Search options (Page 7 of 16)

One of my favorite writers. Read by James Earl Jones.

Memphis Trace wrote:

A thousand years ago, it was Muslims who were stunned by the savagery of Christian radicals:

Interesting. I didn't know MSNBC has been around that long.  And Sunday morning? Who was the savage? Christian or muslim?

njc wrote:

From today's Mad Genius Club, By Dave Freer:

So: what did L’Amour do right? Besides appeal to a lot of people: why? I over-analyze everything – I looked L’Amour and the cowboy genre in general when I was setting out to be a writer. Several stick out points, stylistically, are worth noticing. Sentences are generally short, shorter on action. There is a lot of action, non-action is often covered by narrator-style ‘telling’ rather than showing (the books read well aloud. You can almost imagine parts as a fireside yarn). The books themselves are short – often as little as 130 pages or less. They’re usually single point of view (trust me this is actually hard to do well). The successful authors had distinctive ‘voices’ – some of which I pinned on dialogue choice.

(Italics mine ---NJC)

Okay, because you were able to interpret the author's shoddy writing and rambling insinuations [he actually did write 'I looked L'Amour and the cowboy genre...'  you quote] can you tell me what's his point? Write simply for simple people like them stupid cowboys who took deep pride in the country and people?

"So: what else made them work?"   Hey go read this entire book [Grant/Brings the Lightening], I'm not telling, the author orders us.

The admonition for commercial success is so often given to write for your audience and “No one in this world, so far as I know — and I have searched the records for years, and employed agents to help me — has ever lost money by underestimating the intelligence of the great masses of the plain people. Nor has anyone ever lost public office thereby.” [H.L. Mencken]

Memphis Trace wrote:

Just finished All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy. Just began The Lords of Discipline by Pat Conroy.

Memphis

I"ve read the Mccarthy but not Conroy. I've seen the movie of the same name. It'd be good to hear your thoughts on it when done.

Cheers!

badger?

groundhog

talking out of your ass

Galimatias

Memphis Trace wrote:

When I read To Kill a Mockingbird again, I will look for any hints of overt Atticus's racisim. I don't remember any. I will also look for anything in the text that shows he approved of the law being applied unequally to women.

If, without a lot of trouble to yourself, you can pull out examples of this overt racism and sexism, I will carefully consider it when I read it in context.

Memphis

Okay I’ll get digging, but please understand that my understanding of racism is;

A person who believes that a particular race is superior to another.

I am guessing you will find instances where Atticus speaks of whites being in superior circumstances to blacks. I do not consider that racisim. I think that is what he meant when he said it is 10 times worse for a white man to cheat a black man than it is to cheat a white man.

Some people think that racism requires horse whippin’ lynching and a touch of genocide to qualify.

I think racism requires that action be taken against the race one feels superior to. For instance, I don't think acts of charity toward a race because you feel your circumstances are superior to theirs would qualify as racisim. 

I don’t ever feel within the book that Atticus regards himself to equal to, or the same as the coloured folk. I feel that he believes himself superior.

I felt his acts in To Kill a Mockingbird were those of a man who regarded himself as having intellectual and financial and institutional advantages superior to the blacks.

Earlier within the thread I asked; “Can you imagine Atticus being completely non-fussed by say, the concept of his daughter taking up a black boyfriend (of good character), or marrying a black man (of good character)?

He’s a cardboard cut-out character, so we’ll never know. But if you imagine that Atticus would be nothing but pleased for his daughter’s happiness, then he’s no racist.

I personally think that he’d take umbrage with such a situation and I'll try to extract the quotes that lead me to that conclusion.

I cannot imagine Atticus approving of Scout taking up with a black boyfriend. I never really considered this while reading To Kill a Mockingbird, perhaps because I never considered Scout as anything other than a 6-year old tomboy.

Look out for Braxton Bragg Underwood, the newspaper owner. He openly dislikes black people and yet publicly (vociferously) defends Tom’s right to a fair trial. What’s going on there? Another one who thinks that all men are equal under the law, but are definitely not equal in daily life. I seem to be the only one who thinks this duality is skewed morality.

I will take a close look at Underwood. But right off the top of my head, I would say that unless he acts in some negative way towards blacks, I would not consider openly disliking them to be racist.

BTW: My definition of male sexism is the belief that men are naturally superior to women and thus should dominate most important areas of political, economic, and social life. I shall be claiming sexism based upon that description.

Again, I will be looking for acts by Atticus that demonstrate his "belief that men are naturally superior to women" and should dominate important areas of political, economic, and social life. For instance, I wouldn't convict a man of robbery if he believed he should rob a bank but never did.

Cheers

Memphis

Memphis Trace wrote:

It is most interesting to me that you and others see Atticus's racial superiority in To Kill a Mockingbird where I didn't see it until Go Set a Watchman...
..............................................
It also explains to me why I found Atticus to be a flat, and unbelievable character on reading To Kill a Mockingbird a second time, some five years before reading Go Set a Watchman. I was missing all the hints you were getting, the part of the iceberg Lee elided from To Kill a Mockingbird, to dignify my perception of the story of Atticus as the white hero I was looking for.............
...............
It also explains to me why I found Atticus a much greater hero after reading Go Set a Watchman. It gave me hope and a model for being a father and grandfather that would recognize and overcome the moral corruption pressed on me the by the history I endured and by my preconceptions to hide my moral corruption under the sort of good counsel Atticus dispensed to Scout.

I have completed my 2nd read and have considered deeply my personal feelings upon the Atticus character and the reasons I feel the character is not worthy of the hero status and sentimentality that has been lavished upon him over the decades.

My disappointment in Atticus and the book itself remain and are heightened on the second read. I’ll explain those feelings as objectively as I can.

Atticus lives in a time and place where racism is so deeply established that is has become an accepted way of life. As a white man Atticus ‘naturally’ considers his race to be superior to the colored men, but he is seen as ‘outstanding’ because he makes a conscious effort to treat black men fairly and with politeness. (This is where the condescension feelings creep in for many people). It is like the one rider, who with compassion for his horse, doesn’t whip or spur his mount like the others do theirs. 

This is the way the Atticus character is painted by the author, and that is all well and good. I think what annoys me is the mass misconception that Atticus is such a hero for being anti-racist.

He is not anti-racist, he merely makes a point of being kind and polite to black people, which is not the same thing. He never rages against the racism that his society is built upon and he certainly doesn’t believe in equality. Can you imagine Atticus being completely non-fussed by say, the concept of his daughter having a black boyfriend, or marrying a black man?

Atticus also believes (and states) the women are inferior to men. Again, he is kind and polite to women, he encourages his daughter; but his natural position is that women are the lesser sex and even instructs his daughter upon this ‘fact’ when she questions the inequality in the jury system (that Women are deemed to be incapable of understanding and rationalising with the kind of intellect that a man can). It is like he is telling his daughter that she can be anything, and all she can be…. but only within the intellectual and capability boundaries of a female. He informs her that she must realise that she can never be equal the superior sex, the male.

These points I raised previously and my feelings upon the above are strengthened by the re-read.

However, the main thing that irks me about Atticus is not what he says and does, but what he doesn’t say or do.

The racism and sexism aside, I don’t think that Atticus ever gets to the crux of the matter (neither do I think that the book gets to it).

Incest.

Incest is the dark unmentionable undercurrent of the book. It occurs within that society, within that time and place. It is the shadowy secret that some families endure and a truth that all avoid.

Tom is so clearly not a rapist and yet Bob Ewell is publicly identified as sexually and physically abusive man. Mayella Ewell is a surrogate wife for her father and a surrogate mother to her younger siblings.

The whole trial is a sham. Mayella Ewell grasping for some power, a cry for help regarding the abuse she is subject to, a mask for the feelings that she, a white girl might have feelings for Tom, a black man.

Attius bloody well knows this. At the very least he strongly suspects it (we all do, it is alluded to throughout the book). And yet he never goes after Bob in court. We feel that Mayella is only one or two forceful questions from blurting the truth, indeed, we feel that Atticus is softening her up for the killer question;

“Isn’t it true Mayella, that it is your father who rapes you, and not Tom who raped you?”

But that question, the truth, it never comes. The incest is accepted and ignored. A massive elephant with a monkey on his back weeping at the rear of the courtroom and it is skirted around because it is too deep a subject, to vast a ‘can o worms.’

What kind of man is Atticus then? Prepared to conduct a sham trial but not to confront the truth?

He is a part of that same vile establishment that protects paedophile priests; the people in power who don’t necessarily condone the act of Priests raping children, but who do nothing about it all the same. They accept it; turn a blind eye and cover up for the perpetrators. If a paedophile priest is exposed, the first defence they drum up is that the children deserved it, the children seduced the priest.

Ask people (readers) what the novel ‘To Kill a Mockingbird’ is about and they’ll all chant the mantra ‘racism.’

Ask if Atticus is a good man and they’ll cheer with a resounding unequivocal 'yes.'

As I read I’m bursting with excitement and anticipation to get to the bit where under pressure or manipulation from Atticus, Mayella Ewell confesses that her father is the actual rapist. It never comes. For me it is biggest disappointment within all of the literature I’ve ever read. From the courtroom scene on, I’m numb from the disappointment, and that is the ‘flinging the book into the hedge’ moment for me.

Harper Lee tells us; "The book to read is not the one which thinks for you, but the one which makes you think."

As Vern states in reply, actually, he prefers not to think, just enjoy.

I think that is the same apathetic state of mind that applies for most readers of this book. The charm of the precocious little girl narrator, all curly top and fight in her cute little man overalls; the upstanding white man in his respectable suit who has the courage to speak politely to a Negro fella. The good natured, wrongly accused black man who gets martyred. The vile white trash villain who get what’s a comin’.

Nobody thinks about the abuse and incest that is the very core of the story, the very core of the book. Racism is just the sideshow, the cop out, the misdirection.

I don’t know what is intentional by the author and what is not. It is either a brilliant novel or just pap, I honestly don’t know and simply can’t tell.

You see what thinking about a book does for you! Turmoil, emotional unrest and weighty theories. My advice is to follow Vern’s advice; just skim along on the surface and enjoy it like it were a cherry pie. Never, ever think about the book and above all, never, ever mention the incest.

Memphis Trace wrote:

Janet Taylor-Perry wrote:

In dialogue in order to create a speech pattern or persona, using bad grammar is acceptable, but not in narrative.

I am sure Mark Twain missed this wise counsel when he wrote The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn.

In narrative, it is a particularly effective way to add 'voice'. ¿If a character talks using irregular verbs, surely he thinks and stews in his juices in the vernacular?

For instance, a character who uses irregardless is not going to shed his pomposity—or his ignorance of eager linguists' fear and loathing of the now irregular word—should he shut his mouth long enough to have a coherent thought. Here is how Ring Lardner used it at least once in his story, The Big Town, 1921: I told them that irregardless of what you read in books, they's some members of the theatrical profession that occasionally visits the place where they sleep.

Irregardless of what eager linguists may think of irregardless, I would point to Lardner's effective usage as a guide for creative writers trying to find and enhance their 'voice' in a work.
     
Memphis Trace

I repeat: NARRATIVE. Thought is internal dialogue. Sure, my hillbillies would say and think--I ain't gonna do it.

But when the author narrates, s/he should not say he ain't gonna do it. No, it should be something like--Sally Mae knew he would not do it.