Writing Technology

I have a typewriter, a deep purple Olympia typewriter to be specific, and it got me thinking.
I noticed that at first at least my typing with the typewriter was slow, inconsistent and full of error, as I’m talking about only a few paragraphs. I can only imagine how painstaking it must have been the write an entire book in that manner.
Obviously I am ignorant. Typewriters, especially the one like mine, are not at all old, mine is only around 50 to 60 years old in fact. What struck me at this point in my thinking was, hang on, if I’m find it this difficult on fairly recent technology how hard must it have been in say the early 1900’s when it was all pen/pencil and paper.
Even slower, even more mistakes and even less presentable.
And then before that it was an inkwell and before that scrolls!
I suppose what I am trying to say is that whilst in the past the ability to write may have been restricted to those with the education and economical freedom, which created a rather restricted classical canon, writing in the past was nonetheless much harder than today and therefore much more honourable in a sense.
Again I am not slating the ease and openness of writing in modern times with the invention of computers that nearly all can access, at least in the West, all I am saying is that there is something much less prestigious and elegant to it.
I don’t really have a point I suppose, just some interesting ramblings.

Christmas Haul and Overcoming my Bias

So I thought I had better do a Christmas haul post to talk about the books I received as gifts this year but with a twist.

Many of the books I’ve received as presents I may have in the past looked over because of their style and I have recently learnt to be much less arrogant  with my reading and accept this books. So I’m going to tell you about my books and why I may have not looked at them in the past.

Firstly I got the ‘Professor Moriaty‘ series. Yes, that Moriaty, the Sherlock one. These books are essentially a spin off from Conan Doyle’s works that accept that Moriaty may be the only other person as brilliant as Sherlock and so he is also called up in desperate situations to solve cases. I won’t lie, I LOVE this idea of a ‘bad’ main character but I probably would not have picked up these books myself.
That is because of my bias, I in the past may have felt that because one author has directly used another’s inventions he is in some way less talented or less worthy of my readership. How bloody awful of me! Just because he has written a spin off it does not make it any less valuable, it is in fact harder to write under a given structure rather than with free reign and who knows these could be the best books I’ve ever read.

I also got Assassins Creed Unity (in book form) obviously being centered on the French revolution. I love historical fiction. I love the Assassins Creed games. So why did I last year pick up Assassins Creed Revelations on a HMV shelf and say OUT LOUD that I wasn’t going to read it because it didn’t really count as literature and so I didn’t want to read it. I am so glad I was given these books and I am now FORCED to open my eyes to new opportunities that I’m sure I will love. I cannot believe that I have been such an elitist for so long.

I also got three books that I did ask for, Revolution by Russell Brand, Dreams of Gods and Monsters by Laini Taylor and The Heroes of Olympus: Blood of Olympus by Rick Riordan. I won’t go into thew individual reason that I may have at some point discriminated against these but you can see how messed up my thoughts used to be.

Basically, whilst I love the classics and will always love them I have learnt that all literature has a value even if that value isn’t completely even it is still there in different levels depending on the readers own personality.
Read books. Love books. Please YOURSELF.

 

Beat Generation vs. The World

This post is a little backwards I’ll admit, hear me out.
So recently I’ve watched Kill Your Darlings and it had me considering Ginsberg, Carr, and Kerouac, I’ve only ever read a little Ginsberg and I’m possibly the only literature student in the universe who has yet to read On The Road but I think about them a lot. Here’s why.
The Beat Generation were sick of meter, rhyme, order and the classist control of verbal expression stemming from the ‘classics’ of Ulysses, Shakespeare. That’s where my problem with them begins really.
I absolutely love the ‘classics’ and I don’t think that they are anywhere as restrictive as the Beat Generation clearly believed them to be. I mean obviously more modern issues such as sexuality and youth and addiction weren’t properly addressed but did that really call for a complete reversal of everything that had ever been? Maybe.
The film Kill Your Darlings had me thinking that they certainly were an extraordinarily unfortunate troubled bunch of young men that were fortunate enough to have been around to inspire each other before going their separate ways. These men changed the world of literature, I have no problem with that, I’m against censorship and human restriction, I am certainly glad that they produced this new literature leading to the removal of bans on books like Lady Chatterley’s Lover and Wuthering Heights.  But something about the bluntness of their work puts me off.
When I first read Howl for example, I didn’t read Howl actually, I listened to it,  and I was fascinated with how emotive it was, captured in his pain, inspired, moved and mystified by it. I was also horrified and disgusted. The language used was brutal and blunt and in that way completely unimaginative. Which even as I type this I realise may have been his exact intention.
And okay yes I can get over that they want to shock and hit out against all that came before and I do in a way enjoy it but I don’t think it should be put anywhere near the First Folio, or the collected works of Romantics. Yes let Ginsberg hang out in the Library with the other 20th Century revolutionary writers, but let’s face it they will only ever been symbols of THEIR time, they are just a movement. Shakespeare, Byron, Poe, Wilde, they take place in a much more universal human sphere and will be eternal.
Furthermore, and this is a controversial point but I want to state my peace, Shakespearean literature and the Classics, the Romantics, THEY are truly artists, subtly suggesting feelings they couldn’t express otherwise, painting intricate drawings with their words. The Beat Generation are running down the high street smashing shop windows and terrorising the locals. I enjoy their message. I value their historical input. But they are not artists, not poets and in Beat Generation vs. The World, I choose the world.

(Side note, finding out that Lucien Carr had his dedication removed from further publications of Ginsberg’s works absolutely tore my heart out.)

Ban Shakespeare?

I will try to make this a short post. I promise nothing.
I recently saw that one of my friends at uni was attending a debate entitled: ‘This House Believes that Shakespeare Should be Banned from the Classroom’ and I’ve not been able to stop thinking about it since.
Because NO! Don’t ban Shakespeare from the classroom, ARE YOU CRAZY?
To show I understand the issue I will quickly list you top 5 reasons you may have to ban the bard; there is much more modern literature that needs appreciation, by forcing Shakespeare upon students they will grow to resent it, Shakespeare shouldn’t even be studied as literature as it is a play, the language and themes in Shakespeare are irrelevant now, who’s to say he’s a genius he just happens to be the one that got famous and finally, a bonus one,  who knows if he even wrote it? ( I will deal with that last one in a separate post).
I think that whilst all of these point have SOME validity, I can prove every last one of them to be completely wrong, quickly hopefully, I could rant about this for days.
I understand that modern literature needs appreciating and that in many ways the white middle class man that dominates the canon should be moved to one side, (although Shakespeare was lower class, just sayin’). My point simply is, how can we appreciate modern literature if we cast the classical out? Balance, my dear friends, balance.
As for the next two, I have a very quick response, It is a matter of British culture. I do not CARE whether Shakespeare is studied in Literature, Theatre, History or Philosophy, it has been a huge part of the British culture and societal change for centuries, you cannot ignore it, to touch upon the fourth point, it will never be irrelevant, it is not possible. Students will not resent the subject if they enjoy it, that is not up to the subject, it is up to the teacher and how it is communicated, take them to see it, explain the sexual jokes, let them play soldier and they will be entertained.
As for the language, as Ben Crystal points out, 95% of the language in Shakespeare is the same as our Modern English  and out of that 95% Shakespeare invented loads of those words and phrases, so to say that he uses a different language is both wrong and ignorant. Shakespeare is not complicated, there is a stigma around it that is easily debunked if you spend more than five minutes concentrating on it, so don’t give me that excuse.
The genius question is not a factual one or an easy argument to make, but if you consider how many words he invented, how he never had a formal education, how he used huge political events like the Gunpowder Plot to make unforgettable plays, how he created strong female characters in the 16th century, how he has lived on through people simply discussing how much they loved him (he did not publish collections in his own life time) and how he has us still talking about him 450 years after his birth, I really don’t see how you could deny it.
Rant over.
Loyal Stratfordian out.

Shakespeare for Kids?

I went shopping the other day,  very exciting I know, and whilst I was there I picked up a couple of Christmas presents for my little sister.
What I picked out were some children’s books, Shakespeare’s famous plays adapted into a story format for kids. Then I began to wonder, was my eagerness to have my sister experience Shakespeare at such a young age really a good thing?
For a start these editions of Shakespeare don’t have even similar language to tge original plays, obviously.  I know I know I know I can’t expect a 7 year old child to be able to read Elizabethan English,  she hasn’t long learnt how to read regular English,  but just how much of these stories are lost when we take away his language. We lose the metre, the rhyme, the distinction between verse and prose, the puns, a lot of the imagery,  I could go on.
The other concern I had was that maybe the stories would be a little too adult for her. Not so much Much Ado or Midsummer’s but Macbeth for example,  or Hamlet or Romeo and Juliet, contain war, suicide and regicide and one the copies I bought had a rather too graphic drawing of bodies hanging from a tree. I mean I read Romeo and Juliet with an equally graphic drawing when I wasn’t much younger than her and I turned out okay right?
I did have these concerns yes, but the way I see it is that I’m only providing her with one more influence,  one more option and in the end it can’t be any worse than the crap they force down their throats on kid’s tv these days.

“Dangerous” Literature?

Wait what?
Yeah I know, it sound completely insane to suggest that a book could be harmful (unless it’s the monster book of monsters) but some people, in fact a lot of people, do or have at some point believed this.
It (kind of) makes sense.
Books are very powerful things, because the human voice, the human message, affects people easily.
Millions of people worship based on certain books, the Torah, the Qua’rn, the Bible.
People have rallied up politically behind certain texts, The Communist Manifesto, Mein Kampf, for example. And more currently it looks like Russell Brand’s new book Revolution is already making mainstream politicians sweat.
Yes, this is understandable but what is harder to understand is when fiction is banned.
Harry Potter, Animal Farm, Wuthering Heights, The Bell Jar, Requiem For A Dream, The Lord of the Rings, Lady Chatterley’s Lover, Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, The DaVinci Code, The Fairytales of the Brothers Grimm, even Twilight have all been banned at some point around the world, and why? Because they have discussed or possibly ‘approved’ something that a government board decided that people shouldn’t be allowed to read.
Wuthering Heights was too shocking, ghosts and grave robbing and adultery, DISGRACEFUL. Harry Potter supports the use of witchcraft, obviously. Lady Chatterley’s Lover is just too damn sexy. Or maybe the truth is that books like Requiem for a Dream, the Bell Jar and Animal Farm expose parts of society that the government would prefer to overlook, like human corruption, poverty, mental health, drug wars. Is that a possibility? I think so.
The way I see it is that even if certain books do promote certain things, people will only react that extremely if those things are true, or if they already have certain feelings inside of them already, people will not turn murderous because of words on a page or because of a video game for that matter, you must have certain capacities within you. Think of all the people who absorb this media and DON’T start revolutions. WE must look at this like everything else, from a Utilitarian perspective, the potential for good for the majority of people to develop from these books far outweighs the chance of some minority acting in a harmful way.
I guess what I’m trying to say is that book censorship is wrong.
People should be allowed to read whatever they want, make their own decisions will all of the information in front of them, what’s more, as writers we should be able to write whatever we want and express ourselves in whatever way we feel comfortable.
Lastly, although I disagree with book censorship, it gives me great joy, great hope, because as long as government boards are trying to hide away certain book it means that government boards are scared of writers. It means that writers have power.
It means that writers can change the world.

Peter Pan; AGAIN!

I know I’ve talked about Peter Pan before but whilst wondering around work the other day I decided something, I NEED TO TALK TO YOU ABOUT IT AGAIN!
This time I want to talk about how dark Peter Pan really is, the original text I mean, not any of the jazzy Hollywood versions. And it is indeed very very dark.
For a start Pan who lends his name to Peter and his Pipes, is the lost Greek god of the wild and whilst that sounds romantic it really isn’t. Pan was often thought to be a sexual fiend, sleeping around with nymphs, getting drunk and generally behaving rather inappropriately and immorally. Let’s combine this with Peter Pan’s role, he suddenly goes from an angel to a child snatcher and he doesn’t grow up, suddenly not cute, irresponsible in fact.
Next, Peter is suggested to be around 10 or 11 years old, pre-pubescent by any means, and yet he has already mutilated a fully grown man (Hook) and for all we know actually killed other pirates. Never to mind the fact that there are fully grown men willing to slaughter children simply for being unable to grow up.
I’M ABOUT TO MAKE THIS RIVALRY REALLY INTENSE BE WARNED. We could choose to see Peter v. Hook as an idea of Good v. Evil, God v. Satan. And that’s not necessarily a good thing, whilst Peter may seem like the obvious hero, charming and child friendly, he seems to mercilessly punish a man who he really knows little about and tries to draw others into his group very quickly forgetting and shunning all who should dare to step one toe out of his set of rules. Also whilst Hook talks like the temping snake trying to lure Tink and Wendy to betray their leader we must understand that he is trapped, outside of his prime in a mutilated body seemingly unable to reach the levels of happiness and innocence that allow Peter to mock him, we don’t know why Hook is this way, we just assume he’s evil. Could Barrie be saying that we have broken concepts of good and evil and could he be using Peter to show God’s cruelty, falseness and moral corruption? Ouch.
I don’t want to spend long on this one but we must touch upon how messed up Peter is from a Freudian perspective. He never had a mother or father figure growing up and so constantly flips from being a child to being a parent in his tribe and sees women as mother and mothers as little else than housekeepers. Peter’s constant searching for this is painful, rather disturbing, and ultimately unfulfilled.
I feel that I should at this point reiterate that I love Peter Pan and think that it is one of the most well crafted and timeless pieces of children’s literature in the history of the Western World (I can’t really speak for the rest). I simply wanted to show that Peter Pan has a thousand different paths to explore some pleasant and beautiful and some with a less optimistic view of the human condition.
I want to study this text at university hence my recent and intense analysis, I’d love to hear any additional thoughts of yours.
(Also this picture is one I found of the RSC Peter Pan performance I saw last January, it was incredible and if you can get hold of it in any form, see it, it was incredibly well directed and acted.)

Passion

Passion is a funny word isn’t it?
I’m always babbling on about how I’m passionate about English or how I have a passion for poetry or the theatre, but saying that on its own has very little meaning really.
I finally thought about what passion is and I have decided there are two kinds, for me at least.
There’s the sudden lusty kind and the slow warm loving passion, both of which I have in my life.
The first kind of passion really takes you, it’s the one you notice, it’s the way your heart races when you hear a new song that’s fantastic, when you get towards the end of a book and finally realising how it all comes together, when you’re reading and you have an epiphany and suddenly become a genius philosopher.
The other kind of passion is when a warmth just slowly passes over your chest, like it’s melting in your mouth, this is like when you remember how much you love someone, or like when you get to the end of your favourite poem for the fiftieth time and you feel uncontrollable love and positive emotion for everything you’ve just experienced.
Basically what I;m saying is that when I say that these are the things I’m passionate about, I’m not just saying that I like to read or that I like to pass my time writing poems, I’m saying that when I do these things my heart and ears pound and I have some giant emotional and almost physical reaction to them and that even thinking about these things makes me flood with happiness.
Don’t get me wrong, this can be a bad thing, sometimes my passion tortures me and it makes me come across rather oddly to strangers who don’t share this (trust me, I’ve tried), but I’ll tell you now there is no better feeling that letting yourself indulge in these or even better, meeting someone who is as passionate as you and letting your passions explode together (again trust me I’ve tested it).
So there you go, THAT’S how I feel about what I am and what I do.
Peace.

I’ve missed my blog!

9 months later and I’m revisiting this little treasure! (No I didn’t have a baby)
I am on my gap year now and I am planning on filling this gap year with literary delicacies and wordy treats.
Some of my conquests so far have been; Lord of the Flies, To Kill A Mockingbird, The Fault in Our Stars, Bring Up The Bodies just to name a few.
I plan to power through some of my collected works, I currently possess the full works of Shakespeare, Dickens, Wilde, Poe and Keats (really sticking to the canon there Katie) and I am proud of my classical interests despite all the new age gusto.
I also plan to read to read and am reading, some critical writing, some American writing (Requiem for a Dream is my current taste), and the Bible as I thought this might be helpful for my studies when I get to university.
Well with this reading I have started making critical notes in a little notebook so that I don’t forget how to analyse and that made me think, hell I should start up my blog again and force my shabby and amateur ideas down other people’s throats, because that’s what everyone wants to do in the end.
I’m still writing poems don’t worry and when I get my typewriter up and running I’ll be blasting my thoughts out on that as well.
I will bring back everything that I had before, my book reviews, theater and film translations, my own writing and of course my own mumblings and grumblings about aspects of the language in a much broader sense.
Gosh, that was a lot of nonsense right there, sure I’ll be back soon, keep reading!
Laters!

(Cheeky P.S. Whilst you’re reading, why not check out my poems, they ain’t half bad! http://allpoetry.com/poems/by/Katie%20Taylor )

Writing a Story: How Hard Can it Be?

So I’ve decided to broaden my creative writing horizons and try to write a short story or two among all my poetry.
I’ve had a couple planned for ages but it’s difficult because stories are just so much longer, and in continuous prose, it’s really hard for me though, verse comes very naturally to me, it’s like half the time my brain only works in verse, like a Shakespeare play, but stories, that’s so much harder and I’m convinced they’re awful.
It doesn’t feel right not putting in romantic language and similes and rhyme everywhere and so I already assume it’s awful, but I’ll let other people judge once I’ve actually finished writing them.
(As I’m writing this I’m realising how little I use the j key, it’s a good letter, how sad, it needs more love)
Anyway that’s it from me, other writing I want to try at some point is plays, maybe even in a Shakespearean style, again it’s hard and gets harder as I’m just convinced I’ll amount to nothing, god it’s easy to see why writers go mad.