holy. fucking. hell.
not only is he a superb actor famous for about a dozen roles as a villain (like dracula, saruman and count dooku), but also:
- he's a knight. and he's been knighted on halloween. how fitting
- he has recorded a metal album over the age of eighty as singer with two complete bands
- he regularly narrates albums by metal bands
- he has been a commando and secret intelligence member in WWII
- during the filming of LotR, he asked peter jackson to re-shoot the scene in which he was killed because, as he said "when you kill someone from behind the noise he makes is not like this one". draw your own conclusions.
- he has made the most films (over 250!!!) out of any actors, dead or alive ever
- he speaks eight languages varying from moderately well to excellent
- he is a direct descendant of charlemagne (NOT joking)
- according to himself, he does a bit of head-banging to music every day
he is probably the most awesome human being ever.
2010. december 27., hétfő
2010. december 22., szerda
the act of creation
ask any writer about the question which most frequently asked from them, and they will invariably answer: "where do you get your stories from?"
really, where do stories come from? rushdie imagines a vast "ocean of stories" in which stories come from an endless stream and mix freely (haroun and the sea of stories), stephen king maintains that his talees just come out of nowhere, usually based on a character, and always end up totally different from what he intended (on writing), while vonnegut always traces back everything to some (usually) childhood memory or other.
poems are easy. poems nearly always come from an excess of an emotion. but stories... stories can arise from anywhere. if you've got a certain knack for it, you might think of an entire story just by seeing an interesting person (such has happened to me, though that story is yet to be written down), or perhaps your imagination stretches the boundaries of an experience, making the ordinary extraordinary (or, oftentimes in fantasy and postmodern writing, the extraordinary ordinary).
some authors swear by dreams, others by drugs. if you can manage to sort out all those jumbled, crazy pieces and make it into one semi-coherent narrative, well, that's something. some say you need serious research and stay close to the truth, others will bend things to suit their stories.
do you go by an idea, and create the story around it? do you just start jotting things down, hoping it will finish up somehow? is there a "right" way to writing?
where do your stories come from?
really, where do stories come from? rushdie imagines a vast "ocean of stories" in which stories come from an endless stream and mix freely (haroun and the sea of stories), stephen king maintains that his talees just come out of nowhere, usually based on a character, and always end up totally different from what he intended (on writing), while vonnegut always traces back everything to some (usually) childhood memory or other.
poems are easy. poems nearly always come from an excess of an emotion. but stories... stories can arise from anywhere. if you've got a certain knack for it, you might think of an entire story just by seeing an interesting person (such has happened to me, though that story is yet to be written down), or perhaps your imagination stretches the boundaries of an experience, making the ordinary extraordinary (or, oftentimes in fantasy and postmodern writing, the extraordinary ordinary).
some authors swear by dreams, others by drugs. if you can manage to sort out all those jumbled, crazy pieces and make it into one semi-coherent narrative, well, that's something. some say you need serious research and stay close to the truth, others will bend things to suit their stories.
do you go by an idea, and create the story around it? do you just start jotting things down, hoping it will finish up somehow? is there a "right" way to writing?
where do your stories come from?
a brief rant on fantasy and the canon
neil gaiman. stephen king. george rr martin.
all great contemporary fantasy authors with a large body of work, fantastic writing skills, loads of sold books - and serious "professional" under-appreciation.
(quick observation: huge number of books (or anything) sold clearly not equals very valuable writing (see: twilight or danielle steel) but it does indicate that the author is doing SOMETHING right.)
fantasy, as a genre, is somehow not seen as something belonging to the canon (apart from, for a certain group of people, the bible). the reasoning for it goes something like this: "many people like it, ergo it is easy to read and understand, so it clearly can't contain valuable, enriching writing". thus far, the only works of fantasy really going into literary discourse either fall more under the genre of magic realism or are from earlier periods (gothic horror is very much appreciated, king on the other hand, is somehow not, despite clearly following in the footsteps in his epic tales and supernatural horror stories) plus the lord of the rings.
yes, there might not be too much to discuss about stories involving dragons, knights in shining armour and mages throwing fireballs (unlike discussing important literary stories in which someone changes into a bug, which makes perfect sense), but fantasy is an important part of contemporary literature. check the main literary sites - song of ice and fire (martin) is consistently near the top of ratings and reviews. these are works often spanning a thousand pages, written through the course of multiple years, creating a whole new world, with new races, autonomic cultures with a language, a mythology and time-honoured tradition - to do this right, one has to be an author on the top of his job.
fantasy characters are often accused of being too simple, too black-and-white, which makes for morally less interesting stories. though this is true (although this has also been changing recently), the view disregards a very important thing: the average person's need for fairytales in which the smallest prince saves the princess and the evil overlord falls. granted, nowadays it's more likely that during the course of this, a few dozen people die, the sun is blotted out, and the princess is raped/maimed/driven insane/all of this, it's still appealing to something which was common to everyone as a child and which stays the same very often, it's simply, in some cases, repressed. one of the main points of fantasy is that it does not have to have serious meaning - it's for enjoyment and it's another goddamn world, so it does not have to reflect the problems and common features of our world.
on the other hand, there is a select part of fantasy fiction which does have important, canon-worthy themes and materials (i'm using canon-worthy as in: it could/should belong to the current canon, which is pretty much fucked up in the first place). this is where avoiding of fantasy as a whole comes into play in literary studies. i wonder if most literary theorists who refuse to read and discuss stephen king on the grounds of writing "cheap horror" and bestsellers, know that he dwelved deeply into children's psychology and their problems in a number of his works, or that he reflects on everyday social questions (race, class, gender) in all of his works; the fact that he has written several books which are allegories on alcohol abuse and the possibilities of fighting it, or that he has authored three books in which the craft of writing is meticulously explored.
george rr martin in song of ice and fire describes all the possible outcomes of a power vacuum in a given historical context, with a plot which makes richard III. look like a simple task to grab the salt instead of power. black-and-white morality is found very-very little in the series - and if it is, it quickly results in death.
and neil gaiman is neil fucking gaiman and there is no place for any questions concerning that.
all great contemporary fantasy authors with a large body of work, fantastic writing skills, loads of sold books - and serious "professional" under-appreciation.
(quick observation: huge number of books (or anything) sold clearly not equals very valuable writing (see: twilight or danielle steel) but it does indicate that the author is doing SOMETHING right.)
fantasy, as a genre, is somehow not seen as something belonging to the canon (apart from, for a certain group of people, the bible). the reasoning for it goes something like this: "many people like it, ergo it is easy to read and understand, so it clearly can't contain valuable, enriching writing". thus far, the only works of fantasy really going into literary discourse either fall more under the genre of magic realism or are from earlier periods (gothic horror is very much appreciated, king on the other hand, is somehow not, despite clearly following in the footsteps in his epic tales and supernatural horror stories) plus the lord of the rings.
yes, there might not be too much to discuss about stories involving dragons, knights in shining armour and mages throwing fireballs (unlike discussing important literary stories in which someone changes into a bug, which makes perfect sense), but fantasy is an important part of contemporary literature. check the main literary sites - song of ice and fire (martin) is consistently near the top of ratings and reviews. these are works often spanning a thousand pages, written through the course of multiple years, creating a whole new world, with new races, autonomic cultures with a language, a mythology and time-honoured tradition - to do this right, one has to be an author on the top of his job.
fantasy characters are often accused of being too simple, too black-and-white, which makes for morally less interesting stories. though this is true (although this has also been changing recently), the view disregards a very important thing: the average person's need for fairytales in which the smallest prince saves the princess and the evil overlord falls. granted, nowadays it's more likely that during the course of this, a few dozen people die, the sun is blotted out, and the princess is raped/maimed/driven insane/all of this, it's still appealing to something which was common to everyone as a child and which stays the same very often, it's simply, in some cases, repressed. one of the main points of fantasy is that it does not have to have serious meaning - it's for enjoyment and it's another goddamn world, so it does not have to reflect the problems and common features of our world.
on the other hand, there is a select part of fantasy fiction which does have important, canon-worthy themes and materials (i'm using canon-worthy as in: it could/should belong to the current canon, which is pretty much fucked up in the first place). this is where avoiding of fantasy as a whole comes into play in literary studies. i wonder if most literary theorists who refuse to read and discuss stephen king on the grounds of writing "cheap horror" and bestsellers, know that he dwelved deeply into children's psychology and their problems in a number of his works, or that he reflects on everyday social questions (race, class, gender) in all of his works; the fact that he has written several books which are allegories on alcohol abuse and the possibilities of fighting it, or that he has authored three books in which the craft of writing is meticulously explored.
george rr martin in song of ice and fire describes all the possible outcomes of a power vacuum in a given historical context, with a plot which makes richard III. look like a simple task to grab the salt instead of power. black-and-white morality is found very-very little in the series - and if it is, it quickly results in death.
and neil gaiman is neil fucking gaiman and there is no place for any questions concerning that.
introduction
hello, dear reader,
this blog is (hopefully) literature about literature. it's not really analytical writing - we're not being published in some big, important journal, not many people pay attention to us, and we're not constantly referring to other analytical works instead of coming up with our own ideas. the idea behind this blog is to explore the popular literature - it's works, genres and it's place in the canon, which, at least to me, is severly under-appreciated. we are doing this blog as a team with a few other guys, you'll get to see them postsoon enough, i hope. i myself will often be referring to a number of other internet sites - you can find them in the sidebar, or i'll highlight it in the post itself. topics for me will mainly consist of "fringe" genres such as fantasy, sci-fi and horror, different media types like literature, sometimes movies and often comics. hope you'll like the journey.
m
this blog is (hopefully) literature about literature. it's not really analytical writing - we're not being published in some big, important journal, not many people pay attention to us, and we're not constantly referring to other analytical works instead of coming up with our own ideas. the idea behind this blog is to explore the popular literature - it's works, genres and it's place in the canon, which, at least to me, is severly under-appreciated. we are doing this blog as a team with a few other guys, you'll get to see them postsoon enough, i hope. i myself will often be referring to a number of other internet sites - you can find them in the sidebar, or i'll highlight it in the post itself. topics for me will mainly consist of "fringe" genres such as fantasy, sci-fi and horror, different media types like literature, sometimes movies and often comics. hope you'll like the journey.
m
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