On The Reading and Creating of Novels.
The journey and its interpretation-The reader and the viewer
The demise of the book has long been boohooed, yet there are still folks eager to tell their stories in the old fashioned way, through use of paper and ink. There is just something about sitting down in a comfortable place with a stack of books besides one’s chair, ready to read in this direction or that. In an admission of some interest in modern technology I admit I like to look at the full color pictures, too.
However, there is something in the ‘interpretation’ that is lost when the images are coming at you through the control of a video camera, even as aided by a remote control and 110 channels coming at you. It is too easy to get lost in the world of the producer.
Somehow, in interpreting the images drawn on paper with ink I feel more in control of the journey. As a reader, I am participating in the discovery with the author. As a viewer, I am looking over the shoulder of a committee who has decided to ram their world down my throat.
A New Creation-the author speaks
Of course, like most every other sentient being on the planet, I do have a television and I do part with hard earned lucre with the Hollywood set. Indeed, if a novelist is to make any money at their craft, a blockbuster movie is as good as money in the bank. Sometimes it is OK to be swept away with the intensity of someone else’s artistic vision.
In my own work, an idea comes along, the kernel of a story.
• The first idea: A loved one dies young and I question heaven’s sovereignty. Somehow the idea of an alien abduction strikes me in some twisted metaphor. After a few years of parsing together a story, and my novel The Moses Probe was published in 2006.
• A second idea: Childhood, coming of age, and remembering the staples of my own youth, David Copperfield, Oliver Twist, and The Hornblower Saga: I must write my own saga of ‘Growing Up.’ My novel The Bouchard Legacy is ‘in the works.’
• The third construct: Margaret Mead says “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” What would such a small group look like and what changes would they make? Would they be technically advanced, or would they be, as Wordsworth once yearned for--some kind of “pagans suckled in a creed outworn?” This book comes at me in bits and pieces, informed, like all fiction, by the events of my life and the times we live in. The group, perhaps citizens of a small town. Conceivably influenced by some influential big man. What if the big man is somehow dissed or framed? How would those who he influenced react and how would that change the world? Still in the formative stages, I call this work COH/CMS. I am accepting ideas on titles, situations and names of characters, Write in your champions, your ideas with be seen in print!
Nation building and America have a long proud tradition.
"Change will not come if we wait for some other person or some other time. We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek.
Barack Obama
"America is a Nation with a mission - and that mission comes from our most basic beliefs. We have no desire to dominate, no ambitions of empire. Our aim is a democratic peace - a peace founded upon the dignity and rights of every man and woman."
George W. Bush
"Make the world safe for democracy."
Woodrow Wilson
"The business of America is business."
Calvin Coolige
Did you know America is the oldest democracy doing business today? Our forebearers have set the pace. Keep it up America!
