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This brain must have come from somewhere...
What I missed, to go along with the implicit erasure essay that I linked last time was the other thing I'd just read on the overdone nature of epic fantasy: Jo Walton's essay on why she hates fantasy, the principle of which I agree with entirely. My particular pet peeve is the Great Battle Between Good and Evil, which I would be happy never to see again. I've actually had arguments with a friend in which I insisted that people aren't binary, and neither is the world, and was told that one ought to have clear-cut fiction as a learning tool.
Meanwhile, Jo Walton has done it again, and produced a very good theory to explain why I refused to be an English major: my brain was trained to read fantasy, not high literature. Yes, you can analyze a story (and having done a lot of reading translated from the ancients, I disagree with her in that I think good footnotes, while not necessary, can contribute to good world building, although perhaps I am just too fond of the interrupted narrative, a la Tristram Shandy) but the first thing one should get out of reading is the story, and analysis is for the things one enjoys enough to keep on thinking about them. Also, one's interpretation shouldn't be foisted on the unwilling; if an author's work is timeless, it's because it continues to convey all the things it was meant to without a million layers of imposed analysis, or perhaps because it doesn't need the original subtext for having acquired another one, or (shockingly!) it's doing fine on the strength of the actual plot. Shockingly, sometimes the zombies are really just zombies, and yes, they're real. Or the unicorns, for that matter.
---
According to family history, or at least what I have been telling myself for so long that if it's not true, there is no longer any hope of resurrecting what was, I decided to be an author when I was in 4th grade. I wasn't particularly militant about writing at the time, although I did some of it. I have an old school notebook that I carried with me everywhere in 6th grade, and some of the fragments of things in it I've recently started pulling out and contemplating re-casting, because they're interesting, and part of my personal mythologies. I wrote a lot of poetry as a kid, and then grew out of it around middle school because I promised myself not to write vast quantities of stupid love poems. (For the most part, I even succeeded.)
Somewhere around eleven or twelve, I began writing (or at least starting) short stories-- first on notebook paper, and then on a succession of inherited laptops. That lasted through high school and a bit of college (although there I spent more time writing papers than fiction, sadly; I still vaguely regret not turning in a set of modernized Canterbury tales as an apology for why my final paper in the Chaucer class was going to be late...) and then somewhere along the line I started thinking in novel length. I think I've finished perhaps five short stories in the last decade, because my writing time has mainly gone into NaNo, starting new novel-length ideas, and finishing up or sorting through the things that I started in November.
Of course, I still haven't quite got anything novel length that's ready to send out to seek its fortune in the wide world, and so I've been trying to write more short stories while I pretend to work on it. Just out of curiosity, I went back into the "stories" folder on my harddrive (which has been accumulating since I got my powerbook 100 in 1994, with a couple fragments-- one of which I've used elsewhere, and one which ought if finished at least to be novella length and might one day be worth resurrecting if I ever wanted to write science fiction-- transferred over from the DOS Kaypro 2000) and poked about in some of the things I wrote in high school to see if any of them were worth attempting to publish. Admittedly, I'm not quite done yet, but most of what I find is either rather embarrassing in its attempt at seriousness, or resembles this gem, which may go some way towards explaining my sense of humor: (don't worry, it's pretty short)
THE FROG
Once upon a time, in the terribly romantic and badly designed garden of the palace Far Away, there lived a young and handsome frog. He was so handsome a frog that all the flowers loved him, but he was in love with the princess, so they were doomed to disappointment. Even the roses wept.
My story, however is of the frog, not the roses. He was not only a very handsome frog, but he was also kind, and so he went around the garden after the princess, hoping she would drop the cloth of gold pincushion with which she always played so that he could pick it up for her.
One day the frog's wish came true. The princess dropped her cloth of gold pincushion with which she always played. "Oh no!" she cried, "I have dropped my cloth of gold pincushion with which I always play! Someone pick it up, quickly!"
But her escort was too distressed to move. So the frog hopped forward and asked, "What will you give me if I pick it up?"
"Oh, anything! Anything!" cried the princess, eager to retrieve her toy.
The frog took a deep breath, and asked, all in a rush, "Will you let me eat at your table, sleep in your room, and will you kiss me goodnight?" At this point he stopped, mostly because he had run out of breath.
"Sure," said the princess, and it was a deal. The frog picked up the cloth of gold pincushion with which the princess always played and dusted it off. The princess took it from him, and skipped away.
That night the castle was dismayed to find the frog entering the dining hall just before dinner. The princess denied having made any promises to a common frog, but her stepmother, the Queen and ruler of the kingdom since her husband's death, told her that she had to keep her promise.
So the frog ate at the princess's private table, and for the first time in her life, the princess ate from the common table with her stepmother and the court.
At the end of dinner the princess, under protest, led the frog up to her room. But when she went to kiss him goodnight, he turned into a handsome prince.
The frog was as surprised as the princess. He did, however, like being a prince better than a frog because he was much smarter, and realized that the princess was really an idiot.
So the Frog Prince married the stepmother, and they sent the princess off to the editors of Dragons Magazine as a raffle prize. They figured that anyone stupid enough to try to kill a dragon really deserved her.
The flowers and the fish in the fishponds all pined away because their frog never came back, but the gardeners planted new flowers, and everyone was relatively happy. That is, excepting the kitchen maid, who always had to walk half way around the castle to get herbs from the garden.
THE END.
Meanwhile, Jo Walton has done it again, and produced a very good theory to explain why I refused to be an English major: my brain was trained to read fantasy, not high literature. Yes, you can analyze a story (and having done a lot of reading translated from the ancients, I disagree with her in that I think good footnotes, while not necessary, can contribute to good world building, although perhaps I am just too fond of the interrupted narrative, a la Tristram Shandy) but the first thing one should get out of reading is the story, and analysis is for the things one enjoys enough to keep on thinking about them. Also, one's interpretation shouldn't be foisted on the unwilling; if an author's work is timeless, it's because it continues to convey all the things it was meant to without a million layers of imposed analysis, or perhaps because it doesn't need the original subtext for having acquired another one, or (shockingly!) it's doing fine on the strength of the actual plot. Shockingly, sometimes the zombies are really just zombies, and yes, they're real. Or the unicorns, for that matter.
---
According to family history, or at least what I have been telling myself for so long that if it's not true, there is no longer any hope of resurrecting what was, I decided to be an author when I was in 4th grade. I wasn't particularly militant about writing at the time, although I did some of it. I have an old school notebook that I carried with me everywhere in 6th grade, and some of the fragments of things in it I've recently started pulling out and contemplating re-casting, because they're interesting, and part of my personal mythologies. I wrote a lot of poetry as a kid, and then grew out of it around middle school because I promised myself not to write vast quantities of stupid love poems. (For the most part, I even succeeded.)
Somewhere around eleven or twelve, I began writing (or at least starting) short stories-- first on notebook paper, and then on a succession of inherited laptops. That lasted through high school and a bit of college (although there I spent more time writing papers than fiction, sadly; I still vaguely regret not turning in a set of modernized Canterbury tales as an apology for why my final paper in the Chaucer class was going to be late...) and then somewhere along the line I started thinking in novel length. I think I've finished perhaps five short stories in the last decade, because my writing time has mainly gone into NaNo, starting new novel-length ideas, and finishing up or sorting through the things that I started in November.
Of course, I still haven't quite got anything novel length that's ready to send out to seek its fortune in the wide world, and so I've been trying to write more short stories while I pretend to work on it. Just out of curiosity, I went back into the "stories" folder on my harddrive (which has been accumulating since I got my powerbook 100 in 1994, with a couple fragments-- one of which I've used elsewhere, and one which ought if finished at least to be novella length and might one day be worth resurrecting if I ever wanted to write science fiction-- transferred over from the DOS Kaypro 2000) and poked about in some of the things I wrote in high school to see if any of them were worth attempting to publish. Admittedly, I'm not quite done yet, but most of what I find is either rather embarrassing in its attempt at seriousness, or resembles this gem, which may go some way towards explaining my sense of humor: (don't worry, it's pretty short)
THE FROG
Once upon a time, in the terribly romantic and badly designed garden of the palace Far Away, there lived a young and handsome frog. He was so handsome a frog that all the flowers loved him, but he was in love with the princess, so they were doomed to disappointment. Even the roses wept.
My story, however is of the frog, not the roses. He was not only a very handsome frog, but he was also kind, and so he went around the garden after the princess, hoping she would drop the cloth of gold pincushion with which she always played so that he could pick it up for her.
One day the frog's wish came true. The princess dropped her cloth of gold pincushion with which she always played. "Oh no!" she cried, "I have dropped my cloth of gold pincushion with which I always play! Someone pick it up, quickly!"
But her escort was too distressed to move. So the frog hopped forward and asked, "What will you give me if I pick it up?"
"Oh, anything! Anything!" cried the princess, eager to retrieve her toy.
The frog took a deep breath, and asked, all in a rush, "Will you let me eat at your table, sleep in your room, and will you kiss me goodnight?" At this point he stopped, mostly because he had run out of breath.
"Sure," said the princess, and it was a deal. The frog picked up the cloth of gold pincushion with which the princess always played and dusted it off. The princess took it from him, and skipped away.
That night the castle was dismayed to find the frog entering the dining hall just before dinner. The princess denied having made any promises to a common frog, but her stepmother, the Queen and ruler of the kingdom since her husband's death, told her that she had to keep her promise.
So the frog ate at the princess's private table, and for the first time in her life, the princess ate from the common table with her stepmother and the court.
At the end of dinner the princess, under protest, led the frog up to her room. But when she went to kiss him goodnight, he turned into a handsome prince.
The frog was as surprised as the princess. He did, however, like being a prince better than a frog because he was much smarter, and realized that the princess was really an idiot.
So the Frog Prince married the stepmother, and they sent the princess off to the editors of Dragons Magazine as a raffle prize. They figured that anyone stupid enough to try to kill a dragon really deserved her.
The flowers and the fish in the fishponds all pined away because their frog never came back, but the gardeners planted new flowers, and everyone was relatively happy. That is, excepting the kitchen maid, who always had to walk half way around the castle to get herbs from the garden.
THE END.