News and Commentary

Hello everyone!

The Eclipse
I ventured forth to try and get a glimpse of this thing, but my eyesight is poor, and everywhere I tried, I could only see a blurry image, so I gave up.  As soon as I got home, it began to become overcast, and that was the end of that.  I must place on record that I have seen an eclipse some years ago, and it was very impressive.  I had some sort of equipment then, like a darkened glass, which really worked well.

A local support rally
The progressives in our town got together in a quiet town park, and I quietly attended, trying not to be very visible.  I have a retiring nature, and the last thing I need is to be identified as one of these "libtards" who are supposedly destroying American society for everybody.  I'm not sure what to make of such claims, but more on that later.

I was deeply moved at what happened at the rally.  It was not called a rally, simply because that is almost an invitation for anyone opposed to tolerance and racial harmony to come out and disrupt it.  There was no march, no slogans; only appeals for reaching out, forgiving, and patience, and (brace yourself) love.  I never thought of myself as a very loving person, but I began to remember the mood of love and peace from the seventies, just as it was beginning to be shut down in the eighties.  But warmhearted people are still out there, trying to spread peace and love, but some of this seed falls on barren ground, as they say.

What conservative ideologists have to say
I discovered a paperback for sale in our local supermarket, outlining what one conservative writer thinks is happening in the US.  He says that
(1) Liberals have gone overboard about animal rights.  Obviously (he says) pets and animals do have some rights, as they would in any decent society.  But it looks as if some people want animals to have the same rights as people!  This is true, and perhaps it is this sort of thinking that is not yet widely accepted that bolsters the notion that liberals are running away with everything.
(2) Liberals (he says) have some arbitrary principles about how things should be done, and they are forcing everyone to fall in line with these.  I suppose he means things like marriage for same-sex couples, and bathroom privileges for trans individuals, and so on.  Well, we were on a roll, but some people are frustrated to be on the losing side.  It is no longer the losing side; it seems that the present government is comfortable with repealing many of the most progressive laws that were put into place in the last few years.  This is the danger of going far and fast; everything can be undone.  If you thought Obama was moving too slow, you realize now that consensus building is a very important thing.

Finally, it is clear that conservative businessmen are convinced that the Liberals are taking all their wealth.  No, it is not the liberals, it is their fellow-conservatives.  When the government takes money in the form of taxes, it is spent, as wages, social services, infrastructure-building (construction), education, libraries, etc.  That money is spent in turn by people to buy various goods and services, which of course enrich other businessmen.  In contrast, when businessmen and other fat cats are allowed to keep their money without paying taxes, it sits in their bank accounts, making them happy, but out of the reach of their fellow-conservatives, who are anxious to increase their wealth.  Big money, is of course, at pains to convince the people that the money simply disappears into Government coffers.  If it did, we would not have such a deficit.

Work
I had taken on fewer and fewer teaching jobs over the last few years; I was getting increasingly frustrated with the abilities of incoming students.  A few of them are very good, but the vast majority of undergraduates are difficult to teach.  I must leave it to more capable people than myself to push through the material that they need to be given; I certainly can't do it.

Personal News
I don't like to reveal too much about myself, nor do I like to burden my readers with things that they would probably not be concerned about.  Suffice it to say that I had some minor health problems, but I am bouncing back pretty well.  I have not lost my sense of humor, yet, and I will start writing again in the near future.

Reading
You probably realize by now that what I love to read is books I have already read, and the latest are the books of the Anne of Green Gables series.  The first book was crafted brilliantly, but the remaining books are also amazingly fresh and rewarding to read.  Lucy Maud Montgomery had a delightful sense of humor, and I have to admit that she was able to create a variety of characters that really are three-dimensional, by which I mean that they were distinctive, recognizable types, with consistent characteristics and dialect that she carefully used to keep them alive all through a book, and all through a series.  And, of course, the younger characters aged very plausibly.  I know how hard that is to do: to make the descriptions of a character, their nature, their personality, their spoken idiom, all age continuously through a story in a plausible way!  Of course, the books were originally intended for young people.  But there is plenty in them for a mature reader to admire and appreciate.

Kay

Tricks Authors Use: perhaps we should reexamine these

It’s been a long while since I wrote about fiction writing in the abstract.

I was visiting at the home of a friend, and stayed overnight.  In the morning, I came into their television room, to find a particularly violent episode of a TV series playing.  I had seen earlier episodes of this series in another location, and I began to think about how TV writers become successful.

Success in TV series writing comes when a TV series grabs the viewers’ attention over several episodes, ideally an entire season.  How does one do that?

Increasingly frequently, at least some writers seem to be using hate as a tool.  How?  They create a character, or an incident, calculated to trigger intense indignation or anger in the viewers.  Of course, this has been a time-honored ploy in literature: you always make a favorite character have to suffer something really horrible, and that drives the plot along.  But now, with scores of writers competing for the attention of a fickle audience, the less talented among them must invent increasingly horrible things to happen to their heroes, in order to keep their viewers angry enough to tune in to the next episode.  On top of everything, drugs, crime and violence in reality seem to compete with fiction to be each more horrible than the other, so what with life out-horrifying art, TV viewers are seeing an fearsome volume of harshness and cruelty on the small screen, and inevitably, the audience becomes jaded, and inured to cruelty.

I, myself, have never been able to create a truly despicable villain.  This probably accounts for how little success I have achieved!  Still, I despise this whole business of calculatedly creating a villain in order to make a piece of fiction successful.  I think a story in which the cruelty is incidental is superior to one in which the cruelty or horror is calculated to arouse the desire to see retribution within the audience.

So, if there are authors among you readers, please consider toning down your imagination for horror, and deliberate cruelty, or ruthlessness.  It is a tough assignment, especially in these days when ruthless criminals are a dime a dozen; we almost have to invent a super-ruthless criminal to make any headway.  But don’t; the cost is too high.  My heart quails to imagine what psychic damage must result in a young person who sees senseless cruelty day after day.

Kay