Poet's Corner: Parody Edition

Can a poem be so bad that it crosses over into “awesome.” Today I’m operating on the assumption that it can. I happened upon some old scraps of paper yesterday, scraps I’d scribbled on in high school- when my only relationship to poetry was to make fun of it with my friends. I thought I’d share one of these creations here. I figure that if the internet can appreciate the brilliance of Shitty Watercolors, it must also have a place for intentionally crappy poems:

 -image source

Day of McDermot’s Silence

By Farkus

Incogitant winds make me sway,

Disregarding indemnifications,

Geminating my agony.

Time is a braying beast of burden.

Helen of Troy, make no vain promises!

They penetrate my fervid core.

                I am enervate.

Your turn.

The Good Earth: Found!

Our post from the other day about Cojimar got me thinking about the setting of another book I just finished: Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth . Spend five minutes with your favorite search engine and you can learn all sorts of things about that book- that it led the bestsellers lists for 21 months, that it nabbed a Pulitzer Prize, and that it was the basis of Buck’s Nobel Prize just a few years later. But if you want to know where the book actually takes place, well, that’s a little tougher to come by.

For one thing, Latin spellings of Chinese place names have changed over time, so pulling clues from Buck’s novel can be a little tricky. For another, those Latin spellings are at best just approximations of the actual Chinese pronunciation, so if you find in a biographical sketch that Buck and her husband lived in Nanhsuchou in the farming country of northern Anhwei, you might find that Google Maps suggests instead the town of nan suzhou , in Anhui  province. As it turns out, that is the correct answer, as you’ll see in a minute. And kudos to Oprah’s Book Club for putting together what appears to be the only map on the internet that tries to answer the question:

Now, as maps go, this one’s pretty crappy. Everything to the right of that right-most squiggle is actually ocean, so you’ll have to use your mind’s eye to paint it blue. And the coastline won't match what you see on any decent globe. There’s also no sense of scale except for the relative scale between cities- cities that are, again, somewhat difficult to find on a modern map with modern place names. But Shanghai is still Shanghai, so we can start our search pretty confidently from there. The Oprah Book Club (OBC) city of Chinkiang is most likely the Google Maps (GM) city of Zhenjiang. And the OBC city of Nanking is almost certainly the GM city of Nanjing. It would appear, then, that the OBC map’s ordinal directions are also pretty skewed, since in the real world Nanking/Nanjing is northwest from Shanghai, and not due west as shown in the OBC map. But okay, they tried.

Now, Nanking is about equidistant from Shanghai and Wang Lung’s farm on the OBC map, so we know that the OBC city of Nanhsuchou cannot be the GM city of Chuzhou- it’s too close to Nanking. If we keep searching to the north and west we come upon the GM city of Suzhou (different from the famous canal city near Shanghai). And here, I am fairly confident that we have pinpointed the setting of The Good Earth :

Why? Well, here’s what we know from the book itself:

• Wang Lung’s farm is frequently flooded by a “river to the North.” A farm on the northern outskirts of Suzhou, with the Xinbian River flowing just to the north, would fit that description (The Xinbian River is not shown on the OBC map but can be seen at the top of the map below.)
• During the first great famine Wang Lung travels southward 100 miles by train to the great cities of the South. What cities would fit this description and distance any better than the great cities on the banks of the Yangtze River: Nanjing, Zhenjiang and Shanghai?
• Last of all, the clincher: We know that the town closest to Wang Lung’s farm is surrounded by a mote- he crosses it, he buys land next to it, etc. It can hardly be a coincidence that the old town of Suzhou just happens to be surrounded by a moat. (See the roughly rectangular outline to the left of the Suzhou railway station in the map below. Somewhere outside of that moat was Wang Lung's farming village, and somewhere inside it was the great house of Hwang and the Tea House where he meets Lotus.)

Pretty cool, no?

View Larger Map

I flew with him over Africa

"To Denys Finch-Hatton I owe what was, I think, the greatest, the most transporting pleasure of my life on the farm: I flew with him over Africa. There, where there are few or no roads and where you can land on the plains, flying becomes a thing of real and vital importance in your life, it opens up a world. Denys had brought out his Moth machine; it could land on my plain on the farm only a few minutes from the house, and we were up nearly every day.

"You have tremendous views as you get up above the African highlands, surprising combinations and changes of light and colouring, the rainbow on the green sunlit land, the gigantic upright clouds and big wild black storms, all swing round you in a race and a dance. The lashing hard showers of rain whiten the air askance. The language is short of words for the experience of flying, and will have to invent new words with time. When you have flown over the Rift Valley and the volcanoes of Suswa and Longonot, you have travelled far and have been to the lands on the other side of the moon. You may at other times fly low enough to see the animals on the plains and to feel towards them as God did when he had just created them, and before he commissioned Adam to give them names.

"But it is not the visions but the activity which makes you happy, and the joy and glory of the flyer is the flight itself. It is a sad hardship and slavery to people who live in towns, that in all their movements they know of one dimension only; they walk along the line as if they were led on a string. The transition from the line to the plane into the two dimensions, when you wander across a field or through a wood, is a splendid liberation to the slaves, like the French Revolution. But in the air you are taken into the full freedom of the three dimensions; after long ages of exile and dreams the homesick heart throws itself into the arms of space...

Every time I have gone up in an aeroplane and looking down have realized that I was free of the ground, I have had the consciousness of a great new discovery. "I see:" I have thought, "This was the idea. And now I understand everything."

-From Out of Africa , by Isak Dinesen  (Karen Blixen) 

Literary Lucre

The idea of money, both the unlikely accumulation of it and the nerve racking experience of watching it run out, can be a pretty powerful thread to pull the reader through a book. It’s as universal a theme as there is. But you don’t have to read Og Mandino or Horatio Alger to see it done. Just consider these lasting images from some of our literary greats:

• The coffee can piggy bank nailed to the floor of the tenement closet in Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn – always dutifully fed, and all-too-frequently raided in times of need.
• The bags of gold buried under the brick floor in George Eliot’s Silas Marner  - which are dug up for continual counting, but disappear at the hands of a thief.
• The small stash of silver hidden away in the earthen walls of Wang Lung’s farm house in Pearl Buck’s The Good Earth – a stash that is multiplied and invested in land until it becomes the makings of a “great house”.
• The forty dollar kitty of the westward-bound Joad family in Steinbeck’s The Grapes of Wrath - a precarious sum that keeps us on pins and needles to see whether it can get their run-down jalopy across the desert and into California.

Money can be the driving force of the story, as are the boons bestowed by Pip’s mysterious benefactor in Dickens’ Great Expectations.  It can raise the stakes of the plot, as do Bingley’s and Darcy’s fortunes in Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice. It can provide a mysterious back-story for a character as does Jay Gatsby’s ill-gotten wealth in Fitzgerald’s The Great Gatsby.  Or it can be the measure of the rise or fall of a protagonist, like those experienced by Scarlett in Margaret Mitchell’s Gone With the Wind. 

Money is something we’ve all got experience with (some more than others, to be sure) and it’s something that most of us keep a keen interest in throughout our lives. So while a good “up from nothing” story can appeal to all of us, it can be equally gripping to follow a monied protagonist- whether that’s Hank Reardon fighting to protect his wealth and his property in Ayn Rand’s Atlas Shrugged , or whether it’s Ebenezer Scrooge finding inspiration to share his wealth in Dickens’ A Christmas Carol .

I’m looking for more great books in this vein. Do any of you have any reading recommendations to share?

Feast on this!

As you sit down to gorge yourself today, and give thanks for our many modern conveniences like stretchy pants, we invite you to gorge your mind on a literary feast, as well.

• Take last year’s Thanksgiving post, which features an O Henry short story that’s a strange mix of “The Gift of the Magi” and the pie eating contest from “Stand by Me.”
• Or there’s the Cheever Story we posted for Christmas which provides a more humorous take on the theme of abundant feasting.
• You could smack your lips as you watch an ad for this innovative literary treat.
• Or take in a couple paragraphs from this Ray Bradbury post, which speak to the gifts of a good cook.
• You could dream of the food of San Francisco, like Kerouac
• Or enjoy a Proustian bite with Anton Ego.
• Or take a seat next to William Least Heat Moon as he feasts in one place or another.
• And when you’re ready to belch out your approval of the massive meal you’ve consumed, we invite you to examine the belching prowess of one of the great southern belles of the literary world.

Happy Thanksgiving!

Where Santiago and Manolin fished

Hemingway’s The Old Man and the Sea  was originally published in LIFE Magazine. They sent a photographer to Cuba to capture images of the author and the Caribbean island that inspired the novella’s setting. Above is his shot of Cojimar, the small fishing village northeast of Havana, that served as Santiago’s home harbor- the one that also inspired this famous first edition cover art:

Faulkner in Hollywood

INTERVIEWER

Would you comment on that legendary Hollywood experience you were involved in?

FAULKNER

I had just completed a contract at MGM and was about to return home. The director I had worked with said, “If you would like another job here, just let me know and I will speak to the studio about a new contract.” I thanked him and came home. About six months later I wired my director friend that I would like another job. Shortly after that I received a letter from my Hollywood agent enclosing my first week's paycheck. I was surprised because I had expected first to get an official notice or recall and a contract from the studio. I thought to myself, the contract is delayed and will arrive in the next mail. Instead, a week later I got another letter from the agent, enclosing my second week's paycheck. That began in November 1932 and continued until May 1933. Then I received a telegram from the studio. It said: “William Faulkner, Oxford, Miss. Where are you? MGM Studio.”

I wrote out a telegram: “MGM Studio, Culver City, California. William Faulkner.”

The young lady operator said, “Where is the message, Mr. Faulkner?” I said, “That's it.” She said, “The rule book says that I can't send it without a message, you have to say something.” So we went through her samples and selected I forget which one—one of the canned anniversary-greeting messages. I sent that. Next was a long-distance telephone call from the studio directing me to get on the first airplane, go to New Orleans, and report to Director Browning. I could have got on a train in Oxford and been in New Orleans eight hours later. But I obeyed the studio and went to Memphis, where an airplane did occasionally go to New Orleans. Three days later, one did.

I arrived at Mr. Browning's hotel about six p.m. and reported to him. A party was going on. He told me to get a good night's sleep and be ready for an early start in the morning. I asked him about the story. He said, “Oh, yes. Go to room so-and-so. That's the continuity writer. He'll tell you what the story is.”

I went to the room as directed. The continuity writer was sitting in there alone. I told him who I was and asked him about the story. He said, “When you have written the dialogue I'll let you see the story.” I went back to Browning's room and told him what had happened. “Go back,” he said, “and tell that so-and-so—. Never mind, you get a good night's sleep so we can get an early start in the morning.”

So the next morning in a very smart rented launch all of us except the continuity writer sailed down to Grand Isle, about a hundred miles away, where the picture was to be shot, reaching there just in time to eat lunch and have time to run the hundred miles back to New Orleans before dark.

That went on for three weeks. Now and then I would worry a little about the story, but Browning always said, “Stop worrying. Get a good night's sleep so we can get an early start tomorrow morning.”

One evening on our return I had barely entered my room when the telephone rang. It was Browning. He told me to come to his room at once. I did so. He had a telegram. It said: “Faulkner is fired. MGM Studio.” “Don't worry,” Browning said. “I'll call that so-and-so up this minute and not only make him put you back on the payroll but send you a written apology.” There was a knock on the door. It was a page with another telegram. This one said: “Browning is fired. MGM Studio.” So I came back home. I presume Browning went somewhere too. I imagine that continuity writer is still sitting in a room somewhere with his weekly salary check clutched tightly in his hand. They never did finish the film. But they did build a shrimp village—a long platform on piles in the water with sheds built on it—something like a wharf. The studio could have bought dozens of them for forty or fifty dollars apiece. Instead, they built one of their own, a false one. That is, a platform with a single wall on it, so that when you opened the door and stepped through it, you stepped right off onto the ocean itself. As they built it, on the first day, the Cajun fisherman paddled up in his narrow, tricky pirogue made out of a hollow log. He would sit in it all day long in the broiling sun watching the strange white folks building this strange imitation platform. The next day he was back in the pirogue with his whole family, his wife nursing the baby, the other children, and the mother-in-law, all to sit all that day in the broiling sun to watch this foolish and incomprehensible activity. I was in New Orleans two or three years later and heard that the Cajun people were still coming in for miles to look at that imitation shrimp platform which a lot of white people had rushed in and built and then abandoned.

-from "The Art of Fiction #12" at the Paris Review

A few considerations before you name your son Edward

Now, we know one of the reasons you come here is because we do the important research no one else is willing to do. Well, today is no exception, so if you’re an expectant parent with hopes of producing a literary genius, listen up.

You need to think about how your child’s name is going to appear on the cover of his or her first book. Will they be able to splash it boldly across that fancy dust jacket? Or will they demure behind a pair of initials? The answer might not be as obvious as you’d think. Just ask the parents of Thomas Stearns Eliot, Thomas Edward Lawrence, Edward Morgan Forster or Edward Estlin Cummings. All gave their verbal wunderkinds very solid, respectable names, but perhaps they were too  solid and respectable. After all, each one opted to use their initials when their galleys finally went to press.

They’re not alone, of course: J.D. Salinger, H.G. Wells, D.H. Lawrence- all preferred a two-letter trade name to the Jerome Davids, Herbert Georges, and David Herberts they were given as children. Others only went half way: Francis Fitzgerald became F. Scott, and little Henry Haggard rose to fame as H. Rider. And still others took it to the extreme- I’m looking at you, John Ronald Reuel Tolkien- three initials indeed!

Now, there’s nothing at all wrong with going by one’s initials, just ask G.K Chesterton, T.C. Boyle, H.L. Mencken, C.S. Lewis, J.P. Donleavy and E.L. Doctorow. But parents should go into this naming exercise with eyes wide open. So, let’s get down to brass tacks, or as some might refer to them, “B.T.” What are the names most likely to be initialized? We’ve created two word clouds to illustrate exactly that. The one pictured above is based on the authors already named in this post, and the second one below is based on Wikipedia’s “List ofLiterary Initials”, which catalogues roughly 200 or so authors who have preferred letters to full names. The larger the name, the more frequently it has been shortened to an initial.

We’ll leave the rest to you and your favorite book of baby names.

The Elsinore Vacillation

What if Robert Ludlum wrote the title for Hamlet?- and other title what-ifs, with Salman Rushdie and Christopher Hitchens.

The Writer's Gene

Yesterday’s post got us thinking about literary lineage. Not influence, mind you, but writers who actually beget other writers. In my five minutes of looking around, it appears to be more common than you’d think. Perhaps there’s a “writer’s gene” waiting to be isolated in the human genome project.

Take William Falkner. No, that’s not a typo. I’m talking about the author of The White Rose of Memphis , great-grandfather of the William Faulkner we all know- the one born before the family added a “u” to their name.

Or, there’s John Steinbeck… the Fourth- son of the John Steinbeck we all read in high school, journalist and posthumous memoirist. Or his brother Thomas, author of a few novels of his own, not to mention an upcoming memoir.

Hemingway’s first son, Jack, helped prepare A Moveable Feast  for posthumous publication, and himself published a memoir. Jack’s daughter Mariel has written three books of her own. Ernest's second son Patrick edited his father’s 800 manuscript pages from a trip to Africa into True at First Light , and has been good for an introduction or forward in many a Hemingway book ever since. Youngest son Greg (AKA Gloria) also authored a memoir, as have a couple of his children.

Then there's Thomas Mann, whose brother was also a writer, as were three of his children. Or the Bronte sisters for that matter. I’m sure there are tons of other examples I don’t have time to research, but it’s shockingly common. So maybe there’s something to this writing gene after all.

(That, or maybe there's a universal desire to capitalize on one’s family name when it happens to be a juicy one. I could be convinced of either.)