Thoughts on First-Person in Fiction and Essays

A unique Bones episode told from

the point of view of a dead boy.

I have mixed feelings about first-person in fiction. It is ubiquitous; these days, I read far more of it than I used to. But I'm always somewhat wary of it. Like with fiction based on letters, I can't drop the sneaky suspicion that it is too easy. Oh, just write a memoir already. 

Additionally, I have formed the uneasy impression in the last few years--I read a great many small press books on my Kindle, and I enjoy many of them--that first-person is a kind of fall-back position for being able to quickly establish character, except it doesn't always work. I sometimes develop less feel for the characters than I do with third-person texts. Everything is being discussed out of the perspective of a single mind, but I can't see the person or sense how that person interacts with others: what makes that person unique. The stream-of-consciousness stuff begins to blend together.  

I think good first-person is so difficult because it requires enormous control. As someone once remarked to me about The Curious Incident of the Boy in the Nighttime, "By the time the book was over, I wanted to get out of the boy's head." 

And the reader admired the book! For that matter, I consider Blossom Culp, the narrator of Ghosts I Have Been, to have a fantastic voice. 

But. Still. 

I use Terry and Alim as first-person narrators in His in Herland because the original text is in first-person. I used the god of love as a first-person narrator in my take on Northanger Abbey because I didn't trust that I could pull off Austen's omniscient narrator (I did the next best thing). In both cases, I tried to remember that THIS narrator would use particular references and vocabulary. Terry is hard-headed, pragmatic, and little wry. Alim, who is looking back on events, is more philosophical. Ven, the god of love, is "what have I signed up for?!" off-the-cuff-smoking-pot-behind-the-convenience-store guy. 

I thankfully returned to third-person in my other books. 

The one entirely valid reason to use first-person is for the reason listed below: the first-person narrator is able to supply a first-hand account.

* * * 

Re-post from 2008 with tweaks:

From Ohio Northern University

I occasionally get students who believe they should never use first-person in an essay, especially a research essay. Once upon a time, one of their teachers forbade the use of first-person, and the students took it to heart. The reasoning is that by banning first-person, the teacher will prevent students using non-credible evidence. 

Considering the number of my students who use [the equivalent of A.I.] and still fail their essays, the banning of first-person bears no relationship to the ability of students to think critically.

There's a lot of ridiculous non-first-person evidence out there which has no more credibility than a teenage driver claiming, "I never speed." A claim, introduced with an "I" or not, is still a claim, and any claim is disputable (as is all evidence).

I've seen the results of this logical fallacy in my students' writing; they confuse claims with support, thinking any statement without "I" is evidence (there's a huge difference between arguing, "Cats make great pets" and proving that cats make great pets). They also confuse claims with facts, thinking any statement without "I" is a fact: The United States is having a recession. Newsweek says so. I can use this "evidence" in my paper!

All evidence/claims are testable, both personal evidence ("I experienced") and non-personal evidence. Determining credible evidence has nothing to do with first-person and everything to do with the credibility of the speaker/researcher/study/source.

In a well-intention desire to prevent excessive grandstanding, teachers who ban first-person are confusing cause with effect. A superfluity of "I think that..." "I believe that..." "I must be right because..." may be the result of a me-centered culture (and can get annoying), but it has little to nothing to do with whether the speaker can actually be trusted or whether the speaker's evidence is meritorious. I often tell my students, "Personal evidence is the strongest evidence you have; it just isn't enough except to your parents and your friends." 

But to say that personal evidence carries no weight at all is such an obvious untruth that students are liable to follow the teacher's instructions while missing the point. 

Here's a claim: Non-credible arguments in the college environment will not go away until students are forced to be intelligent (but not cynical) about all information. And...[2025 update]...A.I. doesn't help. Or at least, it rather troublingly enforces how gullible students actually can be. The Internet says it (without "I"!) so it must be true.

Thankfully, I can report that there are students out there who get the problem. They do prefer to think for themselves, which, of course, makes them in the long-run, more objective.

The Brassy Female Character: Peck's Blossom Culp as a Standard Current Writers Should Aim For

One of the more annoying things about trends is that readers/viewers/critics tend to behave as if nothing has ever happened before, such as--

Behaving as if no writer before 2020 wrote strong female characters.

Peck's Blossom Culp proves that assumption utterly wrong (so does Shakespeare, but Shakespeare comes with more baggage). 

Blossom Culp is a fantastic female character in four of Peck's books. Though she appears in an earlier book, the first book primarily about Blossom is Ghosts I Have Been, whose plot has a link to the Titanic! She is exceedingly proactive--she scares boys to stop them tipping over a privy. She defends another girl on the playground. She helps her mentor, Miss Dabney, to out-maneuver a shyster spiritualist. She gains the ability to see ghosts and ends up traveling to England where she poses in Madam Tussauds.

So Blossom Culp is a great character but she does interesting things. She is also great because she has personality.  

In comparison, the scriptwriters of The War of the Rohirrim apparently consider their main female character to be preferable to all other LOTR female characters because she is "complex." I guess "complex" means "does a lot of things with confidence after a brief pause." 

But in truth, the main female character of The War of the Rohirrim is boring. 

Blossom is not boring. Like Agatha Christie's nurse in Murder in Mesopotamia, she is observant and somewhat blunt. Christie's nurse is more tactful. But both characters have a brassy good-nature that precludes cynicism (cynical narrators can be enticing--they can also get a bit wearisome like the Genie constantly breaking the fourth wall). They are intelligent about human nature  at a practical everyday level. 

Blossom Culp is younger than Christie's nurse, of course, being about twelve in the first book. She is also adventurous, tough, smart and clever (the two traits are not synonymous) and human. She is kind. She isn't perfect. She has her weaknesses, one of them being the next-door neighbor boy, Alexander. Consequently, she is well-rounded, especially since she has a sense of humor with a pragmatic view of life:

"I was never threatened with imprisonment after the first hour or so." 

"I could have done better, and I might have done worse. But that's true of life in general."

The Voice of Characters: Cadfael and Others

Patrick Tull

I remark in an earlier post that one issue with books-to-movies is when the character doesn't match the image in one's head. Although I am a big fan of Sir Derek Jacobi, I don't really see him as Cadfael. I like the early Cadfael series anyway. But I never forget that I'm watching Sir Derek Jacobi. 

A related topic here is when someone SOUNDS like the character. The first Ellis Peters' books I listened to were read by Patrick Tull. He isn't one my favorite readers since I like readers who read at a fairly steady clip, and Tull lingers on words. But the voice--oh, my!--was perfect, exactly how I imagined Cadfael would sound. Stephen Thorne was the second reader I encountered, and he is quite good both as Cadfael and as a well-paced reader. I "see" Cadfael through their voices.

Stephen Thorne

Ian Carmichael is the same. His voice, that is. I will occasionally watch the Wimsey TV movies starring Carmichael, but I can never not wince a little: he doesn't match Sayers' description of Peter Wimsey or my own image of Peter Wimsey at all.

And yet, he TOTALLY gets Wimsey. His voice is perfect. 

In reverse, I think David Suchet is perfect as Poirot in the series, but I don't like him as a reader. (I far prefer Hugh Fraser.) Likewise, Barbara Rosenblat as Mrs. Pollifax makes her sound about two decades older than she is in the books, which is just odd. 

Good reading is a skill. And a good reader makes a difference. Voice can be as much a "character" as any other part of an actor. 

Art for Art's Sake: Perfect Scene in The Silmarillion

One of the most remarkable aspects of Tolkien's Middle Earth theology is the preservation of the agency of the individual. Even the Maiar, those beings below Iluvatar who reside on the edges of Middle Earth, are separate sentient beings who must make their own choices. Their lack of knowledge; their idiosyncratic interests; even their preferences re: friendship are not perceived as sins or mistakes or failings. 

In fact, reading (or listening to Andy Serkis read) The Silmarillion brings home how often humans do unfortunately interpret "righteousness" as seamlessness or sameness. 

In contrast, everybody in Tolkien's universe has a unique and personal set of interests and hobbies and loves and wants. 

Consequently, one of the greatest scenes in the book occurs after Morgoth (Melkor) has stolen the Silmarils with the help of the ever-hungry Ungoliant. The Maiar Yavanna then commends the elf Feanor for creating jewels that could restore or replace the Silmarils. The Maiar ask for the jewels.

There was a long silence, but Feanor answered no word. Then Tulkas cried, "Speak, O Noldo, yea or nay! But who shall deny Yavanna? And does not the light of the Silmarils come from her work in the beginning?"

But Aule the Maker said, "Be not hasty! We ask a greater thing than thou knowest. Let him have peace for awhile." 

Love of one's creation is a state of mind deserving of respect. 

Over and over through The Silmarillion, Tolkien praises the desire to make stuff. Even when it goes wrong, the desire to build and fashion and write and produce is never in itself condemned. 

The view here agrees with both Tolkien and Lewis's attitudes toward art. They believed that God was the ultimate creator and when we try to create we are attempting to emulate God. Creation, even imperfect creation, is always the opposite of destruction and negation. It always bears about it the imprint of heavenly favor.

A glorious view of life and deity! 

People Don't Change: The Proliferation of Financial Records

Ancient Egypt was hugely popular in the nineteenth century--and still is. Professor Amanda Podany in her Great Courses CD and DVD on Ancient Mesopotamia comments that people are often confused by her focus: Mesopotamia rather than Egypt, even though Ancient Mesopotamia is the older culture. 

Ancient Egypt, in all truth, is somewhat misleading about what the ancient world was like. Those pyramids! They don't just loom over the landscape, they loom in importance over the history and the lives of Ancient Egyptians. (By the time  Hatshepsut comes along, the pyramids were to the Egyptians of that time period what the medieval era is to us. To Ramses, the pyramids were ancient.) Yes, the pyramids were huge work projects, employing a great many people, and yes, they reveal beliefs about the afterlife... 

But Ancient Mesopotamia reveals what truly pushed human civilization forward from Day 1. The majority of cuneiform tablets from the area are about...

Accounts! 

I can confirm this reality. Reviewing my parents' paperwork, the largest file (just as large if not larger than the letters and journals and stored children's artwork) is...

BILLS! Account agreements. Banking forms. The file would be even larger if some of the documents hadn't be shredded.  

Archaeologists love this stuff, by the way. 1,000 years from now, archaeologists and anthropologists will try figure out our lives--how we lived, where, on what--from tax documents. Which doesn't mean the more imaginative, family-oriented, individual, belief and art-type stuff doesn't exist: imagine trying to figure out everything about United States culture or history from those ubiquitous newsprint circulars that show up in our mailboxes every weekend. Archaeologists and anthropologists could figure out quite a lot from those circulars! But what they figured out would only scratch the surface. And they wouldn't be able to guess that I throw out most of mine--I don't even use them to line the cage of my non-existent hamster. 

What survives the MOST is, itself, up for interpretation. 

The Scarlet Pimpernel: Do Spies Make Good Spouses?

Anthony Andrews' Scarlet Pimpernel is carried to a huge extent by Jane Seymour's vibrant beauty and Anthony Andrews' exceptional skill at exuding bravado and insouciance. Unlike the book, the film's story starts with the courtship, and the question immediately arises: Why would a sharp-witted actress marry a seemingly shallow idiot, if not for his money?

Without abandoning the character's vapid cover, Anthony Andrews manages to give Sir Percy a hint of something deeper when he is around Marguerite. He is boisterously happy to woo her and lets her believe that there is, in fact, "more" there.

 

When they marry and he comes to believe that she sent a family to the guillotine, he retreats entirely behind his adopted persona. Marguerite rightly perceives him as hiding from her. But the lover is still there.

 

This double or, rather, triple face is only possible because Andrews is that good. He manages to give Percy an aura of sincerity no matter what he is doing. When Marguerite complains that she can't confide in him, he is truly upset. He manages to convey that underneath all the frippery and shifting attitudes, a base personality remains.

 

Generally speaking, however, I don't buy it. The history of spies reads like the history of die-hard grifters. Le Carre's version of spies--and for that matter, Andrew Robinson's Garak in Deep Space Nine--is much closer to the truth. In one episode of Deep Space Nine, Garak keeps telling stories to the doctor, as if he were four or five different people: soldier, friend, traitor, exile. All of them are true. All of them are lies. 

 

The slipperiness of an entire personality being constantly in "code" doesn't bode well for a relationship. Though it may be true that one person can never totally understand another, the sheer bewilderment of a person never being one thing--no base personality--would make it difficult to go forward with that person...

 

Unless, of course, the lover LIKES being in love with a chimera.

 

Loid [using Crunchyroll's spelling] and Yo are exceptions here, of course, since they are decent, family people who just happen (oops!) to be a spy and assassin rather than a spy and assassin who are trying to pretend to be decent people.

More About Giving Audiences What They Want: Great Quote

Church

I write in Don't Give Audiences What They Think They Want that authors run the risk of putting out stories with beloved tropes and then...ending up with dissatisfied audiences since viewers/readers want those tropes but they also want more.

(When Tolkien became hugely popular in America in the 1960s, a great many fantasy series by others followed. Some were quite good. Some...feel like a wizard, small person, dwarf, elf, and king were shaken up together in a bag!)

Scene from Murdoch Mysteries

I suggest that the best writers have a vision and that the best visions are by authors who love what they are writing. In American Visions by Robert Hughes, Hughes makes this point regarding painting and Frederick Edwin Church:

Like Dickens, indeed like any artist who becomes both great and popular, he hadn't reach this position [of being America's 'national artist'] by figuring out what the public wanted and then giving it to them. He wanted what the public wanted, and was rewarded by its unstinting gratitude.

Hollywood, like Google Search, often come across as unbearably cynical because they seem to think they have "figured out" the public. 

But only a willing member of the public can truly succeed at capturing a zeitgeist.  

All the Ms: Magaziner to Magorian

Magaziner, Lauren: The Only Thing Worse Than Witches is  witches and kids in the Roald Dahl tradition. I was never a huge Roald Dahl fan but I suspect he is still so popular (nearly ¼ of my students last semester chose him as the author they wanted to research) because he not only taps into topics that interest people but into an approach to life that is fundamentally atavistic: isn't life strange and random? His heirs will never fade.

Audrey Magee: The Undertaking has a fantastic opening! It’s a war novel, and I limit the number of war novels I force myself to read. (I read plenty of historical and violent non-fiction.)

The Magic Bus series is presented under “M” in the Portland Public Library. I read The Search for the Missing Bones. I learned stuff!

I generally argue that fiction should not try to improve people. However, I must say The Magic Bus series is brilliantly written, so much so I thought, as I was reading, “Boy, I wonder if some of my nursing students who have to take that horrible anatomy class, which is pure memorization, would remember things better if they read this book?”

Kekla Magoon: I tend to be warier with young adult novels these days than adult ones. However, The Minus-One Club, though it is tackles a fairly dark topic–high school kids who have lost a loved one bond with each other–is quite engaging. Like Breakfast Club, only better written and less obnoxious. It reminded me of Ryan Conall’s House of Cards. I didn’t continue and I’m not sure that one member of a couple can save another member of a couple. I nevertheless recommend it for what it is.

Michelle Magorian: I’d heard of Good Night, Mr. Tom but never read it. The story of a young boy evacuated from London during World War II who ends up with a gruff yet caring old man it is quite good. (The movie version is far too short.)  

Books to Movies: Keeping Characters Together in The Two Towers, Good and Bad

Since audiences invest in certain characters, keeping them together visually  makes sense. 

In the book, Eowyn does not go to Helm's Deep. In fact, the purpose for Helm's Deep is somewhat different in the book than in the movie. Theoden and his riders do retreat there--and women, children, and the elderly as well as goods are being safeguarded there--but only because Helm's Deep is one of many holdings. It is rather like British civilians retreating to the underground even though London wasn't exactly safe (people stayed in London anyway). 

However, it makes sense to bring together the main characters in this particular plot thread, so Legolas, Theoden, Aragorn, Gimli, Eowyn and the Rohan ride together. Unlike in the book, Eomer is absent, which makes for a great final scene in the film. In the book, Gandalf fetches a new character to ride to the rescue--but in a movie, again, the character who has already earned viewer investment is a better choice for a pay-off.

I think wanting to keep characters together--and in mind--is why the elves show up at Helm's Deep. And it makes for a great visual. 

And it makes me wince every time. 

Tolkien is extremely exact about distances and supply chains. There's a reason the Fellowship brings along Bill, and there's a reason Bill is sent away. Aragorn and others are constantly making decisions about goods versus weight versus travel time. There is a VERY good reason why Boromir was able to reach Rivendell without being pursued but 9 people setting out from Rivendell have to be more cautious. And an equally good reason why moving armies from, say, Rohan to Gondor is time-consuming and impossible to completely disguise. (Theoden's troops take a "back roads" approach to Gondor but once they reach a certain point, their presence is a known variable.) 

No matter how stealthy they were, I simply don't buy the idea that hundreds of elves from anywhere could just show up in Helm's Deep without the enemy being aware or, for that matter, Theoden's own scouts. 

The one reason I kind of let it pass is because it references a point not raised in the film or directly in the book (but brought up elsewhere). There were three fronts during the war, including Lothlorien. 

Of course, in reality, the elves should have stayed in Lothlorien to cover that "front." 

Oh, well. Visuals won over reality.  

 

Don't Give the Audience What It Thinks It Wants

Re-post from 2011.

I recently posted about ignorant characters. I point out problems with such characters. What I don't mention is how the ignorant character is often preferable to the noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfectly good or perfectly evil character. 

The problem with the latter is how often filmmakers and authors do the equivalent of what Plinkett describes below--they make that noble, omniscient, triumphant, perfect character the focus of every prequel. 

Giving the audience what the audience (supposedly) wants is a mistake.

* * * 

In Plinkett's latest Star Wars' review (which is amusing though not as complete as the others), Plinkett, like always, makes a very cogent point.

Here is the cogent point in my own words:

Just because Darth Vadar became an iconic image of Star Wars doesn't mean the prequels needed to be about him. Just because Darth Vadar is important to us doesn't mean he was important to that universe at that time.

There is a writing conundrum here. Yes, it helps when you are writing a novel/short story/movie/show to use motifs and plot-lines and characters that people actually enjoy and recognize.

However, if all you do is stick together the most common motifs/plot-lines/characters, 9 times out of 10, the product will be a dud--or, at least, remarkably lacking in staying power.

Plinkett does a thorough job proving that, unfortunately, this sticking-togetherness is how Lucas approached the prequels. He took iconic images from IV, V, and VI and simply expanded and rehashed those images in the prequels even when the rehash made no sense.

So, for example, instead of the robe Obi-Wan was wearing in IV simply being the kind of robe people wear on desert planets, suddenly it became the robe ALL Jedi wear.

And instead of the training tools on Han Solo's ship simply being what was at hand, suddenly those tools became the way ALL Jedi are trained.

The result is unimaginative. And irrational.

It also highlights a very important principle. Classic motifs are good. Classic motifs backed by an actual vision are BETTER.

In a large, but not unmerited, segue, C.S. Lewis' Narnia series has been criticized for basically being a collection of every single fairytale/folktale/mythological image/motif C.S. Lewis encountered in the course of his extremely well-read life.

But as many critics, including Lisa Miller of The Magician's Book, have pointed out, it isn't the images and motifs that delight us, it is what Lewis did with them. He wasn't pretending to create new stuff; he was taking what he knew and rearranging it into a new pattern. He had a vision.

Every writer has to have a vision. Without the vision, the writing sags. And should the writer give up that vision to satisfy the audience's supposed desire for an iconic image, the audience will feel the vision dribbling away.

The writers did NOT make

Frasier a repeat of Cheers. 

Which is one reason why writing to satisfy fans doesn't always work. The fans LOVE a couple of minor characters, so the writer(s) make those characters a bigger part of the drama, and, hmm, what do you know, the show is less satisfying.

On the other hand, refusing to give the audience what the audience wants out of sheer "BUT I HAVE TO BE DIFFERENT" perversity isn't too smart either.

The solution is writers who give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision. This, of course, isn't easy, but I see two solutions:

1. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when they like what the audience likes.

If you want to write romance novels, it helps if you like romance novels.

2. Writers can give the audience what the audience wants without losing their vision when the writers and the audience agree on what the writers are trying to do.

To clarify this second point, not all novels/stories/movies/shows have to focus on the latest popular topic: vampires, for example. People vary; interests vary. There are a lot of audiences out there to satisfy. I would argue that people want much of the same thing within their separate genres, but that leaves a lot of room for individual creative vision-making.

Hey, there's even room for those people who think that reading stream-of-consciousness profundities about Life in Middle Class America is NEW and DIFFERENT! (Shhh, don't tell them they are being pandered to.) The point is, the writers and audience agree that that is what is going on.

In other words, the rules are agreed to--even when the rules are Monty-Python randomness.

Back to characters--the connection between this repost and characters is that giving the audience the characters they love as ALREADY those characters, despite the movie or book being a prequel, destroys the characters. I found Jill Paton Walsh's The Attenbury Emeralds a disappointment because it presented a young Wimsey as already ahead of everyone else in the mystery. There was no learning curve. He met Charles Parker but didn't learn from Parker, a policeman already. 

In truth, I think filmmakers read into audience engagement something that isn't necessarily there. Yes, we like Gandalf's wise remarks to Pippin. We also like Gandalf's snappishness. And we like his confession to Galadriel that he is afraid. We like the noble, semi-omniscient bloke. But we like the imperfect, struggling bloke as well. 

 

As my obnoxious (but accurate) fifteen-year-old self said, 

"If everyone is special, then no one is special."

If there is no contrast between the character THEN and the character NOW, there is nothing for us to delight in. 

The Ignorant Characters of E. Nesbit

The ignorant character is the character who comments on the action without fully understanding it. 

Scout in To Kill a Mockingbird closely observes and comments on the world--while not understanding entirely what she is witnessing. In one of the most gripping scenes of the book/movie, Jem and Scout and Dill surprise Atticus who is sitting vigil outside Tom Robinson's jail cell to stop him being lynched. Atticus is cool and collected until the children arrive. Scout observes the change in behavior without fully understanding that she is observing a suddenly frightened father. 

Scout is ignorant due to age (her age and understanding increase in the book). Other characters, like Watson and Hastings, are ignorant in comparison to Sherlock and Poirot's genius.  

The problem with the ignorant character is that so much naivety or missing-the-point can grate. It is generally excused more with children but even there, as E. Nesbit shows, it can fall a bit flat. 

E. Nesbit wrote a series of connected short stories told by Oswald Bastable (they are told in third-person but ostensibly written by Oswald, who occasionally forgets that he is a character, not the narrator). They are mostly hilarious. But there are a few places where Oswald relates events that he supposedly doesn't understand but amuse the adults within the book. 

[Oswald] placed the ungoated end of the rope in the unresisting hand of the fortunate detective [who won the children's lottery]. Neither Oswald nor any of the rest of us has ever been able to make out why everyone should have laughed so. But they did. They said the lottery was the success of the afternoon. And the ladies kept on congratulating Mr. Biggs.

The difference here between Scout and Oswald is that Lee doesn't make a mockery of Scout. Scout is entirely reliable as a narrator. The conclusions for what she has closely observed are left up to the audience. In fact, I use the scene from To Kill a Mockingbird in my literature course to illustrate how fiction is different from non-fiction. The audience is never told why Atticus behaves the way he does. 

Nesbit doesn't tell anyone either--but the "hmmm, now, now, why did that happen, I wonder?" tone is laid on a bit too thick in places. It's not that different from the hilarious jokes-in-passing in Pixar's Toy Story, where they work perfectly, becoming a bit-too-self-conscious in some of Pixar's other movies. 

Nesbit is generally quite remarkable with child characters. The Railway Children possibly captures better than any of her books the day-to-day thoughts and reflections of ordinary kids. And the adults who step in to help don't turn the siblings' behavior into punch lines.  

Celebrating Eugene Woodbury

My oldest brother Eugene died at the beginning of this year. Today, June 8th, is his birthday. 

Tributes to Eugene can be found on his blog:

• A Tribute to Eugene's Interest in Engines
• A Tribute to Eugene's Time in Japan
• A Tribute to Eugene's Writing and Translation Work

As I mention on his blog, I intend to republish his novel about his mission--Tokyo South--and several of his translations, which original works reside in the public domain. The republished novels will become available through his blog.

The photos are Eugene; Eugene and Kate; Eugene at the center with his siblings. 

All the Ms: How Deep Does Culture Go?

In a previous post on the Ms (the A-Z List where I try out all the fiction books in the "M" section of the library--try out as in, I read the first chapter or first 10 pages), I comment that "[s]o-called great authors are as much slaves to trends as anyone else."

The issue here is a fascinating one. It is also one that I change my mind about every time I reflect on the issue:

How much are artists a product of their time periods and how much do they transcend those time periods due to their imaginations? 

On the one hand, Shakespeare definitely reflects not only the tropes and plot ideas of contemporary (to himself) artists, Shakespeare also reflects his own culture. He reflects political and historical matters that interested his audiences and would have been common conversational gambits in the streets and taverns. And he uses the language of his world. His mindset or perspective reflects the beliefs of that time. 

On the other hand, audiences still enjoy Shakespeare today--despite changes (some changes) in customs and language and interests. His plays are remarkably translatable--not only into other languages but between mediums. Idioms and characters from Shakespeare are common fodder in many cultures. One possible reason is that people adapt easily to a variety of art forms. Another possible reason is that Shakespeare captures eternal aspects of the human condition, experiences that transcend Elizabethan and Jacobean England. 

This past semester, I distributed an article about Dickens and Poe to my Literature students. Was Dickens influenced in the writing of David Copperfield by meeting Poe? Did he use aspects of Poe's life in the creation of the character of David Copperfield? 

I chose this article for three reason:

1. To underscore that true understanding/knowledge of an author can not be AI-derived since AI does little more than perpetuate stereotypes. The author of the article, Harry Lee Poe, points out that many scholars connect Dickens to David Copperfield. However--

Jane Smiley has observed that Dickens loved David Copperfield 'as if it were his autobiography', then added insightfully in contrast or defiance of the prevailing view, 'but in fact the incidents of the novel and the incidents of Dickens' early life were quite different.' Smiley goes on to argue that David Copperfield evokes Dickens' life without relating it. (my emphasis)

2. To underscore that the author of the article is only able to argue that David Copperfield closely resembles Edgar Allan Poe by KNOWING specific information about both Dickens and Poe. Dickens and Poe did meet; in addition, Poe reviewed Dickens' work (positively!); and Dickens and Poe corresponded. Dickens later visited Poe's mother-in-law. The end of the article presents 16 points of biographical information about Poe's life. 

3. To underscore that the biography-argument approach to literature (authors are the product of their times and upbringing) is not a given. As the author states, 

Though David Copperfield has flashes of autobiographical moments, as all of Dickens's novels do, it succeeds as a novel because it is not about Dickens. He has the necessary distance from the character of David Copperfield to create a work of art - of imagination. The imagination collects up a great storehouse of experiences from which the artist creates a work of fiction. Source criticism provides a fascinating insight into the world from which a writer fashions fiction. (my emphasis)

The passage reminds me of a quote I use to begin Chapter 4 in my thesis. In Ngaio Marsh's When in Rome, Alleyn reflects:

The Van der Veghels broke into excited comment. Grant, they warmly informed him, had based the whole complex of imagery in his book upon [the well]. "As the deeper reaches of Simon's personality were explored--" on and on they went, explaining the work to its author. Alleyn, who admired the book, thought they were probably right but laid far too much insistence on an essentially delicate process of thought.

I would substitute "delicate" with "ambiguous" or "multifaceted." LOTS of conscious and unconscious elements go into forming a brain that produces a piece of art or writing, from genetics to culture to upbringing to other artists to personality to choices and, yes, imagination. 

The article about Dickens and Poe:

 Poe, Harry Lee. "Poe, Dickens, and David Copperfield: Biography – but Whose?" The Dickensian 115.509 (2019): 272. ProQuest. 

Books to Movies: Two Towers, Sudden versus Gradual Change

In the book, Theoden is aging, bad-tempered, and querulous. He is under a spell but the "spell" is a good, flawed man who has listened to bad advice.

In the movie, he is senile and enspelled. Gandalf releases him at which point, in one of the most heartbreaking scenes in the movie, he asks, "Where is my son?"

In the book, Treebeard calls a conference at which Merry and Pippin speak. The Ents then decide to move against Saruman.

In the movie, the Ents determine to ignore Saruman. Merry then convinces Treebeard to directly witness the destruction Saruman has made of Fangorn, and Treebeard gets angry.

I agree with the first choice, not the second.

The first sudden change is dramatic. It avoided turning the sequence into a far longer arc than it needs to be. Theoden's internal arc of coming to terms with his age occurs later in the movie, as it should.

Treebeard suddenly getting angry, however, departs from his fundamental character. I understand the problem: Merry and Pippin are responsible for bringing Saruman's deceit to the forefront of Treebeard's mind. Watching diplomacy in action is far less interesting than watching a tree-man get wrathful.

However, the scene in the film could still have been dramatic. Merry and Pippin could have presented a kind of show-and-tell summary of their adventures to the Ents. The Ents could then have reached a decision through rational argument. The point of the Ents is that they are deliberately angry, not emotionally angry. They know exactly what they are doing.

Treebeard does get more wrathful as he sees the destruction wrought by Saruman--but, still, he sets out with a purpose. It is possible to take warlike action without being at the mercy of emotional upheaval.

In both cases, I appreciate that the movie provides visual representations of change rather than discussions of change. Gollum's change/non-change, for instance, is skillfully done. Could Gollum change? Does he, at first (before Faramir)? Is Sam right to be continually suspicious? Tolkien doesn't answer these questions or even imply a particular answer. Gollum is as ambiguous to the readers as he is to the characters--and to the viewer. 

The point here is that Tolkien and the trilogy rely on characters that change: change their minds, change their attitudes, change their lives. Those changes need to be shown visually, and Jackson uses multiple techniques to make the changes evident. Some techniques are better than others.

Montgomery's Anne: Fallible and Fun

I remark in another context that "Anne of Green Gables...is the Western answer [to the fallible female heroine]." 

My point in the other context is that manga is somewhat better these days at creating female heroes who can fail yet remain protagonists. 

Recently, I read a complaint that Eilonwy from Lloyd Alexander's Prydain series wasn't treated more seriously even though she was just as courageous as Taran!! But as a kid, I never found Eilonwy all that enchanting; as an adult, I find her behavior in the early books mostly irritating. It truly isn't okay for someone to crash a military expedition, all for the sake of proving "I'm as good as you!"

In fairness, I don't think Alexander thought so either. Eilonwy is an individual, not a role model or virtue-signaling character type. 

However, Eilonwy never has to come to terms with her behavior in the early books. In the case that I mention, she turns out to be right: they should have let her go on the mission from the beginning! (In real life, her gate-crashing would potentially lead to the entire party being massacred.)

As stated above, I think manga generally handles this type of heroine better. She may do rash things, like Kasahara in Library Wars, but she learns from her mistakes and improves, without losing her joie de vivre. 

Anne of Green Gables is an accomplished product of this approach--one reason, I suggest, she is so beloved. Readers truly don't enjoy slogging through the so-called tribulations of perfect specimens (one reason, earlier children's fables in which well-behaved girls and boys are rewarded and badly behaved girls and boys are punished failed; these plots were successfully mocked by writers like E. Nesbit and Mark Twain). 

Much better to have a raw, lively, risk-taking, joyful character who matures than a character who is right and triumphant again and again and again. 

Ngaoi Marsh's Alleyn: The Character Who is Less Obnoxious than How He is Written

Patrick Malahide as Alleyn* 

My first encounter with Ngaoi Marsh's Golden Age mysteries was in college. Whenever I was about to fly home, I would go to the mystery fiction section of the BYU Bookstore and pick out a new Marsh to get me through the plane ride.

My favorite is Killer Dolphin, which introduces one of her best secondary characters, Peregrine Jay. I also quite like Grave Mistake and Singing in the Shrouds, although the murder in the latter is downright daft (and the kind of thing that would ordinarily lead to a detective being called on the carpet).

I have mixed feelings about Marsh herself. She was one of those people back in the day who made snide remarks about poor Sayers falling in love with her hero-detective. What makes this nastiness not only distasteful but bizarre is that Marsh is far more worshipful of Alleyn than Sayers is of Wimsey.

With Lord Peter Wimsey, Sayers may have created her ideal counterpart, but she tackles him with a degree of objectivity missing from Marsh's treatment of Alleyn. Marsh may not be in love with Alleyn, but she treats him like the ultimate cool, overly handsome guy in that really awesome clique that everyone supposedly can't wait to join.

Alleyn is NEVER wrong (even when he IS wrong: in real life, half the passengers from Singing in the Shrouds would have sued Scotland Yard). When he is self-deprecating, other characters rush in to correct his erroneous self-analysis (no, no, you were wonderful!). People who initially sneer at him, end up admiring him. His subordinates adore him. He is constantly impressing people with his knowledge of Shakespeare and his insightful quips. He would be totally irritating if he didn't manage to be a character in his own right. 

A young David Hyde Pierce as Wimsey!

Contrast this with Sayers' Wimsey, who isn't over-the-top handsome (though he has a nice body) and isn't universally beloved. Some people dislike him; others misunderstand him; the occasional murderer loathes him. He does win some people over, but even people who like him--like Charles Parker--remain objective about him. Sayers never forgets that people simply don't react the same way to the same person all the time.

Marsh seems to think that as long as someone is "popular," no one will ever, ever take issue with that someone. It's a startlingly immature perspective that is reflected in some of her comments re: Sayers. Unintentionally or not, Marsh comes across as a cliquey high schooler laughing about that weird girl over there.

Me, I side with the weird girl.

Still, Marsh is a good writer, and the mysteries are fun. And Alleyn manages to exist as a "real" character in his own right. So much of the applause comes from other characters, rather than Alleyn himself, it is possible to admire his detective work (even if I am far less susceptible to the oohing and aahing). 

*I didn't care for Patrick Malahide as Alleyn at first, but now, I quite like him. He is actually much closer to Marsh's description of Alleyn than he appears at first--though he isn't as tall as Alleyn is supposed to be. He is also quite approachable--the actor has decent comedic timing--and is treated with normal respect (not hero-worshiping respect) by his subordinates. He is, in sum, somewhat more likable than the book version. 

Joseph of Old: So Many Versions!

I keep moving this post around. To what author should Joseph of Old be assigned? 

I decided to assign him to "Mann" for Thomas Mann, who wrote Joseph and His Brothers and Joseph in Egypt. 

Joseph's story from the Old Testament is a fantastic one! It is one of the most intact of the narratives in Genesis and is considered by some scholars to be the Bible's Odyssey or Iliad: a seminal piece of literature that has been told and retold.

There are numerous media retellings out there. When I was growing up I adored a recording one of my brothers owned [borrowed] of Webber's Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dream Coat. I knew all the lyrics to every song. I saw the musical as teenager and naturally watched the Donny Osmond version.

I later watched a non-musical version with Ben Kingsley and Paul Mercurio. However, my favorite is the New Media Genesis Project version. Films associated with the project came out in the 1980s: Bible stories in which a narrator in English relays the story as the actors speak in Aramaic and other languages. One reason I like their Joseph interpretation is that the final scene isn't a joke. 

I do love the musical but the serious confrontation between Joseph and the Brothers--the building of tensions as Benjamin is accused of theft--turns into a calypso song, which irritates me. I don't care if people want to sing about famine--and I own the hilarious Quentin Blake book of the musical, full of skinny cows.

But the final set of scenes deserves something other than a joke. Joseph has reason to be uncertain of his father's survival, Benjamin's survival, and how his brothers will react to his reappearance. He is battling with lingering anger and uncertainty and the rationality that comes with age and forgiveness. He is a fully fleshed-out human being. Very relatable! 

There's a reason the tale lasted and got collected.  

Despise not caring for that scene, the Donny Osmond version that mixes the classroom with action and presents a delightful narrator is worth watching--one can see why Donny Osmond was such a hit!

 

Rival Characters: The Good, the Bad, the Pointless

Robin McKinley's Beauty in her seminal work Beauty brings up the issue of rivals. In the classic tale, Beauty's sisters are rivals (as are the stepsisters in Cinderella). In McKinley's retelling, the sisters are entirely sweet and pleasant and supportive. Their behavior is a nice change from the over-the-top unpleasant version of the sister (see #2 and #3 below). 

Love Boat has a Cinderella tale where the stepsisters are too gauche and rude and unappealing to be even vaguely believable; the episode is hilarious, however, because the stepmother has no qualms at cozening up to Cinderella once she realizes which way the wind is blowing. The rivals are played for farce. 

Rivals  can be useful characters. Unfortunately, they sometimes feel like the product of vindictive self-indulgence by the writer. 

Rivals fall into several categories:

1. Awful people but not really rivals. 

Miss Bingley falls into this category. Whatever she, her sister, or Charles may have hoped, Darcy has zero interest in her and doesn't even seem to realize that he is supposed to. 

However, Austen plays fair. Miss Bingley isn't entirely unlikable. She isn't evil. Mostly jealous, she ends up sabotaging her own efforts. At the end of the novel, Austen tells us that Miss Bingley will make nice with Elizabeth: better to be a family friend of the Darcys than not!

2. Obviously awful & conniving.

Lucy Steele uses her "secret" engagement to  Edward to put Elinor in her place. Her arrival in the story is a little too convenient to the plot.  However, Austen is fair to Lucy or at least to the situation. That is, Lucy is complex enough that her "confidences" are not really something that Elinor can protest. Is Lucy jealous? Honest? Cruel? Self-satisfied and smug? 

The behavior is obviously unkind and the opposite of honorable. But what the character believes about herself is a different matter.

3. The non-friendly serious rival. 

Here is where I get creeped out. The non-friendly serious rival is actually trying to break the couple up, and the sheer arrogance of "I know what is best for you--it is me" sends me searching for something else to read/watch. I gather from the number of films and series out there with this type of rival that some people just love for a male or female protagonist to have endless choices but I find the constant competition tedious at best and nearly sociopathic at worst. 

4. The friendly serious rival. 

However, the friendly serious rival--common in manga--is quite fun. The friendly serious rival competes but gives way graciously, or at least gracefully, and remains friends with the main characters. 

Ryu Jihye in Semantic Error falls into this category. She's a decent person, honestly interested in Sangwoo (not for his potentially great future or family or money). She helps him relate to people and remains his friend after he and Jaeyeong pair up. 

Her rivalry is with Jaeyeong. And Jaeyeong knows it. He cleverly out-maneuvers her on several occasions, as indicated by his wink.

5. The hilarious rival. 

The teenage female high school students in His Favorite fall into this category. They pursue Sato. Then he starts dating Yoshida and tells everyone. Instead of beating up Yoshida (which Yoshida expects), they tell him, "Stop being such a wuss. We're going to keep competing with you, you know." 

Except often their competition backfires--as when they get Sato to study with them and he spends the whole time asking them dating advice, which annoys them to no end. Don't you understand that we are serious competitors here? 

Rivals are going to arise in romance: here's to hoping writers handle them in a non-revolting manner!