The Shades of Pemberley want cleaning...

Oh, for the love of all things Austen!

Is nothing sacred any more? Are the Shades of Pemberley thus to be polluted? This is not to be BORNE!

New and Unknown

10 years after Darcy and Lizzy got married they had a son. He is about to turn 17, but then one december night a beautiful, pale skinned girl asks for a job. What will happen when he finds out she is not really human but a vampire. OOC. Twilight cross over.


I have looked at the story in question, and there are AUTHOR'S NOTES in the text! Jane Austen is in her grave weeping at the terrible disservice this thirteen year old is doing to her text! I'm sure this girl hasn't even READ Pride and Prejudice.

I want to raise an angry mob right now. Who's with me? Grab your torches and pitchforks! Or at the very least, your flaming reviews. I know when I am in a more harmonious mood I will give this girl a piece of my mind.

Taking Writing Seriously

Today I have to give a presentation of my linguistics research on fanfiction, and over the past twenty four hours when I've been composing my little speech I've presented it to several different people (My furniture got bits and pieces of it for several hours last night.) Reactions were varied, mainly because either my audience knew lots about fanfiction or nothing at all. In fact, one of the more knowledgable audiences, Mallory, said something I've never even considered before --

"Wow, you really take your fanfiction seriously, don't you?"

I realized then that writing fanfiction for me was never a question of taking it un-seriously. I've treated my work as worthy of research, worthy of investing in books I may never read and will probably not be able to use outside of my appropriative linguistic endeavors. (How many people do you know get excited over a book with a title like "What Jane Austen Ate and Charles Dickens Knew"? Exactly.)

So I have a bit of advice, not specifically about writing but about whatever your hobbies may be. Take them seriously. Even if you're not very good at them (and heaven knows there are better writers than me in the world) your being committed to your hobby says something about you to other people. Maybe you collect bottle caps or you make cut and paste collages from old calendars, but if you're committed to it, if you treat it seriously, then I think people have a little bit of respect for it.

And if they don't? Personally, I think that means they're jealous.

Conflict.

My paper on fanfiction vocabulary is COMPLETE! All ten pages in their fannish, appropriative glory are done.

...and then I found out this morning that someone is writing their PhD dissertation on slash, and I felt sad. But I'm not a doctoral candidate, and I had half a semester to come up with ten pages on something I only found four books on, so I think I'm in the clear here.

This news about the doctoral candidate reminds me of something else I'm working on right now -- our last unit in peace studies dealing with the topic of race. This evening I have to go over to SJU to watch a movie we started in class called "The Color Of Fear" in which eight men of varying ethnic backgrounds (two latinos, two blacks, two asians, and two whites) discuss their perceptions on race. When we stopped the movie last class, one of the black men (whose name escapes me at the moment) had just finished a rant, for lack of a better term, in response to several comments by the others on what it means to be American. In what I thought to be a brilliant peice of discourse for someone who was so angry, he outlined his displeasure in the idea that one has to "give up the hyphen" as it were to truly be American. He said that we can't all be the same, so why are we trying, and that being American is all about owning who you are, be it African American or Euro-American.

I won't hide the fact that by the time he was finished, I was crying. Reading my online blog will probably not have given you the sense that I am by nature a very emotional person, especially when it comes to problems I know I can't solve but want to anyway. My problem with this issue is this -- I have always felt either way I approach 'a minority issue' if we can call it that, if I connect with the issues presented to me I will be considered patronizing, and if I don't connect I will be considered racist. Either way, I lose.

This is not the first time Peace Studies has made me feel this way -- When we were reading "Beloved" earlier in the semester, I faced the same problem, addressed on this blog in "An All-Seeing Eye: The Big Other in The Bluest Eye". I had read Toni Morrison before and had run into the problem of not liking "Beloved." I had a hard time coming out and saying that because I could be seen as racist. On the other hand, I had a hard time coming out and saying that the power and emotion in "The Bluest Eye" struck me in ways that I have not been struck before because I might be seen as patronizing --

Pre-conditioned responses have already been embedded into my system, and apparently one of them is to step away any time a black author tries to involve me in the shared feeling of remorse and say "But I'm not on the same level as you."

This is troublesome indeed, and I'm not entirely sure I know how to solve that. On the one hand, it is true -- not being picked for the kickball team is by no means the same as being rejected from the social network of your classroom by your peers because you are black and do not look like the beauty ideal of Shirley Temple in any way, as Pecola is in The Bluest Eye.

I feel the same way about Toni Morrison's writing as I do about slash fanfiction. While I've been doing my research, I kept coming across information that told me that female fanfiction writers write slash to break away from the hetrosexual-centric culture and reclaim agency and writing space for themselves. It sounds epic and exciting and revolutionary...and I'm not part of it. I'm a female fanfiction writer. I've never written a piece of slash fanfic in my life. I'm part of the group of writers reaffirming the social norm in their writing. And for some reason, that makes me feel bad. Why can't I be part of the majority and enjoy it? It's not that I look down on the minority, that I consider their expieriences less valid and important than my own, it's that I like it where I am. I'm being guilt-tripped into thinking that just because I enjoy Jane Eyre, whose main character is allowed to exist and prosper because her colonial sister Bertha is repressed by the system of British Imperialism, I am a bad person.

Why?

And perhaps more importantly, what do I do now?

All I want for Christmas...

...is a Templar plushie!

Is that or is that not one of the cutest things ever? Completely pointless, and not what I really want for Christmas (Wellington boots, for those of you family members who occasionally check this blog, MOM) but worth mentioning.

If you actually want to buy one, and this woman's work is amazing (Plushie Viking, anyone?) you should check out her blog here --

http://herzensart.blogspot.com/

And while we're in the business of discussing Templars, I should at some point this weekend update Song of a Peacebringer. It's finals week in two weeks and my schoolwork is slowly determined to crush the life out of me, one ten page paper at a time.

Vindication

I have just heard Patrick O'Brien's Aubrey Maturin novels described as "The Novels Jane Austen would have written if she had written about her brothers in the Navy rather than her sisters."

This completely legitimizes my crossover of the two. I feel vindicated.

And in the mood to read my copy of M&C, which is currently at home. Curses.

Holmes behind the Hat -- Halloween and buying into Stereotypes

As many of you know, I was Sherlock Holmes for Halloween, which was a fun and exciting time, especially since everyone recognized me in my distinctive (and wonderfully inexpensive) costume. See? Don't I look wonderful?

But before I went out with my wonderful halloween crew of freinds, who had equally amazing and non-commercially produced costumes, I couldn't help thinking about the nature of the character I was playing. Holmes enthusiasts will probably be quick to tell you that my costume isn' t a thing like what Holmes was portrayed as in the books.

For starters, there's the pipe and the hat. The hat, the infamous Deerstalker that one cannot picture without putting Holmes' famous noggin underneath it, is never mentioned in the short stories -- reference is made to some type hunting cap, but not necessarily the deer stalker.

The pipe, also, is a mistake -- Holmes' drug of choice was opium, although he did smoke a little, and the distinctive calabash pipe, which I did not have, was introduced by one of the many actors to play Holmes because he wanted something that wouldn't interfere with his diction. My pipe (which I do not actually smoke) was borrowed from my grandfather, a relic of his father-in-law. Over the course of the night, I discovered that the pipe is a wonderfully expressive prop, and one that I will certainly use again if the owner does not ask for its return. Perhaps next Halloween I'll use it for JRR Tolkien or a Dead Poets Society Member or something. That would be fun.

The coat he probably would have worn, although mine is sans the capelet that characterized men's outwear of the period (the historical details I give up when I shop at thrift stores) and the shoes and pants, of course, were straight of my closet, and not a Saville row haberdashery.

It's interesting to see how images of popular culture figures evolve. IMDb tells me that no less than 40 actors have played Holmes, including Christopher Lee and Christoper Plummer, the latest of whom will be Robert Downey, Jr, with Jude Law standing in for the estimable Dr. John Watson --

(As a fangirly aside, I would let that duo investigate me any day of the week. Ditto to James D'Arcy's Holmes from the 2002 "Sherlock" regardless of how plotless the actual movie was...)

But 40 actors and 200 movies point to some kind of allure in Holmes' character. (I am going to fervantly deny the existence of whatever ridiculous hack job Will Farrell and Sasha Baron Cohen are going to make of everyone's favorite dective stories.) And certainly I cannot forget that my own favorite TV duo, House and Wilson, take no small influence from Conan-Doyle's works. What is it about Holmes that makes him so endearing? Is it the brilliant, aloof way he solves crime? The rapier sharp wit that is so quick to belittle anyone who doesn't understand him? Or is it just that misattributed hat and calabash pipe that has fixed him in our literary conciousness?

I think that's a question only Holmes himself could find the answer to. I'll stick to exploring the depths of unanswered questions in my fanfiction. And knowing me, that will probably involve Watson and some class of damsel in distress as soon as that movie comes out...

Jingo-Lingo: Doublespeak, Fanfiction Vocabulary, and the limits of language

Noam Chomsky is trying to take over my life.

No, I am completely serious! He has shown up in every single one of my classes this semester, and that is an accomplishment, considering every single class I'm taking is from a different department. He's a linguist, which meant we read his thoughts for Linguistics (duh) on how languages are structured, in my Human Development class on how children acquire language, and in my Communications class on how we use language in advertising. Today he came up in Peace Studies because he is a political activist and theorist as well and we were reading an article of his on terrorism.

But today in Peace Studies we discussed something else that Mr. Chomsky would probably have a few thoughts about-- doublespeak, or the particular brand of language used by the government and by other various bureaucracies to make whatever they intend to say unintelligible to the average joe. And of course, I thought back to linguistics and my research project, which is on another type of lingo -- the vocabulary of fanfiction.

Just like doublespeak or the less confusing academic language of, say, chemistry, fanfiction vocabulary is an attempt to make what we do as authors seem like legitimate discourse as well as create the same barrier as doublespeak does, veiling us in our own elite little world of Mary sues and crossovers and canon 'shipping. By using these terms, we establish our experience level and our authority within our discipline the same way a chemist uses terms like valence electrons, hydrogen bonds and heterogenous solutions to show that he, too, knows what he is talking about rather than referring vaguely to the structures of atoms or mixtures of liquids that have differing properties. And chemists and goverment officials aren't the only ones using confusing langauge -- English speakers employ euphemisms, those phrases that drive translators wild with annoyance, every day of the week.

This is from my introduction so far:

The scene is a familiar one to anyone who reads on a regular basis – it is the last page of the novel you’ve been dying for months to read since you heard your favorite author was publishing again, and as you finish the final words, you can’t help feeling a sense of disappointment. That wasn’t the way you wanted the book to end at all! The hero was flat, the love interest was transparent, and there were entire scenes that needed to be explained! If you were writing the book, you would have definitely included more, like a chapter explaining how all the characters met each other. Most people never follow up on these notions of re-writing or filling in their favorite novels, but for a small community of writers, that idea forms the basis of their entire creative output. It’s called fanfiction, and it’s been around for hundreds of years, almost since the printing press created a mass market for books. These authors use texts ranging from Jane Austen to the latest comic book series as their source material, and their aim is simple – to write stories based on characters people already connect with for the purpose of improving their own writing and filling in gaps in the original stories. Since the advent of the Internet and sites that allow readers and writers around the globe to establish communities, fanfiction has grown dramatically, and as this style has grown in popularity, it has developed its own unique language, a codified and agreed-upon set of terms and vocabulary to help connect within the community and establish legitimacy among its members. Fanfiction is written with the aim of creating agency, space, and identity for its writers, and these three motives help explain why the vocabulary of fanfiction exists as well as why it is structured the way it is.

As you can see, it's going to be a riveting paper. But one of the other things the movie we watched in Peace Studies today discussed was how language, as well as how people use language, significantly impacts how we view the world. Jacques Derrida discusses this in one of his writings, talking about how using our language to discuss the way we use language is by the very nature of the proposition a play doomed to failure. The Sapir-Whorf hypothesis posits that different languages formulate different trains of thought, that if a language has more than one word for snow the people speaking the language will, of course, be more aware of snow.

Certainly this could be true with doublespeak. By using a disconnected doublespeak, we in turn disconnect ourselves from war, rearrange our thought process and make war more palatable -- an enemy solidier is easier to kill if he remains nameless and becomes Jerry, Gook, or Victor Charlie, a manufactured propaganda face with a leering grin and beady little eyes set on destroying the American way of life. We're not fighting a war, we're peacekeeping, and don't even think about calling them casulties. Talk about the body count instead, or the butcher's bill, if you're fighting in the South Pacific on a 19th century ship of the line. Using doublespeak can hinder our ability to look objectively at war.

But fanfiction vocabulary does the opposite of doublespeak-- it seeks to open up and delve further into an artistic endeavor by making new words (or rearranging old ones) to better explain the unique animal of fanfiction writing. Mainstream writing doesn't need a word for the advocacy of a relationship between these two people or those two people, but fanfiction does, so we have shipping, a clipping of 'relationship' that's been turned into a verb, an appropriative vocab word for an appropriative art. My thought process is shaped by those words, but the very fact that they are new and that I have allowed them into my vocabulary speaks to my ability to influence by own thought process. It's not that we're more aware of snow becuase we have more words for it -- it's because we needed to be more aware that we came up with more words.

Fascinating world we live in, isn't it?

Rocking the Regency

I have discovered a treasure.

Regency Dress Up Doll by *savivi on deviantART

This woman is AMAZING-- I have had far too much fun designing Fanny and Charlotte Aubrey--

And Georgiana, who is so much fun. I am by no means an Austen purist, and I am not ashamed to admit that I really liked Tamzin Merchant in Joe Wright's 2005 Version. She was very...impish, which is a quality that suited her, I thought.Those of you familiar with Thackeray will recognize Georgiana's title -- in my fanfic she's married to Marquess of Steyne, his second marriage and her first. I've also now only just realized that she should be a Marchioness. *shrug* The vagaries of rank and style.

I had fun doing myself, too...


But the fun didn't stop there-- she has one for our favorite heroes, too!

Regency Hero Dress Up Doll by *savivi on deviantART

Which meant, of course, that I had to do Richard Hornblower, George Darcy and Phil Norrington as well....Aren't they dashing? I gave George a dog, though he doesn't have one in my story... Perhaps he should get one now.

And you should all go read Husbands and Lovers now. It has so few reviews. Please, even unhappy reviews would be appreciated, too...

Husbands and Lovers, a Napoleonic Wars Crossover of Epic Proportions

Updates!

And, after a nightmarish two weeks of school work piled on top of school work, piled on top of the Minnesota weather beginning to act like the minnesota weather and making it really hard for me to type some days, we have LE UPDATE.

We have, in no particular order,

New chapter from Mercury Gray,

Category: Kingdom of Heaven
Title: Song of a Peacebringer
Chapter: 13
Chapter Title: Chapter 13
Genre: Drama/Adventure
Rating: Fiction Rated: T
Summary: Trying to escape a life with no prospects, a young woman sets sail for the Holy Land not knowing what she will find there. Armed with her brother Gregory's advice and a modicum of courage, Audemande of Vinceaux tries to make the most of Jerusalem.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4400318/13/

and a new story! I've been working on this one for a while, and I finally finished it this weekend.

New story from Mercury Gray,

Category: Kingdom of Heaven
Title: Gardens of Paradise
Genre: Drama/Spiritual
Rating: Fiction Rated: K+
Summary: While in Jerusalem, Nasir Imad Al Din meets a fellow poet in the gardens of the Citadel of David, and has a lengthy discussion about gardening, poetry, and God.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4656923/1/

and another new story, too -- this one is a Grey's Anatomy fanfic -- new territory for me! check it out and see what you think!

New story from Mercury Gray,

Category: Grey's Anatomy
Title: The Small Matter of Teaching
Genre: Drama/Humor
Rating: Fiction Rated: K+
Summary: After Chief Webber notices Christina's non-existent teaching skills, everyone's favorite perfectionist gets a wake-up call from a patient of hers on how exactly to deal with the small matter of teaching.
URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4656438/1/

Now, after that massive outpouring of creative energy, I have to go work and attempt to write a four to five double spaced page essay on the impact the Bible and the Printing press have had on the evolution of English. Ah, Linguistics class, I love you so.

But really? Really?

The Long, Long Trail -- Thoughts on the Evolution of the Identity of Armistice Day

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

-The Dugout, by Siegfreid Sassoon, from The War Poems, 1919

First off, Happy Armistice Day, everyone! I know most Americans are probably thinking, "Merc, where has your head gone? It's Veteran's Day, you ninny!"

And you'd be right. Today is, technically, Veteran's Day. Has been since 1954. But in 1919, per an order from then-president Woodrow Wilson, today was Armistice Day, because on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, peace was declared between the allied powers of England, Russia, France, and Italy and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, people around the country would gather to celebrate the end of the war that was supposed to end all wars, the last gasp of a dying style of warfare and the first breath of the beginning of another.

Never again would the enemy be a man you could forget your differences with and play a game of soccer in no-man's land with, as with the Christmas Truce of 1914. Weapons could shoot further, more accurately, and with increased effect. You were removed from the man you were killing with shells and gas and later, napalm and missiles, weapons that would be fired from far off so that the effect was never seen by the man doing the firing. It became a common tactic to make your enemy into something less than human -- Jerry, gook, Victor Charlie -- so it was even easier to kill him.

Armistice Day used to be a day to celebrate peace -- that's what the original act to make it a national holiday stated. "A day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

In 1953, someone decided we needed a day to celebrate veterans, and another act of Congress changed Armistice Day into Veterans Day. I agree that veterans have a right to be celebrated, for the sacrifices they make are great and worthy of remembrance, but did they have to take the one day out of the year that was designated to remembering the cause of peace?

You're probably wondering why I'm writing about this on a blog dedicated to writing. World War One was the Great War -- it inspired a generation of writers, Fitzgerald, Remarque and Hemingway among them, and dozens of poets who brought to life in words that remain with us today the horrors of what war could do. Sassoon, Owen, Brooke, and other less famous names wrote about what they saw daily in the trenches, and told thier families it shouldn't happen again.

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin...
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori," Wilfred Owen wrote bitterly in one of the most famous war poems of that era, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," or "It is Sweet and Right." Owen could find nothing sweet and right about war, and neither could many of his comrades. World War One was supposed to end all wars because it was brutal and too many good, young man died uselessly, trying to move lines yards at a time instead of miles.

So today, while you are celebrating the men and women who gave their lives, their fortunes, and thier sacred honor, to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, to the cause of America, please take a moment to remember the Armistice, and remember that the goal of all wars should ultimately be peace, and the removal of the need for more conflict.

I'm going to end this post with one of my favorite poems by my favorite hometown poet, Carl Sandberg. I think it deals very well with the cause of peace, and the necessity of it. It is entitled simply "Grass."

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass;
I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.

Tinged with Thought of Suicide -- National Novel Writing Month

"There are three rules for writing a novel. Unfortunately, no one knows what they are." - William Somerset Maugham



Ah, W.S. Maugham. How witty you were. Are. Continue to be. It's always a funny thing to try and refer to an author or an author's work, becuase while they may be dead, as is the case with the author of "The Painted Veil" and "Of Human Bondage," their works are still very much living, attaining a new life every time thier covers are cracked open. In that way, writers seem to be immortal, continuously in the present tense.



And that immortality is what many participents are probably striving for as NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month, begins. I applaud the intrepid souls who are starting out on this suicidally tinged quest for greatness -- I once tried in the 9th grade, got 8 thousand words in and decided it was hopeless. Now I have my heart set on being a teacher, a much more marketable use for an English Degree. If that falls through, I plan on becoming a librarian, in the hopes that I may someday help a handsome ex-pat break out of jail, go gallivanting through the desert in search of buried treasure, and be able to explain, while in a somewhat inebriated state, "Mr. O'Connell, I may not be an adventurer, or...or an explorer...but I am proud of what I am! I...am a Librarian."

Additonal props to anyone who knows what movie that's from.



For those of you not familiar with NaNo, let me elaborate -- NaNoWriMo is a contest, of sorts, in which aspiring novelists across the country commit themselves to writing 50,000 words in one month. 30 days.



As I mentioned before, tinged with thoughts of suicide. Especially if you're a full time student like me. Which is why I am staying far, far away from it and contenting myself with one small, insignificant fanfic at a time.



Props to all of you crazy people, though. I hope W.S. Maugham's three rules occur to you some time in the midst of your word churning. Who knows -- perhaps this time someone may actually write them down.

On a Stack of Bibles

I've just returned from my Linguistics class field trip, and I am nothing short of flabbergasted. You who sit in front of your computer screens reading this post are probably wondering a) what was so exciting about linguistics or b) why a college class was going on a field trip.

Allow me to elaborate. My professor, who is an august and amazing man, takes our class for little excursions around Saint Ben's and Saint John's to show off what an amazing school we go to and introduce us to cool and nifty people around our campuses. Our field trip today was to the Hill Museum and Manuscript library, which I've talked about before on this blog ("Paperback Swap Status, September 10th")

Specfically, we were going to the HMML to hear a presentation about the Saint John's Bible Project, the nearly 13 year project to script, illustrate, and illuminate a bible, in English, using midieval techniques. I'm telling you people, it is a thing awesome to behold. The books (there are going to be seven volumes to this behemoth when it's completed) are going to be about 14 inches wide by two and a half feet tall, a size appropriate to our Abbey Church, which is huge inside --

That honeycomb you see behind what we call the Banner -- that's also the largest stained glass window in Minnesota, possibly the world, I don't remember. The structure is also entirely poured concrete, which is just amazing when you think about how big it is. You can't see this by looking at the picture, but the Abbey church is right on the top of a hill, and it's one of the first things you see when you get off the highway and start approaching Saint John's. It's really cool -- and the guy who designed the church, Marcel Bruer, he's world famous.

But back to the Bible and the HMML. Donald Jackson (who is apparently a BIG DEAL in the world of calligraphy) expressed an interest in writing a 20th century bible and asked the monks of Saint John's if they would like to be associated with the project. They said yes, and the Saint John's Bible was born.

If you are ever in Collegeville, Minnesota, or if you hear that it will be touring near you, go see it. It's beautiful. In fact, it's so amazing the Pope has a copy. That's right. The Pope. Brother Dietrich, the President of Saint John's, traveled to Rome in April of this year and presented it to him. This book is so important the Vatican Library gets a copy. I think that's all seven kinds of awesome, right there.

But I also learned something else today. I learned that the HMML, which resides right underneath the library where I do my homework on Tuesday afternoons, across the lawn from that Abbey Church, is one of the largest collections of medieval manuscripts from across the world, some THREE MILLION pages on microfilm, comprising about one-hundred thousand volumes, most of them from the Middle East.

Are you all jealous yet? Because you should be.

I go to school at two colleges comprised of some four thousand students, in the middle of nowhere in Minnesota, and we have a collection of old books that is so unique scholars from all over the world come to study them. I wrote about one of them in that previous blog post I mentioned earlier.

I think that's something to be proud of. My school is famous the world over for preserving books, books that now, in addition to microfilm, can also be accessed online through the Vivarium, here. For the one hundred and fifty years that Saint John's Abbey and the Monastery of Saint Benedict have been in Minnesota, we've been focused on teaching, learning, and preserving heritage, things that are all still alive in our traditions today.

And I am. I am very, very proud of that.

Thoughts on NBC’s Crusoe

(An alternative title considered for this post was "Let's Po-Mo the Mo-Fo!" but I didn't think many readers would approve. I, on the other hand, found it hilarious, and felt like sharing it anyway.)

So NBC debuted their new fall series Crusoe, and I, like many period piece aficionados, was very excited. I had the premiere date written on my calendar since I found out about the show, because I, like many other women in my age bracket, find most of the male cast of this show undeniably hot.

Now who DOESN'T want a piece of that?

But unlike most of the other women who tuned in on Friday night, I took the time to read the source material first, because I am an English Major, and I can do things like that. I wrote a killer, kick-butt blog post when I finished reading Daniel Defoe’s Robinson Crusoe back in September, and then Blogger deleted it in a series of unfortunate and regrettable events, so I’m starting over from scratch.

First off, I’d like to point out that the copy of Robinson Crusoe I was reading was last checked out of our library in 1970, so it’s not as though this book is making the rounds. Daniel Defoe is not Stephanie Meyer, if you know what I mean. In fact, he’s not even Samuel Jonson, whose book is just about as boring and still gets use. (That’s Samuel Jonson’s DICTIONARY, for you bibliophiles in the crowd) Defoe’s tale is full of self-righteousness and morality, and his protagonist is a Puritanical merchant who, despite the fact that he’s trapped on an island, decides he’s going to institute a rigorous work ethic, tame the wilderness, and never drink the rum he’s been left with unless it’s an emergency.

(I considered writing a fanfic where Jack Sparrow gets marooned on this same island and he and Crusoe have a terrible arguement, but then I realized no one aside from me would find that funny, and I demurred.)

Basically, he’s a stick in the mud who doesn’t remember how to live a little. And you wonder, after reading this story with Crusoe’s religious conversion of sorts and his detailed descriptions of what went on every day (“Today I caught a goat and plan to find another to make a herd…”), how on earth is NBC going to make this into a TV show that people are actually going to want to watch?

I’ve answered that question already – make Crusoe undeniably hot even after he’s been marooned on this island for years, scrap the idea that he’s going around in a weird hat made out of goatskin (a la the illustration here) and make his house the most awesome place on the planet. (Did you see his juicer? It was the BOMB! I want to get myself stranded on his island just to make him OJ in the morning!)

But after you’ve solved the problem of making the protagonist sexy, there’s still that nagging issue of plot. That one’s also simple – Add pirates! Make no never mind that the pirates in Defoe don’t come in until the last hundred pages.

In short, it was a post-modern extravaganza of updating and tweaking. No longer does Crusoe merely eek out his living on the island, waiting for a ship to one day enter his little world – he’s actively campaigning to get off and return to his lovely wife, Susannah. Friday’s been updated, too – he’s not just a savage who doesn’t know how to speak in complete sentences, but a great friend and companion for Crusoe, to the point of brotherhood, and a linguistic genius who ‘took six months’ to learn English and ‘can make himself understood’ in 12 different tongues. This Friday really is the embodiment of that great and lasting friendship that scholars seem to think exists between Crusoe and Friday, and he really is Crusoe’s equal, on occasion even his superior, saving his life and pointing out, in his witty, endearing way, that sometimes Crusoe does some pretty stupid stuff. (Did I mention Friday’s pretty hot as well? NBC did a good job casting this thing – Even Crusoe’s dad, the indomitable Sean Bean --one of my first celebrity crushes-- is looking pretty fine.)

It’s interesting to observe what needs to be changed to make the story resonate with today’s modern viewers. Morals don’t play a role in this tale as much as they do in Defoe’s version, and the work ethic that he so carefully outlines with the daily toils of his narrator never seemed to enter the picture in NBC’s version. Crusoe needs a reason to get off the island, so he’s married off to the daughter of a prosperous cooper. Friday can be the post-colonial black guy and be smart for a change, and of course, because Crusoe is on an island must mean he’s having adventures instead of wrangling sheep or talking to his volleyball friend named Wilson.

Don’t get me wrong – I’m glad they changed it. Crusoe is much more enjoyable without that silly hat and the ridiculous beard. The pirates are funny, and add interesting dimension to the narrative. Reading the original Friday was painful to my 21^st century sensibilities, and Tongai Chirisa’s rendering is much cooler to listen to and watch. (And did I mention he's good looking? Becuase the thought did cross my mind once or twice.)

So after a few episodes, you’ll probably see a little notice on this blog saying that I have post modernized the post modern Crusoe and have begun writing a fanfic of some kind. It’ll probably make Defoe turn over in his grave, but somehow, I’m okay with that.

At least I’m not writing fanfic on Jonson’s Dictonary.

Not for Want of Connection

It's amazing how small the world becomes as I sit in front of my computer. I sit here and find out that a girl in Manchester whose writing I adore has read the same book as I have and had the same revelations and I don't even know her name. And she wants to know what I write on this blog. I think that's pretty awesome. (That's Petit Parapluie, for those wondering -- she owns me at writing. Seriously. No joke. I don't joke about talent.)

I sit here and look for books on my research project on Irish Rebel Music and find out that there are maybe five books in the whole world written on that particular subject and that the resources I need won't even come from the state of Minnesota. Some of them only reside in universities in Canada and Ireland. One of the texts I'd like only lives in the library at Cambridge University.

THE Cambridge University. In England. The famous one.

My other research project for this semester is going to be on fanfiction vocabulary, and that's such a new topic there are also maybe three books in the world on it, (three published books, that is) and that amazes me. I'm going to write a paper on something that few people in the world have considered worthy of scholarly study.

I'm blazing a trail here. My librarian assures me that this is the stuff of masters theses.

And this boggles my mind. I've got friends in places I haven't even seen, freinds I've never met and probably never will. I'm doing something that other people haven't done. My world is becoming so much wider, and all I've done is sat here, in front of my computer.

Imagine what will happen when I leave my room, my campus, my homeland -- what possibilities await me there!

Updates!

Okay, haven't done one of these in a while. An update post!

A new chapter of "Song of a Peacebringer" has been posted on FF.net -- you can read it here.

I've also, in the spirit of non- eurocentric thinking, posted a new story about Saladin, The Final Checkmate:

New story from Mercury Gray,

Category: Kingdom of Heaven

Title: The Final Checkmate

Genre: Drama/General

Rating: Fiction Rated: K+

Summary: After Salahuddin's battle against Reynald de Chatillion at Kerak is stopped and both armies have gone home, Salahuddin plays chess with Nasir and explains his strategy.

URL: http://www.fanfiction.net/s/4574746/1/

I've also begun a ROME fanfic, based on the HBO series. Unfortunately, because of the nature of ROME, the story is an MA rating (mature audiences) and I can't archive it on ff.net, so we're probably looking at putting that on hms_mercury under a cut with an explicit content rating.

The Liberating Writer (and a few thoughts on Women's Studies)

I've blogged before about the nature of words in different langauges (A Million Words for Love, February 08) and I've found another that I think writers and readers everywhere will appreciate. And once again, this linguistic revelation comes to us courtesy of Arabic.

I'm reading a book now called "The Forgotten Queens of Islam" by Fatima Mernissi (University of MN Press 1993) and Ms. Mernissi, in explaining the difference between levels of power in the early Islamic state, has this to say on the subject of freedom and, by association, writing:

"In Arabic words like hurr (free) and hurriyya (freedom) have little to do with the modern human rights connotation....Hurr also has to do with the idea of resistance, since one says of a bride that she has spent the night hurra if she was not deflowered on her wedding night, since her husband could not penetrate her. This idea of resisting, of concentrated energy contained in hurr, is evident in the word harrara, which means 'to write.' When you decide to write a text, what you are in fact doing is liberating words (tahir al-kitaba). You are arranging alphabet letters in a specific order that makes sense and liberates meanings. Al-muharrir (the liberator) is one of the many words for a writer. One of the many duties of the hurr, the aristocrat, is to think globally..."

Being a liberator of words is a beautiful image of writing, if, of course, one writes well. I'm sure some of my writer freinds would say that bad writing does not liberate words but rather enslaves them for evil and terrible purposes(see Simon's The Coming of the Madness to see what I mean.) But more than being liberators of words, I would also contend that writing is a liberating of ideas. Certainly we have seen that many movements for change and political ideologies have come from written texts, in which words have been set down and the reader is inspired to think on them. With Mernissi's acknowledgement of a writer as al-muharrir, (and certainly she fills this position with her writing, ) English speakers can also consider the idea of the author as an authority (note similarity of root), the teacher and beginner of discourse, as theorists like Foucault ("What is an Author?") point out to us.

So far the book has been exceedingly interesting, and I would recommend it to anyone interested in Women's Studies. On the back, one of the commentaries from another academic, Ella Shohat, says this: "Mernissi's breathtaking investigation challenges both contemporary fundamentalist Islamic opposition to women in the public sphere and one-dimensional Western representations of Muslim women as completely lacking in agency..." {bold my own}

Ms. Shohat is also the author of "Unthinking Eurocentrism" so I think we all know what her aim in life is. But really, she has a point. We of the West never hear about exemplary women of other cultures, the Nur Jahans and Aisha al-Hurras and Trung Sisters of the world (It took me about five minutes to come up with that list, and I can only explain two of the three on it, so don't laud me just yet) while we valiantly praise the Victoria Woodhulls and Susan B. Anthonys and Gloria Steinams (and that list is entirely American, so that goes to show something else about my education, too).

When I came back to school, I began reading a lot of non-fiction books, and many of them had to do with the subject of women. I read Something from the Oven, a book on the culture of domestic perfection that grew up in American households after World War II, Hen Frigates, a book on the lives of women as wives and daughters of sailing captains in the 19th and early 20th centures, Women of the Raj, a book on the role of women in British Imperial India, and Women, Crusading, and the Holy Land in Historical Narrative , which kind of explains its subject matter itself. It was a Eurocentric reading list, to be sure. So, when I started this past weekend writing a Kingdom of Heaven fanfic based around the arabic origin of the word checkmate (shah-mat, the king is dead in Arabic or more appropriately the king is helpless in Persian) I realized I was woefully underprepared to deal with the Sultan Saladin (or Salah Al Din, as it is appropriately spelled) as a character.

Bearing this in mind, I went to the library to find a book on him. Easier said than done, but I did find Ms. Mernissi's book. After reading it I feel a little better about my reading habits (although I did find the book towards the end a little poorly organized, to be truthful) but I also realised something else, a unique similarity between women's cultures around the world.

In the last passage of her book, Ms. Mernissi says this:

"We, the inhabitants of medina democracies, are whirling around between Heaven and Earth, astronauts despite ourselves, without space suits or oxygen masks, launched into that planetary dance with bare faces and open palms. And there is one far from negligable difference; we women have to do all that whirling around wearing the veil. Heavens! When I think about our power! But shhh! We mustn't talk about it. We might attract the evil eye!"

After reading that, I recalled another saying, much in the same tone, from a western source --

"Remember, Ginger Rogers did everything Fred Astaire did, but she did it backwards and in high heels."

I may not have understood the politics and various intrigues of the worlds and religious tones that Mernissi was talking about, but I did at least understand that what they did was exemplary.

(I realize, also, that this blog post was very poorly organized, but there was so much to be talked about!)

On this day in history, English changed forever...

From my quote of the day email:

It was on this day in 1066 that William the Bastard, Duke of Normandy,
landed 600 ships and a 7,000 man army on the beach at Pevensey Bay in Sussex.
Convinced that he was the rightful king of England, and with the full support of
Pope Alexander II, he prepared to attack King Harald's forces, which he routed
at Hastings a couple of weeks later. Thus England gained new laws, an overlay of Latinate vocabulary on her language, feudalism, and forks.

The quotes were on invasion, which, while a fascinating subject, is not why I brought this to your attention. Freinds, today marks a turning point in the history of the English language (and this might be on my Linguistics test next week, so I might as well re-hash what I know for practice.)

Besides bringing Latin into the language, William the Conquerer also brought French, the language of his court and thus, the language of his barons. They became the ruling class, and French, along with Latin, became the language of power. English was the third langauge in its own country, spoken only by the peasants who were working in the fields while important buisness was conducted in the language of the castles and the whole buisness was recorded in the language of the church.

After William's invasion, English got a whole new set of words from French, some of which I've already used in this blog post -- army, baron, castle. If you look at these words they're primarily about ruling and rulers. (They didn't just bring the words, either -- they also brought concepts. You'll find that prior to the Norman invasion, Britain didn't have many castles, and certainly nothing like the stone buildings that William put up.) As time wore on, though, different words emerged.

Melvyn Bragg in his "Adventure of English" (which I recommend to anyone interested in this subject -- purchase it at Amazon or Better World Books) notes that in some cases, words from French did not take the place of English words, but rather complemented them, taking on a fraction of the meaning. Here's an example.

When a black Angus is out in the field eating, it's a cow. Cow is Old English. But when we butcher the cow, cook it and serve it for dinner, we don't say we're eating cow, we say we're eating beef. Beef comes from the French boeuf. In almost all cases, when the peasents deal with something (like taking care of the live animal) it retained the Old English word, and when the French dealt with something (like the dead animal on thier dinner plates) it took on the French.

So. Today everyone should have a party and raise a glass to William the Conqueror, who, despite ushering the three-hundred year period where the Kings of England didn't speak English, was actually a good thing for the language in the long run. À Votre Santé and Wes Hail!

(That's French and Old English for basically "Good Health and just drink your mead already.")

Observations on Lord of the Rings

I decided, on a whim the other day, that I was going to watch "Return of the King" because it's my favorite of the three LOTR films and I was kind of in an epic mood. Don't ask.

Anyway, I made two rather interesting observations. One is that, during the Two Towers, Eowyn sings a lament for her cousin, Theodred, a list of the kings that have gone before him into death. One of the lines, the only one I ever remember, is "Frecan, Folcan," a reference to Freca and Folca, both of whom were kings in Rohan. The -n ending on the end is an inflection that deliniates what part of speech the name is functioning as. Rohirric is an inflected language, much like Latin or, of course, Old English, which is what Tolkien based both the langauge and culture of the Rohirrim after.

Of course, I knew that already, but my linguistics class (Thank you, Ozzie Mayers and Melvyn Bragg and The History of English) didn't make it apparent until now.

The second is much more movie-oriented -- during the siege of Minas Tirith, Pippin pulls Gandalf aside and says...

PIPPIN
I didn't think it would end this way.

GANDALF
End? No, the journey doesn't end here. Death is just another path. One that we all must take. The gray rain curtain of this world rolls back, and all turns to silver glass. And then you see it.

PIPPIN
What, Gandalf? See what?

GANDALF
White shores. And beyond, the far green country, under a swift sunrise.

You know where else they have white shores and beyond a far green country?

The White Cliffs of Dover. See, there's the white shores and if you keep going over the little island they're attached to, there's another little island that a lot of people have taken to calling the Emerald Isle on account of its green-ness.

Funny, innit, how these things happen? Gandalf has just given us a vision of England as Valinor.

You're a sneaky one, PJ, I'll give you that.

Things I've Learned from National Talk Like a Pirate Day

First, Happy National Talk Like A Pirate Day, People!

There comes a time in every rightly constructed boy's life when he has a raging urge to go somewhere and dig for hidden treasure.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

He blam'd and protested, but join'd in the plan; He shared in the plunder, but pitied the man.
- William Cowper, 1731 - 1800

The average man will bristle if you say his father was dishonest, but he will brag a little if he discovers that his great-grandfather was a pirate.
- Bern Williams

The kingly office is entitled to no respect. It was originally procured by the highwayman's methods; it remains a perpetuated crime, can never be anything but the symbol of a crime. It is no more entitled to respect than is the flag of a pirate.
- Mark Twain, 1835 - 1910

Classic nineteenth century European imperialists believed they were literally on a mission. I don't believe that the imperialists these days have that same sense of public service. They are simply pirates.
- John Pilger

Every normal man must be tempted at times to spit on his hands, hoist the black flag, and begin slitting throats.
- Henry Lewis Mencken, 1880 - 1956

Every day my RA puts up a message on the large white board at the end of our hall. Today's was a cheerful reminder that today is National Talk Like a Pirate Day. Yo-ho-ho and a bottle of rum and all that jazz. Surrounding it were suggestions of how to talk like a pirate.

ARGH!

ME HEARTIES!

YO HO!

and my personal favorite --

BLIMEY!

Blimey? Since when has that been accepted pirate jargon? Which brings me to the point of this post -- when you're a writer, you have to make sure that when you're writing stereotypes, you write the right stereotypes. Make sure your dialogue is appropriate for your characters. Blimey is for Cockneys and lower class British people and Ron Weasley in the Harry Potter books.

Not, as my RA seems to think, for pirates.

PaperBackSwap Status

All the books I sent before going back to school have gotten to their intended destinations, and I have sent a book to Hawaii. That makes 16 books so far, and 5 received, and 2 more sent for. I've also tabulated the books I got at the end of the summer when I put my vacation hold on, and the books I bought at the book sale the other day ($2.75 for eleven books FTW) and I have at least nine that are going to leave in December when I come home from school. HOW AWESOME IS THIS?

I also found a book for my mom (not telling, but it's a doozy; she's going to love it) and I think I'm going to buy a book for my dad at the SJU booksale. They have a lot of theology books there, and I'm going to be on that campus again till 8 or so tonight to get information about going to the Holy Land.

Yes, I am taking my research on the Third Crusade for "Song of a Peacebringer" to a new level. I am actually considering GOING TO THE HOLY LAND and walking where all my favorite historical characters (Jesus not excluded) walked. I'm not sure how this will work out, but I'm very, very excited.

Last night I went to a lecture by Miquel Larranaga from IE University in Segovia, Spain on Image, Word and Power in the 11th through 13th centuries. He was at St. John's going through our Hill Monastic Library for images that would help him write his paper in support of the idea that church art and architecture, alongside the sermon being preached that day, helped to support and justify the idea of feudalism.

Feudalism, for those of you who don't know, is kind of like a triangle divided up into three parts, like so:

At the top are the clergy, those who have a direct relationship with God. After them are the nobles, the knights who fight to protect the other two classes, and at the bottom are the lowly peasants, the ones who make sure the other two classes don't starve.

In the text of medieval sermons, the priest or presider tries to make it look like all the classes are equal, and that all are equally important to the survival of feudalism. Thus, the model should look like this :

But it doesn't. As George Orwell will remind you, some people are more equal than others, and feudalism, as Dr. Larranaga reminded us, is about social domination. There has to be some power input in order for feudalism to work.

At the end of the lecture, Brother Colomba, who runs the HMML, observed that in the feudal scheme Benedictines are both the top and the bottom, those who work and those who pray. This, I expect, was a brilliant idea of Benedict's to not only keep his monasteries self sufficient and busy but also to keep them humble. they weren't just praying for salvation -- they were going to get their hands dirty, too.

But that got me thinking -- what about the Knights of the Hospital? Shouldn't they fit into all three? Hospitalliers were supposed to be knights, but they were also expected to lead a monastic life and contribute their time to working in the Hospitals of their Order in Jerusalem and elsewhere. Doesn't that mean they meet requirements for all three? They work, fight, and pray. I thought this was a pretty genius observation, and also thought that this was the reason that the Hospitalliers never really quite moved out of the Holy Land. As Godfrey says in "Kingdom of Heaven,"

"A man who in France had not a house is now the master of a city. He who was the master of the city begs in the street...You are not what you were born but rather what you have it in yourself to be."

Going to the Holy Land, either to join a monastic order like the Hospitalliers or just as a pilgrimage, was a clear usurpation of the accepted medieval social order.


On the flip side, Paperbackswap won't ship to school. Sad.

The Awesome Power of books.

Today's quotes from QOTD.com were about Books, and I thought, being the literate folks you are, you could appreciate them.

Some books are to be tasted, others swallowed, and some few to be chewed and digested.
- Francis Bacon, 1561 - 1626

Each time we re-read a book we get more out of it because we put more into it; a different person is reading it, and therefore it is a different book.
- Muriel Clark

All that Mankind has done, thought, gained or been, it is lying as in magic preservation in the pages of books. They are the choicest possessions of men.
- Thomas Carlyle, 1795 - 1881

Books have led some to learning and others to madness.
- Francesco Petrarch, 1304 - 1374

A house without books is like a room without windows. No man has a right to bring up his children without surrounding them with books, if he has the means to buy them.
- Horace Mann, 1796 - 1859

Just the knowledge that a good book is awaiting one at the end of a long day makes that day happier.
- Kathleen Norris

And while we're on the subject of books, let me reccommend one to you:
It's called The Gallery of Regrettable Food, and it is possibly the funniest non-fiction book I have read in a long, long time. James Lileks decided one day after coming across a cookbook from the golden age of the 1950s in his mother's closet that he was going to write a book about these timeless treasures of food art, and thus, this book was born.

But don't expect to find anything edible in this plethora of pictures -- Lileks devotes himself entirely to making fun of the gut-wrenching array of aspics, roasts, and everything-in-a-jello mold displays of splendor. It's quality humor writing, and apparently he's got a book on 1970s interior decorating out, too...

And in other news, this book makes me think of the popular song -- Lime Jello Marshmallow Cottage Cheese Surprise, by William Bolcom, who was sick of hearing all the inedible things people tried to serve him at Women's club meetings when he would go and play piano for them. (Wikipedia)

LADIES, THE MINUTES WILL SOON BE READ TODAY.
THE GARDEN CLUB AND WEAVING CLASS
I`M SURE HAVE MUCH TO SAY.
BUT NEXT WEEK IS OUR CULTURE NIGHT,
OUR BIGGEST, BEST EVENT,
AND I`VE JUST MADE A DISH FOR IT
YOU`LL ALL FIND HEAVEN SENT

IT`S MY LIME JELLO MARSHMALLOW COTTAGE CHEESE SURPRISE

WITH SLICES OF PIMENTO,
(YOU WON`T BELIEVE YOUR EYES,)
ALL TOPPED WITH A PINEAPPLE RING
AND A DASH OF MAYONAISE,
MY VANILLA WAFERS `ROUND THE EDGE
WILL WIN YOUR HIGHEST PRAISE.

AND MISSUS JONES IS MAKING SCONES
THAT ARE FILLED WITH PEANUT MOUSSE;
TO BE FOLLOWED BY A CHICKEN MOLD
THAT`S MADE IN THE SHAPE OF A GOOSE.

FOR LADIES WHO MUST WATCH THOSE POUNDS
WE`VE FOUND A SPECIAL DISH:
STRAWBERRY ICE ENSHRINED IN RICE
WITH BITS OF TUNA FISH.

AND MY LIME JELLO MARSHMALLOW COTTAGE CHEESE SURPRISE

(TRULY A CREATION THAT DESCRIPTION DEFIES)

WILL GO SO WELL
WITH MISSUS BELL`S
CREATION OF THE WEEK:
SHRIMP SALAD TOPPED WITH CHOC`LATE SAUCE
AND GARNISHED WITH A LEEK.

AND MISSUS PERKINS` WALNUT LOAF
THAT`S CROWNED WITH MELTED CHEESE
WAS SUCH A HIT LAST CULTURE NIGHT,
WE ASK: NO SECONDS PLEASE!

NOW YOU MUST TRY HER HOT DOG PIE
WITH CANDIED MUSHROOM SLICES.
THOSE LADIES WHO RESIGNED LAST YEAR,
THEY JUST DON`T KNOW WHAT NICE IS!

BUT MY LIME JELLO MARSHMALLOW COTTAGE CHEESE SURPRISE,

I DID NOT STEAL THAT RECIPE,
IT`S LIES,
I TELL YOU, LIES!

OUR GRAND AWARD:
A PICTURE HAT AND
A SALMON SEQUINED GOWN
FOR ANY GIRL WHO TRIES EACH DISH
AND KEEPS HER WHOLE LUNCH DOWN.

I`M SURE YOU ALL ARE WAITING FOR
THE BIGGEST NEWS: DESERT!
WE`VE THOUGHT OF THINGS
IN MOLDS AND RINGS
YOUR DIET TO SUBVERT.
YOU MUST TRY OUR CHOC`LATE LAYER CAKE ON A PEANUT BRITTLE BASE
WITH SLICES OF BANANAS THAT MAKE A FUNNY FACE.
AROUND THE EDGES PEPPERMINTS
JUST SWIMMING IN PEACH CUSTARD,
WITH LOVELY LITTLE CURLICUES
OF LOVELY YELLOW MUSTARD!

IF ALL THIS IS TOO MUCH FOR YOU,
PERMIT ME TO ADVISE

MORE LIME JELLO MARSHMALLOW COTTAGE CHEESE SURPRISE!

(I`VE MADE HEAPS!)

I'm excited for this. So -- James Lileks, people. Minnesotan, funny guy. Go buy his books.

AMAZON!

Or, if you're more community minded,

BETTER WORLD BOOKS! <-- well, would you look at that. it costs less here. you can help literacy programs AND save money! I think I should do a post on Better World.

An All Seeing Eye -- The Big Other in The Bluest Eye

In Toni Morrison's preface to The Bluest Eye, which I'm reading now for Introduction to Peace Studies with Jeff Anderson, she begins by stating this:

"There can't be anyone, I am sure, who doesn't know what it feels like to be disliked, even rejected, momentarily or for sustained periods of time...When this happens, it is some consolation to know that the dislike or hatred is unjustified -- that you don't deserve it."

When I read the first line, I agreed. What kid hasn't been passed over for the kickball team, or the last one to find a buddy for partner time? I know one of my constant complaints as a small child were about being rejected by the other kids in my grade. But when I read that second sentence, I immediately thought one thing:

"She can't possibly mean the dislike I've experienced -- I'm not black. I haven't had to endure the same kind of dislikes she has. Clearly my rejections have not been the same. I'm not worthy to compare the two." And that troubled me.

In my communication class we've learned that when two people have a conversation, there are actually six people talking, three for each of the participants. There is my perception of me (white, middle class, college student, female, brown hair, silly), my perception of you (what you look like, what I know about you from previous conversations, the circumstances we got into this conversation) and my perception of what you think of me (you must think I'm a smart ass for saying that, you look like you don't like my hair, you obviously think I'm racist for saying this.) The same goes for the other party.

Reading a book, I just realized, is much the same way. You approach a text the way you approach speaking to another person. There's what you know about yourself, what you know about the author, and what you think the author wants you to get out of the story. Unfortunately in the case of a book, there is only one person on the other end -- the text itself, unmoderated, unassuming. Of course, we might say that the author has already considered the other side of the conversation when they were writing the book, but that is subject to your interpretation. You are the only lens. Of course, other lenses can be added to the three I've just mentioned -- what other people want you to get out of the book, why you are reading the book (reading for class or reading for fun can totally discolor your picture) what you think other people will think of you for getting what you get out of a book, and dozens more.

There's something Lacanian about all this, some Big Otherish quality that governs the discourse between book and reader. Pre-conditioned responses have already been embedded into my system, and apparently one of them is to step away any time a black author tries to involve me in the shared feeling of remorse and say "But I'm not on the same level as you."

This is troublesome indeed, and I'm not entirely sure I know how to solve that. On the one hand, it is true -- not being picked for the kickball team is by no means the same as being rejected from the social network of your classroom by your peers because you are black and do not look like the beauty ideal of Shirley Temple in any way, as Pecola is in The Bluest Eye.

On the other hand, I think one solution would be to affirm that while the situations are different, they are also somewhat the same, which is what Morrison was trying to do with that opening line of her preface in the first place. By acknowledging that difference and respecting it we can move forward in the discussion. This was something we talked about last year with Sister Mara. In an essay she presented to us, the author of the essay, a white woman who does a significant amount of scholarship on Toni Morrison's work, talked about how she felt inadequate (not quite the right word) when it came time for her to present her work because she wasn't black and therefore couldn't possibly understand Morrison's work the way it was meant to be understood. Eventually, however, she realized she could reconcile this by owning up to the similarities between the experiences of women of both races (backgrounds, upbringings -- I really don't know what word to use here, either, race being a loaded word) and by comparing the differences. By owning up to the difference and respecting it she was able to become more comfortable with the concept.

So yes, Ms. Toni Morrison, Nobel Prize Winner and writer of fantastically good fiction, I do know what it's like to feel like you don't measure up to standards of perfection. I know what it's like to be rejected. Please share with me your thoughts and experiences on the subject. Because that’s the reason we read, isn’t it? We read to understand other people’s experiences more.

Grammar

In light of the class on linguistics I'm taking this semester, the subject of grammar (which, you should all note, I am not well-versed in) has been pulled into the spotlight, and I've been reminded of this song, which I heard at the beginning of the summer and promptly forgot about.

It's called, appropriately, Bad Grammar, and it's a parody of Timbaland's The Way I Are.

Keys for Writing- Music and other tidbits they won't teach you in class.

I've been writing since the eighth grade, and in that time I've learned a few things that they won't teach you in a creative writing class that help me write pieces that just keep getting better and better. Now bear in mind that these are techniques I use, and while they work for me, they won't always work for you. But it's a place to start.

Before you begin writing, it helps to know something about yourself -- namely, your learning style. As an Education minor, I have to take a lot of classes on teaching and the best ways to teach, and I've found that people process information in one of several ways. You can be an audial learner, a visual learner, or a kinesthetic learner. Once you've determined which one of these you are, it will help to discover which techniques may work for bettering your writing.

I'm a visual learner, which means I like to see things in order to process them. To incorporate this into my writing, I make photocollages or backgrounds to coincide with the piece I have front and center at the moment.
I made this background for a friend, but if you're writing about the golden age of Hollywood, it helps get you in the mood a little bit. An acting friend of mine once told me that one of the things he does to prep for a production is to copy out his script so that each page has a blank side, and put them in a note book. You can fill the blank side with images to help you remember or evoke things on that page of script. This is the same idea.

Since I'm also an audial learner, listening to music or watching a movie is also a great way for me to try and find inspiration. I have folders in my Music Library labeled "Gilded Age Tunes" "Medieval Songs" and "Sea-Sailing Shanties" all filled with mood music for a particular type of story. The Sea Sailing songs? I listen to those when I'm writing Master and Commander Fanfic. As an additional bonus, listening to period appropriate music (like Boccherini when you're writing from the Patrick O'Brien canon) will give you some allusions to make in your story that will really impress readers.

Your music of choice doesn't have to be period appropriate --If listening to death metal helps you write battle scenes, go for it! Find what works for you.

But sometimes, silence is the key. In this day and age where some people can't seem to walk down the stairs without turning on their iPod, I think we often forget that sometimes silence is the most helpful writing tool of all. It gives you space to formulate your own thoughts. I like to write with my window open so I can hear the birds and the wind rustling the bushes and the crickets. That grounds me. What grounds you?

One of my most helpful writing tools is a walk. Yes, a walk. Around the block, to the park, upstairs to refill my waterbottle. Walking gets you away from the material for a little bit and it also recirculates your blood. When you have blood moving to your brain, ideas come a lot easier. Plus, the change of scenery may inspire something. My room is in the basement of my house; I do some of my best writing when I'm upstairs in the kitchen. I'll walk upstairs, make dinner, and while my water is boiling, jot down notes on a slip of paper. The change of scene, along with the recirculating blood, helps.

While we're on the subject of brains, let's discuss water. I always write with a 24 oz water bottle sitting right next to my computer. Why? Because a hydrated brain is a productive brain. They've done studies on students in elementary schools that show that a student's attention and focus will slack off if he or she is not drinking enough water. Your body is nearly 70% H20 -- You need to keep it that way. A dehydrated brain is only thinking about one thing -- NEED WATER. I don't mean go up and pop open a can of Sprite. I don't mean go out and get your favorite Starbucks. I mean water. Plain and simple. Get a reusable water bottle and make your friend Mercury happy by not wasting plastic.

If you're a kinesthetic learner, finding an 'artifact' to help inspire you (such as a certain food if you're writing a feast scene or a piece of fabric when you're trying to write a costume intensive scene) might be helpful. Making a scrapbook page could also help -- cutting out pictures and associating colors can open a host of ideas to you.

These are just a few things that I've found helpful. If there's a technique you've tried in the past that you'd like to share with me, feel free to leave a comment!

PaperBackSwap

Those of you who know me well will smile and nod when you hear me say that there is nothing I like more than new books. But you know what I like more than new books?

FREE NEW BOOKS!

So you'll understand entirely why this site is now my new favorite --

PaperBackSwap


The concept's pretty simple. You post books that are in relatively good condition that you no longer want, and people across the county look to see if you've got something they want. If you have book B, and Helen wants Book B, she puts in a request. You get an email saying "HEY -- Helen wants Book B!" It will send you an address label with Helen's address on it, and all you have to do is wrap Book B, buy some postage, and ship the book to Helen. When Helen receives the book, she tells the site what a wonderful person you are, and you get one point. One point equals one book. So now I, having my one book point, can go and find a book that I want, send a request, and the process repeats with someone else. GENIUS! I'll gladly pay the three dollars and change for shipping rather than paying six bucks and change through Amazon for the same book.

You know what else is great? This site does DVDs and CDs, TOO!

HOW COOL IS THIS?

You can check this blogger out at paperbackswap under the name mercurygray. If you get an account there, tell them I referred you -- I get points for doing it!

Ciao-
Mercury

I totally want one of these shirts

If you live in Saint Louis or can get there easily, BUY ME ONE OF THESE SHIRTS! They're from the Saint Louis Shakespeare Company, and I can't buy one online...

They're adorable.

The Passing of one of the big names

RIP Alexander Solzhenitsyn, whose One Day in the Live of Ivan Denisovich wasn't actually that bad of a way to finish AP English.

Solzhenitsyn, chronicler of Soviet gulag, dies