The Silent Protagonist

abi_dierecte @ 2009-10-22T20:16:00

2009-10-23T00:17:01Z

Being INTP is hard sometimes.

Wilfred Owen

2009-10-17T21:23:45Z

is my favourite poet right now. He's so...punk rock!

abi_dierecte @ 2009-10-13T13:41:00

2009-10-13T17:41:49Z

At what point is one no longer an amateur at something?

abi_dierecte @ 2009-10-10T23:56:00

2009-10-11T03:57:01Z

The offices through which our friends passed should have been described but for the fact that our author finds himself completely overawed in government offices. Even if he has happened to pass through them when they were at their most brilliant and dignified, with polished floors and tables, he has tried to run through them as quickly as possible with eyes humbly fixed on the floor, and because of this he has no idea whatever how flourishing and prosperous things they are.

Dead Souls

2009-10-10T00:55:12Z

I'm reading Dead Souls right now...the narrative structure! Oh! Gogol is with us throughout, I'm conscious of his physical proximity to the novel at all times. I am there with him, as if together we are watching a drama unfold. Yet he controls the camera, he forces my gaze on a scene, and afterwards, or at any moment, he tears the world away from me and I am in a dark room with no one but Gogol as he looks me dead in the face and tells me what I've just seen, what it means, or he may poke fun at the characters, all of them, ridicule them. But his monologue occurs in real time with the narrative; he takes opportunities wherein nothing important happens to tell me something. I know this because he says so:

Since the conversation which our travellers conducted with one another is of no great interest to the reader, we shall do better if we say a few words about Nozdryov himself, for he will perhaps play a not inconsiderable part in our poem. The reader is probably to some extent familar with Nozdryov's personality...

and on he goes for a few pages until they arrive at Nozdryov's house. The novel is surreal, grotesque, a dream. "They had all sorts of names and most of them in the imperative mood..." Consider this remarkable scene built out of dialogue. They are sitting at the dinner table, but where do they go? Where is time? When do they move?

"I won't hear of it," said Nozdryov. "I won't let you go."

"Please don't make it difficult for me, my dear fellow," the brother-in-law said. "I must go. Really I must. You will make a lot of trouble for me, you know."

"Nonsense, nonsense, we'll have a game of cards."

"Please have one yourself, my dear fellow. I can't. My wife will be vary angry with me. Really, she will. I must tell her all about the fair. You see, my dear fello, I simply must do something to please her. No, please don't keep me."

"Oh, to hell with your wife! As if you had anything important to do with her."

"Oh no, no, my dear fellow. She's a very good and faithful wife. Does so many things for me. Believe me, it makes me cry. No, please don't keep me. I'm an honest man and I must go. Honestly I must. I assure you."

"Let him go," Chichikov said softly to Nozdryov. "What's the use of keeping him?"

"You're quite right," said Nozdryov. "I can't stand these namby-pamby sentimentalists." And he added in a loud voice: "Oh, to hell with you! Go and make love to your wife, you fetyuk!"

"No, my dear fellow, don't call me a fetyuk. I owe my life to her. She's such a nice, sweet woman. She's so sweet to me. she makes me cry. I'm sure she'll ask me what I saw at the fair and I must tell her all about it. You see, she really is a darling."

"Oh, go. Tell her a pack of lies. Here's your cap."

"No, you oughtn't talk like that about her, my dear fellow. You see, you really are insulting me by such talk. She is such a darling."

"Well, then, get out and go to her quickly!"

"Yes my dear fellow, I'm going. I'm sorry I can't stay. I'd be glad to, but I can't."

The brother-in-law went on repeating his apologies without noticing that he had been sitting in his carriage for a long time and had been driven out of the gates hours ago and that for hours there was nothing before him but open fields. It is to be assumed that his wife did not hear a lot about the fair.

"What a rubbishy fellow!" said Nozdryov, standing before the window and watching the carriage as it drove away. "Look at him rolling along! His trace horse isn't bad: I'd long wanted to snaffle it, but you see, you can never agree about the price with him. He is just a fetyuk, simply a fetyuk!"

They then went back to the room. Porfiry brought candles and Chichikov noticed in his host's hands a pack of cards which seemed to have materialized out of nowhere.

Out of nowhere, yes! the whole book is like this, sudden shifts, time flying forward and backward, characters fading in and out of being, like Gogol is himself a magician conjuring all of this up as we watch. Which is unlike other novelists who do their conjuring behind our backs, as it were. No, Gogol enthralls us with constant motion, now showing us something, now smacking our head, now he's somewhere else. An amazing book!

Norton Project Update; learning OE

2009-10-08T15:41:27Z

It took me a few days to settle down with it but I finally read the introduction and the first two selections: Caedmon's Hymn and The Dream of the Rood. I don't have anything interesting to say about the former--Uh, it would be cooler if I knew OE. Otherwise, the selection boils down to the story of a man becoming divinely inspired to utter poetry. The Dream, on the other hand, was neat. First crazay thing about it is that it was discovered in a single manuscript, a collection of OE poems, in ITALY, from the 10th century. So, wow, I wonder where the thing was copied. It's also a cool read, a first-person monologue from the perspective of the tree which was cut down and made into the cross upon which some "young Hero" was crucified.

Beowulf is next, which I've read, but it was long enough ago that a re-reading is ok.

I want to start with OE soon; anyone know a good textbook? I have Peter S. Baker's Introduction to Old English; how is it? I don't like how it doesn't have vocabulary lists for each chapter. I need vocab lists--which words are high-frequency, which words are important to know...that sort of thing.

1

2009-10-06T01:16:34Z

Tonight I was sleeping. Or trying to sleep. I saw a road covered with bloody arms and could not close my eyes. I sat up and turned on the light but saw nothing. Now I'm here writing this letter. I had a dream that she married a military man and painted hexagons for eternity, hunched over an open window. The hexagons scattered themselves over the edge of her canvas and out the window and I pulled myself up on them and said goodbye. I walked out into the shapeless, amber landscape and disappeared.

Norton Project

2009-10-04T14:34:43Z

After my last post on the Norton Anthology Project, I started to feel bad for skipping volume A. Sure there's some "greatest hits" stuff in here that I've read before (Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, Beowulf, The Canterbury Tales), but that is no excuse because I'm unfamiliar with many of the other selections. Plus a part of my goal is to witness the evolution of English literature and starting with the Renaissance won't give me a good picture of that--I'm starting off with a revolution in literature and not reading through the context of that revolution! So, volume A will get a read through now.

A few notes

2009-10-03T00:13:26Z

Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder, 1503-1542
Introduced the sonnet to the English language through his translations and adaptations of Petrarch's sonnets.
Faves: "Farewell, Love:"

Farewell, Love, and all thy laws forever,
Thy baited hooks shall tangle me no more;
Senec and Plato call me from thy lore,
To perfect wealth my wit for to endeavor. (excerpt)

"Madam, withouten many words:"

Madam, withouten many words,
Once, I am sure, ye will or no.
And if ye will, then leave your bordes,
And use your wit and show it so.

And with a beck ye shall me call.
And if of one that burneth alway
Ye have any pity at all,
Answer him fair with yea or nay.

If it be yea, I shall be fain.
If it be nay, friends as before.
Ye shall another man obtain,
And I mine own and yours no more.

Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, 1517-1547, the last man executed by Henry VIII
This guy invented the English sonnet, and also introduced blank verse. He utilized blank verse (unrhymed iambic pentameter) to render Virgil's Aeneid into the English tongue. He was a friend of Thomas Wyatt, so the two of them were a pretty potent coupla guys for the development of English poetry.
(The Italian or Petrarchan sonnet is 14 lines long, consisting of an octave and a sextet. The English sonnet is intead quatrain, quatrain, quatrain, couplet.)

Faves: hard to say just yet, but I love his rendering of Petrarch 164, "Alas! so all things no do hold their peace," and amazing contrast between his inner turmoil with the outward peace of nature. Well-done!

Reading English Literature

2009-10-01T20:37:45Z

I've taken up the project of reading the entire Norton Anthology of English Literature. This will take a while, but I think I'll try to post regularly on my progress. The Norton Anthology is a large collection of English literature beginning with Beowulf and continuing up to writers living today. I think the entire thing--I don't have the second set yet--amounts to over 6,000 pages. One of the reasons I want to do this is, well, I'm a little ashamed that I am so unfamiliar with the literature of my own language. I've been feeling like an exile lately, craving a greater acquaintance with English. It is a travesty that I do not know Old English or Old Norse and I should not be proud not to know other Germanic languages better than I do. Oh, German.

So far, I've cheated a little bit by skipping volume A on the Middle Ages. I'll come back to it. In volume B I've read John Skelton, Sir Thomas More, and Sir Thomas Wyatt the Elder. Here's an interesting passage from More's Utopia, which reminded me of rinku:

But while they equal the ancients in almost all other subjects, they are far from matching the inventions of our modern logicians. In fact they have not discovered even one of those elaborate rules about restrictions, amplifications, and suppositions which our own schoolboys study in the Litle Logicbook (sic). They are so far from being able to speculate on "second intentions" that no one of them was able to conceive of "man-in-general," though I pointed straight at him with my finger, and he is, as you well know, bigger than any giant, maybe even a colossus.

More's friend Peter Giles (to whom the work is addressed) created a sample of the Utopian language which is pretty neat.

Utopia is a cool book to read after you've gotten to know Lucian pretty well, especially the Alēthē Diēgēmata.

Next up is Henry Howard, Earl of Surrey, who lost his head to the whim of Henry the Eighth. ("Eighth" looks funny. Like some weird Welsh cough.)

Oh, and Christian? Stop reading my journal. Go away. Now.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-09-30T23:36:00

2009-10-01T03:37:19Z

i employ cruelty
as a fine art
she said.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-09-30T23:34:00

2009-10-01T03:36:00Z

i hear music in my head ringing
sounds i've never heard before
it goes on and then on and then on again
like a record
broken

Styrofoam is a name brand

2009-09-23T23:57:38Z

I just typed "styrofoam cup" into the newest version of Microsoft Word and it auto-capitalised it for me. I thought, "What? Is this a name brand?" so I google it and lo, it is. I suppose they payed Microsoft to auto-capitalise the word so that the name doesn't become diluted and part of ordinary language, like "xerox".

However, according to Wikipedia,

"In the United States, the word styrofoam is often used as a generic term for expanded polystyrene foam, such as disposable coffee cups, coolers or packaging material, which are typically white and are made of expanded polystyrene beads. This is different from the extruded polystyrene used for Styrofoam insulation. The polystyrene foam used for craft applications, which can be identified by its roughness and by the fact that it "crunches" when cut,[4] is not specifically identified as expanded or extruded."

And I was writing "he was nursing a syrofoam cup of pop." Clearly not extruded polystyrene!

abi_dierecte @ 2009-09-21T05:51:00

2009-09-21T09:51:42Z

I feel beat up.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-08-08T13:42:00

2009-08-08T17:42:08Z

I think I forgot to tell the following story. It happened, oh, about a year ago. A middle school principal called me up, offering me a job teaching Latin. We had a few phone conversations, he noted my student evaluations and so on and honestly he seemed ready to offer me a job. However, I still had to come in for an official interview at the Central Office.

I go in and have to wait around for a little while. Asecretary seems confused that I'm there. She asks me why I'm not interviewing at the school. I shrug. Eventually I'm called and I'm led down a long hall. Up ahead a short man peek out at me from around a corner, then ducks out of view. When I get to the end of the hall I'm shown a small room. The short man and another man are sitting at a round table. They offer me a seat and inform me that the interview will be recorded. It turns out that the short man is the principal.

The questions are pretty generic and drawn from a list. After the interview is over I meet another woman and fill out some paperwork. She informs me that I'm "99% of the way through" the hiring process, but she also warns me, "don't quit your day job yet." She goes on and on about how much they want me for the job. So I leave, confident I've been hired, but it isn't official yet.

I go home, I sit around, I never get a call. About two weeks pass and I figure I didn't get hired. Then, on a Thursday, I get a call from the principal. I was supposed to go to an orientation for new hires, he tells me, and he wants to know why I wasn't there.

"I didn't know I was supposed to be there," I tell him.

"You didn't?"

"No, I figured I hadn't gotten the job."

"No one contacted you at all?"

"No, no one."

"Oh. I guess that's my fault. Well, you'll have to make it up, then. Report to the school on Monday. At 8 am."

So that's that. So that day I get an apartment, and I move in immediately, in preparation for Monday.

Monday I head to the school and get there just before 8. The parking lot is empty except for one other car...a teacher is getting her gear out. I introduce myself and ask her if she knows where I'm supposed to go, or if there's a meeting. She doesn't know, but walks me to last year's Latin classroom. It has my name on the door. That's good. However, no one else is here. My door happens to be unlocked, though, and the teacher escorting me tells me to have a nice year and leaves. She never speaks to me again for the rest of the year.

So now I'm in an empty room, no one is here, and I don't know what the hell is going on. Eventually people show up and I get introduced around and meet my "mentor." Everyone seems to know what they are doing..."getting their rooms ready" while I'm trying to figure out what textbooks to use, what the curriculum is, sort through all the junk left behind by the previous teachers, etc. The whole week is bizarre, with no specific tasks assigned, and no meetings at all.

These are designated as Optional Work Days, so I figure, okay, these are optional. I mean, I'm not doing anything. I'm supposed to follow the State-mandated curriculum of instruction, but I can't find it. The curriculum coordinator tells me to look online, but there is no curriculum information for Latin.

One day I come in late and my "mentor" demands to know what I've been doing, where I've been. She tells me, and I'm not kidding here, "it's an Optional Work day. You can't be doing this, you have to be here."

Tennis!

2009-07-28T17:01:07Z

Yesterday I played tennis for the first time in my life. I've always wanted to try tennis out. I've liked the idea of it for years. And finally the playing occurred.

It was great. I especially liked it when I managed to hit the ball.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-07-25T15:23:00

2009-07-25T19:23:38Z

Of course I keep a Writing Log. A log of writing I do for specific projects, not blog/LJ/Journaling. I've written--or documented having written, I should say, since I know some days I didn't log it--on 71 of the past 156 days. That's 46% of days. On those 71 days I've written a total of 27,981 words. This is the current state of five works:

A: 20,586 (first draft nearly complete, but needs drastic editing and scene repair)

B: 10,892 (less than half complete)

C: 2,018 (essentially complete. Four drafts done, but needs another.)

D: In my head. Sketching/plotting

E: In my head. Sketching/plotting

These of course do not add up to 27,981 words but 33,496. This is because I have failed to log a few days, and also the writing began before I got the idea to log things diligently. I also have a strict regimen of the number of words I'm required and allowed to write each day. I'm not allowing myself to go crazy and write 2,000 words in one day because I'm worried I'll burn out if I do that, or dry out my wells. I really wanted to write more today. The words were coming right out of me.

Story A was not nearly complete three days ago. I had plotted more, and anticipated that it would expand to 30 or 40 thousand words! But I suddenly found an ending. Or the ending just happened. Which means, actually, that I'll have to do another draft, adding various elements and foreshadowings etc into it.

D is like...Poe on cyberpunk. "Amontillado!" E is a dystopian thought experiment.

I tend to write dark depressing stuff where rocks fall and everyone dies.

Concerning a piece I'm in the midst of writing

2009-07-20T20:05:37Z

Question:
What's supposed to be the focus of the piece? It seems very much to focus on the helplessness of the new owner and a very insular community that's trying to keep the status quo.

My (pretentious) answer: It's not meant to be realist at all. More Kafka-esque/gothic/symbolic. The house itself represents society and its strictures; the tale, the unfortunate way in which culture can break down the individual. The individual is often helpless in the face of the masses. But the writing, especially the ending, needs more art, more work. Your questions and the comments and questions of others have helped me tremendously in focusing my thinking about all this. I know I need a more developed ending: the protagonist leaves but struggles with the isolation. There's not much of a beginning to the story in which I show where the protagonist comes from, because there is no place he comes from.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-06-11T18:29:00

2009-06-11T22:29:17Z

Oh, so 4chan is populated by middle schoolers. That explains it.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-03-15T14:52:00

2009-03-15T18:52:19Z

Now my major story has exceeded nine thousand words; my initial projection of twelve thousand turned out to be way off. I now think that this thing will turn out to be a novella, or a very long short story. I wonder sometimes if I am writing too much, if I am spending too much time on any given detail. That will come out when I re-read, I suppose. At this point I refuse to read back over it while I'm in the writing of it. I don't want to throw myself into agony over this or that word or sentence or scene, not until I've got the whole story down on paper.

I started another work also. Nothing major, but I need a break from my main piece some days, but I don't want to not write at all.

An amazing meal. kind of like pad thai poverty edition

2009-03-05T23:45:48Z

recipe:

1 packet of ramen, less the flavour packet
2 eggs
a drop of soy milk (about a tablespoon)
neutral vegetable oil, like canola
1 clove garlic, finely chopped
freshly ground pepper
oregano
soy sauce
sriracha

put ramen in cold water on the stove. maybe break it in half. turn on stove. when water comes to a rolling boil, drain ramen.
warm oil with garlic in a pan.
when hot throw in ramen. turn to med-high.
add pepper, oregano, soy sauce
cook
beat eggs with milk.
add eggs to pot
stir
turn
fold
add sriracha
eat.

this is actually really good and can be made in ten minutes or less. the oregano might sound weird but it is goood!
if anyone has any suggestions of what they'd add, let me know.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-03-03T12:31:00

2009-03-03T17:31:13Z

"I'll agree as well that the narrative is what makes the game magic...I've played a lot of Power Grid over the years, and never heard someone say "That was so awesome when you bought all that coal" after the game."

Possibly the greatest review of the greatest boardgame I've ever played, here.

Making it into a kind of game

2009-03-03T16:59:43Z

School is closed today for the second day in a row.

My current hard limit (H) is 300 words. This is my daily word count. Very modest. Let's make it into a game, shall we? It will be an RPG and I will try to level up.

Each day I must write H. People usually say that the writer should stop immediately on reaching H, even in the middle of a sentence if necessary. But I will institue a soft limit, or S. S is always equal to H plus fifty. This gives me a little bit of wiggle room and an extra, bonus goal to reach each day. (Today I cheated--I wrote four hundred thirty-four words, but it was an accident.)

Here's how I level up: H is increased by fifty if I have met H fourteen days in a row. So far, every day that I write, I meet H, but there have been missed days. But right now I'm level one, 300H. Soon I will be level two and have to write 350H. If I miss day then I'm automatically knocked down one level. So, in the future, when I'm level five and writing five hundred words a day, and I miss a day, then I'm knocked down to level four and will be writing a mimimum of 450 and a maximum of 500.

I have to reign myself in. If I try to spend all day Saturday and Sunday writing a thousand, immo two thousand words, I'll overextend myself. And the stories need their own time and space to grow and develop and live as they are written.

For when a story has been completed, then it is dead.

abi_dierecte @ 2009-02-26T20:22:00

2009-02-27T01:22:06Z

Man!
I just downloaded the RITES OF SPRING album. Rites of Spring were an early (perhaps the first) emo band from '85. They were one of my favourite bands when I was 16. I remember sitting in my room, in bed or on the floor, listening to the album and their 7" over and over again with the lyric sheet splayed out in front of me.

I related SO MUCH to their lyrics! And the wild chaotic music, the screaming, the excited rush! My god, I'm listening to "End on End" right now for the first time in years and years and it is everything I remember.

A lot of the songs deal with lonliness. Solitude. The unbridgeable gulf between you and I, in spite of our physical proximity. The danger and hurt of words. And so on! RAAAAAWWWWRRR!!!!

Some lyrics:

We are all trapped in prisons of the mind,
it's a hard sensibility
but we'll see it through in time
but when words come between us
Noiseless in the air
Believe me, I know it's so easy to despair.

but don't
Tonight i'm talking to myself
There's no one that I know as well
Thoughts collide without a sound
Frantic, fighting to be found

And I've found things in this life
that still are real
a remainder refusing to be concealed
And I've found the answer lies in a real emotion
Not the self-indulgence of a self-devotion

Too many situations
Left with too little to say
So we try, we try to feel our way
And if decisions cause divisions
Tell me who's to blame?
Pick a target for convenience
When there are other ways

So don't
Tonight i'm talking to myself
There's no one that I know as well
Thoughts collide without a sound
Frantic, fighting to be found

And I've found things in this life
that still are real
a remainder refusing to be concealed
I've found the answer lies in a real emotion
Not the self-indulgence of a self-devotion

Update

2009-02-26T01:12:29Z

Life is o.k.
I'm happy to report that I'm going well with my resolutions for the year. Especially the one that goes "write every day." After fooling around with what works best for me, I've set the goal to write 300 words a day. This is modest as hell but reachable, and since I set this as my daily work goal I've only missed one day. Some days I do more, but typically I stop at 300, even leaving sentences unfinished (which gives me something immediate to get into when I start again).

Since I meet my goal every day, I feel accomplished all the time and optimistic, etc. I might bump it up to 400 or 500, but not much more. I'm exhausted on weekdays still, even with the re-tooled schedule which leaves me with more energy. Today I went to the store after work then crashed on the bed in all my clothes until 6:30, then headed to the coffee shop (where I am now) and wrote 300 words together with vegging out on the internet.

Another thing that is helping me write is that I don't worry about word choice or editing as I write. Only rarely do I restructure a sentence or stop and think about the unfolding of the narrative. I have a plot outline and I'm going with that. This isn't to say that I don't make new discoveries about the characters or the narrative as I go--I've learned a lot as I write, ideas often come in a rush--but I work them in in the heat of the moment, or else make a note somewhere of my discovery. But if I did worry about clause structure and rhythm and accidental rhymes as I went then I'd never get anything done. That used to be my problem when I wrote fiction in the past, and why I never finished anything. I'd break into a sweat and agonize over every line, every word and whimper that this was just too hard and could not be done.

When I've gotten to the end, that is when I will go back to edit. Then and only then.

I have one well-plotted story right now, 4,100 words are written of a projected 12,000. Another semi-plotted (mostly in my head) adventure/sword & sorcery story, about 3,700 words written and I have no idea how long that one will be. That's actually kind of pathetic, I should have more completed than this, but it has only been recently, since the new semester actually that I've been writing really in earnest, every day.

I'm also interested in the possibility of writing a narrative completely in the second person. How often has that been accomplished?

I'm also interested in the idea of writing collaboratively, writing and dropping the thread to have someone else pick it up and take it somewhere. Maybe a group blog.