his default male template of sex and gender nearly derails his mission as Envoy, a mission saved by the sacrifice of a person Ai later realizes was his only and dearest friend.

Franco, Shevek, and Ai, all male in this instance, are in the end fundamentally and authentically themselves, respectively gay, cis-but-sexually-open, and cis. This I think is the doorway connecting the three books in my mind; not the gender/sexuality specifically, but the solidity of the respective identities and how Carocari and Le Guin write them as normative.

My voice has always been my own so to read a story with a very strong voice is deeply satisfying to me, no matter what the voice. Though the thriller aspect of this book will not stay with me I think, in terms of representation this is a book that I will cherish. I am not any of the people in it and though not gay specifically, I am other. Aside from the story, aside from the writing, I felt seen in a way I rarely experience in daily life. These people, Franco and his friends, were my people. There aren’t too many books that give me that.

Postscript: I deliberately did not read any reviews of Blackout or interviews with Carocari prior to reading his book. Finding out now that he is not native-born or raised American and managed to capture NYC as he did is some kind of wonderful. A tip of the cap to you, sir.

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.

How to cite this post

Jablonski, J.A. (2022, Jan 6). Marco Carocari | Blackout. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2022/01/06/carocari_blackout


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Cover of Marco Carocari’s book, Blackout. From Amazon.
    • World Trade Center, NY. Photo by Lukas Blaskevicius on Unsplash. Modified & retinted.
    • Marco Carocari. Author photograph. From Mr. Carocari’s photography website About page.

Ocean waves. Photo by Photoholgic on Unsplash

Photography by Marco Carocari: Man in profile with tatoos; Roy’s Motel; View of desert from RV trailer door. All used by permission.

Photo of author Ursula K. Le Guin © 2014 by Jack Liu. See Le Guin’s Publicity Photos page.

SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Carocari, Marco. (2021). Blackout. Level Best Books. His author website is here.

[2] Carocari, Marco. Mr. Carocari’s photography website.

[3] Erskine, Fiona. (2021). Phosphate Rocks: A Death in Ten Objects. Sandstone Press. ISBN: 9781913207526

[4] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1974). The Dispossessed. Avon Books. (Bookshop link is to the Harper Voyager 1994 edition.) The Bookrags quotation above can be found here.

[5] Le Guin, Ursula K. (1969). The Left Hand of Darkness. Ace Books. (Bookshop link is to the Ace Books 1987 edition.) The Wikipedia quotation above can be found here.

No Move, No Write

by | Dec 13, 2021 | Character Building

Man & microphone, person in leather lacket, wood art mannequin

“What I am looking for is the person in the motion.
What I want is to pull that motion from them
and transform it into a character and their story.”

I have a character waiting for a story. He came to life most vividly one evening some years back when we were out to dinner with friends. The evening had ended and we were getting ready to leave. The one gent happened to rise first. In a brief unified flow of motions he stood, pulled his black leather jacket close to his chest, put up the collar, then turned back towards his partner to say something. My mind’s camera snapped the shot. And so expressive was the image that around two the following morning—I am an insomniac since pretty much forever—I woke to see the man walking slowly back and forth by the back wall  of my room, in profile, this time wearing an elaborate black velvet, calf-length cotehardie with high collar. No idea who this character is only that he seems to be waiting, patiently, for a book in which to travel.

It’s movement that brings my characters to life. If they don’t move I can’t write them.

So I spend a lot of time people watching be it live, in my mind’s eyes, in movies, in YouTube or Vimeo videos. The videos are varied. I like to watch dance pieces, especially those with only a few people.  And I like to watch the videos that artists or actors make of themselves at work.

 

Will B. Bell

Male and female dancer standing lean back as they hold each other by one hand

Contemporary ballet and jazz choreographer, Will B. Bell, has posted several set pieces on his YouTube channel. In addition to his choreography work, Bell is a teacher and actor. [1]

The set pieces are expressive in their lush movement, the dancers more than dancers as they embody the unspoken narrative. What captures me, beyond appreciating the sheer beauty, is the storytelling that underlies the dance.

The screenshot at left is from a piece named for the song by Adele, “Love in the Dark.”

“I can’t love you in the dark
It feels like we’re oceans apart
There is so much space between us . . .?

The dancers are strong and centered in their approach to each other. The lyrics matter but I find myself less tuned to the story they tell of this pair than how the dancers themselves interpret. I like that the woman is muscular and strong in her movements. And I like that the man’s gestures are expressive and self-aware. The lighting accentuates their power, the physicality of their relationship, and their isolation. DJ Smart and Zola Williams, the dancers, are more than than their dancing. Their movement not only carries a tale, it makes them into vivid, if nameless, people, makes them into characters I might write of someday.

 

Jono Dry

The work of certain artists, specifically artists who draw, infuses my writing work. What I am looking for is the person in the motion. What I want is to pull that motion from them and transform it into a character and their story. Cape Town artist Jon Dry gives me that energy of motion. Dry creates large scale drawings in graphite. The images are stunning in their depth, expression, and technique. Equally stunning is the interior impetus for them. Dry has ADD and describes how he uses art to

“…reflect on mental illness and its metaphors. With these drawings, I explore how one can make the experience of a state of anxiety or depression visible, particularly when those states of so often seeming inexpressible in words.” [2]

Graphite drawing of headless nude figure seen from behind. A hot air baloon floats above. Graphite drawing of a nude woman partially wrapped in wide fabric ribbons. Elaborate antlers grow from her head Graphite drawing of a black man shown from mid-chest up. His arms are crossed and he covers his lower face with his hands. Flowers and plants grow from the top of his head.
Left: Separation          Center: Figure in  Frame          Right: In My Silence

 

A key character in the academic mystery I am currently working on is psychologically complex. In the planned second book we see they are also suffering from complicated grief due to a murder that takes place in Book 1. In that state they are tormented. Dry’s images speak to me of their inner anguish, what I think of as the movement of grief.

Dry himself inspires my creativity with regard to characters on a more general level. He creates videos of himself drawing. The videos are their own works of art. He uses an array of cinematic techniques—slow and fast motion, multiple exposure, still and in-motion lighting— to capture the experience, his experience. His use of water on paper is powerful and evocative. [3]

I can see that complex character of mine in Dry’s movements as an artist. Dry looks nothing like my person, who is nonbinary and wears their hair styled most dramatically and colored a brilliant turquoise. But I see them in his focus, his care, and in the unmitigated courage of his physical and emotional self expression. [4]

 

Peter Hamilton Dyer

I am old enough to have a small collection of vinyl LPs from the 1960s-80s. It includes a number of original cast and movie recordings of some Broadway plays of which I am particularly fond: Brigadoon, The King and I, The Music Man, Man of La Mancha, Oklahoma, and a few others. Besides adoring the music, I enjoy comparing the way different actors sing and interpret their characters via song. Darren McGavin in the 1964 Lincoln Center revival of The King and I gives Yul Brynner’s archetypal performance of the King a serious run for the money. [5] The onstage shows were staged when I was only a child, a child stuck in the Midwest no less, so I’ve never been able to compare the acting and, especially, the movement of actors playing the same role.

I’ve mentioned actor Peter Hamilton Dyer in a previous post in relation to listening and character development. Having seen the DVD of the 2012 production of Twelfth Night at the Shakespeare’s Globe theatre in which he played Feste the jester I was curious about how he used the instrument of his body in making Feste happen. [6] To do that I wanted to compare him to himself, as it were, to see how he did that in general. I found a showreel of him playing a modern and an early 20th century character—he does this curious angling of his shoulders in both (I must have a thing for shoulders(!). [7] But what really caught my eye, and which let me solidify my sense of one of the main characters in my WIP academic mystery, was a rehearsal video I came across  of Hamilton Dyer playing Turkish newspaper editor Can Dunbar journalist in the provocative drama #WeAreArrested staged by the Arcola Theatre in 2018.

As far as I can determine there is no publicly available video recording of the production, but there are a few rehearsal videos on YouTube. One especially fascinates: “#WeAreArrested – Movment.” In it Director Sophie Ivatts and Movement Director Ingrid Mackinnon discuss the role of movement in the play. Their challenge was how to tell Dunbar’s story as told in his book and make it work onstage. [8]

From the video’s transcript:

[Speaking: Director Sophie Ivatts] “The ways in which we thought about finding a theatrical language, moving away from prose and really looking at what is the toolbox that we as theater makers can bring to Can’s story to tell it in a different way to the book? Movement it felt like an obvious answer to that.”

As Feste Hamilton Dyer dances intermittently, sometimes as a direct part of a scene. At one point (Act IV, Sc. 2) as he exits the stage, the moment he goes through a side door, he does a kind of skipping leap as he says his final line, “Adieu, good man devil.” It was that instant that my mystery’s character came to life, with that flippant line, in that somehow self-satisfied leap. (Whether Hamilton Dyer was actually doing it that way didn’t matter. My sometime-loner academic MC appeared!)

The role of movement in #WeAreArrested is used to structure the play rather than create character but how the three actors move belies who they play. Movement Director Mackinnon talks about movement and magic. At one point she steps up onto a large table that forms a central position on stage. You can see Hamilton Dyer watching her intently. At another point he is on the table himself, as Dunbar, walking and gesturing. Voila! There was my professor again. This time I could imagine him in front of a group of students or debating, as he does at one point in my narrative, the issue of conscientious objection.

~ * ~ * ~

Partial side view of tall woman in flannel shirt and blue jeans holding a crossbowWhen I began drafting this post back in October, I was inspired by the Halloween season to title it “Stealing Bodies.” For isn’t that what I am doing in a way with my notion of movement and character development?

I had my body stolen by a writer once. The author was SF author Sheri S. Tepper writing a mystery series under her pseudonym of B.J. Oliphant. [9] Her amateur sleuth, the intrepid rancher Shirley McClintock, is something of a badass. She is also tall which Tepper wasn’t. She and I corresponded briefly and I had the opportunity to visit her at her New Mexico home. She told me later that she borrowed my body and that of her farmhand, an equally tall woman, and put us together to create McClintock. I have to say I was mighty honored by her thievery.

 

 

 

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Dec 13). No Move, No Write. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/12/13/no-move-no-write

IMAGE CREDITS

 

SOURCES

[1] Bell, Will B. Dance videos on his YouTube channel:

[2] Dry, Jono. (n.d.) Interview. Culture of Creatives website.

[3] Dry, Jono. (2021, Sept 8). Pencil Drawing Timelapse – ‘Figure in Frame.’ YouTube video.

[4] Dry’s work and commentary can also be accessed via his website.

[5] The King and I – Music Theater of Lincoln Center Revival. (1964). Info, photos, and playlist at Masterworks Broadway website.

[6] Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre: Twelfth Night. (2013). Opus Arte. IMDB info page.

[7] Hamilton Dyer, Peter. (n.d.). Actor page. Spotlight.com. Showreel link on page.

[8] Arcola Theatre. (2019, Nov 12). #WeAreArrested – Movement. YouTube Video. Video content by Laura Clifford.

[9] Oliphant, B.J. The Shirley McClintock Mysteries may be out of print but copies can still be found. The titles are

    • Death in the Scrub (1990)
    • The Unexpected Corpse (1990)
    • Deservedly Dead (1992)
    • Death and the Delinquent (1992)
    • Death Served Up Cold (1994)
    • A Ceremonial Death(1995)

Glenda Norquay | Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s

by | Dec 6, 2021 | Book Thoughts

Norquay Book, Map of RLS Treasure Island, Portrait of Glenda Norquay

“Her removal of RLS from the biographical context allows her to position him
in relation to his social and literary peers as simply that,
peers, which in turn lets her discuss those peers on their own merits.”

It’s been a while since I’ve motored my way through a scholarly text for the fun of it. As an academic (educator and librarian) in the humanities and social sciences I’ve taught literary criticism, research methods, and professional and academic writing. And I’ve indexed a goodly number of scholarly books and unnumbered scholarly articles. So this is something of a busman’s holiday.

A disclaimer, however: My thoughts in this essay are not so much a book review as a book response. I like to converse with and around the books I read. The book in question is Glenda Norquay’s Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: The Author Incorporated (Anthem Press, 2020). [1] And a second disclaimer is necessary. I am by no means a Stevenson scholar; I am a dilettante at best. I came across the gent perhaps two years ago while looking for a quotation to use as a chapter epigraph for a mystery novel I am writing. That led me to his letters, then his essays, then to a run of biographies about the man. I’ve yet to read much of his fiction.

Here is a section of the summary of Norquay’s book provided by her publisher, Anthem Press:

‘Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Transatlantic Publishing in the 1890s’ focuses on an author characterised by geographical and aesthetic mobility, and on those who worked with him or wrote for him at a period of key changes in transatlantic publishing. Stevenson’s situation in the 1890s, living in Samoa, publishing in Britain and the United States, is both highly specific but also representative of a new literary mobility. Drawing on a range of resources, from archival material, correspondence, biographies, essays and fiction, the book examines the operations of transatlantic literary networks during a period of key changes in transatlantic publishing.
To investigate Stevenson and the geographies of his literary networks during the last years of his life and after his death, the book presents a series of critical case studies profiling figures who worked with Stevenson, negotiated his publications on both sides of the Atlantic, wrote for him or were inspired by him. Each chapter focuses on a figure involved in the production or afterlife of Stevenson’s late fiction. . . . The book deploys the concept of ‘literary prosthetics’ to frame its analysis of gatekeepers, tastemakers, agents, collaborators and authorial surrogates in the transatlantic production of Stevenson’s writing. . . . [and] contributes to knowledge of transatlantic publishing and literary cultures in the 1890s and to Stevenson studies but its focus on the specifics of Stevenson’s ‘case’ provides a point of entry into larger considerations of literary communities, nineteenth-century mobility drivers of literary production and the nature of the authorial function. [2]

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson. He smiles gnetly, his eyes hsow light amusement.Reading Literary Networks (as I shall refer to Norquay’s book) was a bit like reading two books at once. Scholarly writing can be pedantic and weighty but I didn’t see that here. Norquay’s Introduction is necessarily dense but she outlines her theoretical approach straightforwardly in graceful prose. It is here she lays the groundwork of the book re: geography and the history of publishing in Stevenson’s time.

That is how I started reading it, as groundwork, but as I neared the end of the section, the notion of literary networks became personalized. As she proceeds into the book proper, taking as the focus in each succeeding chapter a single influential person in Stevenson’s life, or group of persons in the case of his family, Norquay’s take on things assumes an increasing momentum and power. This is a work of concision and insight.

Stevenson is presented as a person outstanding, not a creature enmeshed in his biography as is often the case. He is himself, a man in transition at a time of transition. Norquay’s removal of Stevenson from the biographical context—she is keenly aware of this well-trod territory and how it has the tendency to make biographies of Stevenson narratively redundant—allows her to position him in relation to his social and literary peers as simply that, peers, which in turn lets her discuss those peers on their own merits. She gives Stevenson a larger space within his own time. Literally larger, in the geographic sense and chronologically in relation to his literary contemporaries. Norquay’s conceptions lets us view Stevenson as responding, if only instinctively, to the transitional nature of that era’s publishing approach, to the changing notions about intellectual ownership, and to the traditional, idealized creative process of the author.

For all that Literary Networks is not a deliberate biography, the chapter case studies on Lemuel Bangs, Charles Baxter, Sidney Colvin, Stevenson’s immediate family and friend-collaborators, Arthur Quiller-Couch, and finally, Ricard Le Gallienne act to mirror Stevenson, reflecting who and how Stevenson was in a way more singular than mere biography might achieve.

THE NOTION OF TRANSITION

Literary Networks provides me with a welcome and unexpected context. My personal interest is in the creative process as a topic and in and of itself. I always land on the transitional moments: the twelfth-century Renaissance, the period of incunabula leading in to the age of the printing press, the so-called Industrial Revolution (especially in the United States), and the rise of the internet in its publicly accessible mode. Such liminal moments fascinate me and charge my creative approach. [3]

Transition, in its dual meaning as change and progression, operates on a personal level for Stevenson. His friendships and relationships, the really critical ones, have a creative and imaginative intimacy to them. He is a willing collaborator (if a sloppy businessman). As time progresses, as his social environment changes, he matures as a writer in terms of craft but, more intriguing to me, in terms of his imagination. That, I confess, more than the specifics of the matters of international publication and copyright are what stayed with me after reading.*

* Though I must hasten to clarify: As a student of writing history I find Norquay’s analysis of the transitions in the publishing industry, the subsequent contrasting approaches to the development of a reading community, and the notion of the popular versus literary value of Stevenson’s work to be virtually a separate, and most valuable, addition to my scholarly library.

Transitioning to Self

Until Stevenson took up permanent residence in Samoa, his nomadic ways—fueled by medical necessity in most instances though by personal and emotional necessity as well—were regarded by his personal and literary friends as a quirk. His travels fueled his writerly imagination and a reading public’s romantic notion of him. His time in Samoa changed him, however, much to the consternation of those who sought to publish on his behalf and, as Norquay considers, who might use their connection with Stevenson to personally or professionally profit on their own behalf.

Always complex psychologically, Stevenson’s engagement with Samoan politics, his responsibilities as literal and local clan patriarch, and an increasing sensibility that he was finally his own man, led him to write what he pleased or perhaps more accurately, write about matters closest to his heart: a broken relationship with a father and rich relationships with strong women.

Writing to his beloved cousin Bob Stevenson three months before his own death Stevenson muses on the notion of family, his own, over previous centuries. He says

What a singular thing is this undistinguished perpetuation of a family throughout the centuries, and the sudden bursting forth of character and capacity that began with our grandfather! But as I go on in life, day by day. . . I cannot get used to this world, to procreation, to heredity, to sight, to hearing, the commonest things are a burthen. . . . The prim obliterated polite face of life, and the broad, bawdy, and orgiastic–or maenadic–foundations, form a spectacle to which no habit can reconcile me.” [4]

Here is a man who lived his entire life expecting death at any moment, who conformed then fought conformity, who turned away from the “polite face of life” to find his own face. Such an intensely personal and intimate life journey playing out over two oceans and multiple letters. And, it seems to me, within Literary Networks. It is a powerful work of scholarship to be sure. It seems, though, anyone taking on Stevenson takes him on his own terms. In discussing the development of her book, Norquay says she initially thought it would be

“. . . primarily text-based. Talking about ‘St. Ives’ . . . about ‘Weir of Hermiston’ . . . . but in a way it’s become more about the characters around Stevenson and their very different perceptions of Stevenson as an author and their very different engagements with him . . . .” [5]

Novelist and critic (and one of Norquay’s case study subjects), Arthur Quiller-Couch, describing him as their lodestar, reflects a perpetual present tense quality of Stevenson, a kind of enmeshment, where he is continues to be viewed through a personalized, present-tense lens by family, friends, and colleagues.

Norquay, by using the different frame of geography and literary mobility, frees Stevenson from the focused, limiting role of lodestar. His influence, she shows us, is more far-reaching in the spaces of authoring and publishing and long after his fiction had gone out of literary fashion.

REFLECTIONS

JA Jablonski Portrait - middle aged female presenting Caucasion person with short white hair and glasses wearing a royal blue kimono-style jacket over a white Oxford shirtMy tendency as a reader is invariably trinary, with my focus on the pragmatic, the associative, and that which I call the originative flux. As a pragmatic reader I take the story or text as is looking at or for the narrative who, what, when, why, and how. Problematic, sloppy, or casual writing annoys and distracts. If fiction, I wish to be taken, persuaded, challenged, entertained; if nonfiction I want to be informed, accurately and insightfully. And I want the writing done with grace, style, and some measure of verbal power.

As an associative reader I invariably, and involuntarily, associate what I am reading with whatever the reading might trigger, be that something else by the same author, or a different author, or a movie, or an image, or a comment from social media, a costume, a dream . . . whatever the text calls to mind. It is a combination of Rabbit Hole Syndrome and a kind of spontaneous and unpremeditated mind mapping. It can be massively distracting and intensely pleasurable.

The reading experience of originative flux, a mode that, like the muse does not always materialize, is something of a constant. My curiosity about the origination and the flux of creation is deep and voracious. I cannot but crave knowing the mind behind the making. Not the person, necessarily, though that may happen along the way. (I try to avoid parasocial interactions with creative others, not always successfully.)

Norquay captures me on all three levels. One of the delights in reading Norquay’s book is seeing a mind work in such a large way. Literary Networks is a work that manifests considerable scholarly range yet Norquay wears that mantle lightly. It enhances my personal experience as a reader. That her writing style is easy—in that it flows, is crafted yet not overwrought, is intellectually accessible while challenging—heightens my enjoyment. I delight in seeing an idea well-formulated and explained in the same way I find joy in seeing a perfectly executed double play in baseball or hearing the perfect balance of polyphonic music. I very much look forward to reading her other work.

 

Glenda Norquay - middle aged Caucasion women with chin-length ash blonde hair wearing an oatmeal-colored cardigan over red print shirtAuthor Info. Glenda Norquay is Professor Emerita in Scottish Literary Studies at the Research Institute for Literature and Cultural History at Liverpool John Moores University. Her research focus is twofold: Scottish writing, specifically women’s fiction, the nineteenth-century and contemporary novel; and Robert Louis Stevenson’s fiction, criticism and publishing history.

In addition to the book I am considering here, Norquay has two other books on Stevenson: a monograph, RLS: Robert Louis Stevenson and Theories of Reading: The Reader as Vagabond, and R.L. Stevenson on Fiction: An Anthology of Literary and Critical Essays. She is currently editing his unfinished novel, St. Ives: Being The Adventures of a French Prisoner in England for the New Edinburgh Edition of Stevenson.

If you have a question or comment for me, drop me a line via my Contact page.

© J.A. Jablonski 2022. All rights reserved.

 ABOUT BOOK THOUGHTS

“Book Thoughts” is an intermittent column within my blog. The essays are not so much book reviews as book responses. I like to converse with and around the books I read.  

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Dec 6). Glenda Norquay’ | Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/12/06/glenda-norquay/


IMAGE CREDITS

Header image

    • Cover of Glenda Norquay’s book, Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: An Author Incorporated. From publisher website (Anthem Press).
    • “Stevenson’s map of Treasure Island.” From Wikipedia, listed as in the Public Domain.
    • Glenda Norquay, author portrait. From Professor Norquay’s Liverpool John Moores University profile.

Portrait of Robert Louis Stevenson by Henry Walter Barnett, 1893. Modified using the Picas art photo filter. Original image is in the public domain.

Portrait of J.A. Jablonski by Mike De Sisti. Used by permission.

Portrait of Glenda Norquay. From Professor Norquay’s profile for The Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities, The University of Edinburgh.

SOURCES

Disclaimer: As a Bookshop Affiliate (US only) I will earn a commission if you click through on a book title I’ve linked to and make a purchase.

[1] Norquay, Glenda. (2020). Robert Louis Stevenson, Literary Networks and Translatlantic Publishing in the 1890s: The Author Incorporated. Anthem Press. 

[2] About this Book. (n.d.) Anthem Press.

[3] Works on historical transitions that I especially like:

[4] Letter to Bob Stevenson, 9 September 1894. The Letters of Robert Louis Stevenson, vol 8, January 1893-December 1894. Letter #2782. Yale University Press, 1995, pg. 362).

[5] Norquay, Glenda. (2020, Nov 16). Robert Louis Stevenson Inc. | Prof. Glenda Norquay | LJMU English. YouTube video. Runtime: 15:14. Description: “Norquay discusses her new book about the transatlantic publishing networks of Robert Louis Stevenson and his literary circle.” The quotation above begins at timestamp 2:45.

Hello

by | Nov 22, 2021 | Greetings

Word cloud of hello in multiple languages

“And now we welcome the new year. Full of things that have never been.”

Rainer Maria Rilke

Hello and welcome.
It’s not quite the new year, but this website is a new incarnation for me and I am much looking forward to what happens next. The short version of a longer story is that I’ve been many things professionally (see my About page) and am finally embarking on something I promised myself many years ago that I would do: write. You can’t hear my chuckle as I typed that word—write—as virtually my entire working life has involved writing be it course syllabi, lectures, instructionals, and hundreds of student paper feedback notes; writer and indexer user manuals and technical presentation guides for a major professional and scientific organization and several universities; individual and institutional marketing and promotional materials; guest blogs; much of a writing guide for an online university with attendant syllabi, tutorials, etc.; a number of scholarly book and journal indexes; and a thesaurus or two.

To quote my favorite author, Ursula K. Le Guin, words are my matter. But so too is the imagination that grounds the making of words, the making that fosters imagination, and the fascination with people and things that gives impetus to it all.

Finally, having paid my professional dues, I get to pay something else—pay the universe back, if you will—and tell the stories that have percolated within for years and, in one instance, decades. No longer an anonymous byline, no longer a servant to a necessary master. Now I write for me, and I hope, for you though I do not yet know who the most of you are.

Welcome and again welcome!

 

Storytelling the matter

in a most literal and intimate manner,

now longhand,

now milonguero style.

I lead the gambol.

I beget the tale.

~ Excerpt from my poem, Gambol (2020)

 

 

 

© J.A. Jablonski 2021. All rights reserved.

HOW TO CITE THIS POST

Jablonski, J.A. (2021, Nov 22). Hello. Blog post. J.A. Jablonski (website). https://jajablonski.com/2021/11/22/hello/

IMAGE CREDITS

Header image of night sky and pine trees. | Photo by Ryan Hutton on Unsplash. Colors modified. | Word cloud layer created via WordClouds.com.