27 May 2009
If you’ve been reading this blog for a while, you may have noticed a few sidewise digs at the Stephanie Meyers Twilight series. Writer-to-writer digs are unbecoming (as evidenced by the recent Oxford chairship ugliness), especially sidewise ones. So I’ve been meaning to write about Twilight straight on.
In writing classes, a cardinal rule is to start with positive comments when critiquing. So let me say that I’ve been to Forks, WA, and it’s a lovely place.
Ok, seriously. My Twilight problems began when I took on a group of undergraduates, almost all young women, in a fiction class. When asked what they like to read/are currently reading in fiction, most cited the Twilight books. Most cited only the Twilight books.
Naively, I gave the students free reign on what to write for their first round of short stories. The first few came back as vampire and/or young-love stories. During the mid-class break (it was a 3-hour weekly session), I heard a few students congratulate the writers on how much the stories reminded them of such-and-such scene or character from Twilight, or, alternatively, how smartly the writer had both simulated and departed from Twilight. Clearly, Twilight was hovering and echoing in these students’ imaginations.
The basic weaknesses of these first stories were as follows: repetitive/unimaginative language, cliche descriptions, flat (too-perfect) young male characters.
So even though I’d never read Stephanie Meyers’ books, I immediately developed a prejudice against them. I felt I had read them.
My prejudice became a little too apparent in class. And when I confessed I’d never read the books, my students — justifiably — called me out on it. So. I asked one of the most enthusiastic Twilight advocates to bring in for us her favorite chapter, so that we could all read and discuss the quality of the writing, since that’s what we were there to study. She happily agreed.
We had our discussion during our last class — after 15 weeks of studying and writing and workshopping. We’d learned about characterization, language, plot, point-of-view, and dialogue. In their peer critiques, the students had begun writing comments like “cliche!” in the margins, and were recognizing where characters were not credible, dialogue sounded forced, language too vague, plot arc too flat. They were “showing, not telling” me their characters much more in their stories and exercises. They were reading and discussing Chekhov, Junot Diaz, ZZ Packer, Tobias Wolff, Mary Robison.
The gist of our Twilight discussion? Repetitive/unimaginative language, cliche descriptions, flat (too-perfect) male characters.
But we also talked about the brilliant premise of the series — sexual tension, in a nutshell (the more the handsome vampire loves the girl the more he both wants to bite her and struggles to resist biting her – talk about conflict and rising action!). And in the end, the students decided that the books are highly entertaining and emotionally absorbing; just not terribly well-written.
(For the record, the one male in the class hated the excerpt.)
So there you have it. Life is hard sometimes, entertainment lightens the load. That said, there’s no reason why art and entertainment should be mutually exclusive. Looking for a salacious page-turning romance teeming with sexual tension? Try Henry James, Edith Wharton, Tolstoy. No kidding, you won’t be disappointed.
26 May 2009
Welcome to summer! I don’t know about you, but we grilled us some corn-on- the-cob over the weekend. So it’s only fitting to blog today about Hyperion’s new “e-imprint” Kernl. Kernls are described as “short packages of text combined with video and interactive components.”
Err? Yeah — me perplexed too. Clearly these are not books.
What are they? Well, it seems they might ultimately evolve into book-like substances. The words “incubation” and “full-length” are used in the article.
Kernl will also eventually seek advertising. This is the part that makes my face squinch up. A publisher (of books) adjusting to the new market reality by turning books into something which can be advertiser-sponsored. More likely, turning increasingly away from the production of print books, and toward the delivery of multi-media “packages.” Perhaps no surprise, since Hyperion is a division of ABC TV/Disney Media Networks.
I am no economics guru, but I think we learned about this in high school when we studied industrialization and the rise of big business. A little something called vertical integration? Any business-minded folk among you, with perspectives more sophisticated than my 1980s history textbook, please chime in and enlighten.
22 May 2009
…if you poke around a little on a regular basis.
From a post at RobAroundBooks, a book jacket I am guessing I would have otherwise never seen — for a novel by a Korean writer (I’ve never heard of), published by Telegram, an indie publisher in London (that I’ve also never heard of).
Isn’t that lovely? I’m sort of speechless.
Click here for more about The Bird by Oh Jung-hee.
17 May 2009
The book jacket for Long for This World is done. Galleys next month. Exciting? Wish I could say yes. It’s strange when things become “final.” In every other part of life, completion feels good. With creative work, there’s a tinge of melancholy. Post-partum?
I’ve been looking at book jackets more closely lately. Anyone seen this one yet, for Denis Johnson’s new novel?
Ee-gads! There should be a disclaimer: No books were injured in the making of this book jacket. Still, can’t wait to read it.
14 May 2009
An interesting blog post from novelist David Francis about the dubious considerations of literary “success” in a publishing environment that is less and less interested in building up a writer’s career/readership slowly, over time. “You wrote a hit,” the agent might say, “so now give us more of the same. That’s what your readers want.” Francis admirably resists. No, “admirably” isn’t quite right; he resists because there is no other choice. A literary writer only writes well when he writes from the gut — inductively, not deductively. Francis writes:
I’ll honor that desire to lay out the lines of words as they appear, as Annie Dillard suggests, securing a sentence before building on it, allowing it to grow “cell to cell, bole to bough to twig to leaf; any careful word may suggest a route, may begin a strand of metaphor or event out of which much, or all, will develop.” That still feels right to me, to let it be what it becomes.
Let’s hope Francis’s agent gets it.
