On the first day of Christmas my true love sent to me a partridge in a pear tree

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn happy holidays, writing

Actually, if that happened they (the partridge in a pear tree) would probably end up in the garage where they would never be seen again. That’s fine. I detest pears. The cats would probably eat the partridge or vice versa.

My wife and I got books, candy, calendars, and plush throws for those chilly Georgia nights. These we can use, along with new lamps for the master and guest bedrooms. When we had multiple cats, they played in the pile of used wrapping paper. Last night when we opened gifts, our indoor/outdoor cat was asleep in the bedroom and our 25-year-old calico no longer cares about it (the paper).

Our decorations usually go up late and stay up through Twelfth Night when my wife is supposed to give me twelve drummers drumming. Well, more for the garage. Of course, it’s bad luck to leave the decorations up after Twelfth Night. Personally, I think it shows a lack of taste to throw the Christmas tree out for the trash truck late on December 25th.

I’m fairly traditional about this, following the Christmastide schedule as noted in Wikipedia: “In 567 the Council of Tours proclaimed that the entire period between Christmas and Epiphany should be considered part of the celebration, creating what became known as the twelve days of Christmas, or what the English called Christmastide. On the last of the twelve days, called Twelfth Night, various cultures developed a wide range of additional special festivities. The variation extends even to the issue of how to count the days. If Christmas Day is the first of the twelve days, then Twelfth Night would be on January 5, the eve of Epiphany. If December 26, the day after Christmas, is the first day, then Twelfth Night falls on January 6, the evening of Epiphany itself.”

One of the deathly hallows

This year, I added a new element to the Christmastide festivities called falling off the step ladder while putting up with lighted garland around the front door. That resulted in a headache and now a sore place where my head it the deck. I do not intend for this to become a new tradition.

My wife and I have sinus conditions that make us dizzy at times, so I told my wife not to put up the garland alone because she might fall off the deathly hallow. I guess it figures that I’d be the one calling off the ladder.

For your own safety, do not introduce any step ladders into your Christmas celebrations.

I hope your Christmas is happy, merry, and bright–and safe!

–Malcolm

‘Prophet Song’ by Paul Lynch

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing1 Comment

‘From that first knock at the door, Prophet Song forces us out of our complacency as we follow the terrifying plight of a woman seeking to protect her family in an Ireland descending into totalitarianism. We felt unsettled from the start, submerged in – and haunted by – the sustained claustrophobia of Lynch’s powerfully constructed world. He flinches from nothing, depicting the reality of state violence and displacement and offering no easy consolations. Here the sentence is stretched to its limits – Lynch pulls off feats of language that are stunning to witness. He has the heart of a poet, using repetition and recurring motifs to create a visceral reading experience. This is a triumph of emotional storytelling, bracing and brave. With great vividness, Prophet Song captures the social and political anxieties of our current moment. Readers will find it soul-shattering and true, and will not soon forget its warnings.’  – Esi Edugyan, Chair, Booker Prize.

When Kirkus Reviews praises a book by saying, “An exceptionally gifted writer, Lynch brings a compelling lyricism to her fears and despair while he marshals the details marking the collapse of democracy and the norms of daily life. His tonal control, psychological acuity, empathy, and bleakness recall Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). And Eilish, his strong, resourceful, complete heroine, recalls the title character of Lynch’s excellent Irish-famine novel, Grace (2017)” it’s certainly worth a look. Those of us who remember “The Troubles” (1960s-1990s)  will feel an eerie sense of Deja Vu to the violent world of the Irish Republican Army.

From the Publisher

“On a dark, wet evening in Dublin, scientist and mother-of-four Eilish Stack answers her front door to find two officers from Ireland’s newly formed secret police on her step. They have arrived to interrogate her husband, a trade unionist.

“Ireland is falling apart, caught in the grip of a government turning towards tyranny. As the life she knows and the ones she loves disappear before her eyes, Eilish must contend with the dystopian logic of her new, unraveling country. How far will she go to save her family? And what—or who—is she willing to leave behind?

“The winner of the Booker Prize 2023, Prophet Song presents a terrifying and shocking vision of a country sliding into authoritarianism and a deeply human portrait of a mother’s fight to hold her family together.”

From the Guardian

“Lynch’s message is crystal clear: lives the world over are experiencing upheaval, violence, persecution. Prophet Song is a literary manifesto for empathy for those in need and a brilliant, haunting novel that should be placed into the hands of policymakers everywhere.”

Reviewers in general are calling the book believable and plausible as well as a stunning achievement.

—Malcolm

 

Almost Christmas – are you ready?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

We’re as ready as we can be. Gifts have been mailed off to out-of-town family. My wife and I have gifts for each other; I finished wrapping what I got for Lesa this afternoon.

Those of you who’ve read this blog for a while know that I drive out in the middle of the night to a nearby QuikTip, Exxon,  BP, or other nearby gas station with a mini-mart and stock up on last-minute bargains such as Pork Rinds, Tee shirts with various logos, a case of oil, and other treats that help make opening gifts a festive occasion each year.

While I would prefer opening gifts on Yule, we open them on Christmas Eve. This is a holdover from the days when we celebrated Christmas day with my parents one year and my wife’s parents the next year. Doing that just became a tradition, and we liked having our own gift exchange ourselves beneath the lights of the spruce Christmas Tree.

Neither of us has been well lately, so the indoor and outdoor decorations aren’t as lavish as usual. But they suffice. We used to send out a Christmas (Yule) letter but stopped that several years ago. We still send out a few cards, but now they’re always late if we get around to them.

My parents always had a co-called modern Yule log, i.e. one used on the mantlepiece with candles. Theirs had many years of multi-colored tallow on it before they died and my younger brother inherited the log and began adding more colorful tallow every year. With cats in the house, we avoid using candles, and after one Christmas of broken ornaments switched to the unbreakable kind.

Now that the ornaments won’t break, our cats tend to leave the tree alone. Go figure.

I tend to like the old-fashioned, Victorian-style cards even though they aren’t available in the stores. So I use them on my Facebook page. Wherever you are and whenever you celebrate, I hope you have a wonderful holiday season.

–Malcolm

‘Angle of Repose’ by Wallace Stegner

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn authors, writing2 Comments

I read this novel soon after it came out in 1971 (and won the Pulitzer Prize in 1972) and, if I bothered to organize my books, it would definitely belong on my shelf of favorites. The novel is about a real historian Lyman Ward and Stegner (1909-1993) based it on the letters of author Mary Hallock Foote. Some say he shouldn’t have used actual passages from her work. He says he had permission to do so. The controversy remains amongst scholars.

Wikipedia notes that “The title, seemingly taken from Foote’s writings, is an engineering term for the angle at which soil finally settles after, for example, being dumped from a mine as tailings.”

From the Publisher

Stegner in 1969

An American masterpiece and iconic novel of the West by National Book Award and Pulitzer Prize winner Wallace Stegner—a deeply moving narrative of one family and the traditions of our national past.

Lyman Ward is a retired professor of history, recently confined to a wheelchair by a crippling bone disease and dependent on others for his every need.  Amid the chaos of 1970s counterculture, he retreats to his ancestral home of Grass Valley, California, to write the biography of his grandmother: an elegant and headstrong artist and pioneer who, together with her engineer husband, made her own journey through the hardscrabble West nearly a hundred years before. In discovering her story he excavates his own, probing the shadows of his experience and the America that has come of age around him.

The Atlantic Monthly called the novel a  “Cause for celebration…A superb novel with an amplitude of scale and richness of detail altogether uncommon in contemporary fiction.”

About the Author

“Wallace Stegner (1909-1993) was the author of, among other novels, Remembering Laughter, 1937; The Big Rock Candy Mountain, 1943; Joe Hill, 1950; All the Little Live Things, 1967 (Commonwealth Club Gold Medal); A Shooting Star, 1961; Angle of Repose, 1971 (Pulitzer Prize); The Spectator Bird, 1976 (National Book Award, 1977); Recapitulation, 1979; and Crossing to Safety, 1987. His nonfiction includes Beyond the Hundredth Meridian, 1954; Wolf Willow, 1963; The Sound of Mountain Water (essays), 1969; The Uneasy Chair: A Biography of Bernard DeVoto, 1974; and Where the Bluebird Sings to the Lemonade Springs: Living and Writing in the West (1992). Three of his short stories have won O. Henry Prizes, and in 1980 he received the Robert Kirsch Award from the Los Angeles Times for his lifetime literary achievements. His Collected Stories was published in 1990.” – Amazon Listing

—Malcolm

How much ‘extra’ money do you have for good causes?

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

Every year about this time, every charity in the known universe comes out online and in snail mail with matching deals for my consideration. In fact, there’s a tsunami of donation opportunities that will drive most Americans into bankruptcy if they give $20 here and $20 there to everyone begging for their help. How much extra money do any of us have for all the good causes asking for help?

In general, I try to support KIVA, Tibet, and the National Parks. This puts me on a list of people who would have to be rich to respond to all the projects that need funding. I support the International Campaign for Tibet because I believe that China’s illegal occupation of Tibet and its ongoing policy of erasing Tibetan culture and religion is one of the most noxious atrocities on the planet.

I support Kiva because they fund individuals with loans that are designed to help people survive on their own through small businesses and education. And I support the National Parks because Congress doesn’t provide the funds required. Things come up like Ukaine’s need for help and the help required in Gaza. Then, too, there are local causes that also need financial support.

But how much can we give, those of us living primarily on Social Security and the sales from a few books on Amazon? Not enough. And yet, there’s constant pressure to give more. In some ways, I resent this, and in some ways, I understand this. What about you? Do you have trouble keeping up with this yearly onslaught of requests?

–Malcolm

Goulash for Sunday 12-17-23

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Potpourri, writing
  • The Six-month tummy ache continues as the Gastroenterology Department runs a slew of tests. All are normal so far. This experience is pretty much like having a strong case of mono for six months (I’ve been there and done that). The adoption of the two-snake symbol for medicine is an old mistake that got engraved in stone.
  • I’m re-reading One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez. It’s been a while. And I still despise the first sentence. Among other things, this novel has had a strong influence on the magical realism genre. Wikipedia says “Since it was first published in May 1967 in Buenos Aires by Editorial Sudamericana, One Hundred Years of Solitude has been translated into 46 languages and sold more than 50 million copies. The novel, considered García Márquez’s magnum opus, remains widely acclaimed and is recognized as one of the most significant works both in the Hispanic literary canon and in world literature.”
  • Ah, “The Crown” has returned to finish out the rest of the season. In the episode we saw last night, Prime Minister Tony Blair tries to convince the queen that the monarchy is out of touch with everyday people and needs to modernize. She thinks not.  Better to get rid of it completely, but then nobody asked me. Harry Potter fans will notice that the actress who’s playing the queen, Imelda Staunton, played the nasty Dolores Umbridge in the Hogwarts films. That fits.
  • We watched the two-night “MasterChef Junior Home for the Holidays” and, as usual, find it hard to believe these kids can cook so well. When I was ten years old, I was playing cowboys and Indians in the backyard. But these children are turning out meals that could actually be served in a high-end restaurant. Ramsay gets his family into the act as commentators and judges. I wonder if he has to pay them. As usual with their kids’ shows, somebody gets a pie in the face. Guess who?
  • I believe I’ve read most of the James Patterson series about Alex Cross. So, I’m looking forward to Alex Cross Must Die which was released last month. Typically–as a frugal Scot–I’m waiting for the price to come down before I buy it. From the publisher: “One of the greatest fictional detectives of all time (Douglas Preston & Lincoln Child) is in the sights of the Dead Hours Killer, a serial murderer on a ruthless mission.” I’m not exactly holding my breath about the outcome, but when I find a series of novels I like, it’s hard not to sell the house to pay for the latest installment.

—Malcolm

Dispatch from the Nut House

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn writing

“Being an author is being in charge of your own personal insane asylum.” – Terri Guillemets

When I worked as a home manager at a developmental disabilities unit of the Illinois Department of Mental Health, people often asked if there was a career path. I told them that we kept advancing up the chain of command until we became patients. The same path exists for writers.

As CEO and patient, you’re in charge of your own delusions and treatment plan and the novels you write while a patient.

As CEO, I have banned all shock treatments as well as any purported “caregiver” named Mildred Ratched. For the reasons why, see the movie “One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.” Shock treatments and Nurse Ratched are placed in our fiction to relight our readers.

While based on APA clinical practice guidelines, hospital treatment protocols vary depending on age,  types of voices heard,  and the persistence of hallucinations when manuscripts are set aside for the day. And yet, when all is written and done, the writer can only be discharged when s/he stops writing often with the assistance of Alprazolam 0.25 mg PRN.

Living in the nut house is standard practice for a writer, yet in describing it, I don’t mean to belittle proper psychological and/or psychiatric treatments for those who need help! My premise is that all writers need help and that that need is a side effect of the career.  I agree with Dorothy Parker’s prescription: “If you have any young friends who aspire to become writers, the second greatest favor you can do them is to present them with copies of ‘The Elements of Style.’ The first greatest, of course, is to shoot them now, while they’re happy.”

Looks innocent, doesn’t it?

Writers create worlds. But they’re not powerful enough to become gods. The strain is just too much. Hence, creating worlds often leads to the nut house, i.e. the Bellevue in their neighborhood. At best, the creation of worlds and characters is an exciting roller coaster ride. At worst, it’s a flight over the cuckoo’s nest. Either way, the trip might be an illusion.

Here at the nut house, we get “three squares a day,” access to the best Jungian therapists, and a warm bed to sleep in. Yes, there are bars on the windows and doors and visitors are limited, but that’s all for our protection–or so they say.

If you’re a reader, no need to worry. We’re behind these bars for you and, I guess, because living this way is all we know.

—Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell writes magical realism, paranormal, and contemporary fantasy stories and novels.

‘Voices in the Dark,’ by J. P. Telotte

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Film

Jay Telotte and I were members of the faculty of the Department of English of a small Georgia college. His great love was film, a focus that turned into a career when he later became an expert in the field with multiple books, honors, and articles, and is now professor emeritus at the Georgia Tech School of Literature, Media, and Communication. We did not agree about Katherine Hepburn, and Meryl Streep, or coffee with chicory. And yet, eating dinner at his house always included a film shown on an old-fashioned projector. He liked films like “Juliet of the Spirits” and turned me into a believer in Federico Fellini’s work.

We also liked film noir, perhaps my favorite film genre, so I was pleased when he wrote Voices in the Dark: The Narrative Patterns of Film Noir in 1989. We had both moved on to other positions when the book came out, so I never got a chance to ask him why he didn’t enlarge it to include neo-noir. His wife, Leigh, who was an English teacher, switched over to computer documentation–as did I–and we both ended up briefly working in the same department at Hewlett-Packard in Atlanta. (She was on staff and I was a contract writer.) Later, Leigh Ehlers Telotte wrote several books, including Victoria, Queen of the Screen: From Silent Cinema to New Media.

From the Publisher

The American film noir, the popular genre that focused on urban crime and corruption in the 1940s and 1950s, exhibits the greatest amount of narrative experimentation in the modern American cinema. Spurred by postwar disillusionment, cold war anxieties, and changing social circumstances, these films revealed the dark side of American life and , in doing so, created unique narrative structures in order to speak of that darkness. J.P. Telotte’s in-depth discussion of classic films noir–including The Lady from Shanghai, The Lady in the Lake, Dark Passage, Double Indemnity, Kiss Me Deadly, and Murder, My Sweet–draws on the work of Michel Foucault to examine four dominant noir narrative strategies.

The book is very readable and is a wonderful introduction to noir films, many of which you can see on Turner Classic Movies in their noir alley segment. I learned a lot about film from Jay and wished we had moved in the same circles after moving to the Atlanta area.

–Malcolm

Malcolm R. Campbell is the author of magical realism novels set in Florida.

 

Remembering ‘The Summer of ’42’ by Herman Raucher

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn books, writing

This bitter-sweet movie written by Herman Raucher based on his memoir scored big at the box office when it appeared in 1971 and became quite a sensation with young men who wished the film had been about them: teenager meets a grieving war widow and they end up in bed.

Some critics like Roger Ebert didn’t like the sentimentality. According to Wikipedia, “Vincent Canby of The New York Times expressed that Hermie’s encounter with Dorothy is ‘a good deal more common in novels and screenplays (and in the Hermie-like fantasies of middle-aged writers) than in real life’, but praised the film’s ‘reticent quality of its romanticism’ and its actors. Canby concluded the ‘foreground is mostly accurate, in which sexual panic and fist fights and nose bleeds are treated with the great comic respect they deserve.'” The tone of the movie was greatly enhanced by Michel Legrand’s score which won an Oscar.

I read the book, saw the movie, and liked both. I liked them because the story was well told and because–as Vincent Canby noted–meeting “Dorothy” was a prospective rite of passage that seldom happened, and ended badly if it did happen, though these realities didn’t stop numerous young men from dreaming and fantasizing about such an encounter. Freudian psychiatrists probably have a lot to say about such fantasies.

From the Book Publisher

“A chronicle of one summer in a boy’s coming of age”—the international bestselling classic that became the basis for the Oscar-winning film (Medium).

“Captivating and evocative, Herman Raucher’s semi-autobiographical tale has been made into a record-breaking Academy Award-winning hit movie, adapted for the stage, and enchanted readers for generations.

“In the summer of 1942, Hermie is fifteen. He is wildly obsessed with sex, and passionately in love with an “older woman” of twenty-two, whose husband is overseas and at war. Ambling through Nantucket Island with his friends, Hermie’s indelible narration chronicles his frantic efforts to become a man, especially one worthy of the lovely Dorothy, as well as his glorious and heartbreaking initiation into sex.”

from the Reviewers

Website photo

“Mr. Raucher scores most tellingly. His recall of nervous teen-age gaucheries is dead accurate, hilarious, tinged with sadness.”—The New York Times Book Review

“A charming and tender novel . . . The overall effect is one of high hilarity. Raucher is a comic-artist who is able to convey the fears and joys . . . of the boy and at the same time give older readers a wrench in the heart. ”—Publishers Weekly

—Malcolm

When ‘I’m Sorry’ is a putdown

On By Malcolm R. CampbellIn Southern U.S., writing2 Comments

Why is it that otherwise polite people (who are introduced as close friends) by relatives who live outside the South find it necessary to say with a perfectly straight face “I’m sorry” when we say we’re from Georgia?  If they weren’t friends of my relatives, I could respond in all kinds of ways.

  • We love the South because that’s the first place we got the clap.
  • Most of our time there was spent in jail, so we had no choice.
  • You’re sorry? I admire your honesty about that because most people who are sorry won’t admit it.

The best I can say is, “We love it there.” Or, “We were born lucky, I guess.”

And yet, they say it with such progressive guile as though we’re living in hell and that’s how God rolled the dice.

My wife, I think, wants to slap the shit out of these people. I understand that because she was born here in Georgia very near where we now live. I was born in California and lived in Oregon, New York, Illinois, and Pennsylvania before settling in Georgia. The “I’m sorry” people don’t know any of this and if they did, it wouldn’t matter, because they’re living life looking for an excuse to say nasty things about Southerners.

I feel like pointing out to those who live in Maryland that their state was a slave state because I don’t think they know that. Yes, the South has a lot to atone for but Maryland’s sins are not on our to-do list.

When I was a kid, of often heard, “Save your Confederate money because the South’s going to rise again.” That’s pure BS. And all of us who live here don’t subscribe to that BS. Never did. So now I think time has moved far enough away from the Civil War to put away sniping between the regions. That’s kid stuff and outside what the country is trying to achieve through unity.

“I’m sorry,” you say. Ha, I bet you’re not.

–Malcolm