WriMo In Progress - The Third Face of Janus

I'd be lying if I didn't admit to a palpable amount of trepidation over this year's National Novel Writing Month. There's always an element of apprehension, of course—churning out 50,000 words in a month's time is certainly daunting. The standard nervousness is exacerbated by my decision to base this year's novel, The Third Face of Janus, at least in part on my life. Names will be changed, personalities blended into new characters, but at its core will lie a significant amount of genuine Me. 

As with any instance of working with an idea I believe to be of sufficient quality, I'm tremendously excited, and more than a little confident, but there's a part of me that's decidedly reluctant to proceed as planned. While I'm no stranger to introspection, however difficult, to endure a sustained effort as such will no doubt take a toll. An upshot of using myself as the basis for the main character is that I'll be able to use my reactions to the writing process as fodder for more writing; whatever issues arise, the novel will essentially feed them into itself, and reaching—if not exceeding—the goal should be no problem whatsoever.

Over the years, I've bounded between extremes in terms of personality. I'm fairly consistent these days, having leveled off a few years ago, but I thought it might be interesting to explore the back story a bit, detailing the effort required to resolve the various selves I felt I exhibited. As I'm writing it as a dramatization, I can play fast and loose with the facts, exaggerate certain elements, and introduce entire fictions to elucidate the experience far more than a simple accounting of reality could do. I'm never short on hypotheticals and counterfactuals to consider; the perspectives afforded by writing this novel alone should be worth the trouble. We're all, ideally, perpetual works in progress, and its not a stretch to suggest the quest to resolve the many aspects of self is a continual one. The title of my novel refers to this stable middle-ground, between conflicting iterations of self, the place of balance between positive and negative extremes. In the end, success will mean finding, identifying as, and donning, the Third Face of Janus.

Much as I may harbor reservations about this project, I'm unbearably eager to begin. There's no rushing the clock, however, and so I'm resigned to obsessive amounts of NaNoPrep. Most of my preparation will be detailed in future posts, but having recently completed the synopsis and excerpt (or in this case, jacket blurb) portions on my NaNoWriMo Author Page, I thought I'd share them here.

Synopsis

Over the past few years, bi-polar freelance writer Jackson Dolakov has managed to pull himself out of the miserable drink-and-drug filled hole in which he spent most of his 20s. Living alone in a basement apartment on the city's west side, he does his best to continue rehabilitating himself and reintegrating into society. Shortly after he enters his 35th year, however, his therapist goes on leave without warning. Bereft of this point of reference, his fledgling attempt at normalcy begins to crumble, and his tenuous hold on rational thought slips inexorably toward the volatile, nightmare purview of his past. As he struggles to keep his world from falling apart, he sifts through a sea of recollection in hopes of finding the key to preventing a complete and total relapse. In the end, his success will depend on whether or not he can find common ground between the amiable gentleman everyone has come to know, and the misanthropic beast he fears he might yet become.

Dust Jacket Blurb

"The nights used to call out to me, fill me with a sense of potential and purpose and power. The car would top a hill's crest, bring the lights of the city into view, and I'd feel this energy surge into and through me, feed some part of my self long starved in the dismal hours of daylight. Or I'd look out the window at home and watch the houselights go out as the old brass art deco lamp on my desk warmed up and shined like day on my hulking grey tank of a typewriter. I'd pour a drink, light a smoke, and breathe fire onto the pages. 

"These days I'm not much for excitement, anticipation; so long as I know there's a few meals and a laugh to be had, I'm just fine facing another day at home. Good enough food, a laugh, or a drink maybe, with a few smokes alongside--old habits die hard. It doesn't take much. I prefer it that way. It wasn't always like this, but a man can only bear so much blood and shame and pain before he's whittled down to the tragic, crippled shape he's doomed to take before finally giving up the ghost. I might have barely entered my thirty-fifth year, but what they used to say still holds true: I'm an old soul, deep down. And I'm not getting any younger..."

The Growing Season - Summer in Review

Proper reflection can be an arduous process. To thoroughly expound upon events past is challenge enough, but to attempt the encapsulation of an entire season takes more than a few days' thinking. Though autumn is already a month underway, the leaves already changed and falling, it's only now that summer's expiration has finally sunk in. And while I did well to appreciate its passage at the time, it's only through the lens of hindsight that I'm capable of seeing what a spectacular summer it had been.

Sunrise over Lake Glacier, Mill Creek Park

Owing much to the annual school schedule, we are trained from an early age to view summer as a season apart, unique and detached from the rest of the year. It is a time for late nights and lazy mornings, frivolous hours of outdoor play in the extended light of day, vacations and day trips, carnivals and parades. It's a season of adventure and exploration, of excitement, of fun. What did my spectacular summer entail? At least at the onset--reading. Lots and lots of reading.

One of the benefits of cavorting with other writers is catching the fire of their inspiration at the hands of sources new to you. Passion is contagious, particularly when it comes to literary proclivities. A friend enthusiastically endorsed a host of artists and authors with whom I had yet to become acquainted, but none grabbed my attention so firmly as Henry Miller. The nature of his work—controversial, semi-autobiographical, rambling, graphic--intrigued me, and I acquired a copy of 1939's Tropic of Capricorn for my introduction. 

I was instantly seized by the novel's tone, gritty and dark and discontent in the way only a true romantic could portray. In many ways the novel is a period piece, describing a particular moment in history, and yet it also seems to have been ahead of its time; there's a quality to the prose which places Miller, in my mind, at the forefront literary movements that followed, particularly the Beat era. Literary fiction to the core, Capricorn has little in the way of plot to summarize; essentially, it's a window into a portion of Miller's life, however dramatized it may be. Though his work proved controversial enough to earn the ire of censors in its day, the novel's mature themes are almost charming in a way, or at the very least amusing; though the exposition of its protagonist's knowledge and experiences is of a uniquely high quality, its basic import is nothing particularly out of the ordinary in the modern era.

Reading Miller isn't easy, at least not at any appreciable pace. After borrowing Tropic of Cancer from the library, I found myself covering no more than a few pages at a time; sometimes a single sentence would be enough to floor me, bringing me to a state of cerebral paralysis, basking in its genius and wallowing in that novitiate writer's lament, "I'll never write anything half this well..." However, I will say I found I identified with Miller in a number of ways, which was at once welcome and disturbing. The man was many things, but as a role model I'm sure one could find a thousand better choices. Taken by his writing style and what he hoped to achieve with it, my own approach to writing has since shifted in a decidedly Milleresque direction, hopefully for the better.

Something about Miller's style, though I've yet to successfully pinpoint the exact aspect, called to mind Hemingway's writing. I'd only read one of Hemingway's books—The Sun Also Rises—as an adult, but the comparison was distinct. Having seen him portrayed cinematically in Hemingway & Gellhorn and, to a lesser extent Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris, I had developed a curiosity about the man's life and work. I began with Papa: Hemingway in Key West, by James McLendon, an account of Hemingway's time in Florida compiled from interviews with, and as described by, those who knew him. I came to find that behind the myth and the offensively macho veneer lay a man wholly dedicated to his craft, fueled by an insatiable lust for life. I followed Papa: Hemingway in Key West with Papa: A Personal Memoir, written by his son, Gregory, and Ernest Hemingway: A Writer's Life, by Catherine Reef. I read Hemingway on Writing, The Selected Letters of Ernest Hemingway, The Complete Short Stories of Ernest Hemingway: The Finca Vigia Edition, The Nick Adams Stories, To Have and Have Not, Death in the Afternoon, and what became my favorite of the lot, A Moveable Feast.

Say what you will about Hemingway, he was no small figure in American literature. I had never had much of an appreciation for his work—The Old Man and the Sea, required reading in high school, left me baffled as to why anyone would bother with his oeuvre at all. Even after The Sun Also Rises, I remained confused, though for different reasons; the "iceberg theory"—Hemingway's assertion that a writer well-versed in his or her story could leave out the bulk of it, and allow the remaining "the tip of the iceberg" to intimate the rest—was surprisingly effective, but I couldn't fathom how it worked. I could appreciate the simplistic, direct tone, and his use of syndeton was masterful, but there are whole paragraphs comprised of sentences that seemingly have little to do with one another, yet still manage to propel the story in a capable and meaningful way. It all seems so random, and even now I fail at fully comprehending it. That something so simple could prove to me so confusing is a testament to the man's art, infuriating though it may be.

Just as one could never divorce Hemingway from his reputation as a drunk and belligerent misogynist, one is hard-pressed to discuss the man without coming across the topic of hunting or, much more likely, that of fishing. As stated above, passions are contagious. So it was that I went from the summer's first chapter, reading, to its second: learning how to fish. 

Lake Glacier, as viewed from Fellows Riverside Garden, Mill Creek Park

Teaching yourself something from scratch, without the aid of a guide or mentor, is definitely a difficult task. I didn't know the first thing about fishing, and had no idea where to even begin aside from a few "for beginners" books found at the library. I'd initially thought that procuring the necessary equipment would be difficult, though I'd always known my grandfather had an old fishing rod tucked away in the garage. it wasn't until my father caught wind of my sudden interest and located a completely stocked tackle box that the possibility of seeing things through became a reality. I began to seriously consider becoming an angler. 

One of the greatest perks of living in Youngstown, OH is our magnificent park. Mill Creek Park is a beautiful sprawl of forest paths, fields, and waterways. It's also a good place to catch your first fish.

Fishing pier, Lake Glacier, Mill Creek park

After a few weeks spent researching the ins and outs of fishing, practicing a few integral knots and learning about the assortment of accessories used to catch the various fish I might encounter, I took to the park with an inordinate amount of enthusiasm, spending hours at a time practicing my casting, trying different bait and rigs, and eventually catching more than a few bluegill, rock bass, and carp. There's something to be said for the benefits of fishing as a hobby, namely that it's surprisingly conducive to meditation; while fishing, one thinks of the setting, the water, the wind, the line, the bait...but little else. 


There was, of course, much more to the summer than reading and fishing. I attended a wedding reception, for example, that was easily one of the greatest celebrations in which I'd ever participated. I relished the time with the best of old friends, made quite a few new ones, and frighteningly enough, caught the garter with a disturbing degree of enthusiasm. 

I've also endeavored to improve my skills in the kitchen, mastering meringues and excelling at entrees; a particular point of pride is my ability to now bake a palatable cake from scratch. I've become more health-minded, experimenting with green smoothies and far less processed meals. So much of our lives revolves around food, and it was a delight to spend time focusing on it in ways that didn't leave me feeling guilt-ridden, making meals I could proudly share with others. 

Boat launch, Lake Newport, Mill Creek park

In light of all these activities, I reached summer's end feeling more capable in virtually every way. It was the best of times, it was the worst of times--but it was a tremendous season of growth, a season of Becoming. Allowing for a week or two to enjoy the milestone of another year's aging, it's honestly due to this estival progress that I'm back at it here at the Scholar's Fane. It's how I made the decision to take the inspiration gleaned from Miller's writing and apply it to this year's National Novel Writing Month and my novel The Third Face of Janus.



I continue to be overwhelmed by the experience of living, enjoying a lust for life of which Hemingway might have approved. It was the most memorable summer I've experienced in years, and though I was sad to see it finally end, I'm left feeling emboldened, confident, and ready for a spectacular end to the year. Autumn has always been my favorite season, a time for great change and introspection. Only a month in, and it's already proven to be every bit as hectic and fulfilling as the summer had been. As I turn my gaze from the past to the present and future, I can't help but smile. 2013 has turned out to be a far better year thus far than I'd anticipated. It's been a wild one, but for once I'm glad to have gone along for the ride. It's your turn, autumn; let's make this a memorable one.

Parapet Bridge, Lake Glacier, Mill Creek Park

From Page to Screen - The Time Traveler's Wife

“Long ago, men went to sea, and women waited for them, standing on the edge of the water, scanning the horizon for the tiny ship. Now I wait for Henry. He vanishes unwillingly, without warning. I wait for him. Each moment that I wait feels like a year, an eternity. Each moment is as slow and transparent as glass. Through each moment I can see infinite moments lined up, waiting. Why has he gone where I cannot follow?”

“I hate to be where she is not, when she is not. And yet, I am always going...”

There's an inherently magical quality to debut novels, an urgency that permeates their earnest prose in ways not often felt in an author's later works. While the novels that follow may well prove superior in any number of ways, a writer's first work bears the full weight of their aspirations and as yet untapped potential. This isn't to say that every debut stands out as such—many a career has been born of an inauspicious beginning—but for some, so much of the burgeoning writer is poured into that initial foray into the literary world that it truly dazzles, unexpectedly, surprisingly, life-alteringly. Few have so forcefully seized the opportunity that the debut novel presents as Audrey Niffenegger did in 2003, with The Time Traveler's Wife.

Though the plot is driven by the life circumstances of "chrono-impaired" librarian Henry DeTamble, the novel's story largely follows the path of its titular character, Henry's eventual wife Clare. The novel begins with a brief introduction to the characters, as they describe in turn the experience of being subjected to Henry's traveling. We are shown how it is that Henry first meets Clare, and then how Clare first meets Henry—the former taking place in 1991, when Henry is 28 and Clare is 20; the latter taking place in 1977, when Henry is 36 and Clare is 6. 

In alternating perspectives presented in an almost epistolary tone, one character often taking up the story's telling where the other leaves off, the novel details young Clare's encounters with Henries of varying ages, sowing the seeds of the relationship to come. Once Clare meets the Henry who shares her present—albeit inconsistently—the reader follows as their relationship manifests fully and unfolds under duress of the unique challenges presented by Henry's temporal excursions. 

It's difficult to summarize The Time Traveler's Wife further, beyond the above description and all that it implies. So much of what makes the novel truly captivating is its depth, the richness of the lives depicted. Young Clare doesn't offer the temporally displaced Henry a donut—it's a bismarck, specifically. When the couple attends a Violent Femmes concert, they don't merely dance to "the music", we're treated to a sampling of the set list, with lyrical excerpts. Musical, artistic, and literary references abound, and all of these details add texture and nuance, shaping a multi-faceted world that is believable, plausible, real. Niffenegger's grasp of language is such that vocabularies grow as the characters' ages do, and in general creating tones that are at once truly human, and at times profoundly poetic. As Henry and Clare lament and celebrate and opine, each of these moods and moments is imbued with an import inescapable to the reader. Here, it seems as real people suffering, loving, struggling, striving, rejoicing, and with them so too does the reader.

As with any adaptation of a complex work, the cinematic iteration of the novel suffers somewhat from an excess of simplicity. The screenplay, penned by Ghost and My Life screenwriter Bruce Joel Rubin, capably captures the essence of the basic plot, but much of the novel's depth falls sadly to the wayside. Henry's complicated relationship with his father is reduced to a single, intense scene; Clare's childhood, the experiences with Henry of which form the foundation of the relationship to come, is treated only marginally, used most often to punctuate the progression of events in the "present"; most of the novel's cultural references are abandoned, taking it from its particular setting in time and making for a more timeless piece, though somehow to its detriment; characters integral to the story—particularly that of Clare's friend Gomez—are minimalized, if not abandoned entirely.

Yet for all this, the film does still satisfy on many levels, for more than those already fond of its literary basis. The depiction of Henry's traveling is impressively handled, and the story's pacing is consistent while ensuring that no major points are overlooked, nor minor points belabored. The cast is generally quite endearing, despite stumbling over some of the less conversational lines. The "feel" of the film—its fantastical plot, cinematography, framing, and score—lends a dreamlike quality, calling to mind other works, such as What Dreams May Come and Bicentennial Man. This contrasts with the novel's frequently visceral tone, much of which would have been far too graphic for the targeted PG-13 rating. However, this "softer side" of the overall plot avoids the trap of becoming too saccharine for fans of the original work. All in all, for anyone keen on subtly scifi/fantasy films and romantic dramas, the movie is a fairly safe bet.

At its heart, in either iteration, The Time Traveler's Wife is an exploration of ever so much more than the love between a man and a woman. Questions of free will and fate plague the couple, and the reader or viewer as well. The origins of said love are ontologically paradoxical, as are a number of events that transpire as Henry and Clare's relationship progresses. As the philosophical quandaries mount, in addition to the more typical issues that challenge any relationship, the story becomes one that is at the same time utterly unique and all too familiar. It's this blending of strange and common grounds that so compels the reader to continue exploring through the heartwarming and heartbreaking episodes in Henry and Clare's lives. 

Ultimately, though star-crossed in their own way, the DeTambles' love for each other is deep, abiding, and most of all inspiring. To observe their struggles, their triumphs, their tragedies, is a journey all its own. Absent the benefit (and curse) of genuine time travel, one must settle for traveling back to the beginning of the story and embarking upon that journey anew—something many will find themselves compelled to do time and time again.

Click here to read the Post Script to this review

Throwback Thursday - The Rapture of the Nerds

Absurdly surreal, and surreally absurd, The Rapture of the Nerds: A Tale of the Singularity, Posthumanity, and Awkward Social Situations is a challenging book to summarize. A collaborative effort between digital-era demigod Cory Doctorow and science fiction juggernaut Charles Stross, the novel is, at times, humorously poignant; at others, more humorously profane. It is a farcical caricature of an impossible future, populated by the warped result of modern humankind's metaphysical spaghettification after passing through the pinpoint opening of the Technological Singularity. Though clearly meant to be a comical look at technologically advanced humanity pushed to every extreme, it may also just as soon be prophetic. 

The concept of the Singularity is difficult to comprehend, not for its content but rather its import. It is by its very definition unknowable, or at least the moment at which the unknowable trumps all. There's simply no telling what life beyond the event horizon will entail, and it's into this gap that the acid trip nightmare of The Rapture of the Nerds is thrust. Resonating throughout the length of the novel is a palpable sense of “Why not?”, as the transhuman race—or rather what’s left of it, after billions have transcended into the networked nanocloud that has usurped much of the solar system—eke out varying forms of existences in what can only be described as a partially successful post-apocalyptic world. Holographic genies, inflatable buildings, biohackers, churches of sexual perversion, vending machine gender re-assignments—all this and more await the reader who braves this ridiculously ingenious romp through futurity.

In the aftermath of a friend’s party, protagonist Huw Jones awakens to a roaring hangover, in a bathtub that almost certainly wasn’t a bathtub when he passed out. A neo-Luddite of the highest order, Jones lives in a home without electricity at a time when others live in houses that rearrange themselves on a regular basis. Much of the night before is a blur, and aside from the unexpected bathroom Huw is surprised to find a fresh tattoo he doesn’t remember wanting, and before his first cup of coffee discovers that the woman he spent the evening flirting with is now a man. On the heels of this illustrious introduction Jones receives word, much to his excitement, that he’s finally been selected for jury duty—an opportunity to reject one of the many suggestions beamed down to Earth from the cloud, and a chance to speak his principled mind in general. It soon becomes apparent, however, that jury duty will be one of the last things Jones ever looks forward to.

The story picks up quickly from there, and the authors seem content to maintain a harried pace throughout the remainder of the novel. From the object of his jury’s attention to the mystery of the tattoo stems a mad dash in which Jones is torn between escaping various nefarious forces and running toward the completion of a mission for which he would never have signed up—had he been given any say in the matter, that is.  In the end, the relentlessly insane future of humanity may well depend on the actions of its least willing participant.

The Rapture of the Nerds is a perfect novel for its time, as humanity collectively nears the precipice from which we will inevitably leap into the unforeseeable future.  While the authors do, at times, explore the philosophical quandaries which surround the topics of transhumanism and the Singularity, the story focuses more on the titular “awkward social situations” to great amusement, and no small amount of perplexity. Peppered with pop-cultural references and cyberpunk jargon sure to please numerous subsets of the scifi community, and with prose crafted of jagged conceptual clusters which flow poetically, if jarringly, with all the graceful fluidity of an avalanche, the novel may not necessarily be the best choice for the uninitiated reader’s first foray into the genre. However, when all’s said and done, even those least familiar with science fiction—but possessed of a taste for the ridiculous and borderline-obscene—should find The Rapture of the Nerds to be a fulfilling and amusing excursion into one of literature’s most absurd futures yet.

Click here to read the Post Script to this review

This review originally appeared elsewhere in October of 2012

Dewey's Read-a-Thon: Aftermath, Pt. 1

There's so much to be said for the experience of last weekend's Read-a-Thon. So much, in fact, that I doubt it can be contained in a single post. Considering that I have yet to finish the first book on my Read-a-Thon list (though I think I'm finally in the homestretch), most of what I'd like to cover will have to wait.

For now, I'd just like to touch upon an observation that struck me rather early in the course of that day: With so many new contacts in the blogging community comes a desire to follow the work and progress of said contacts. This led me to wonder, exactly how does one follow so many blogs all at once? It seemed impractical to bookmark and check each of them on a daily basis, and similarly inefficient to put my name on dozens of mailing lists. The answer came from one such contact, in the form of Bloglovin, a free site which functions as a tailored aggregator, compiling a custom feed of any and all blogs one chooses to follow.

Signing up was easy enough; I had the option of using my Facebook account, but opted to go the standard route of setting up a profile attached to my email address. From there, I was prompted to start with at least 5 blogs I'd like to follow. After selecting those 5, I was offered the opportunity to include the posts of Facebook friends. This seems like a nice feature, though unnecessary to the cause, so I declined. Lastly, I decided to add to the details of my Bloglovin profile, and "claiming" The Scholar's Fane as mine.

Over the next few days, I'll add the blogs of those with whom I became acquainted over the course of the Read-a-Thon, and with any luck some of them might do the same. I felt that my interactions over the course of the event introduced me to a larger world, initiating me into the general book-blogging community at large. I'm tremendously excited about nurturing this feeling, and as my blog grows, hopefully so too will my relationships with the many other fantastic bloggers out there.

So, in addition to the Fane's Facebook and Twitter pages, I give you a new means of keeping up to date on the latest news, reviews, and musings from the Fane: Click here to follow my blog with Bloglovin