"Blogs, and Poetics, and Hermeneutics -- Oh My!"

/

Over the last year-and-a-half, my wife and I have been reading Lloyd Alexander's Chronicles of Prydain aloud to each other.[1. For the record, I do a pretty awesome Gurgi ... ask me to bust it out the next time you see me.]  While doing so, I started to form a brilliant theory about how traveling parties in quest stories often function as reflections of a specific trait in the protagonist -- it was going to be the Greatest Blog Post that the world had ever seen!  That is, until Betsy Bird at the School Library Journal went and ruined everything by beating me to the punch.

Last week Betsy posted a piece entitled The Oz Quest Theory: Are Four Characters Too Many? She suggested that Wizard of Oz is but one example in a long list of quest books in which the hero picks up three sidekicks who represent guts, heart, and brains.  One of the reasons I like Betsy's blog is that everybody reads it, which means that everybody also leaves comments.  Some readers mentioned titles that either broke or followed the "rule of three",  others floated theories about what might be motivating the pattern, a few even chimed in to ask "what's the point?"

While reading these comments, I noticed that there seemed to be two separate conversations taking place -- each exploring different questions:

1)  How might three be a uniquely suitable number for storytelling?

2)  Why might three be a uniquely significant number in our culture/world?

These are two fundamentally different questions, and looking back you can see the tension that stems from people talking at cross purposes.[2. As for my own contribution, I stupidly tried to tackle both questions simultaneously -- which just made me sound scatterbrained.]  The comments thread is also a perfect snapshot of a philosophical battle as old as literature.  It's the reason MFA writing programs are distinct from Lit PhD programs.  It is the difference between poetics and hermeneutics.

If you want a scholarly breakdown of these terms, click here.  In the broadest sense, poetics is concerned with how and hermeneutics is concerned with why.  Poetics people look at stories the way auto mechanics look at a car engine:  they want to know how every moving part fits together to make a unified machine (maybe in the hope they might one day build a car of their own?).  Sticking with the metaphor, hermeneutics people don't really care about what's under the hood; instead they're more concerned with what it means to live in a world with cars.

Often, the people most drawn to poetics are people who work directly with the nuts and bolts of storytelling -- authors, editors, and dramaturges.  People who deal with hermeneutical questions are those whose job it is to administer books to the world -- scholars, librarians, and teachers.  I have often found that people from one camp have little interest in the questions of the other.  (My own marriage is an example of this Capulet-versus-Montigues battle.)

So which camp is better?  Well, I might be slightly more interested in poetics, but I'd be a fool to argue that hermeneutics isn't absolutely essential.  After all, hermeneutics is what justifies the very act of making of books (as Mary has informed me on more than one occasion!).

Perhaps this is what I find so compelling about the children's literature community?  There exists an  unusual amount of cross-fertilizaton between poetics and hermeneutics -- authors, editors, librarians, teachers, and readers all coming together to discuss this thing they all love.[3. Except, I would point out when it comes to booking conferences:  ALA always seems to book the same weekend as major literary conferences (MLA and ChLA).  Because of this, Mary will miss my first book signing, and I will miss her presenting a paper on Octavian Nothing.  Not cool, conference planning people, not cool...]  Is it messy?  Of course!  Is it frustrating?  Sometimes.  But what fun would a quest be without a few friends?

Peter Nimble in Brazil!

/

Just a short note to announce that Brazil is the latest addition to the ever-growing list of awesome countries that "get it"  ... and by "get it," I mean "are willing to publish my book!"  The publisher will be Leya, and they will also be using my illustrations -- Hooray! Really, this is just an excuse for me to include a video from Terry Gilliam's 1985 movie, Brazil:

   

Recognize that music?  You should, because it's used in a million trailers.  Have a swell weekend!

A TALE DARK AND GRIMM Quote #3

/

"But she wasn't a witch. The Brothers Grimm call her a witch, but nothing could be further from the truth. In fact she was just a regular woman who had discovered, sometime around the birth of her second child, that while she liked chicken and she liked beef and she liked pork, what she really liked was child. I bet you can figure out how this happened. " -Adam Gidwitz A Tale Dark and Grimm

My Editor can Beat up Your Editor ...

/

A few months back, my editor and I were caught in a heated "discussion" regarding a certain passage of Peter Nimble.[1. My editor has a pretty low online profile, so I'll respect that by not publishing her name ... of course if you reallywant to know who she is, it's printed in back of Peter Nimble!]  Essentially, she wanted me to remove a paragraph on the grounds that it slowed down the action.  Understand that I am usually very eager to rip apart my own work in response to a note ... but this particular passage was different.[2. In fact, both my wife and agent have at times argued that I can be too eager in this regard. Perhaps that's a subject for another day.]  When I sat down to write a book, I essentially sat down to write this one passage -- and now I was being told to cut it out entirely! There were a LOT of phone calls, during which I would list countless reasons why these few sentences were necessary to the book.  Every time she would say she understood my feelings, but that she couldn't in good conscience agree.  Finally, after what seemed like weeks of back-and-forth, I tried cutting it out -- just to see how it read.

You know how this story goes:  she was right, I was wrong, "kill your darlings," blah, blah, blah.[3. Author and blogger Wendy Palmer has a neat little series on writing rules that are often misapplied -- including the infamous "Kill your darlings." It's worth reading, if for no other reason than to learn that Faulkner didn't originate that phrase.]

When I looked over the final proofs of that chapter a few weeks ago, I was overwhelmed with gratitude.  My editor is a busy lady, and I'm sure it would have been much easier for her to just let me have my way.  But she stuck to her guns, and the book is better for it.

Shortly after that issue was resolved, I sent over a picture as a sort of peace offering:

Way to be awesome, Editorus Rex.

A TALE DARK AND GRIMM Quote #2

/

"Now, my young readers, I know just what you're thinking. You're thinking, Hmmmm. Stealing a girl. That's an interesting way of winning her heart. Allow me to warn you now that, under any other circumstances, stealing a girl is about the worst way of winning her heart you could possibly cook up. But because this happened long ago, in a faraway land, it seems to have worked." - Adam Gidwitz A Tale Dark and Grimm

Mum's the Word...

/

Last month I wrote a post about how my father shaped me as a reader -- so I thought today it would be appropriate to talk about my mum.[1. Yes, Canadians actually say "mum." Why? Because we're adorable, that's why.]  That's her in the photo, reading to my cousins ... but it's a pretty accurate picture of my own childhood.

I come from a family of serious readers.  When my mother was growing up in the middle of South Dakota farmland, she read every book in her local library.  My parents didn't have much money growing up, but they did have stacks upon stacks of books.  In fact, it wasn't until I got to college that I learned that reading at the dinner table was considered rude.  Auxiers were readers -- end of story.

Or at least that's how I remembered it.  But recently, I learned something from my mother that made me take a second look at my upbringing ... and made me love her all the more:

It happened right before I entered second grade.  It was the end of summer, just before class would start, and my parents sat me down to explain that I would not be going back to my elementary school.  Instead I would take a year off for something called "home schooling".  At the time, my mother was completing an MA in Gifted Education, and I suspected at once that this whole home schooling thing was something she had made up.  Not that I objected.  As I recall it, my home school year consisted of playing Construx and memorizing lists of random facts she fed me -- art history, prepositions, the presidents, and other things no seven year-old had any business knowing.[2. Mary has since informed me that lots of kids are forced to learn prepositions -- but nobody can touch this guy for shere awesomeness.]   At the end of the year, I went back to regular school.  Only I didn't go into third grade with my former classmates ... instead I was put into a second-grade class with kids that were younger.  It was only then that I realized the truth:

I had been held back.

I remember being confused at why my parents might have thought me unfit for the rigors of second grade.  I mean, it's second grade.  It wasn't like I couldn't handle the workload.  So why hold me back?  Whenever I asked my mother, she would just shrug and say that she had wanted to spend some more time with me.

My second try at second grade was a blast.  The big thing I remember was a year-long reading competition.  Students were required to fill out little book reports, and the kid with the most book reports at the end of the year got an awesome plastic trophy.[3. In my day, you had to earn those dollar-store trophies, damnit!]  My parents, who are some of the least competitive people I've ever known, were uncharacteristically invested in the event -- there were constant trips to the library, and a gentle-but-unmistakable pressure to make sure I handed in those reports.  All told, I read 88 books that year.  Even better than that trophy (which I totally won), were all the great authors I had discovered!  Over those months, I had transitioned from stupid formulaic mysteries to Roald Dahl, Shel Silverstein, John Fitzgerald, and Lloyd Alexander.

It wasn't until almost 20 years later that I made the connection between these two memories.  It came while I was teasing my mother for taking me out of school just so I could learn to say all my prepositions in a single breath (which I can still do).  To this she replied: "I couldn't care less about prepositions ... I took you out of school because you didn't like reading."

Huh?  I loved reading!  What was she talking about?!

My mother explained that even though I knew how to read as a kid, my teacher had warned her that I didn't seem to enjoy it very much.  And so she made an executive decision:  pull me out of school and FORCE me to love reading.  Every single day she would sit down and read a book to me, and then she would make me read a book myself.  After that, I was allowed to do whatever I wanted (Construx!).

To this day, I have no memory of this home school reading regiment.  But when I think about the year that followed, about all the wonderful books that I devoured, I start to see that it may have worked.  Thanks, mum.

AFTERWORDS: I'll Chop off Your Head Alot!

/

One of the things that bothers me most about social media is its ephemerality.[1. Come to think of it. Ephemerality is also what bothers me about life in general.]  I hate that idea that a person could spend hours crafting a witty tweet, only to have it disappear by the next day.[2. Yes, I have actually spent hours on a tweet before. What can I say?  I'm a big fan of the editorial process.]  And so I've decided to try out a new feature on The Scop -- a sort of roundup of things I've found on the internet each week.[3. I'm aware that a lot of blogs already do Friday Roundups, so if you don't want me to add to the noise, please let me know.]  It will also be a chance for readers who subscribe to my RSS feed or only check the site once a week to see the Marginalia quotes taken from books I'm currently reading.  We'll see how it goes ...

LINKS:

First thing's first -- Saturday is National Free Comic Book Day.  Yes, it's as good as it sounds -- just show up at a comic shop and they'll give you a comic.  More info here.  Also, kidlit podcaster Katie Davis just posted a great interview with comics veteran Barbara Slate about her new book designed to teach kids how to make comics -- it's worth a listen.

 

Since we're on the subject of comics, let's talk about Axe Cop.  For the unitiated, Axe Cop is a brilliant webcomic in which artist Ethan Nicolle collaborates with his six year-old brother to write the ongoing adventures of a cop with an axe. It's truly amazing. Even better, there is now a cartoon version of Episode Four: The Snow Planet.  Eat your heart out, Hoth.

 

I had a lot of responses from readers about my recent post on how my wife hates pigeons. Every friend, to a person, made a point of telling me that they, too, hate pigeons. So it was a nice change of pace to see author Lisa Brown post a link to a New York Times piece written by Mike Tyson about how pigeons are great.

 

And in silly movie news. Some website re-drew all the big Summer blockbusters as Lego products. Which might be cool were it not for the fact that Lego is totally lame.

 

 

 

 

And finally, this little gem from Salon magazine, talking about the trend in which hot movie starlets fall all over themselves to declare their geek bona fides. I am embarrassed for parties on both sides of the equation.

 

Ooh! One more thing! Cartooning genius Allie Brosh is finally writing a book. I think we can all agree that the world will be the better for it.

 

 

MARGINALIA:

This week, I finished posting the last of my favorite lines from Robert Cormier's The Chocolate War. This man is a much better writer than I am ...

From chapter 25: “‘That’s right,’ Jerry said, his voice small, a wrong-end-of-the-telescope kind of voice.”

“Rippled” is the perfect word: “A second chocolate followed the first. And a third followed the second. His mouth was crammed with the candy now and his throat rippled as he swallowed. ‘Delicious,’ he said.”

Talking to a crank caller: “‘Who is this?’ Jerry asked. And then the dial tone, like a fart in his ear.”

Chapter 31: “Why did the wise guys always accuse other people of being wise guys?”

Talking while jogging: “‘He got transferred,’ Jerry answered, squeezing the words out of himself like toothpaste from a tube. He was in good shape because of football but he wasn’t a runner and didn’t know the tricks.”

The book's central question: “The poster showed a wide expanse of beach, a sweep of sky with a lone star glittering far away. A man walked on the beach, a small solitary figure in all the immensity. At the bottom of the poster, these words appeared — Do I dare disturb the universe? By Eliot, who write the Waste Land thing they were studying in English.”

To see more Chocolate War quotes (or quotes from any other books I read), check out the marginalia section here.  Next week I'll be posting favorite lines from Adam Gidwitz's A Tale Dark & Grimm.  Have a good weekend -- may you all succeed in disturbing your respective universes.

SPEAK, JELLICOE ROAD, and Revelation Narratives

/

My first year of grad-school, I wrote a terrible play about a woman who hadn't slept for 17 years.  At the center of the story was a mystery regarding what had happened to make her stop sleeping.  When I went back home over holiday, I had a former drama professor look at the script.  He promptly told me why the play didn't work:  I had written a revelation story and didn't know it.

Revelation stories, he explained, are plots in which the central dramatic event is the revelation of information to the audience.  The key phrase in that definition is "to the audience".  In revelation plays, the climax takes place not on stage, but in the seats.[1. Mystery writer Dorothy L. Sayers has talked about the danger of art whose sole purpose is in manipulating the audience:  "In the end it is directed to putting the behaviour of the audience beneath the will of the spell-binder, and its true name is not 'art,' but 'art-magic.' In its vulgarest form it becomes pure propaganda." A bit extreme for me, but still interesting.]

These sorts of narratives are hardly limited to theatre.  A recent(ish) example from the literary world might be Laurie Halse Anderson's Speak.

[COMMENCE SPOILER ALERT!] Speak tells the story of a high school freshman recovering from a recent sexual assault.  The book begins after this assault took place, and its climax involves the protagonist learning to "speak" of what happened.  While Anderson does a pretty good job of making this revelation feel dramatic, the early chapters of her book rely heavily on the assumption that readers will readily identify with the protagonist's emotional life -- and that that identification will be enough to carry them all the way to the climax.  While the gamble pays off in this book, I have seen many other stories (my play included) where it blows up in the author's face. [END SPOILER ALERT.]

The primary problem with revelation narratives is that all the interesting stuff happens in flashback.  So how does an author bring those past events into the present-tense (where the audience can experience it in realtime)?   Usually authors spice up the revelation by making the characters deal with the past trauma.   But on the spectrum of dramatic impact, "dealing with issues" is pretty weak -- no matter how well it's written.

Even if you pull this off, there's still the added challenge of not pissing off your reader.  In her recent book on publishing, children's book editor Cheryl Klein talks briefly about the storytelling power behind mystery:

"I want to think about mystery a little more because it's probably the single most effective plot technique for hooking a reader:  Have a secret, let the reader know there's a secret, and then don't tell them what it is until it absolutely serves your purpose to do so.  It's a classic childhood strategy, the equivalent of dancing around your reader saying 'neener-neener-neener.'"

I think that Cheryl is spot-on so far as it relates to individual scenes.  However, occasionally a story drags out the mystery so long that reading the book feels like 300 pages of "neener-neener."  Not exactly the best way to win over your audience.

When I first started reading Melina Marchetta's Jellicoe Road for our children's literature class, I thought I was getting into a Speak-style revelation narrative.  The hero, Tyler Markum constantly eludes to some past events that have defined her.[2. Several other characters in Jellicoe Road also have secrets that are constantly being teased -- the book is nothing if not teasy.]  But when Tyler finally gets around to sharing her memories, she learns her understanding of the events was either incomplete or flat-out wrong.  That added element creates a nice Rashomon-style twist to the moments of revelation -- and it also keeps the storytelling focus on the chracters, where it belongs.

I'm Sorry, Pigeons ...

/

For as long as I've known her, my wife has had a profound hatred of pigeons.[1. Actually, there is one pigeon that Mary approves of. It is her yellow Flying Pigeon Bicycle, imported from China. It is magnificent ... and it weighs 500 lbs.]  She claims this has something to do with having grown up on a farm.  However, I suspect her feelings are part of a larger cultural bias.  While I don't have anything against pigeons per se, I try to make a practice of taking Mary's side whenever I can.  It is for that reason that I turned a blind eye after a trip we took to New York last year.  The trip was publishing related, and while I was talking with editors and such, Mary was free to  wander the city.  One afternoon, we met up and she was so excited to tell me what she had done at Central Park, something she had dreamed of doing for years:  She kicked a pigeon. You know how pigeons are always playing chicken (as it were) with pedestrians?  Remaining in place until just the last second before flying away?  This mocking behavior had led to something of an obsession in my wife -- she had long grumbled that one day she'd show those pigeons who was boss.  At last that day had come.  She kept revisiting the scene that night, explaining how she snuck up on it, closed her eyes, and gave it a good wallop -- "Pow! Right in the tail-feathers!"[2. After reading this post, Mary has asked me to clarify that she "barely grazed" the bird, and that the creature sustained no injuries. Having been kicked by Mary before, I sincerely doubt it.] I even drew a picture of her triumph in my journal:

End of story.  Or so I thought.  During my recent illustration bonanza, however, I found myself free to listen to a lot of podcasts.[3. This was also my chance to work through many episodes of Katie Davis' publishing podcast Brain Burps About Books ... truly wonderful stuff.]  Among those podcasts was the show Radiolab.  For those that don't know, Radiolab is a show that blends pop-sociology and science -- if This American Life interviewed scientists and had sound effects, it would be this show.  One of the episodes I listened to was called "Lost & Found".  It was all about navigation, and it featured a profile on carrier pigeons.  Over the course of the show, I learned the following facts about these so-called "soccer-balls with wings" (another of Mary's nicknames):

- Carrier pigeons are monogamous. In fact, if you make a carrier pigeon think his mate is being hit upon by a rival, he will fly home even faster.

- While many birds have a sort of internal compass, carrier pigeons have an internal GPS.  This means you can knock one unconscious, ship it halfway around the world, and when it wakes up it will instantly know its coordinates.

- There was a carrier pigeon in WWII named "G.I. Joe" who single-wingedly saved an entire Italian village.

Pigeons, you have my heartfelt apologies.

LA Times Festival of Books ...

/

This last weekend was the LA Times Festival of Books.  I have somehow managed to live in LA for many years without ever attending.  This year, however, I find myself actual in the publishing industry ... so I decided to check it out.

The day got off to a nice start when I met and had lunch with picture book legend Laura "If you Give..." Numeroff, who is absolutely delightful.  Among topics discussed was the story of how she obtained an original piece of art from Stuart Little![1. Garth Williams is a favorite of mine; he was also a major touchstone for the art in Peter Nimble (more on that another day!).]

I also had a chance to meet up with writer and frankenblogger Matt Cunningham, who runs the Literary Asylum.[2. I've got an interview coming there soon ... you've been warned.]  Like myself, Matt is a screenwriter transitioning into publishing.  He is also an incredibly nice guy.  After walking the campus a few times, we stopped to watch Lisa Yee's presentation on the Target Stage[3. Fun fact: Matt is a Batman fanatic, and he acted as Lisa's resident expert for her newest book, Warp Speed.]

Today Lisa was reading excerpts from the American Girl books she wrote. Usually I would have no interest in hearing about a girl book, but Lisa's book also involves an awesome scene with monk seals ... and she was kind enough to bring along visual aids:

I very recently became involved with a group called the LAYAs (Los Angeles Young Adult Authors).  While my book is technically middle-grade, they were more than willing to welcome me into the fold.  This included participating in a trivia show on the YA Stage.  The event was moderated by author Cecil Castellucci, who solicited book-related questions from authors earlier in the week.[4. I should also mention that she was just last week hired on as the children's editor for the Los Angeles Review of Books -- congrats, Cecil!]  There I am in the middle, playing for "Team Holden":

This is quite literally the finale of the show.  Mike Reisman (Team Holden) is  squaring off with Kami Garcia (Team Scout) in a tie-breaking lightning round. Tragically, our team lost.  Even more tragically, we lost on a question that I wrote:

All of these major children’s authors wrote books set in England. One of them, however, actually grew up in America. Who was it?[5. The answer is Burnett, by the way ... a fact I know only because of my smartypants wife.]

a)    E. Nesbitt b)   P.L. Travers c)    Frances Hodgson Burnett d)   AA. Milne

I'm pretty sure this means my new LAYA friends will never talk to me again.