More Ursula

I've been reading my way through the novels in Le Guin's Hainish Cycle, her series of philosophical/anthropological musings about what happens when differing groups of hilfs (highly intelligent life forms) cross the stars and interact with native populations. I've taken Ian Watson's suggestion for the internal chronology of the cycle as a starting point. This is not, however, the order in which Le Guin wrote the novels.



What I have finished so far, in order:

The Dispossessed (published in 1974)
The Word for World is Forest (1976)
Rocannon's World (1966)

I had a revelation in reading this last one. As far as I have been to tell Rocannon's World was Le Guin's first published novel. And in reading this early work, I realized that up until then, I have thought of UKLG as She Who Can Do No Wrong. As the epitome of excellence in the craft of writing.

But Rocannon's World is a mess.   Let's go on an adventure! Ah, look here at this creature, what will happen in our interacting with it? Interaction. Conflict. Move on to another interesting creature or group of people. What will happen now? And on and on. And all these creatures, all these peoples, all these events, none of them feel fully tied together into a whole. There are some very beautiful passages, and some striking ideas that Le Guin carries on to explore in the later-written novels. But in those later novels every passage is right, is a piece of the whole, is said beautifully, correctly, just as the story needs it to be said.

For me this was an important discovery. Ursula herself learned her craft. She got better. She got fantastic. But she wasn't always fantastic, she seems to have practiced her way there.

Perhaps some of us are gifted with something like a natural talent for story-telling, but we aren't necessarily lost if we haven't been  born into it. We all can practice our way toward excellence.


That was a good thing to be reminded of.

Tonight I finish Planet of Exile. (Which interestingly, though published in the same year as Rocannon's World, is a much more integrated and so more engaging novel.) A quote by Le Guin, from the introduction to this novel, nicely captures what I've been trying to think through here: "I learn by going where I have to go."

Next up: City of Illusions.

Recommendations: Hawkeye and Avengers Arena

Last week, my fellow Scribblerati Agent Shawn posted a few suggestions for your reading enjoyment. One was for the comic book Hawkeye written by Matt Fraction and drawn by David Aja, it's a recommendation that I heartily agree with. In fact, it was the forgotten 14th book in a blog of my own: 13 comics in '13. Shawn talked about it a little bit, so I'll be brief.

Hawkeye is a great book.

It's funny and smart with some fantastic art. It manages to easily walk the line between portraying the serious danger permeating the life of an off-duty Avenger and reveling in the misadventures of a man who is part good-hearted hero and part screw-up.

Now, I'm not one to rail against mainstream superhero books. I don't see the point. I'm not a fan of some of the more annoying and long ingrained tropes, but I still understand that the industry is what the industry is. I mean, you should know what you're buying before you buy it. If you don't like certain things, do like me and don't support them with your money... simple enough. But at the same time, I love books like this, books that stretch and explore and try new things. Simply put, there should be more books like this on the shelf. Books with substance and wit, y'know? Granted, Hawkeye is a character that may not sound like an interesting read at first glance, but it is absolutely a book you should be picking up. It deserves the support.

Here's some samples to give you a taste:

This is hands-down a great book. I love it. Well written. Fantastic art. Excellent pacing and balance of tone. Lots of fun. Definitely worth a buy.

Next up is a comic that I wasn't expecting to like. 

Avengers Arena. 

I mentioned it in the 13 comics in '13 blog, as well. For the click-lazy, the story goes like this: There's this old X-men bad guy called Arcade. He's a little red-headed twerp in a white suit and bow-tie who specializes in creating these elaborate and nightmarish theme parks he calls Murderworlds that are designed to kill superheroes. He then lures the X-men or the Avengers into the middle of one of these ridiculously stupid, Rube Goldbergian death-traps, all while cackling wildly. 

Unfortunately for him, he's a big failure. None of his intended victims have ever had any trouble at all busting out of one of his stupid traps, let alone actually come close to dying in one. Never once. Not once. He usually just ends up getting the unholy crap somewhat deservedly kicked out of him. The guy is D-list all the way. A total nothing villain. A joke.

Idiot

Or at least he was...

Because Arcade is back and he's done some work on himself while he was away. He has upgraded his tech and changed the rules of his game. Now, within his new Murderworld, he is all-powerful.

His first target: Teen Superheroes.

"Wait a minute," I hear you saying... "You just go on and hold on there a minute, Jon, you're not talking to some rube here, you are talking to someone who has devoured the latest and greatest new hotness in "literature" these days and I gotta tell ya', this stuff here sounds like nothing more than a Hunger Games rip-off." And you'd be right, Senor English Lit Major... kind of (except for the fact that it's more of a Battle Royale rip-off and so is Hunger Games, both of which owe a huge debt to Lord of the Flies... ahem... but I digress), but the kicker is: The creators are also aware of the similarities. I mean: Duh. Come on. Here's some sample covers...

So they know. It's not a big thing. Anyway, I haven't read anything else by Dennis Hopeless and I'm pretty sure I haven't seen any of Kev Walker's work before either, but let me tell you, they're killing it. Walker's work is expressive and fluid with strong, dark lines, not overly concerned with muscle poses or relying heavily on sexy. I really like it, especially for this book. But the real sell is Hopeless's writing. I mean, really, the key to pulling off a book like this, using a topic like this, featuring a villain who has never been a threat, is to make it all matter. You have to make it dangerous. In a nutshell, Murderworld has to kill the hell out of some characters. 

And it does...

SPOILERS:

 

 

END SPOILERS...

The best part is that all of the characters trapped within this new Murderworld are heroes or heroes-in-training and as the story progresses, slowly but surely, Arcade is forcing them to play his game. Blood has been spilled. There's twists and danger on every page. 

And it doesn't take long to realize that no one is safe. 

Which is surprising because some of the cast has appeared in other books before. There's members of the Runaways and the Avengers Academy present, among others, so you kind of expect them to be safe... but believe me, they are not. 

Along with these established characters, there are some brand new ones too, not that you can tell when reading--a testament to the writing. Each new issue focuses on a different cast member, it introduces them, it lets you get to know them, it makes them a real character with actual motivations... and then...sometimes, it kills them off, often shockingly. Arcade's game isn't over until there's only one hero left and at this point, I'm not entirely unsure that is what will actually end up happening. That's brilliant. Do you know how many Big Two comics there are out there where a character could actually die in a non-Event book? And have it matter? 

None.

Now, some people out there will complain about this. Comic fans are notoriously resistant to any kind of change in the status quo at all, while often at the same time bitching about the lack of tension in stories... it's a difficult crowd to please to say the least. I don't get it. To me, the danger is what makes it thrilling. Sad, of course, because due to the strong writing you end up liking a lot of these characters, flaws and all, but it's a thrilling read nonetheless.

And that's why Avengers Arena is highly recommended.

Read on,

Jon

The Little Words Can Throw You Too

I've been pondering since Claudia's last post, this idea of interrupted reading, of writing that throws the reader out of the story. We often talk about that as a flaw in the writing. But in this post (and my next couple) I'm trying to get a handle on throwing out that, in some writing at least, is just right.

Sometimes I'm reading a story and the writing is so _______, I just can't go on. And rather than the negative adjective that your brain may have supplied there, I'm thinking about when the writing is so beautiful or lyrical that I just need to stop and read the line again. Or when an author has chosen the absolutely perfect word to capture a feeling that is very hard to describe in words.

My most recent experience of the later example comes from Ursula K. Le Guin's The Dispossessed, which I was reading when Claudia's blog went live.

Shevek has just landed on Urras, the lush planet from which his species evolved. Only he has never set foot on it. (Four? Six?) generations ago a dissident group of Urrasti emigrated to Urras's desert moon, Anarres. There has been next to no communication between the two civilizations since that time.  He is surrounded by photographers. Le Guin writes:

"The men around him urged him forward. He was bourne off to the waiting limousine, eminently photographic to the last because of his height, his long hair, and the strange look of grief and recognition on his face."

The strange look of grief and recognition.

Reading these words I was instantly there with Shevek, perhaps I was Shevek just a little bit. Here I am, standing for the first time on the planet from which my deepest ancestors evolved. I have the eyes I do, the skin, the perceptions, my entire body and likely a good portion of my mind, all of these are the way they are because my species came to be, here. Right here. And I have been separated from my body's truest home my entire life. I am for the first time smelling the trees, feeling the winds, seeing the colors of the sky, being embraced by the world that made me the sort of being I am.

Grief. Recognition.

With just those two words, Le Guin captured for me the ephemeral of coming home to a place that one does not know.

Grief. Recognition.

And I cannot read on, because I want to sit with that complicated emotional state awhile. And layered in that state is something more, is awe. My appreciation of Le Guin's ability to do this to me. How not only has she nailed it in two words, she's also given the sentence a meter that moves you to those two words and punctuates them. And again I just need some time.

And as I savor the moment, more layers stack up. Recognition. Grief. Recognition of writing at its best. Grief that I am nowhere even close to that ability.

Yet.

On the Pleasure of Re-reading

There are many kinds of re-reading. The re-reading we do as we edit our work, letting the critical mind hover alongside the creative mind. The re-reading we do when we want to spend more time with our favorite characters. I'm often re-reading difficult philosophy passages to try to make some kind of sense out of them. Re-reading sentences of my student's papers trying to figure out what they meant to say so I can help them say it more clearly. There's a value and a unique pleasure to all these re-readings.

But there's another kind of re-reading that I find intensely satisfying. After reading a well-crafted story, after I've pieced it together as I read and then at the very, very, last moments of the tale, the whole thing falls into a different kind of place. The strands I thought were just pretty embroidery suddenly show themselves as the very stitching that holds everything together. And what I thought I knew is turned topsy and now I really, really know what was there all along.

Oh.
Oh!

And then I have to start over from the very beginning and re-read the whole damn thing and marvel at what was there and yet hidden from me.
Pure joy.

I've tried to do that in my latest short story, Supersedure. Scribblerati helped to point out all those sentences, paragraphs, passages where, like my students, I haven't said what I need to say clearly enough. But even with those more surface fixes, I'm mindful of how hard that story is to write. (And why writing mysteries seems impossibly intimidating to me).

How to weave and dye the fabric of the story so that on the first read through the reader thinks the story is blue, but once finished they realize it was green all along. How to write it so they don't feel tricked, or worse, don't see the green at all. How to write it so that they immediately turn back the first word, re-reading as they marvel at its blueness, its greenness.

Now that story. Writing that one, that would be something to treasure.

Page 99 or What can one page tell you?

While at Uncle Hugo’s last weekend with Jon Hansen, he told me about the book he was reading, “The Forever War.”

“How is it?” I asked.

He handed a copy to me off the shelf. Duh. We were standing right in front of it. I did what I do with any book I’m considering. I opened and started reading. In this case, it was page 1, and this was the line:

"Today we're going to show you eight silent ways to kill a man."

That’s a damn good line, I thought. I’d buy that book. (Fortunately Jon has agreed to lend me his copy when he’s done.)

So apparently, when book shopping, I don’t really give most books a big chance. I don’t want to read a hundred pages to decide if it’s a good book or not (I know many people who do). But—if the line or paragraph gets my attention, if the writing is so good I want to turn the page and see what happens next—I might purchase the book. If not, the book goes back on the shelf. 

This made me wonder about my writing—and I’ll ask you writer-types the same questions. So what happens when you pick up your work and open to any page and read any line or paragraph? Do you like what you find and want to keep reading? Will your readers?

For me and my own work, it depends on the page. I sometimes am surprised and think, “Gee, that’s good. Where did that even come from?” Other times I want to put my own work back on the shelf (but I can’t. It means back to the writing desk).

And then of course, there is always this site: http://page99test.com

It’s based around this saying:

“Open the book to page ninety-nine, and the quality of the whole will be revealed to you.”

~Ford Madox Ford

It’s an interesting idea. Check it out. If you create an account, you can read other people’s page 99 from their books (mostly unpublished)—or upload your own page 99 and get feedback. I’ve gone to it a few times, to check out what other writer’s have posted there. After reading each sample you can give feedback, most importantly, about whether or not you’d buy the book, or turn to the next page. I might be a tough grader, but for most of the samples I read on my last visit to page99test.com I wouldn’t turn to the next page or buy the book in 9 times out of 10. Why?

In some cases it was “thick text” (one unrelenting descriptive paragraph filling the entire page), unrealistic or forced dialogue, telling vs. showing, unlikeable characters, characters who are doing nothing, great descriptions with no true character motivation, and so on. Or in other words, not great writing.

It’s not easy being a writer, but it’s also not easy being a reader. We’re all busy people, and if I (the reader) am going to take the time to read your stuff, you’d better be good, and you’d better be entertaining, and your writing has to be alive on the page, every single page. It’s got to be poetic, or funny, or scary, or (pick your favorite emotion), or contain likeable characters and an actual story. Or we’re not turning the page, and we’re not buying your book. And as the author, I think that stinks. But I also know that’s the name of the game. Why do you think I spend all this time editing and revising?

For fun I decided to post page 99 of my unpublished book BLACKHEART here:

http://www.page99test.com/read-my-page/1751

Please feel free to check it out. Leave feedback if you’d like. Check out other authors on the site, or even post your own page 99 if you are searching for feedback. Again, you’ll need an account to do this. There are ground rules for the page99test.com site, so read them carefully if you do set up your own account.

I debated about also putting up page 99 of my new book-in-progress, SUNLIGHT. But, it’s too new, still a first draft. I haven’t even entirely settled on which page will actually be page 99. But, I did look over that page in my rough manuscript, and it made me realize this: to make this page in my book work, to make it really stand out, sing, carry the story, I’ve got more work to do. 

Back to writing.

Happy 4^th of July!

Mark

@manowords