Heroes Never Rust #98: The Graphic Nature of Storytelling

17 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Heroes Never Rust #98 by Sean Ironman

Terror Inc.: The Graphic Nature of Storytelling

Terror Inc. is part of Marvel’s MAX imprint—a collection of comics geared toward an adult audience. The imprint was launched in 2001 and is known for featuring explicit content: sex, violence, profanity. Stan Lee, who co-created the Marvel universe, has spoken out against the imprint, saying, “I don’t know why they’re doing that. I don’t think that I would do those kinds of stories.” You see, some people do not want to read stories with sex, violence, and profanity. I know, shocking. Of course, I feel differently than Stan Lee, but I do understand that there are a lot of people who will not stand a story with questionable content. Check out these Amazon reviews:

One star review for Reservior Dogs: “All Tarantino dialogues sound like something a high school kid came up with. Just goes to show that anyone can make a lot of money with vulgarity and no talent.”
One star review for South Park: Bigger, Longer & Uncut: “This is a R-rated movie? Yea right! This sure seems like an x-rated movie! The languege is so awful! Those four foul mouthed boys should be given a bath!T hey say the F-word about 100,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,0oo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo, ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo,ooo times in it!It sould not be viewed by anyone! I would have voted no stars,but no!Ii had to vote 1!”
One star review for season one of Game of Thrones: “Way too much explicit sex for a science fiction action story.”
Two star review for season one of Masters of Sex: “pretty much just porn”

Apparently, there is a common thought that only valid content should be used in storytelling. Of course, anything in a story can be too much (I’ve discussed this before). There can be too much sex in a story, too much profanity, just as there can be too many conversations, too many scenes of characters hand-holding. This seems to be the main topic when discussing popular fiction these days. How many articles about nudity in Girls have been written? How many people have announced they are boycotting Game of Thrones because of an act of silence in the newest episode? Just a few minutes ago, I saw that George R.R. Martin has once again been asked about his thoughts on the violence against women in Game of Thrones. We will never decide this matter. I can tell you how much I want my stories to reflect the real world, and in order to do so, a story must contain content that I do not enjoy. I can appreciate a graphic violent act in a story and not condone the actions in real life. I think sex and, especially, nudity creates an intimacy between me, as view or reader, and the characters. But, I am after something different when I read or watch a story.

A story is a complex creation, meaning it could be used for multiple purposes: entertainment or art. Escape or thought. Entertainment makes us feel good, while art challenges us. David Cronenberg said, “Entertainment wants to give you what you want. Art wants to give you what you don’t know you want.” Now, I believe a work could be both. It’s more of a sliding scale between entertainment and art than two disparate choices. But, that seems to be at the root of the matter: some people watch a TV show or a film, or read a novel or a comic book as entertainment. Others look for something deeper. There is no convincing a person who only wants to be entertained with a story lacking any difficult or graphic content that the story should have such content. And vice versa, a person looking for something deeper will continue to pick apart summer blockbusters.

Stories, in general, are capable of giving a reader, or a watcher, a different experience. Yet, each story is geared toward a specific purpose: entertainment or art. People will go on complaining about a story having inappropriate content, and others will complain about stories not having enough depth. The only thing storytellers can do is to make certain the audience knows what they are getting into before they start. Marvel’s MAX imprint does just that. If a reader prefers his or her stories without violently graphic content, then he or she can pass by the book on the shelf. There are enough people out there, enough possible readers. If someone doesn’t like the content, then it’s not for them.

_______

Photo by John King

Sean Ironman (Episode 102) earned his MFA at the University of Central Florida. Currently, he teaches creative nonfiction and digital media at the University of Central Arkansas as a visiting professor. His work can be read in The Writer’s Chronicle, Redivider, and Breakers: A Comics Anthology, among others.

Buzzed Books #28: Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter

16 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Florida State University, Marshall Ledbetter, Rachel Kolman

Buzzed Books by Rachel Kolman

Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter

Around 4 A.M. on a June night in 1991, a 22-year-old man—drunk, stoned—stumbled up to Florida’s capitol building. He wrapped a whiskey bottle in a towel and threw it at a glass door, which broke. No alarm sounded. Nothing. Wouldn’t you want to wander around inside, too?

Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter is a book-length discussion of FSU dropout and radical thinker Marshall Ledbetter, the man described above. The book, written by sociologist Daniel Harrison, dissects Ledbetter’s life, from his humble upbringing in Polk County to his acid-tripping days on FSU’s campus, with an attempt to better understand Ledbetter’s motivations – both psychological and political – and the lasting social implications of this incident.

Ledbetter’s invasion of the Capitol is considered a precursor to the “Occupy Wall Street” movement, but it’s also memorable for Ledbetter’s eccentric list of demands, which included a large veggie pizza from Gumby’s, 666 Dunkin’ donuts, a carton of Lucky Strikes cigarettes, $100 worth of Chinese food, and a CNN news crew. It’s a crime more humorous than harmful, but authorities at the time didn’t know that. They assumed Ledbetter was armed (he wasn’t). They assumed he had taken hostages (he hadn’t.)

Ledbetter would have gone completely unnoticed until morning if he hadn’t made an anonymous call to 9-1-1 himself. “The Capitol building is occupied,” he told the dispatcher, leaving his list of demands at the door and kicking back in the sergeant-at-arms’ office. By 8 A.M., the building was surrounded by a crew of officers who had no idea what really waited for them inside. Ledbetter could have been anyone, least of which a stoned college kid.

Ledbetter exited the Capitol six hours later, after being tricked into believing he had been broadcast on CNN, and went peacefully to his arrest.

As he was escorted out of the Capitol, reporters swarmed Ledbetter, asking why he’d done this. Ledbetter responded, “I needed a soapbox.” It’s unclear what his soapbox was really for—maybe some political agenda, given that Ledbetter was vocal about his distaste for President George H.W. Bush. Ledbetter followed that with, “I can’t explain it all in one sound bite.” Ledbetter seemed to have a general frustration with the government at all levels that maybe he himself couldn’t quite figure out. So many of us need a soapbox, and time, and an audience. These commodities are just as difficult to find now as in 1991.

Ledbetter was quickly seen by medical professionals and diagnosed as manic-depressive, but refused to take the court-ordered lithium. Because of this, Ledbetter was deemed as unfit to stand trial and was circulated around mental institutions for another decade.

Making Sense of Marshall Ledbetter is an interesting piece of true crime writing. It dives deep into Ledbetter’s life and psyche, creating a bond between Ledbetter and reader. It examines Ledbetter’s influences and how he’s a product of his time (he loved both NWA and Paula Abdul). It’s thought-provoking, letting the reader pause and consider what it means to be mentally ill.

On a personal level, this book appealed to me for its connection to Tallahassee and Florida State University, where I myself went to school in the mid 2000s. Ledbetter’s antics happened about a decade before I attended, but reading about his trips to Gumby’s and afternoons spent in front of Landis Hall, I felt like I knew Ledbetter just a little bit better. I could see him stumbling drunk on the Tennessee Strip or wandering the Hogly Wogly. For me, it was comforting to feel Tallahassee’s presence again through Ledbetter’s experiences and Daniel Harrison’s writing.

Harrison is careful not to place judgment or bias against Ledbetter. Even when Ledbetter is diagnosed with manic-depressive disorder, Harrison treats this simply as a “diagnosis” and never refers to Ledbetter as actually mentally ill. In his final paragraphs, Harrison finally offers his own opinion, stating, “At times Marshall could be frustrating or hard to handle, but he is far from being a lunatic. It is clear Ledbetter wanted to have a positive impact on society. But the fact that Marshall took his life demonstrates that despite his courage, he was also a fragile human being.” The switching between first and last name references is telling.

Harrison expresses frustration at the way Ledbetter was pushed into mental institutions over and over again. And that’s where the larger significance of this book lies: the examination of the way the mentally ill are labeled and discarded in America, and the lack of “real” treatment and rehabilitation for criminals. “The irony of our tale is that Marshall was treated by a number of certified professionals over and over again for many years. Suicide was still the result.” A heavy fact to acknowledge. Ledbetter’s story is chilling, at times silly, at times sad, but nevertheless an important story to tell.

_______

Rachel Kolman (Episode 85) received her MFA in fiction from the University of Central Florida. She currently teaches composition at Valencia College and Seminole State College. She’s also a barista at Vespr Coffeebar and can make a mean cup of joe. When she’s not grading papers and drinking coffee, she’s probably watching Netflix and eating Vietnamese food.

The Global Barfly’s Companion #12: The Knockback

15 Monday Jun 2015

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The Global Barfly’s Companion #12 by Scott Gilman

Bar: The Knockback

Location: 2315 NE Alberta Street. Portland, OR 97211

On vacation in Portland, Ore., I am taken by my companion to a bar called The Knockback. I’d like to tell you what part of town we’re in, but it’s my first trip to the Northwest and my bearings are shot.

We park on a side street and on the way to the bar peek into the houses, alive and active with Saturday night gatherings. It’s a warm night after a bright sunny day. We move past the outdoor patio (well equipped with heathers and a fire pit that weren’t needed on this night) and into the bar, dark reddish light illuminating the entrance, some fine taxidermy greeting us as we make our way to grab two seats at the bar.

A bowl of punch of what appears to be spiked lemonade sits just to the right of my companion.

The place is busy but not too crowded. We each had two cocktails while there, both of us ordering the same thing as we were in the mood for gin. The Bee’s Knees, which we had first, was our favorite, and then a Rosemary Gin Fizz, which neither of us liked. More on that in a bit.

I complimented the bartender on their selections of bourbon and whiskey, and was told the place had spent months carefully crafting their options. I could tell they had put a lot of thought into it. Our bartender had moved to Portland two years ago from Wisconsin, where he used to work in a distillery. He was friendly and seemed to know many of the patron’s names. On the wall was a picture of the Customer of the Month. We ask how one became so distinguished and what the reward was; we were not surprised at either: frequent visits warranting such special recognition, which allowed for the first drink for free during happy hour for the month. A bar with a rewards program? Exciting…yet dangerous.

We’re talking now, about our day, about the vibe in Portland (my friend having recently moved there), the challenges and rewards of starting over in a beautiful, cool new city. As we’re chatting, someone behind us gets our attention and alerts my friend her bag is on the floor, which she picks up and places on a hook underneath the bar. Chalk one up to friendliness and good behavior.

Despite the impressive cocktail options and Manhattans available on tap, a surprising number of patrons are ordering tall boys of Tecate. It appears to be the drink of choice for those sitting outside. The jukebox takes on a distinctly British flair for awhile: The Clash, David Bowie, The Cure.

We finish our first round and, even though we said we’d have just one, we decide to stick around for one more. The bartenders are nowhere to be found, so we continue our conversation and patiently wait. I’m turned around, looking at my friend, when I see a tall man standing at the bar beside her. He’d been waiting awhile, like us, but not terribly long. I see him scope the bar, leaning over it to get a sense of where the bartenders are. Feeling secure, he scoops some lemonade punch into the silver ladle and drinks directly from it. I’m shocked, impressed and disgusted. Chalk one up for poor public manners. He then orders two Tecates, innocent as a puppy. There’s always someone watching, pal. Note to self: never order punch at a bar.

In prepping our next drink, the bartender applies flames from a blowtorch to the rosemary.

It’s the first drink I’ve ever had in my life requiring a blowtorch, so that feels kind of cool. It’s a long sprig of rosemary and when I get my drink it’s poking me in the face like an awkward straw. Also, it stinks. I suppose that’s the way rosemary smells, but it’s so distracting and odorous it prevents me from enjoying the drink.

So there you have it at The Knockback: fire pits, taxidermy, a wicked whiskey collection, hooks at the bar to hang purses, punch robbers, blowtorch-yielding bartenders. We each use the restroom before leaving, and we both have to wait. The bathrooms are multi-sex, so first come, first served. As it should be.

I appreciate the correction in the way our society manages bathroom lines. They appear to mostly have a good handle on things at The Knockback.

_______

Scott Gilman lives in Austin, Texas and enjoys exercise, reading, writing, eating and drinking. He is working on his first novel and a short story and essay collection. More of his writing can be found here.

Shakespearing #36: The Winter’s Tale

14 Sunday Jun 2015

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The Winter's Tale

Shakespearing #36 by David Foley

The Winter’s Tale

The second most extraordinary moment in The Winter’s Tale is Act V, Scene ii, the penultimate scene of the play. We’ve just been brought to a place of high, incipient drama. The King of Bohemia has arrived offstage, exposing Florizel’s plan to marry a shepherd’s daughter against his father’s wishes. But the shepherd who knows the secret of Perdita’s birth is also in the wings. In another minute, all will be revealed. And it is. Secondhand. We skip to the next scene, and a trio of gentlemen describes Leontes’ joyful and amazed recovery of his daughter, even though one of them insists we have “lost a sight which was to be seen, not spoken of.”

It’s one of those moments when you feel thrillingly (perhaps deceptively) close to Shakespeare as dramatist. In this play, presumably written just after Cymbeline, Shakespeare foregoes the extended recognition scene. We won’t have character after character come forward and reveal his piece of the tale. Either he wasn’t happy with the way that scene worked in Cymbeline, or he wanted to try something new and daring, or he knew that the major revelation of the play, the resurrection of Hermione, needed to be set apart. One way to do that is psychological. We’re being frustrated, denied the expected release of emotion, and that emotion will be invested where it matters, in the mysterious reappearance of Hermione.

Here, too, we’ll be frustrated. We won’t be told how Leontes was persuaded that Hermione was dead, or how she lived in seclusion all these years, and Hermione’s only speech, seven scant lines, will be addressed to her daughter, not her husband. Joy will be tempered by mystery and sorrow. Irrecoverable time has passed, as Leontes makes clear when, still believing he’s looking at a statue, he says, “Hermione was not so much wrinkled, nothing/So aged as this seems.” Who Hermione is now, what she has undergone, what has happened to the forceful, charming, loving woman we met earlier in the play, all this is denied us, and it becomes part of the deep redeeming melancholy of the scene. As one of the gentlemen says in the earlier scene, we are not sure if we’ve “heard of a world ransom’d, or one destroyed.”

The most extraordinary moment in The Winter’s Tale is the onset of Leontes’ jealousy. It happens in an instant, with what Leontes himself calls a “tremor cordis,” a tremor of the heart. There’s no Iago to provide an external impetus for it. It’s an “affection,” which the Riverside note defines as “a sudden, unexplained change in mind and body.” This is Shakespeare’s psychology at its most terrifying, our minds at the mercy of our bodies, we at the mercy of our minds, which swerve dangerously out of our control. At the height of his jealousy and rage, Leontes is horrifying. He tells Antigonus to take Hermione’s baby and burn it, or “the bastard brains with these my proper hands/Shall I dash out.” And then just as suddenly it ends, but not before the world’s destroyed. So destroyed that Hermione will fake her death and disappear for sixteen years even as Leontes expresses his determination to “new woo my queen.”

It’s a strange position to put women in, to redeem the broken world. It’s not the only way women appear in Shakespeare. There are ambitious cutthroats, virtuous victims, and venally comic bawds. But it’s surprising how often women oppose a grounded sense of reality to the madness around them. When her own reality is not enough for Leontes, Hermione insists on the reality of the cost.

_______

David Foley is a playwright and fiction writer living in Brooklyn. His plays include Cressida Among the Greeks, Paradise, Nance O’Neil, The Murders at Argos, A Hole in the Fence, and Sad Hotel, among others. His novel The Traveler’s Companion is available on Amazon. He teaches at New York University.

Episode 157: Shane Hinton!

13 Saturday Jun 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in Craft of Fiction Writing, Episode, Flash Fiction, Florida Literature

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Episode 157 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

In this week’s episode, I talk to fiction writer Shane Hinton,

plus Sayantani Dasgupta writes about how Jules Verne’s Twenty Thousand Leagues Under the Sea changed her life.

TEXTS DISCUSSED

NOTES

Tuesday, June 16th, is Bloomsday. Celebrate wherever you are by listening again to a bang-up, in-studio, Bloomsdaying production on episode 104,

or if in NYC celebrate the day on which Ulysses is set in person with Colum McCann, Aedin Moloney, and quite probably Chris Booth at Ulysses Folk House.

_______

Episode 157 of The Drunken Odyssey, your favorite podcast about creative writing and literature is available on iTunes, or right click here to download.

The Curator of Schlock #92: To The Devil…A Daughter

12 Friday Jun 2015

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The Curator of Schlock #92 by Jeff Shuster

To The Devil…A Daughter

(Seriously, what’s with the ellipses?)

We continue on with Satan Month here at the Museum of Schlock. I think last week’s movie was a bit of a rip-off since there weren’t any actual Satanists in it. There was a dwarf named Hercules who might have been a Satanist, but this can neither be confirmed, nor denied. I need people dressed in cloaks sacrificing high school kids in the woods. We don’t exactly get that in today’s movie, but it’s a whole lot of weird, and it stars Christopher Lee, so it has that going for it.

The trailer for 1976’s To the Devil…A Daughter promises a film in the same league as Rosemary’s Baby and The Exorcist. Well, it’s got Satanists like Rosemary’s Baby had, except this group aren’t a bunch of old fogies that make chalky chocolate mousse and go on and on about the health benefits of tannis root.

Anyway, Christopher Lee plays a priest named Father Michael Rayner who isn’t down with the fact that the Catholic Church is against worshipping and summoning demons. Father Rayner starts his own secret, Satanic church that I guess is disguised as a Catholic church. Maybe the Satanic church is in the basement?

I saw some nuns, but I think they were Satanists posing as nuns.

Nastassja Kinski plays a young girl named Catherine Beddows who dresses like a nun, but she’s not a nun because she was raised by Father Rayner’s group of devil worshippers. I think they sacrificed her mother on an altar while she was being born and then baptized Catherine in her mother’s blood. Then the ghost of Catherine’s mother shows up and forces Catherine’s father into a Satanic pact. Her father is played by Denholm Elliott, the dude that played Marcus Brody in the Indiana Jones flicks.

I think Catherine’s father arranges for Catherine to be kidnapped by John Verney (Richard Widmark), a writer of best selling books on the occult. Father Rayner oversees the pregnancy of another Satanist who is pregnant with a devil baby.

After a very, very, very uncomfortable birthing scene that results in the death of the mother, I think it’s revealed that the baby is some sort of monster, the living embodiment of a devil named Astaroth…I don’t know who Astaroth is. According to Wikipedia, he’s a crowned prince of hell. I guess that means there are other crowned princes of hell. They didn’t teach this stuff in Catholic School!

Anyway, I think Father Rayner wants to perform a “reverse baptism” to get Astaroth to take over the body of Catherine and become Astaroth on Earth. Movies shouldn’t make me think this much. This is Memento all over again! But check it out if you want to see Christopher Lee as a scary Satanic priest!

Christopher Lee

May 27, 1922 – June 7, 2015

It’s at this time that I’d like to say a few words on the passing of Christopher Lee, but what can I say. The phrase “the man, the myth, and the legend” doesn’t even begin to do his legacy justice. I grew up with him as Dracula in those wonderful Hammer films and continued to see him shatter my expectations in his performances in such movies as Sleepy Hollow and The Lord of the Rings trilogy. I’ll say farewell by quoting my favorite Irish toast:

May your glass be ever full.

May the roof over your head be always strong.

And may you be in heaven

half an hour before the devil knows you’re dead.

_______

Photo by Leslie Salas

Jeffrey Shuster (episode 47, episode 102, episode 124, and episode 131) is an MFA candidate at the University of Central Florida.

The Lists #20: Top 10 Suicide Notes

11 Thursday Jun 2015

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The Lists #20 by Brett Pribble

Top 10 Suicide Notes

10. Just finished watching the finale of LOST. I give up.

9. Remember all those cat photos I posted? They were a cry for help.

8. I really thought you’d notice my haircut.

7. Only seventeen people wished me Happy Birthday on my wall.

Just found out that Jon Snow isn’t a real person.

Today a car honked at me for driving too slow. This taught me my real worth.

A black cat crossed my path. I don’t want to wait to find out what happens.

Ran out of Oreos.

If you’re reading this you’re too late. Thanks A LOT!

The only hope I had left was getting this list published on McSweeny’s, but they told me “The bar is really high on suicide lists.”

_______

Brett Pribble teaches writing courses in Orlando, Florida. He’s afraid of sharks and often isn’t sure whether or not he’s dreaming. He was previously published in Saw Palm, The Molotov Cocktail, and 10,000 Tons of Black Ink.

Heroes Never Rust #97: How Bad is Bad

10 Wednesday Jun 2015

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Heroes Never Rust #97 by Sean Ironman

Terror Inc.: How Bad is Bad

The third issue of Terror Inc. focuses on the villains. The main villain is revealed as Talita, a woman Terror loved eight hundred years ago. Her team is called Death’s Reign, a group of South American thugs turned special forces. There seems to be a religious aspect to their following of Talita, with one member sacrificing himself so Talita may use his body to make herself stronger. As he dies, he yells out, “Rapture.” Death’s Reign are more than bad guys. One offers this bit of small talk as they search for Terror: “So this bitch is doin’ her thing, and the H kicks in like a ton of bricks. She has a heart attack and dies in my lap. Best I ever had.” Another two have this conversation: “Dude, Man, I fuckin’ cut that ho.” The other replies, “I know, dude. I cut ‘er too. She was gooood.” This group does not just kill for money, or for religion, or for any purpose that could be considered good. They are evil through and through.

In fiction courses, there is a focus, and rightfully so, on crafting three-dimensional characters. Everybody does what they feel is right, students are taught. No one is evil. People do things for reasons. I agree with this, mostly. Yet, in the real world, we have murders, rapes, greed, racism, sexism, etc. Of course, murderers and rapists have, at one point in their life, done something good or had (or have) good qualities. Doing something bad does not mean there are no good qualities. Yet, some people are real scumbags. Some people do not just kill someone because they had to. Some people enjoy doing the bad things. Take a look at Louis CK’s recent SNL monologue. As he humorously discusses, child molesters enjoy molesting children. If it wasn’t enjoyable at some level, people wouldn’t do it.

There seems to be, at least to me, a “rule” writers confine themselves to: characters must have a reason for acting the way they do. Under this “rule,” writers try to explain why a bad character is bad. In X-Men comics, Magneto is no longer just a villain—he is a terrorist because he is a Holocaust survivor and doesn’t want to see mutants treated the same way as the Jews. In Wicked, the Wicked Witch of the West is no longer just an evil with—she was born with green skin and was despised by her father. And in Smallville, Lex Luthor is a boy who had to grow up under the rule of a disappointed and hard father. Sure, no one does anything just because. There are reasons behind people’s actions and words. But, writers should be careful about trying to explain. Explanations can take readers out of the story by showing the writer. Sometimes, giving the villain an interesting back story or reason for being a villain works well. Magneto is one of the greatest comic book villains. But, he became that way because he straddled the line between hero and villain—once, he even ran Xavier’s school when the professor was thought to have been killed. When he was first created, Magneto had no Holocaust background. Chris Claremont took a typical comic book villain and ran with the new idea of Magneto as survivor. But, even though Magneto has a reason, he is still a terrorist. He’s still a bad guy. The reasoning behind his actions make him a fully rounded character, and being a Holocaust survivor gets readers to understand why a person would think a race of people could be wiped off the planet, but the goal of adding this reasoning wasn’t to make Magneto less evil.

There are bad people in the world. There are people who are just pieces of shit, that if they were to die, the world would be a better place. Studies have shown people gain empathy by reading. Entering into a character’s mind allows people to see and feel the world from a different point of view. But, perhaps that same empathy is also blocking us from the simple fact that some people are bastards. A bad upbringing for Lex Luthor doesn’t make him less evil. Some people do bad things for reasons that are still bad, even if they view them as right. Having empathy isn’t the same as forgiving or excusing actions. Readers need to understand a character’s actions—they need to feel that the character could be real.

Currently, I’m on a road trip, and while driving through northern Arkansas I passed a billboard advertising “White Pride Radio.” I would like you to their website, but personally I feel no one should give these people the time of day. And, just a couple of weeks ago, while looking at reviews for Mad Max: Fury Road (a fantastic film, by the way), I came across the news that a group was boycotting the film because of the strong female characters in the film. This group felt that the film should be focused on Max and lose the feminist angle—their reasoning was solely that the film was harming masculinity because it showed tough women. Again, I will not be linking to their website (which contains far worse sexist and homophobic comments) because they do not deserve the attention.

In yet another example, it was recently discovered that when a person searched “nigga house” on Google maps, the result showed the White House. The reason for that had little to do with Google as a company. Searches adjust to how people use the terms, so “nigga house” led to the White House because enough people online used the term to describe the White House. Yes, I understand that the people behind my examples have been molded with these views based on environment, but that doesn’t change how wrong these actions are.

My point is that sometimes providing a villain with a tragic backstory works well (Magneto), but writers shouldn’t be forced, or feel forced, into making a character sympathetic. A villain doesn’t have to regret his or her actions, or feel that there’s no other way. A villain doesn’t need to murder someone and go home and take care of his or her dog, who the villain loves more than anything. Some people beat dogs. Some people kill dogs. Some people are racist. Sexist. Homophobic. Some people are filled with hate. And whether they are that way because of a good reason or a bad reason, the reason doesn’t change who they are. Feel free, as writers, to have villains like in Terror Inc., villains who are scum and not go out of your way to explain why. That, too, can lead to an interesting story.

Watch the recent film Nightcrawler, starring Jake Gyllenhaal, which is about the most least likeable main character I have seen on film. Tell your stories. Use the good and the bad. Your goal as a writer isn’t to just write well-rounded characters, but to create a real, well-rounded world, and unfortunately, even though there’s a lot of love in our world, there’s a lot of shit too.

_______

Photo by John King

Buzzed Books #27: Something Rich and Strange

09 Tuesday Jun 2015

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Dianne Turgeon Richardson, Ron Rash, Something Rich and Strange

Buzzed Books #27 by Dianne Turgeon-Richardson

Something Rich and Strange

This is less of a book review and more of a public service announcement:

If you’re not reading Ron Rash, you should be.

To put it simply and to risk using an already overused word, he is awesome. If you worry that you’re late to the Ron Rash party (and you should be worried), then Something Rich and Strange, a compilation of thirty-four previously published stories released last year by HarperCollins, is a thorough and satisfying crash course.

Here’s what you need to know about Ron Rash: he grew up in the Piedmont of North Carolina, eventually making his way up into the Blue Ridge Mountains, a spot he rarely leaves. He is a professor in Appalachian cultural studies at Western Carolina University, and most of his fiction is set in the highlands of western North Carolina.

I know you may be groaning. I can even imagine a few eye rolls. Another southern regional writer? What is it with these people who grow up in the Deep South?

Fair enough. We do tend to be slightly obsessed with our homeland.

And yes, Rash’s fiction is very much fiction of place, but there is more to it than location, landscape, and being “southern.” Oh, sure, all that you would expect from southern writing is there: a certain conservative world view, all-encompassing fire-and-brimstone religion, clear and significant class divisions, agricultural society, race, and (of course) the Civil War. And themes of nature, landscape, and environmentalism are widely regarded as hallmarks of Rash’s work. But place and capital T “The” and capital S “South” are not—at least to me—what makes his work worth reading.

His work may start with place, but really it’s about voice.

Voice is how Rash captures place. It’s what leads to great characters, too. The voice is at once uniquely southern and Appalachian but unique to the individual character. Sometimes that voice is very, very funny, as in the case of the female carpenter trying her darndest to stay out of her ex-husband’s cockamamie (and Biblical) schemes in “The Night the New Jesus Fell to Earth in Cliffside, North Carolina,” and sometimes that voice is so melancholy and hopeless that it borders on the existential, as in “Those Who Are Dead Are Only Now Forgiven,” wherein a young man gives up on a college education in an honorable but pathetic attempt to rescue his high school sweetheart from the scourge of meth addiction.

The great thing about Rash’s grounding his characters in voice instead of place or landscape is that it lends them a humanity, a realness, instead of letting them be bogged down in caricatures of southern Appalachian clichés. And this is no accident. Rash uses his own characters to warn us of buying into the hype so often exploited by today’s “redneck chic” reality television. In “The Trusty,” a Depression-era chain gang convict falls for those same stereotypes, and it costs him his life. There’s the Yankee game warden in “Their Ancient, Glittering Eyes” who refuses to believe the stories of a giant fish in the Tuckaseegee River and who refuses to take the old men who catch that fish seriously. Rash is forcing you to take these people seriously, to acknowledge the dignity of all his characters, even the most backwoods, dirt-floor-poor among them, and to recognize a common human experience. This is what all good regional fiction does—disguises the universal in the particular.

If Rash’s short fiction is not only about place, it is also not Grit Lit, the current buzz-genre in southern literature. Henry Crews is widely credited with creating the term that has been referred to as redneck stories, white trash literature, even southern noir. A play on words, referring both to “gritty” stories and the grits so commonly devoured by southerners of all classes, Grit Lit centers on the lives of the rural (usually white) poor, and the tales are full of single-wide trailers, drugs, guns, fights, and almost unspeakable violence. While I admit to reading and enjoying the work of Crews, William Gay, Tom Franklin, and others, there are a few problems with Grit Lit: Most of the writers are men, and commonly the Grit Lit stories they write would not pass the Bechdel Test by a long shot. Grit Lit stories tend to ignore a significant portion of the southern population, namely that portion with darker skin. And at times it seems the writers of Grit Lit are locked in a battle to see who can write the most violent, repulsive characters imaginable, as if they’re all trying to out-Cormac-McCarthy Cormac McCarthy himself.

And you will certainly find some of this in Rash’s writing. But if Rash’s work is gritty or violent, it’s more a product of place than some attempt to shock readers into listening to the stories of the poor and marginalized, which leaves his work more in the realm of regional literary fiction, harkening more to the original notion of Southern Gothic with its preoccupation with the spooky and grotesque. “The Corpse Bird” hinges on long-held superstitions about death, and “Shiloh” suggests the existence of ghosts and spirits. And Rash gives us grotesque, as in the branding of an Englishman’s tongue by Scotch-Irish mountain folk exacting revenge for the massacre of their ancestors centuries before in “A Servant of History,” the repeated “faces of meth” images that litter a number of these stories like trash on the side of the highway, and the ill-fated escapades of the modern-day grave robbers in “Dead Confederates.” But there’s a difference between “grotesque” and “violent,” especially what can often feel like gratuitous violence. Thus, Rash’s work never becomes some version of literary gore porn, and his characters never fall into the trope of brutish redneck. Yes, his characters are often savage, sometimes noble, but Rash never condescends to them or allows them to fall into stereotypes (southern or Grit Lit-y). Instead we get characters with an intense love of the land, of home, coupled with an unspoken desire to escape it, leading to a quiet desperation that plays out in the decisions they make.

This is why you need to read Ron Rash. And don’t forget that Rash is also an accomplished poet and novelist. 2008’s Serena was a New York Times bestseller. But if short fiction is your thing, or if you just want to dip your toe in the clear and cold mountain streams of western North Carolina, Something Rich and Strange is a mighty fine place to start.

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Dianne Turgeon Richardson (Episodes 72, 77, 102, and 129) is a writer of fiction and poetry. Her work has appeared in The Florida Review, Cooweescoowee, and Word Riot, among other places. She received her MFA from the University of Central Florida, where she currently teaches freshman composition. Originally from South Carolina, she now lives in Orlando with her husband, her hound, and a fetus whose arrival is imminent.

The Global Barfly’s Companion #11: The Imperial

08 Monday Jun 2015

Posted by thedrunkenodyssey in The Global Barfly's Companion

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The Global Barfly’s Companion #11 by Caitlin Doyle

Bar: The Imperial at Washburn Imports in Sanford

Location: 116 1^st St., Sanford, FL 32771

Book To Bring With You: Henny Youngman’s Bar Bets, Bar Jokes, Bar Tricks.

While attending a literary event at the Imperial in Sanford, it’s hard not to think of Henny Youngman’s famous quip: “When I read about the evils of drinking, I gave up reading.” Visitors to the Imperial, Youngman would have been happy to know, need not give up either vice. They can enjoy lit and libations in equal measure, and when it comes to the latter, the measure is sure to satisfy even those with Youngman-size thirst. The bartenders serve up generous pours from a distinctive menu of craft beers, specialty drinks, and boutique wines.

I started with a Mixed Berry Bramble, comprised of gin, berries, liqueur, and lemon, and watched the bartender squeeze and muddle the fruit right in front of me – a refreshing emphasis on natural ingredients in lieu of the sweet mixers and packaged juices common at so many other bars. As the evening unfolded, I relished looking on while the bartenders made it clear that the written word wasn’t the only art form in practice. They created an array of handcrafted and innovative cocktails from the night’s roster of featured drinks, which included the popular Sir Knight (scotch, Cointreau, yellow chartreuse, Angostura, and lemon) and the intriguing Death Fizz (gin, Lillet Blanc, Solerno, egg whites, bitters, lemon, and seltzer).

What better way to compliment the night than with a drink named for one of literature’s most enduring themes? I ordered a delicious Death of my own and let the fizz carry me as I walked around and took in the place.

Because the Imperial shares its location with a store named Washburn Imports, the tables, chairs, and home accessories for sale during the day do double work at night in service of the bar’s customers. People sip their drinks amidst furnishings from Southeast Asia, India, and China, and they can choose from a variety of capacious seating areas and more intimate nooks spread throughout the two-story space.

If you fall in love with a piece of furniture or an exotic object, you can come back during daylight hours and buy it for your home. For all of the modish eclecticism bursting from the drinks and the décor, you’ll be relieved to discover that the Imperial gives off a snobbery-free vibe and the atmosphere lacks any hint of a cooler-than-thou hipster-style affectation.

If literary readings aren’t your intoxicant of choice, you can enjoy plenty of other cultural happenings at the Imperial throughout the year, including live music and art shows. But the main event is always the bar itself, where you may find yourself perpetually unable to resist sampling just one more cocktail (who could go home without trying the Bacon Old-Fashioned made with Smith’s bacon whiskey?).

As Henny Youngman said, “if you’re going to do something tonight that you’ll be sorry for tomorrow morning, sleep late.” For barflies seeking a spot closer to Orlando, there’s also an Imperial at Washburn Imports in College Park. Though the two Imperials differ in size and drink offerings, both make it hard to deny Henny’s hard-won wisdom. Pull up a bar stool, and prepare to sleep late.

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Caitlin Doyle’s work has appeared in The Threepenny Review, The Atlantic, Boston Review, Black Warrior Review, and others. Her poems have also been published in a variety of anthologies, including The Best Emerging Poets of 2013, The Southern Poetry Anthology, and Best New Poets 2009. She has held Writer-In-Residence teaching positions at Penn State, St. Albans School, and Interlochen Arts Academy. Her awards and fellowships include the Margaret Bridgman Scholarship through the Bread Loaf Writers’ Conference, a MacDowell Colony fellowship, the Amy Award through Poets & Writers, and fellowships at the Jack Kerouac House and the James Merrill House. Caitlin earned her MFA at Boston University as the George Starbuck Fellow in Poetry, and she is currently at work on her debut poetry collection.