Axe to the Frozen Sea

Dear Readers...

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Wed, 26 Dec 2012 20:07:00 +0000

2012 is closing quickly. A number of projects are opening up for me, so for the near future I have decided to focus my efforts on work outside of this blog. You can still keep up with the news from my writing life at my homepage. And I will be continuing to write and comment on literature and publishing over at the Boston Book Blog. Feel free to browse through the archives here. And check back for any significant updates I may post (including news about the release of my novel).

Happy 2013, and good reading!

Writing Workshop Pros and Cons

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 09 Nov 2012 18:57:00 +0000

Ah, the writing workshop. A staple of your diet if you intend to pursue any kind of serious writing. Some writers are successfully helped by them and go on to publication. Some writers bounce from workshop to workshop as a hobby. Some writers stay far away and insist that if writers of the past never had workshops, they’re not necessary. Here are some of the pros and cons of the workshop:

Pro: Critical feedback from peers

By far the most significant benefit of a writing workshop is getting feedback from your peers on a story you’ve written. Writing is a solitary act done in a vacuum, and to have an audience of experienced readers who know what they’re talking about pick out your blind spots is valuable.

Con: Feedback is through subjective eyes

Having a dozen readers of your work giving you feedback is fantastic, but each one of those readers has different preferences of what they like to read: some may enjoy sparse style, some may enjoy verbose imagery, some may prefer something in-between, which means someone in the group isn’t going to like your style. Different literary preferences are fine, but it won’t give you a supportive reading of your story.

Pro: Exposes a stuck story to readers

If there’s a story you’ve been working on for a while that you know is just off, bring it to workshop. Having your friends say “It’s the best story ever!” when you have 80 million rejections of it doesn’t lead to any solutions; get some experienced eyes to look at it and help you nail down what you need to change to make it publishable.

Con: Ultimately it’s up to the writer to judge appropriate feedback

Not everything everyone says is going to be useful, so you have to choose which feedback you’ll keep and which you’ll toss. Ultimately, if you feel the readers were way off on their assessment, and you choose not to take their advice, it leads to wasted time for all parties.

Pro: Creates a personal, intimate atmosphere of writers

Reading one another’s work gets you real intimate, real fast! The expression goes, “Writing is easy; all you do is sit down and open a vein”; you’re essentially showing your bloody pages to strangers, and that creates a bond. Workshoppers have to provide a safe environment for one another while gaining trust quickly, which can make for a fun, deep class. Plus, you can get into some really good discussion about authors, books, and the writing life.

Con: Workshops are ultimately fake

While that intimacy and bonding might be valuable for your work, after the MFA or after the workshop class you will be back to writing on your own. Will you sustain it? The workshop environment is a contrived safety net. Enjoy what you get from the workshop because it will disappear quickly.

Pro: Helps grow the writer

A writer chooses to engage themselves in a workshop because they desire to grow as an artist. Revealing your private work for others to read and critique is a huge step in trust, but one that can lead the writer – if they’re willing – to growth. There’s an inspiring article in the September/October issue of Poets & Writers of a writer growing from a fumbling first year MFA student into a published author.

Con: Doesn’t guarantee publication or growth

Unfortunately workshopping a story will never guarantee publication. It won’t even guarantee revision, and the person’s work you just spent an hour workshopping could go home and toss it in the drawer and never look at it again. On a macro level, a whole MFA program could be spent workshopping stories that the writers never revise or sends out.

There you have it. Keep these in mind if you’re thinking about pursuing an MFA or joining a local writing group. If you’ve been through the workshop wringer, feel free to add your pros and cons below!

Kafka's Narrator, or, Why So Many Animals?

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 02 Nov 2012 22:55:00 +0000

Franz Kafka is mostly known for stories that were written through a third person voice, yet it seems he was very interested in exploring narrative through first person as well. We see very swiftly moving plots in “The Metamorphosis,” “In the Penal Colony,” “A Hunger Artist,” and “Blumfeld, an Elderly Bachelor,” where third person seems to stimulate and extract a more expository voice from Kafka. He presents us with characters and setting that are located in time and space, and that move across a plot arc. His work in first person often downplays plot, overshadowing it by long paragraphs of philosophic musings (the kind of on-going musings that an editor would pare back quickly). Yet it’s his first person narrative work that might be the most experimental and ambitious. The only stories told in first person that have a somewhat forward-moving plot (in the way a reader would expect it) are “A Country Doctor,” “The Village Schoolmaster,” and perhaps “A Report to the Academy.” In these stories there is a pinpointable beginning, middle, and end. His stories that seem more like musings or sketches, yet which are very long in scope, are “The Great Wall of China,” “Investigations of a Dog,” “A Little Woman,” “The Burrow,” and “Josephine the Singer, or the Mouse Folk.” There are similarities between all of these stories, in that the reader is never made clear on who the narrator is. We may know something of their life and their pursuits, but we gain very little about them. For instance, we know that the narrator of “The Great Wall of China” is some kind of member of Chinese society. We know that the narrator of “A Little Woman” is in a relationship with the insufferable titular character. We know that the narrator of “Josephine...” is a member of the race of mice. But we get very little else on these characters, save the thoughts, politics, and philosophies of their brains.

It’s interesting to note that Kafka often writes from the point of view of an anthropomorphized animal. His first person narrators have included a chimpanzee reflecting upon his entrance into human society; a dog who witnesses other dogs standing on their hind legs enacting a musical number, and attempts to discover the societal implications of it; a burrowing animal who concerns himself with the protection of his food store only to let his imagination get the better of him at a noise; and a mouse who tells about a singer and her influence on their society. (“The Metamorphosis” is the only story in which a human is actually transformed into an animal; all these other stories start with human-like, sentient animals.) Who knows why Kafka chose to write stories like this, through an animal’s point of view. He may have seen it as a way of fantastical detachment from the subject matter he wanted to write about. He may have used it as commentary to show that human thoughts and worries are animal-like, but conversely could show that animals, if sentient, would have the same thoughts and worries as humans. One example is in “The Burrow,” when the narrator hears a whistling sound within a passage near to his dwelling. His imagination flies away with what it could be, from ventilation holes catching a breeze to an enemy of prey digging close to threaten him. By the end of the story we don’t know what the whistling noise was, but the imagination of the narrator made the terror all the more real. It’s something we as humans do: use our imagination to over-inflate the worry and terror of a situation we can’t determine the cause of.

The effect is heightened in the fact that these narrators exist in a world that is so narrow and almost paranoid (paranoia could well describe the state of the narrator in “The Burrow”). These narrators are not out living in their own story, so to say, interacting with others and moving through a plot line. They are tumbling through thoughts in their own minds, and the reader could almost get a sense of being in a very tight, confined space with them. The only reality we know in the story is the one we happen to see through the eyes of the narrator, and even that reality consists of the narrator’s own thoughts and philosophies of reality, not reality itself. For example, the reader can only know Josephine through the lens of the narrator, which is somewhat detached, skewed, and cynical towards Josephine and her place in society. In “Investigations of a Dog” we’re not even sure what kind of society this is in that humans are never seen and food “falls from above.” We have to cling to Kafka’s narrators and keep up with them through the mysterious corridors they walk. Or is Kafka playing with the idea that reality is only what we make or see of it?

Kafka and “In the Penal Colony”

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 30 Oct 2012 02:24:00 +0000

I remember reading “In the Penal Colony” years ago and thinking, “Cool, but what? But cool.” Of course as one gets older one can see the deeper workings crafted into the story, like the necessary swirls and flourishes around the straight letters of the story’s written verdict. “In the Penal Colony” is vividly portrayed, wildly macabre, and filled with negative space, so to speak, in that what’s not mentioned rings as loudly as what is.

There are four characters who are simply known as the officer, the explorer, the soldier, and the condemned man. In the translation by the Muirs those titles are not capitalized as actual titles. The men therefore are not only nameless positions or attributes, they are de-personified positions or attributes, further making them into “everymen.” The penal colony remains unnamed, and it is on an unnamed island somewhere. Only the Commandant’s title is capitalized, yet in going back and forth between the old Commandant and the new Commandant the reader has no choice but to blur the two.

The action of the story is somewhat straightforward: In a penal colony somewhere there is a strange, unique torture device that renders a condemned man’s verdict in script upon their body until they die; the officer in charge explains the apparatus to a foreign explorer, straps the condemned man in, but then frees him, inserts himself into the machine and, malfunctioning, the machine kills him.

But this is a story written by Franz Kafka, which means we’re left with more questions to ask of the text than answers we may receive.

The first is this: Is this a commentary on capital punishment? Yes and no. This story could be read seeing the torture device as a barbaric, inhumane piece of judgement (as the explorer pronounces it), a device itself that is falling into disrepair in the colony because the greater authority no longer cares about its special kind of exacting justice. Spare parts are hard to come by. The people of the island no longer come out to watch the executions. The new Commandant has little interest in it. The old Commandant built it and advocated for it, but it seems to be the last vestige of an old regime and ideology. Kafka may be, and probably is, commenting on capital punishment. But for a writer who turns his characters into bugs, there must be more here.

So then we ask, What else is there? Why this particular method of judgement, an elaborately creative machine that essentially carves art into the body while killing it? Why no trial for the condemned man, his judgement pronounced on hearsay with no chance for defense (like Joseph K. in The Trial)? What is the significance of the sixth hour, when “Enlightenment comes to the most dull-witted” and the condemned man seems to have an epiphany of his crime? Why does the officer continue to wash his hands, like Pilate after condemning Jesus to crucifixion? Why the mention of the different issues with language, in that the officer and the explorer speak French, which the condemned man does not understand, effectively shielding him from the comprehension of his own death? In what language is the judgement written upon the condemned, or is it a language only the officer can read? The officer has the pronouncement of his own condemnation “Be just!” already scripted for programming, so was his self-execution preplanned? Does the officer’s mercy in letting the condemned man go therefore make him “worthy” of the judgement of “Be just!”? Why the overt messianic theme surrounding the grave of the old Commandant found hidden beneath a table at the tea house? Is there any connection between Mosaic/Levitical law and the apparatus, the return of the the messianic figure who will reestablish that law, and the fact that the people have turned away from absolute justice and any belief in the prophecy? Is the officer acting as a substitution, atoning for the sins of the nameless condemned man he allows to go free, and therefore with his death obliterates the old structure of the law and judgement; is the officer the resurrected Commandant? Why the farce of the solider and the condemned man, who provide this strange background play? Why is the officer given so much real estate with his words in this story? Why are we not seeing an actual prisoner’s execution, but a man who is a solider and a watch, obviously part of the penal colony staff? And what is the significance of the ladies always surrounding the new Commandant?

Thematically, Kafka seems drawn towards this idea of judgement, especially judgement pronounced by either an absent party (The Trial, “The Metamorphosis”), an unexpected party (“The Judgement”), or an unfair party (“In the Penal Colony”). He explores the ideas of a person sentenced to something by an outside force (bureaucracy? society? God?) and then having to suffer the consequences of it, which usually lead to death (“The Judgement,” “In the Penal Colony,” Joseph K. was eventually executed, and essentially Gregor Samsa’s condemnation to live as a bug lead to his death). What he’s portraying is a world without free will, or a world with a false sense of free will. Determinism is fine within a worldview that contains a sovereign, just God, but Kafka is giving us a world devoid of not only a guiding divinity, but a world devoid of any kind of objective system, truth, or moralism to latch on to.

Kafka and "The Metamorphosis"

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 23 Oct 2012 02:07:00 +0000

One of the classes I'm in this semester centers around the writing of Anton Chekhov and Franz Kafka. We are now on to Kafka, and what follows are some of my responses.

I enjoy Kafka. There’s something strange and intriguing about what he does in fiction, and though I haven’t widely read his work, I like it. I even named my blog after one of his quotes (“Axe to the Frozen Sea”). I even paused over the flattened, dead body of a cockroach on the platform at Government Center once and asked, forlornly, “Gregor??” I think “The Metamorphosis,” like Melville’s “Bartleby the Scrivener,” is one of those stories that will always drive me crazy in a good way, in that I want to understand it more and more, but as I keep peeling layers there’s more layers. Gregor wakes up one morning transformed into a giant bug, and is still concerned about making his train, and thinks that if he could just get to work everything would be fine. The only person in the story who is significantly unaware of the effects of his transformation are him! Obviously he’s aware that something is wrong, as he sets about trying to coordinate his little legs and tip over his beetle-body to get to the floor and open the door; obviously he’s aware that something dramatic has happened to him (maybe one could look into the psychology of denial on Gregor Samsa as he wakes). But waking up to find oneself turned into a giant bug would seem to elicit a much more of a reaction than what Gregor gives. Which would make the reader think that he’s not really a bug at all, but that it’s a symbol for something else that provokes alienation from his family who, even if he’s not a bug, treats him like a bug. But then again he’s crawling around on the ceiling and eating garbage, so he must be a bug! Ah, Kafka! (It’s like Bartleby’s “I would prefer not to.” What does that mean? Ah!)

There are so many themes in “The Metamorphosis” – identity, communication, alienation, economy – but not one is overtly made the focus of the narrative so it’s hard to pinpoint exactly what Kafka is getting at. (Maybe he’s getting at entirely nothing.) Kafka creates a world where the transformation into a giant bug is not explained, and its origin is not questioned (the family does have a conversation about what they will do about this thing that befell them, but they never ask about how it befell them in the first place). That in and of itself suggests that there is something working on a deeper level, but what? Was Kafka, as a Jew living in Prague in the early 20th century, commenting on the alienation and rejection the Jewish community was receiving around him (anti-Semitic material often called Jews insects)? Is the story about some conversion or lifestyle choice a man makes that garners rejection and ostracism from his family? Is it about vocational identity and losing the ability to be a breadwinner in the household? Related to that, is it about finding happiness and identity in work, rather than have someone financially provide, as Gregor’s family discovers? Is it about a decent into insanity? Is it about Grete’s sacrificial love? Is it about miscommunication, and the transcendent power of music to communicate when Grete plays her violin? Is it a reverse It’s a Wonderful Life, where everyone is actually much better off without Gregor? Kafka leaves the reader to figure this out (which is why it drives me crazy!) and one could even question if Kafka was even aware of these different things woven into the story, or if he just wrote an experimental piece of fiction because he wanted to.

Questions to Ask of the MFA

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 16 Oct 2012 10:47:00 +0000

What questions should we be asking of the Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing? It seems there are new programs popping up all over the place; it also seems like the MFA is turning into the new certification for fiction writers. Yet not everyone is convinced. Since I'm in an MFA program right now, and seeing things from the inside, I have some questions:

- Is it needed?
- Does it churn out one kind of writer?
- Does it promote scholarship?
- Should you pay for it?

- Will it remain marginal or turn into the standard degree all writers pursue?

More on these things later. Right now, if you're in an MFA program, go ahead and ask these questions of yourself and your program.

Chekhov's Later Works

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Mon, 08 Oct 2012 11:00:00 +0000

One of the classes I'm in this semester centers around the writing of Anton Chekhov and Franz Kafka. We started out semester reading Chekhov, and what follows are my responses.

Chekhov continues to mature his work into the later years, bringing more complex characters and deeper themes into his short stories. The idea of fate, of characters being subjected to uncontrollable situations around them, becomes a more prominent theme, and Chekhov grows in deftness at showing the facts of a scene and letting the reader decipher for themselves what is playing out. There are still some themes that stay the same, though, particularly the theme of vocation.

Throughout Chekhov’s work his characters will often speak about the idea of determinism applicable to situation. For example, in many of his stories (e.g, “Easter Eve”) when death is spoken of a character will respond that it is “God’s will.” This small albeit continuous assertion of a greater will determining each character’s steps can be seen as an underlying theme more broadly fleshed out in some of his later stories. In “The Lady with the Dog,” Gurov and Anna, after meeting and carrying on an affair, realize that “it seemed to them that fate itself had meant them for one another, and they could not understand why he had a wife and she a husband; and it was a though they were a pair of birds of passage, caught and forced to live in different cages.” They are somehow subject to the will and demands of a fate they did not choose. Similarly, in “In the Ravine,” the death of Lipa’s child is referred to as “God’s will,” yet in a more broader sense each character is subject to events that happen to them: Anisim’s marriage is arranged, the reader hears about his arrest and conviction in passing, Aksinya’s land is taken away from her, Lipa’s baby is killed. Each character seems to be affected by outward circumstances, rarely taking any active role in their own story. The same can be seen in “The Darling.” Olenka continuously loses the men in her life; she is a passive character only defined by the men in her life. Her vocabulary is only based on the man she is with that moment, and without anyone near “she had no opinions of any sort.” She is told at one point that “‘Everything happens as it is ordained...it must be because it is the will of God...’” She is a passive character in her own story, waiting to have circumstance and identity placed upon her.

Chekhov’s ability to present scenes to the readers without editorializing becomes more deft in his later works. In his early story, “The Cook’s Wedding,” he inserts his own opinions about marriage and property; in later stories he not only removes himself as the narrator but also knows what not to include in order to leave the meaning up to the reader. In “The Student” Chekhov sets the scene of two woman at a fire being told the story of Peter’s betrayal of Jesus. The women are quite moved by the story, and the student speculates a bit why they are, but the reader doesn’t necessarily know. The scene makes an impression on us and leaves us wondering why there was an emotional reaction. The scene, set up similarly to the conditions to that night of Peter’s betrayal, also leaves us grasping at implied symbolism that Chekhov may have intended. He may not have deliberately added any additional symbolism, but by being intentionally narrow in the writing of the scene, he leaves a lot to the reader’s imagination. Similarly, in “A Doctor’s Visit,” Liza doesn’t go into full detail of how terrible her life is. Instead we get an impression of it by Korolyov’s walk around the factory builds. Chekhov deliberately chose to show us those buildings at night and on a holiday, when there were no men around – no talk, no work, no lively scene – in order to give us the sense of space, emptiness, and eeriness that Liza must feel by being in such a place.

The importance Chekhov places on vocation does not change in his later works, as we see with such insertions as “Elizarov the contractor, and beside him Yakov the school watchman,” “Grigory kept a grocer’s shop...Anisim, was in the police in the detective department,” “Ivan Ivanovitch, the veterinary surgeon, and Burkin, the high-school teacher...,” among other examples. Each character is still defined by their vocation – it is their identity, according to Chekhov – and as Chekhov was writing into the later part of the 19th century, his stories feature more factors and industry in addition to his familiar peasants, clergy, and doctors.

As his work evolved, Chekhov began to work more with themes in his pieces, particularly the theme of fate, and grew better at his ability to write those stories.

Chekhov's Middle Works

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Thu, 04 Oct 2012 11:00:00 +0000

One of the classes I'm in this semester centers around the writing of Anton Chekhov and Franz Kafka. We started out semester reading Chekhov, and what follows are my responses.

As Chekhov progresses in his writing career, it’s interesting to see how he begins to incorporate deeper, more challenging themes into his otherwise straightforward vignettes. Certainly his treatment of the moral themes of humanity can be seen in his earlier work, such as in “The Dependents,” and his inclusion of social and class concerns can be seen as early as the last paragraph of “The Cook’s Wedding.” Yet the layering of psychology, social and class commentary, and other themes – and his deftness at handling the layering – begins to show up mid-career for him. His pieces seem less accessible in that they require a bit more engagement from the reader; while his earlier stories could be read as entertainment with a second layer of meaning available for the reader who chooses to unearth it, his later works present the richer content to the reader head on. For instance, in “Neighbours” the reader must necessarily be challenged by the moral implications of the plot; there’s no separating the story’s entertainment value from the story’s moral environment. Likewise, Chekhov’s characters become more fleshed out, more complicated (e.g., “Neighbours,” “In Exile,” “Ward No. 6”), yet his characters sometimes remain as mere stereotypes/archetypes (e.g., “The Grasshopper,” “Rothschild’s Fiddle”). And while he may flesh out his male characters, his women still remain depthless, flighty, and somewhat of a mystery (to the reader and perhaps to Chekhov himself).

In doing a quick survey of each story, I took note of the following:

Chekhov does very well in portraying a woman with a skewed view of herself in “The Princess.” Princess Vera Gavrilovna (who is only known by her title throughout the story) visits a monastery, and is quite challenged by a doctor’s critique of her behavior towards others. After the challenge the princess seems to venture towards an epiphany of her wrongs, but the change never comes, and she is as disillusioned about her own self-worth at the end as at the beginning. She sees herself as a god or savior for the people around her (“The princess fancied she brought from the outside world just such comfort as the ray of light or the bird.”), indulging in naive self-idolatry, and there’s no coincidence Chekhov set the seen at a monastery. She does not change at the end, but that’s the story: even when her wrongs are exposed to her, she remains ignorant of her sins against humanity.

In advising others on their writing process, Chekhov insisted that the author must not insert their own didacticism into their stories, but portray characters with different views and listen in on what they say. That’s exactly what he’s done in “Neighbours.” The story follows the response of Pyotr to his sister who has run away to live with a married man – an issue of which readers will fall on one side or the other – yet the presentation of the narrative never seems to take sides. Pyotr has a righteous anger with which he intends to go to Zina and Vlassitch, yet his inability to speak up for his family, and his intimidation of Vlassitch as someone Pyotr wishes he could be, renders him wordless to address the issue at hand. While Vlassitch and Zina may describe their love as fate and free-mindedness, there is a sense of unhappiness and damnation that hangs over them, especially in the macabre house they live in, where, in the story of the divinity student, holiness was put to death because of temptation (which could be a theme Chekhov is suggesting). Either way, it’s a very morally challenging story, one the reader has to bring mind and emotion to in order to fully engage.

“The Grasshopper” seems like Chekhov’s attempt at a longer, romantic, perhaps popular piece, a story of betrayal and loss that juxtaposes the artistic and scientific community, and asks, “What is celebrity?” Olga is a member of the arts community, but exists more as a “groupie” within it, befriending artists and writers and musicians, and receiving their coaching to further her own artistic talents, yet never fully becoming a true artist. She is always coming alongside the newest celebrity, a kind of societal innovator in the same way that her husband, a surgeon and dissecting demonstrator, is an innovator in the sciences. Her house goes from being filled with artists to being filled with doctors when Dymov’s death approaches, and as they glorify him in his contribution to the sciences she realizes that he was a celebrity in a way she never considered. Still, Olga’s story is one of flighty passion and interest in the superficial (thus “the grasshopper” perhaps), and her storyline with Ryabovsky is predictable. It seemed Chekhov was interested in writing a story about the differences or similarities between the two societies, and needed a vehicle for it; thus, the typical love triangle story.

The major point in “In Exile” is to ask, “Who really is alive and what is happiness?” Chekhov again juxtaposes two different men with two different beliefs: the older, named (and nicknamed) ferryman who believes that having nothing equates happiness, and the young, unnamed Tatar who believes that personal connection to loved ones, even for a day, can sustain the most rugged climate: “Better one day of happiness than nothing.” (The Tatar also seems to also echo the psalmist: “Better is one day in Your courts than thousands elsewhere.”)

Chekhov rises the great debate of humanism, suffering, and the life of the mind in “Ward No. 6,” yet sets the bulk of the philosophical dialogue between a doctor and a mental patient (not necessarily between the sane and insane). Both Ivan and Andrey are both attributed with quirks, social impairments, and reasonable philosophies. Chekhov does not set up a dualism here, nor does he patronize Ivan’s state of mind. In fact, Ivan seems the “saner” of the two when they get into their talk about Stoicism and sacrifice, and in the end Andrey is unable to withstand the “suffer” the patients receive each day at the hand of Nikita.

“Rothschild’s Fiddle” reads more like a straight fable, and the tone is a bit different than Chekhov’s other works in the time period around it. There are elements of humor, an obvious epiphany (“But he had wasted his time, he had done nothing of this. What losses! Ah! What losses!”), and an ending that makes the whole story fable-like. Yakov’s past is unrevealed (even he can’t remember it) and the reader knows very little about him, a strangely unfleshed out character for Chekhov. It’s interesting that, in a story where there is a prominent Jewish figure, the story itself almost reads like a fable from a Russian shtetl, or a Sholem Aleichem tale.

The evolution of Chekhov’s mastery over his piece, and the depths he opens up within them, is obvious as one progresses chronologically through his works.

Chekhov’s Early Works

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 02 Oct 2012 11:00:00 +0000

One of the classes I'm in this semester centers around the writing of Anton Chekhov and Franz Kafka. We started out semester reading Chekhov, and what follows are my responses.

As someone who has never read Chekhov, and who naively believed all Russian writing to be just minor variants on Anna Karenina – that is to say, not very accessible – I can now affirm that Chekhov is a very accessible writer. His content is also highly relatable, in that he presents a world populated by “common folk” experiencing the emotions and conversations of everyday life (thus the application of the term “psychological realism” for the kind of writing he does). He seems to be concerned with a scene or interaction, and how that scene or interaction influences a character’s thoughts and emotions. He is interested in mimicking the real. He does not charge his characters with the philosophical and physical undertaking of hunting a whale, or of navigating Russia’s high class society, or asks them to become symbols in a greater allegorical narrative. Yet he also never assigns them as shallow players in a highly contrived plot, taking away all interior thought and perception in order to forward the war story, romantic drama, or car chase. Instead, Chekhov explores the simple exhilaration of a secret kiss; the grief of a ferryman over his lost friend the hymn-writer; a child’s outing into a strange part of town; a man’s lifelong pets; a husband’s suspicions of his wife; a young cook nervous about getting married.

There’s much that could be said of Chekhov’s style, characterization, and themes, but what follows are some brief sketches of my observations as a nascent Chekhov reader.

Chekhov’s style is very uniform, almost making it easy to tell how he goes about his craft of writing. Nearly every story starts with a tableaux, where the reader is grounded in the setting, the mood, and the characters, before the “lights come up” on the action of the narrative (see “The Cook’s Wedding,” “On the Road”). Every character has a name, and often a full name, giving greater identity. Every story (except for “Easter Eve”) is told in third person, yet Chekhov keeps a very tight narrative closeness to his characters in order to keep the world processed through their eyes only (see “Grisha”). His stories also generally keep within the moment, never jumping time. His stories are set in houses, on a train, at the docks, at a roadhouse, in a military camp, all environments within which his characters would commonly interact. Chekhov is not concerned with the grand narrative arc of a character’s life, or pursuing a scene within multi-perspectives, or constructing a work of great scope; instead, he slices up existence into a moment, and places it under the microscope to investigate. (He was a doctor, after all.)

Chekhov deliberately gives each character a profession – sexton, cook, monk, officer, cabman – that intrinsically defines the character. Yet Chekhov, it seems, wants the reader to transcend seeing the character as a representative of that profession and see them as the man or woman they truly are. It would be interesting to do a study of class in his stories. Was Chekhov writing of the lower classes where as the aforementioned Anna Karenina addressed the higher classes? At first glance it also seems that Chekhov’s characters are at work, interacting in the environment of their work, but upon further investigation many of his stories take place after-hours, on leave, or on a break (“The Witch,” “The Kiss,” “Typhus”).

Chekhov’s subtle, specific details of human experience are what makes his writing feel real. From the lingering sensation of peppermint on Ryabovitch’s cheek, to the way the smells and sounds of the mail car were heightened in Klimov’s delirium, to Savély’s touch and subsequent rejection from his wife, to the way the old man Zotov abusively treats his pets yet knows they are all he has, to Leharev’s subservience to his demanding daughter, the details Chekhov includes in his work are very human, very relatable, and are the kinds of details that make his characters flesh and bone, not just names on a page. There is some real substance to the relationships presented in his stories, real substance to the emotions felt by the characters, and real conflict that is created by placing fully formed personalities alongside one another.

More so than not Chekhov includes elements of the spiritual, whether it be the characters of the monks, priests, and pilgrims, to Savély’s superstition, to the ikons so prevalently found, to the discussion of faith in “On the Road,” to the recurring mention of God’s will governing death, to the character of the shepherd in “The Pipe” who speaks about the end of all things. It seems that either Chekhov was including these elements because they were either parts of culture, he deliberately wanted to include them, or that he saw matters of the spiritual being intrinsically linked to the temporal and mundane of the everyday life he portrayed in his writing. It would be interesting to further investigate the relationship of his characters to the divine, or if his characters have any relationship at all with something transcendent.

Overall, Chekhov’s writing is straightforward, realistic, and relatable, whomever the reader happens to be, and enjoyable as well. Once can sit down with his story, become engaged, and walk away from it thinking more about the characters and the situation they just read about. His stories could necessarily be read for leisure, but have enough substance to keep the mind and the heart engaged.

Assessing the Value

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 28 Sep 2012 04:20:00 +0000

What is value?

At its simplest, value is what something is worth. Maybe a cup of coffee is $1. Does that mean that its value is $1? You could say that, but then I would ask what kind of coffee it is. If it's crappy gas station coffee, then I may pay $1 but it might not hold a lot of value for me - it's just coffee. But if it's a large Starbucks Reserve blend for $1, then that cup of coffee's value just skyrocketed to me, and that $1 would be a deal in my eyes.

What about someone who absolutely loves crappy gas station coffee, and hates Starbucks? The values would switch.

Say my Starbucks cup of coffee cost $100. Would I pay it? Absolutely not, because while Starbucks has value to me, the price point is too high for me to pay. It's not worth that much to me. What if I were dying and that cup of coffee was the last cup of coffee on earth that had magical lifesaving properties that could cure me and grant me immortality? Then I would pay $100 because it not only has value to me, but it would also be worth the price.

I'm sure this is basic economics (I never took economics) and there are specific terms and formulas for what I'm talking about here. Maybe Adam Smith's laughing at me from beyond the grave. But as you go through life you see these things: You buy a sandwich based on what you feel it's worth to you, or you don't buy a sandwich because you believe it's too expensive (i.e., it has value to me but not that much worth), or you pick up an impulse buy at the store (little value but high worth because it's cheap), or you evaluate buying a car, making an investment, buying a house, going back to school.

It's interesting to think that there's a certain price point we will not go past when buying something. For those who see more value in the item, they will be willing to pay more. Like, people will either see the value of a MacBook and pay more for it, or they won't see the value in it and will pay only as much as they believe a laptop should be worth. Same thing with coffee: Someone who doesn't have a high value for coffee will not go above a certain price point, where as a coffee commissioner will pay higher for quality products.

We have to decide what is valuable to us, but also be realistic with what we'd be willing to pay for it - or are able to pay for it. If someone loves to watch TV, and a really good flatscreen is important to them because watching football has a high value, then they would be willing to pay a higher price point for a TV because it's worth a lot more to them. BUT if they're constrained by their budget, then available cash determines the worth or price. That's a big problem: we set a high value on something, and really want it, and then blow our budgets or put things on credit or take out loans to get it.

This is, of course, all relative. I've learned that just recently in living with others from different economic backgrounds - or, perhaps, from different value cultures. It's so fascinating to see where that worth line is, where that place of maximum amount willing to pay is. It's interesting for me to be challenged with value decisions, or maybe to just become aware that there are value decisions to be made.

Ok, so how does this relate to writing, you ask. This is a writing and publishing blog! What's up?

It could relate to setting prices on hardcovers. It could relate to the time spent writing and working on projects. It could relate to doing an MFA degree. It relates to a number of things. And I may explore this in the coming days.

What do you see as something's "value"?

Keep Publishing Men! Keep Publishing, Men!

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Wed, 29 Aug 2012 11:00:00 +0000

Recently a few articles have come out about how the majority of the publishing industry is “male biased” (most recently this was featured in Poets & Writers). This may sound odd coming from a female writer, but I’m not cool with this new push to get more and more female writers into the marketplace that compromises or takes away the opportunities for men. If you are encouraging women to be better writers period, fine. But don't say someone needs to step back to make room for women writers. Here are my thoughts:

- Men in this generation need to step up and be rewarded for doing so. We see men in their twenties and thirties playing video games on their free nights and wrestling like teenagers at community picnics. We see men without jobs, men without vision, men without purpose. So to say to the ones who are actually being creative and innovative, who are actually working to produce new literary works and submit them to literary magazine and publishing houses, that you need to step back and let women in? I’m not cool with that. The reason men have become so passive is, I believe, because women have stepped up into roles the men should be filling. It’s wrong to dissuade men from stepping out and being leaders in the arts. I would rather there be a gap left that men are forced to fill than enable them to be passive artists.

- There’s a less than subtle animosity at the tradition of “dead white English males” that gave us our literary canon, to which I say, That’s our literary canon, timeless stories crafted with enduring themes. So they happened to be written by men, so what? People should stop discounting good literature just because it was written by men. We should count good literature as good literature, whomever wrote it, and continue to encourage men to write and take a stand in their work. Historically, much of the advancement in our culture has been done by men. It’s just fact. Let them continue to do it. (I would say ALL the books I was influenced by, except Frankenstein and To Kill a Mockingbird, were written by men. I’m not angry at that, I’m indebted to that!)

- I’m about to go into an MFA program that, by the looks of it, is 90% women (not a women’s college). I hate that. I really do. Now, are we majority female because the work of the men who applied really stunk? Maybe. But I feel like we’re going to lack unique voice and experience from the male perspective. Where are the men writers? (And poor men who are in the program – how must they feel surrounded by women?)

Men, I encourage you, keep writing! Keep exploring your voice, keep plugging away. Keep submitting, keep publishing. Keep working. We need you!

To the women, I say: Keep writing! Keep exploring your voice, keep plugging away. Keep submitting, keep publishing. But don’t get angry because there are others who are better writers. Give them a chance. Encourage art to thrive, not just art by anyone but males.

Writing v. Building a Platform: Time Fight

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Mon, 13 Aug 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I had a dilemma today I think every writer trying to make a name for themselves will have: Do I spend my time brainstorming ways to grow my platform through social media, or do I spend my time brainstorming the second half of my novel? Traditional thinking would say the latter: Brainstorm the novel. But there is a world of opinion out there about how an author should be building and growing their platform initially, even before publication. How do you balance it? And what are the costs?

I’ve heard it said – and I can believe it – that in a world where everyone is enjoying their fifteen minutes of fame, only those who know how to adequately and effectively build their fan base are considered for publication. Which means that a publishing company is more likely to take a risk on you know that you’re arriving with a built-in audience. With the advent of social media, building a platform is quite easy. You’re actually reading the easiest kind of platform-building catalyst right now: A blog. Add Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and the like in there, and we have more ways of connecting than ever – and more ways of getting people interested in what we have to say. Right now is the only time in history when young writers and artists can bypass traditional methods and means of publication and promotion, and create for themselves a career all on their own. Today, it’s almost required that you be a part of the social media conversation happening online. If you’re not, you’re out: out of touch, out of influence, even out of a job.

It seems to me that gone are the days when a novelist could hole up for a year producing a masterpiece, send it off to their editor in New York, and leave the publishing company to do the marketing and promotion. Today it’s all about hustle; a novelist must write the book, then do a tour, promote it on their blog, talk it up on Twitter, do radio spots, etc. The artist can’t just spend time crafting their work anymore; they must spend time crafting their work, and crafting engaging tweets and blog posts. And at the end of the day, if I’m spending time on my tweets and blog posts, what energy will I have left for the actual writing?

Which leads me back to the initial dilemma: Do I spend time on my social media creation and promotion, or do I spend time on the novel I’m writing? Can novelists afford the opportunity to unplug anymore? Can novelists, even first time novelists, have the luxury of being free to work on their work, without the pressure to analyze web traffic and better utilize SEO for more hits? Can an author just stop tweeting to focus on what’s most important?

If you keep tweeting about the novel you’re writing, you’re not actually writing your novel.

The Scarlet Letter and More Symbolism

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 07 Aug 2012 11:00:00 +0000

In my last blog post about Nathaniel Hawthorne’s writings I talked about how he is an allegorical writer. We took a look at how his main characters function not only as the characters forwarding the plot of the book, but how they also function symbolically. Hawthorne does the same thing with places. In a Gothic Romance such as The Scarlet Letter, the reader usually finds the juxtaposition of civilization and the forest (or a equally rugged, wild terrain). In The Scarlet Letter, and also in Hawthorne’s short story “Young Goodman Brown,” we see the town functioning as the place of societal gathering, of order, of class hierarchy, and of religious piety. Within the town everyone’s role is upheld, and it is where the appropriate face should be displayed for all to see. Within the town’s context, Hester is condemned, and it is where her punishment is upheld. Within the town’s context as well is where Dimmesdale’s ministry takes flight.

On the outskirts of town is the forest, a place of shadows and nature, of wild trees and uncertain paths. It is a foreign place, but not necessarily an unfamiliar place. It seems to represent freedom and the human spirit, but also represents the uncivilized, ideologies too liberal or too unspoken for the town’s structure. Because of Hester’s punishment, she is cast out of society to the edges of the forest, which is representative of the spirited nature that would have lead to her act of sin, a nature that had no place in society. The forest is a place of wild refuge, where things that cannot be spoken about in the town can be verbalized. It’s the place where Hester and Dimmesdale are able to speak freely, and it is the only place in the book where Hester spends a few moments without her scarlet A. The forest is also equated with superstition, wickedness, and Satan himself, a place without God. There is talk of a Black Man who lures souls to the shadows of the forest and, like the characters of “Young Goodman Brown,” it is suggested that some of the characters of The Scarlet Letter regularly go into the forest to engage the demonic. Roger Chillingworth, who is associated with evil influences, is also shown spending a lot of time in the forest.

There are other spaces in the novel that Hawthorne uses in symbolic ways as well, specifically the scaffold, the Governor’s house, and the minister’s chambers. Each place is a locale in the book, but represents certain ideas about society, justice, and order that speak to the greater themes of the book. Keep an eye out for them as you read.

Next: Young Goodman Brown, Sin, and Salvation

6 Tips on Writing a Scene You Don’t Want to Write

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Wed, 25 Jul 2012 11:00:00 +0000

I don’t think I’ve ever seen a blog post, article, or teaching on this, so I’ll jump right in: What do you do with that scene you just don’t want to write? (Why, you procrastinate and write a blog post about it, of course!)

As writers, and especially as novelists, there will be scenes we are called upon to write that we aren’t crazy about. Case in point: I have to write a scene that takes place at a high school football game. I don’t like football. I don’t know the terminology. I don’t know the pace of the game, at all. If it were a baseball game, I would enjoy writing that, since I like baseball, and know the terminology, and could create tension and conflict and resolution. Easy. But football? I could go watch some football movies, but again, I don’t like football. I could do some research on football plays and games, but again, I don’t like football. I could skip the scene...eh, I can’t.

Here’s some advice on how to write those scenes that you just don’t want to:

1) Suck it up and do it. As a writer, I have to be a professional and just crank it out. Period.

2) Rely on memory, or memory close to it. Was there a football game I was at once that I can draw from? This will eliminate the need for research or watching movies.

3) Ask how much weight the scene really holds. Is the action of the scene centric to the plotline, or does the action of the scene take place secondary to the characters, or in the background? Is the scene a major plot point, or is a transition scene, or even a vehicle? The football game includes one of the characters of the novel, but all the rest of the family members are there. So, while a play-by-play is not necessary, there needs to be some kind of inclusion of the football game and its action.

4) If the scene really does hold a lot of weight, and is a major plot player, see #1. Sorry.

5) If the scene does not hold a lot of weight, and is a vehicle for the action of the plot, is there a way to stylize the scene? Ah. Yes. My novel is not about high school football, but about family dynamics. Since the whole family is at the football game, watching their son/brother run plays on the field, it’s the perfect opportunity to be stylized with this scene. What I mean by that is this: Can I get into the thoughts of the other characters during this scene? Can I juxtapose their daydreaming or memories with the action of the play? Can I get subconscious with, say, the mother who looks up to see her son tackled on the field? Can I get subconscious with the sister who has play rehearsal the next day and doesn’t care for football? Can I go into their conversations in the grandstands? Does a character flip out over sticky shoes?

6) Find what is really interesting to you in the scene, and weave the dreaded parts around that. What’s really interesting to me is what’s going on inside the family’s heads and hearts, not the play-by-play (and that will be most interesting to the reader as well). By writing a stylized, close narrative, with indirect free discourse in each member’s head, and by putting the football game as the vehicle for the entire scene, I’m not only writing something I’ll enjoy writing, I’m pushing ahead the psychology of the plot as well.

Voila! Hope this helps. And someday, when you read the football scene in Chapter 3 of my first novel, you’ll understand how I did it.

Reading Nathaniel Hawthorne: The Scarlet Letter and Symbolism

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 20 Jul 2012 17:57:00 +0000

(Spoilers)

Hawthorne is an allegorical writer. That means that when he writes characters, he has them stand for something. It’s a way to write a narrative with a story on the surface and something else going on underneath (I think that’s why I like Hawthorne’s writing so much!). For instance, Hester Prynne, Arthur Dimmesdale, Roger Chillingworth, and Pearl are all characters, but they also all represent other things (can you guess?). The embroidered scarlet A upon Hester’s dress is a scarlet A marking her sin of adultery, but the “A” also stands for something else. The forest is a forest where some of the action takes place, but it also stands for something else. The scaffold in the town square is just a scaffold in the town square, but also stands for something else.

Why should we take notice of the symbolism anyway? Can’t we just read the story at face value? Any book that employs symbolism, or metaphor, or any literary device, is attempting to speak to something deeper than just the action of the plot. (Actually, the action of The Scarlet Letter barely moves along.) Hawthorne is employing symbolism to address the nature of sin and piety, faith and repentance, guilt and forgiveness, integrity and the faces we show to the world.

Hester Prynne wears the central symbol of the novel – the scarlet A – as punishment for her adultery. Hester also bore a child from that union, Pearl, who is her constant companion and is also a symbol of her adultery. But Hester is a woman of redemption. While the A on her dress casts her out of society, the scarlet A that she was forced to make is a piece of beautiful embroidered work. She has talent with a needle and thread, and thus becomes the go-to seamstress of the colony, even contributing to the governor’s clothing. In the chapter “Hester at Her Needle,” the portrait is painted of a woman “[who] would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman’s frailty and sinful passion” yet whose “handiwork became what would now be termed the fashion. ...Hester really filled a gap which must otherwise have remained vacant.” Hester, in a way, makes her A stand for “Art.” She is a symbol of redemption and penance; having made peace with it long ago, Hester accepts her new role as ostracized sinner with grace, as if trusting in God’s divine Providence for her life. Her stoicism is in sharp contrast to the emotionalism of Arthur Dimmesdale.

Arthur Dimmesdale is probably the most fascinating symbolic character in The Scarlet Letter. He is a minister of the Gospel, a young Puritan who pastors the local congregation in colonial Boston. He is a well respected figure of their society, and in the culture would have served in a high place of societal influence just beneath the governor. As the action of the book progresses, we see that Dimmesdale becomes more passionate in his preaching, more aware of the things of heaven, more faithful as a leader. But he also becomes more sickly, less physically able, wearing himself thin, and more confessional – though he keeps the secret of his affair with Hester. “He had told his hearers that he was altogether vile, a viler companion of the vilest, the worst of sinners... They heard it all, and did but reverence him the more.” Dimmesdale’s sin, being kept secret and unconfessed, heightened his awareness of his total depravity, lifting the sovereignty and glory of God even more. Dimmesdale is the symbol of Paul and his thorn in the flesh of 2 Corinthians 12: “So to keep me from becoming conceited because of the surpassing greatness of the revelations, a thorn was given me in the flesh, a messenger of Satan to harass me, to keep me from becoming conceited. Three times I pleaded with the Lord about this, that it should leave me. But he said to me, ‘My grace is sufficient for you, for my power is made perfect in weakness.’” (2 Corinthians 12:7-9 ESV). The minster is considered to be a great spiritual man; in private, he wrestles with his sin. But unlike Paul, who finds grace and trust in the Lord, Dimmesdale believes his depravity too great for the Lord’s forgiveness. Dimmesdale, while encouraging others towards repentance, cannot or will not do it for himself. He symbolizes humanity, every person’s struggle to be faithful to God while wrestling with moral sin. He actually represents Puritan theology, that stressed total depravity and the mortification of the flesh in order to achieve holiness. In the penultimate chapter, when Dimmesdale finally gives his public confession, he fulfills the words of James 5:15: “Therefore, confess your sins to one another and pray for one another, that you may be healed.”

While Roger Chillingworth is not Dimmesdale’s thorn, he is his messenger of Satan. Chillingworth is chilling; an older, unapproachable man, he spends his time with herbs and concoctions gathered from the forest. There is something of the supernatural and dark about him. We also find out that he is Hester’s husband. While he says early on he has no qualm with what she did, he looms near to Dimmesdale. The friendship is an organic one at first, but Chillingworth detects something secret about Dimmesdale’s soul. As the minister’s sin begins to debilitate his physical frame, Chillingworth offers his medicinal aid to heal. He grows closer. And discovers the secret Dimmesdale holds to. Though Chillingworth never reveals his relationship to Hester, Dimmesdale can discern it, and the presence of the man whose wife he conceived a child with pushes the thorn into Dimmesdale even more. Dimmesdale bends under the weight of Chillingworth’s presence, a dark, satanic presence that spiritually convicts Dimmesdale, never giving him relief.

Pearl, the product of the unholy union between Hester and the minster, is one of the most fascinating little characters in literature. She is described as an “airy sprite” and has the spirit and imagination of the most precocious child. Pearl is raised by Hester on the outskirts of Boston, and thus has no playmate but her mother, and her imagination. Quite frankly, she’s a brat; “Hester often dropped her work upon her knees, and cried out...‘O Father in Heaven, – if Thou art still my Father, – what is this being which I have brought into the world!’” Pearl is a child born out of sin, a child that, in action, represents the total depravity of the human soul. Yet there is something magical and artful about Pearl, mystical. She, from a young age, recognized the scarlet A, and it was the first letter she ever learned. Though she doesn’t know the meaning behind why her mother wears that A, she interacts with that scarlet symbol like it is another friend. Her words about it pierce her mother. She recognizes before anyone else that Dimmesdale shares in a brand upon him too. Pearl observes the world in a way that is wiser than a child her age. She symbolizes not only the wild, sinful nature of all of our souls, but symbolizes freedom against the rigid religious society, as she exists outside the society. She symbolizes imagination and free speech and nature and the untamed parts of society. Hester, it seems, does not care to discipline her (which makes sense considering that the law led to her punishment and penance). Still, Pearl “the elf-child, – the demon offspring, as some people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her – became the richest heiress of her day, in the New World.” Pearl leads a beautifully successful life; like her mother, she becomes a symbol of redemption.

Next: The Scarlet Letter and More Symbolism

Reading Nathaniel Hawthorne: Introducing The Scarlet Letter

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 13 Jul 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Yes, we all read this back in high school, and yes, most of us, I’m sure, hated it. Or, if not hated it, then were annoyed with it in some fashion.

Not me.

I remember being amazed at the writing, and fascinated with the story that read like a legend. But there was something else, too. Something in the quiet boldness of Hester Prynne bravely wearing the mark of her sin, turning it into a kind of redemption. Something in the way the devout minister Arthur Dimmesdale is ravaged by his sin, unable to let go of what God can and will forgive. Something in the description of Pearl, the little girl born of sin, and her characterization as a sprite, a free spirit loose from any worldly constraints. Something in the way Roger Chillingworth was written: lecherous, creepy, allegorical, sympathetic. Something in the way Hawthorne writes a tale with a deeper address to sin and faith and repentance beneath.

His construction is perfect. The reader must wade through the tedious but obligatory opening essay “The Custom-House,” where we are introduced to Nathaniel Hawthorne’s persona as the “finder” of the legend of the Scarlet Letter, so to speak. Already we feel we are in for a tale of old New England, one whose snippets and narratives have come down to us through subsequent generations and are now being handed to us by Mr. Hawthorne in his narrative. It sets us up to begin the story differently than we would have without in the introduction. We don’t jump into it like a historical novel, but like a story told at the fireside. In fact, Hawthorne keeps up this apocryphal narrative distance throughout the whole novel, describing scenes and dialogue as overheard, or heard differently by different people. There’s a blur between the real and the superstitious, as the phantoms of the night lurk about in the day. There are what ifs. There’s a sense of the observer in Hawthorne’s narrative, watching the players of Puritan Boston from the outside, attempting to discern their motives. And Hawthorne excels at what he leaves out, what he doesn’t speak.

For instance, Hawthorne chooses never to do a flashback. Any book written today would probably be required to include that flashback of the lead-up to Dimmesdale and Hester’s affair. I think every movie made of The Scarlet Letter includes that backstory. But Hawthorne doesn’t include it. Never describes it. Never reveals the details to the reader, just like in the narrative no details were ever revealed to the watching public of Boston. And when the two faded lovers finally meet and converse, it’s seven years later and the past is far behind. Hawthorne leaves it to the reader to devise the backstory. Which is masterful.

Hawthorne’s gothic romance lingers in our imaginations and in our hearts specifically because of the way he wrote it, of every little detail included and deliberately omitted. It’s a different kind of story, one built from the stones of history, allegory, Biblical allusion, original sin, deception, forgiveness, penance, revenge, humanity, and hope. In every reading there is a new facet to see.

Next: The Scarlet Letter and Symbolism

Reading Nathaniel Hawthorne

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Mon, 09 Jul 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Every fall I get the urge to read The Scarlet Letter. Perhaps it’s my association of the trees turning with New England, and my association with New England to the work of Nathaniel Hawthorne, but every fall I have the urge to read The Scarlet Letter, among other short works of Hawthorne. Since I read it in eleventh grade, The Scarlet Letter has been one of my favorite novels, and Hawthorne’s style – or content, or symbolism, or another thing I can’t quite put my finger on – has been an inspiration for me in my writing. Or I’ve wanted it to; I could never write like Hawthorne, though I try!

Hawthorne was fascinated with the far past of New England and its early settlers, the Puritans. He wrote about the place where their humanity collided with their piety. The Scarlet Letter explores sin and forgiveness, redemption, humanity, and the masks we wear. In fact, many of Hawthorne’s stories include prominent men of faith wrestling with private sins.

For the past few years as well I’ve studied and come to understand the Puritans and their faith a bit more from a conservative Christian perspective. That additional knowledge makes the experience of reading Hawthorne’s work more rich.

I’m finishing up a reading of The Scarlet Letter right now, and will post my thoughts and impressions soon. I’d like to go back and take a look at “Young Goodman Brown,” my favorite short story of Hawthorne’s, and take another glance at “The Minister’s Black Veil.” Since I do love Hawthorne, yet have not read a lot of him, I may take the summer and explore his work, blogging about it here. (I did get The House of the Seven Gables for my birthday this year!) Come fall, since I now live in a New England, a trip up to Hawthorne’s house and haunts in Salem may be in order!

For now, I’ll leave you with the last words of The Scarlet Letter: “‘On a field, sable, the letter A, gules.’”

Writers Taking Chances

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Mon, 02 Jul 2012 14:28:00 +0000

Recently I finished my first Jodi Picoult novel, Nineteen Minutes, about the build-up to, the day of, and the aftermath of a high school shooting. That was a daring book to write, I’m sure. A daring one and a daunting one, because in order to describe that kind of heightened trauma, emotion, motive, and bloodshed, the writer has to bleed a little too. I applaud Ms. Picoult for her willingness.

Any book worth reading should attempt to distill something of human experience and relate it to the reader. Kafka said it best: “I think we ought to read only the kind of books that wound and stab us. We need the books that affect us like a disaster, that grieve us deeply... A book must be the axe for the frozen sea inside us.” In other words, a writer should take chances. I’m not interested in fiction that entertains me. I’m interested in fiction that hits me and leaves a linger mark on my emotions. Fiction that holds up the nasty but true bits of reality and says, “Look at this.” Fiction that is not afraid to get its hands dirty digging for that nugget of revelation. Fiction that jars.

That means bypassing what we’re comfortable writing about in order to move into some dark places in which there needs to be light shed. The old maxim goes, “Write what you know.” But it’s in the attempt to write what we don’t know where mystery, imagination, and truth emerge. It’s in that attempt to place ourselves into a character foreign to us and understand them when we’re bucking “Write what you know” and moving into what art was made for: Experience.

Back in an undergraduate writing class, we were all to meet with the professor and go over with him the story we were working on for the final semester project. I might have met with him but remembered that I did not share my storyline with him. The story was mine until finished and I didn’t want to share it! He said to me later, after the story had been workshopped, that if he had known what I was working on - a non-linear narrative set in World War II - he would have counseled me away from it. He actually said he was glad I didn’t tell him what I was working on, because it came out so well. That story went on to win the Lea Lovenheim Award for Short Fiction. But most importantly, that was the first time in a workshop where a reader described an emotional reaction she had to a part of the story. That’s when I knew: A story is just words until it pierces your soul. That’s when I knew, too: I can pierce the soul with my words, if I'm willing to take the chance.

The Next Chapter

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Thu, 21 Jun 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I think the most human experience we can have is the dualism of wanting one thing but knowing we need to do another. Whenever someone is taking a large step, whether it be a new career, or a move to a new place, we want to stay with the familiar, cling to what we have grown accustomed to. But we know that we must change. Sometimes that change comes with staying the course. It would be simple to go back, simple to just return, but staying the course means seeing it through. Making those sacrifices. Emerging.

A Short Hiatus

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Sat, 05 May 2012 18:32:00 +0000

Emerson College, Boston MA

As I'm making the biggest move of my life so far (new city, new school, new apartment, new job, new church, new friends, etc.) I'm going to be putting the blog on a short hiatus. No worries, it won't be too long. I move next month, so once I get unpacked and settled I will see you again. In the meantime feel free to browse the archives, check out some of my other writing, or read some of the blogs I've linked to in the sidebar. See you soon!

Why Katniss Everdeen May Not Be the Hero You Think She Is

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 01 May 2012 11:33:00 +0000

Much is being said of The Hunger Games’ swiftly rising iconic hero Katniss Everdeen, the girl with a bow and arrow who hunts deer, captures hearts, and comes out the victor in the last-one-standing death match. Recently the character of Katniss has been called “one of a new kind, and not just a new type of character but one that ‘represents an alternative to an enduring cultural type that the literary critic R.W.B. Lewis described as the American Adam’” (Doll, “The Greatest Girl Characters of Young Adult Literature”) and was voted one of the most influential Young Adult female heroines. She is the perfect blend of reluctant hero, modern woman, and survivor. She substitutes herself in place of her sister to be thrown into the Hunger Games. But is she the hero we think she is?

The Hunger Games itself is a reality TV show – albeit a gory, required-viewing reality TV show – and the book is explicit about what the games are, how the children are chosen, how they are styled to present an on-screen persona, and how their survival many depend upon the sponsorship opportunities they are able to cull. In the movie we are able to get more of a sense of just what these games mean. There are the screaming fans, cheering and celebrating those chosen to die. There is the structure of sponsorship, where the contestant “wins” sponsors who will send them provisions during the games. There are the stylists assigned to each “tribute” to make them over for the cameras. So in addition to killing, surviving, and becoming the victor, the tribute has to act, too.

And Katniss certainly acts. In order to gain favor, Katniss puts on a persona, playing into a created romance between her and another tribute, Peeta, in order to collect gifts and move towards victory. The night before the Games, in the last reflective moment before the chaos, Peeta states that if he is to die – and he knows he probably will – that he wants to die knowing that the Games didn’t change him. That is, that he wouldn’t lose his dignity, or his values. Katniss instead states that she “can’t afford to think like that.” That she will become who she needs to be to win. And we see it, especially in her fake romance with Peeta. But her ends-justifies-the-means attitude doesn’t seem to be something she is aware of. It’s just how she is.

So is she really the hero we think she is? The one who is unwilling to be martyred, like Peeta? The one who is willing to compromise values and dignity in order to survive and win?

Then again, wouldn’t we do the exact same thing?

The MFA, or, Is Writing Stories at the Grad Level the Best Use of My Time?

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Wed, 25 Apr 2012 10:00:00 +0000

It must have been about fifteen years ago. I sat at my kitchen table with my new Writer’s Digestlaid flat, reading through the massive feature on Master of Fine Arts (MFA) in Creative Writing programs: Why go, what to expect, where to apply, etc.. I was only in high school at the time, but knew I wanted to be a writer and that, someday, an MFA would be mine to pursue. Very early in my career I understood that there was a value to that degree. It was simple: To be a professional writer one had to possess an MFA.

My thoughts haven’t changed on that fact - to be a professional writer one had to possess an MFA – but the why behind that has. Initially I thought it was the stamp of certification, as an MD is the stamp of certification for a doctor, but of course writers don’t need a document to say they are writers. This is where the argument against MFAs fall, as no writer really needs a higher degree to write a book (heck, there weren’t even MFAs a hundred years ago). And I agree. A writer doesn’t need an MFA to write a novel. But the MFA isn’t just about “writing a novel.”

I graduated in 2005 with a BFA in Creative Writing from Emerson College, and thought about going into their MFA program immediately. Instead I spent some time in the work world, writing on the side, so when I approached the MFA table again I had a clear vision of what I wanted out of the program. I knew I wanted it to be in Boston, where I intend to establish myself and my career; I knew I wanted it to be a residency program because I want to be present with my professors and cohort, not communicating by email; I knew I wanted it to be a school concerned with the professional side of writing, rather than just teaching great craft; I knew I wanted it to be a larger class size so there would be more people to network with and learn from; I knew I wanted it to give me the chance to work at a literary magazine; and I knew I wanted it to include classes or interaction with the publishing industry.

The MFA for me is not just about writing or building a body of work. It’s about building my career as well, networking with my fellow creatives, and collaborating to foster and inform the greater literary community of Boston.

While it’s no precursor to publication, more and more the MFA degree lends a kind of distinction and professional acknowledgement to the writer. I’ll be glad to include it in my dust jacket bio.

(Oh, and the above list of requirements? Emerson College again fit perfectly. It was the only place I applied to, and I was accepted! More in the coming months on that.)

The way I see it, the MFA isn’t just a piece of paper but an opportunity, to write, learn, develop skills, and connect with others in the industry. It is, after all, what you make it.

Can a Writer Be a Leader?

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Fri, 20 Apr 2012 13:09:00 +0000

It’s an interesting question. I’ve been thinking about this lately because I’ve been learning how to be a better leader, but if I want to be a novelist…what does it matter, right? I’m just going to sit inside all day writing my books.

First, what is a leader? A leader is someone who has followers, someone who has some kind of influence over others. That could mean someone whose movie advice you take, or someone you want to be like. Influence could also be related to marketing – Starbucks is an influencer – or how a manager influences your behavior at work. Mostly, I think of Twitter. On Twitter there are “followers,” people who subscribe to someone’s feed because they want to read what that person has to say. I also think of a mentor, or someone who speaks into another’s life. He or she is a huge influencer.

Fundamentally, influence is relational, and leaders are those around you whom you follow (or don’t follow). Much of leadership training discusses progress, problem solving, change, and interpersonal skills in business or within groups.

Which means that leadership inherently happens amongst a group of people.

Which means, if I am leading a solitary life writing stories I cannot be a leader.

That doesn’t necessarily mean that I can’t influence culture. Some of the greatest influencers I know are bloggers and writers whose ideas I trust and love. But are they leading me if we’ve never met? It seems like a very passive kind of leadership. Or a very formal kind.

A writer, in order to be a leader, has to get themselves involved in something with others. Teach. Run a literary journal. Run a publishing company. Become an editor in an office. Start a non-profit writing center. But interact with others. Be a leader that way.

What do you think?

No Pulitzer in Fiction, and Why That Doesn’t Make As Big of a Deal as Everyone Thinks

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Tue, 17 Apr 2012 10:00:00 +0000

Yesterday the Pulitzer Prize winners were announced, and for the first time since 1977 no award was granted in the fiction category. As always, flurry abounded on the Twittersphere, including the following observations and wit:

@jasonpinter: One of the big losers in lack of a fiction Pulitzer winner is bookstores, who would have sold oodles of winner’s novel.

@bookbeast: Apparently they need majority votes (2 of 3 judges) in order to give prize & the 3 judges couldn’t agree for fiction.

@kimberlyburnspr: No Pulitzer for fiction means go to an independent bookstores & ask a bookseller for a recommendation.

@TerryBain: Oh I get it now. This year’s fiction Pulitzer went to “Not Reading.”

@Proofer3: “@adzebill: No Pulitzer for fiction this year, first time since ’77. Guess nobody wrote anything good.” What, not “The Hunger Games”?

@mikecane: Pulitzer Fiction Committee: "But if we name a winner, AMAZON WILL MAKE MORE MONEY!!!"

@jeffkraemer: #Pulitzer jury to fiction writers: You smell. Especially you, Swamplandia!

@LauraSlattery: No fiction award by Pulitzer judges -- this is a little insulting to the finalists, even if it is a no-majority issue.

@samshapiro: how do you not award a pulitzer for fiction? this is not north korea. art must be celebrated and rewarded.

@SteveHimmer: If there's no #Pulitzer for fiction, that means not a single novel was better than mine last year, right? ;-)

Lovely. So here are my thoughts:

It's Odd

To read that there were many other Pulitzer Prizes given out in all different categories but to have no winner in Fiction, the category I would say most lay people watch, is odd. It's like not handing out the Oscar for best picture at the end of the night. But it's not as odd as one might think. There was no winner in the Editorial Writing category either, and every year there tends to be at least one category where there is no recipient of the prize, even though there were nominations.

But It's Not a Surprise

There were three people on the voting committee: Maureen Corrigan, Susan Larson, and Michael Cunningham. There were three novels nominated: Train Dreams by Denis Johnson, Swamplandia! by Karen Russell, and The Pale King by the late David Foster Wallace. I would say there was a lot of wishful thinking in assuming that a decision could be made on one novel by these three people. But it's no surprise that three different people could become deadlocked on a decision. The unfortunate thing is that it's not like all three books win and get the promotion. None won. And who remembers the shortlist?

It Will Not Hurt Bookstores

@jasonpinter stated above, "One of the big losers in lack of a fiction Pulitzer winner is bookstores, who would have sold oodles of winner’s novel." I've worked at a bookstore for eight years. There's generally a small bump in interest, and we get fresh softcovers with the Pulitzer sticker on it. But generally people don't buy oodles of Pulitzer Prize winners. Period. They buy James Patterson. They buy Danielle Steel. They buy 50 Shades of Grey. They do not buy Pulitzer winners.

Why Those Three?

I'm not sure. There was a lot more great literature out last year. I wonder, if there was a bigger pool, would a decision have been made? Maybe with more options the favorite would have revealed itself. Who knows. No, I have not read any of them. I have my opinions on each, though!

It's a Disappointment to Writers

For those plugging away at The Novel, it's disappointing to discover that the coveted Pulitzer Prize is still an award decided by humans, and can come to a gridlock and be canceled altogether.

It's Not That Big of a Deal

Who really can name the Pulitzer winners of the past five years? Even literary geeks can't. Only time really tells if a novel lives up to its Pulitzer. Many don't. Besides, a Pulitzer does not a classic make.

Guess we'll have to wait until next year, friends...

The Writer’s Story Completed by the Reader’s Imagination

noreply@blogger.com (Jessica A. Kent) — Mon, 16 Apr 2012 10:00:00 +0000

I may be a lone writer, but I have a partner: Your imagination.

There’s a danger in not trusting the reader with what you’ve written. What does not trusting the reader look like? It has a lot to do with the old adage “show, don’t tell.” If a writer is telling about the growth their character made, or the how the themes selected directly relate to the story being unfolded, or what the metaphor is, then the writer is not trusting the reader. They are assuming the reader can’t make those jumps and correlations, or maybe the writer needs to spell it all out to make themselves feel more comfortable.

Great writers provide the dots, leaving the reader to connect them.

Great writers show the actions of characters, leaving the inference of that character’s personality and growth to the reader.

Great writers make imprints that the reader works to connect.

Great writers leave questions that the reader must struggle within themselves to answer.

Great writers require something of their readers.

Therein lies the difference between nonfiction and fiction. The nonfiction writer tells the reader what they need to know; the fiction writer shows the reader just enough to spark the imagination to think and create, just enough to incite the heart to respond, the emotions to react.

For instance, here is Hemingway’s legendary six-word short story: “For Sale: Baby shoes, never worn.”

Your imagination is completing that story, isn’t it?