Thread: Literature Talk: Russian & Non -Discuss/Review/Q&As

kidkboom (or anyone else who has read The Odyssey) my daughter would like to have your take on Chapter 11 The Kingdom of the Dead and Chapter 12 The Castle of the Sun. As you gave an amazing summary and put it into understandable every day English, she'd like to hear what you have to say about them.

Thanks!

Originally Posted by rockzmom

kidkboom (or anyone else who has read The Odyssey) my daughter would like to have your take on Chapter 11 The Kingdom of the Dead and Chapter 12 The Castle of the Sun. As you gave an amazing summary and put it into understandable every day English, she'd like to hear what you have to say about them.

Thanks!

Sure, I'll do whatever I can! First my links and resources, the copy of Odyssey I'm referring is The Odyssey of Homer in English verse - Homer - Google Books (there's a more authentic copy, but I can't read Greek).. and the SparkNotes (just to make sure I know what I'm talking about) I used are here => SparkNotes: The Odyssey: Books 10–11

Well a lot is going on in Book 11 - Odysseus was instructed by Circe (a witch and one of his more lengthy "flings") to speak to Tiresias in the land of the dead (Hades) to find a safe way to return home (which is his overriding goal for most of the literature), so he goes to the land of the Cimmerians, to the River of Ocean ("the furthest edge of Ocean's stream") which is where, vaguely, all souls enter into the afterworld.. There they perform some weird sheep-blood sacrifical ritual that Circe explained to him, wherein the blood "attracts the souls of the dead" and he begins to speak to them.. His intent is to speak to Tiresias but he ends up speaking to like 400 people in no particular order.. the important ones, scholastically speaking, would be Elpenor, one of Odysseus' men, who got too drunk in Circe's palace and fell down a ladder and died, rather gruesomely, and begs Odysseus to bury him properly.. (Greeks had strong beliefs about proper burial being relative to proper admission to the afterlife) .. Then ""Odysseus then speaks with the Theban prophet Tiresias, who reveals that Poseidon is punishing the Achaeans for blinding his son Polyphemus. He foretells Odysseus’s fate—that he will return home, reclaim his wife and palace from the wretched suitors, and then make another trip to a distant land to appease Poseidon. He warns Odysseus not to touch the flocks of the Sun "" -(literally, sheep the Sun owns)- ""when he reaches the land of Thrinacia; otherwise, he won’t return home without suffering much more hardship and losing all of his crew."" Then a long scene where Odysseus talks to him mom Anticlea (heh, Aunty Cleah) and she tells him how crazy things have been back home in Ithaca, his wife sorrowfully waiting for him; she tells him that she herself (mom) died of grief waiting for him (major guilt trip! =P ) -- So did I speak, and my reverend mother forthright replied: "Nay, but with a patient spirit thy wife doth abide / In thy halls; and evermore, for the burden of sorrow she bears / Her days are consumed with heaviness, yea, and her nights with tears."

At this point Book 11 is getting wordy so Homer breaks up the text, by having Odysseus say he wants to go to sleep - which pisses off his hosts the king & queen of the Cimmerians, they ask him to be polite enough to finish.. so he agrees and goes on. (Scholars say this is ONLY written in to break up the monotony.) [This text is written as if Alcinous the king and Nausikaa the queen are actually there, as if the ritual was being performed in their court - they even mention the 'people' of Phaecia as being shared hosts of these sailors their guests - yet in the beginning of the book, the scene is only set as being in the land of Cimmeria, in their "dreary" and "grey" town they have there; and the ritual involves digging little holes in the dirt for filling with libations, from what I can tell, so why the king and queen are actually THERE I'm a bit loose on as a writer.. wish I could actually ask that question to a real live scholar, which I'm not..] Anyway accepting that the king and queen and some Phaecians are in the background of the scene they go on.. Some of these meetings and recounts go beyond the scope of an average class and writing into the meat of Greek Myth. Majors's studies..

The most important meaning of all these events is a) Teiresias giving Odysseus a bunch of warnings and helpful advice, free of charge (which is the sort of mistake that led T. to be blind in the first place [[..different stories were told of the cause of his blindness, the most direct being that he was blinded by the gods for revealing their secrets.]] ), then b) tying together a lot of prior events in the book and foreshadowing some upcoming ones, and c) tying the characters throughout the Odyssey in to the colloquial Greek life, so that Greek audiences would appreciate the story more.

I'm going to try to jump back on later tonight and cover Book 12 - luck/life/kidk

Originally Posted by kidkboom

I'm going to try to jump back on later tonight and cover Book 12 - luck/life/kidk

Hey Kidkboom.... daughter says many thanks and to say... not to be rude or anything, but ya never came back with Book 12 She has to write a script for a small skit for those two books.

I've started "One flew over the cuckoo's nest" by Ken Kesey. Well, this is quite a hard journey with a lot of things which refer to a US way of life and are a sort of a puzzle for a non US person. On the other hand Kesey uses present tense instead of past tense for the story flow narration.

Originally Posted by Ken Kesey

I’m mopping near the ward door when a key hits it from the other side and I know it’s the Big Nurse by the way the lockworks cleave to the key, soft and swift and familiar she been around locks so long. She slides through the door with a gust of cold and locks the door behind her and I see her fingers trail across the polished steel — tip of each finger the same color as her lips.

When the book started I thought that the present tense was selected since there is a description of a typical day flow in the mental hospital. But after some pages when the action begins with new patient incoming and disturbing the typical day flow the tense selection has not changed.

Originally Posted by Ken Kesey

McMurphy comes down the line of Chronics, shakes hands with Colonel Matterson and with Ruckly and with Old Pete. He shakes the hands of Wheelers and Walkers and Vegetables, shakes hands that he has to pick up out of laps like picking up dead birds, mechanical birds, wonders of tiny bones and wires that have run down and fallen. Shakes hands with everybody he comes to except Big George the water freak, who grins and shies back from that unsanitary hand, so McMurphy just salutes him and says to his own right hand as he walks away, “Hand, how do you suppose that old fellow knew all the evil you been into?”

Well, is it a typical way to not use the past tense for the story flow or it is just a specific choice for the Kesey's book only?

I've read a German book in which almost every verb was used in the present tense, and I liked it - the story flow is more living. Why are anecdotes told with verbs in the present tense or why do we use the present tense telling about what happened to us yesterday? In order to make them more inpressive, as if you saw things happening with your own eyes. And the past tense is boring - all works of literature in the world are written in past. People like the new and unusual.

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

Well, is it a typical way to not use the past tense for the story flow or it is just a specific choice for the Kesey's book only?

CoffeeCup,

Sorry for coming in late to this... I thought I had talked about this book or the movie made from it... The Time Traveler's Wife it is written in present tense. Here is an interesting article about this style of writing:

Grammar Girl : Present Tense Books :: Quick and Dirty Tips

Why Use Present Tense?

Now, in my experience, most books are written in past tense, as if the story has already happened and the narrator is telling you about it after the fact. John Updike's novel Rabbit, Run, published in 1959, is sometimes thought to be the first novel written in the present tense (2), but Updike credits two other writers as coming before him: Damon Runyon and Joyce Cary. Nevertheless, I found Updike's comments about his state of mind when he was choosing the present tense to be illuminating. I've heard people complain that present tense novels sound like screen directions, and for me, it IS easier to imagine the sentenceJack walks into a diner just south of Japantown as the opening sentence of a screenplay than as the first sentence in a novel. And here's what Updike had to say about Rabbit, Run back in 1990:

It was subtitled, in my conception of it, ''A Movie''; I imagined the opening scene as something that would happen behind credits, and I saw the present tense of the book as corresponding to the present tense in which we experience the cinema (3).

I read that and thought, "Ah, ha! He thought of it as screen direction too."

I was so intrigued by this idea of writing a novel in the present tense that I interviewed Seth Harwood a few days ago to learn more about his reasoning for doing it and learned that other people had also told him that it seemed like a screenplay. But his background is in writing short stories, and he tells me that short stories are more commonly written in the present tense, so it wasn't a big leap for him to write a novel that way. Also, because his book is a crime novel, writing it in the present tense allows the reader to unfold the mystery at the same time as the main character. When Jack is surprised, we're surprised at the same time.

Reading a fiction novel requires the reader to suspend disbelief to some degree to get wrapped up in a story we know isn't true, and a present tense novel can require an extra suspension of disbelief to accept the idea that events are unfolding right now.

I was also reminded by one of my Twitter friends that another book I recently read was written in the present tense: The Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger. I found the use of present tense in that novel less distracting, I imagine because the entire novel is written in such an unusual way. That book is about a time traveler and tells the story from the perspective of two different people, and there is a lot of jumping around in time.

Anyway, my take away from reading about verb tense in novels and from talking with Seth Harwood is that some people think writing in the present tense is modern and other people think it is trendy and annoying. It's kind of a risky move if you're trying to get your first novel published, but it didn't stop Seth. He got his book published. And although I did find the present tense in his book distracting, I still enjoyed the story. It had a lot of action and was a great book to read on the plane.

Also, If you go to Seth's webpage--sethharwood.com--you'll find a recording of our interview, in which we actually talk about tense and person.That's all. Thanks for listening.

A Sampling of Books Written in the Present Tense

• Time Traveler's Wife by Audrey Niffenegger
• House of Sand and Fog by Andre Dubus III
• Choke by Chuck Palahniuk
• Fight Club by Chuck Palahniuk
• Ilium by Dan Simmons (some parts)
• Olympos by Dan Simmons (some parts)
• Rabbit, Run by John Updike
• Line of Vision by David Ellis
• The Sound of My Voice by Ron Butlin (also in second person)
• Half Asleep in Frog Pajamas by Tom Robbins (also in second person)
• The Mezzanine by Nicholson Baker [This one was recommended by a Twitter friend, but I couldn't independently confirm that it's in the present tense. Anyone?]

Hi, CoffeeCup: Kesey is using an informal style for this story, using first person, in the voice of that person. Some people use this kind of present tense to tell things that happened to them. I don't think Kesey is the only one to do this in books in English. He is simply using the character to give the story the way that the character would in real life. Some people talk that way.

Well, thus using the typical past tense for a story flow is a sort of a movie in a cinema when a reader watch it as a third person, while the present tense is a sort of first person 3D shooter (PC game). There is even more coincidence with Kesey’s book since his character is pretending being dumb as well as in most PC shooters a protagonist does not say a word too. I do remember when I was younger and played 3D shooters I had a filling that the PC game’s character I was operating was dumb since he was able only to move and shoot as I liked but never recited a word of mine about those monsters to be shot. Though Kesey hardly had this resemblance in mind since there were no 3D shooters at his time yet.

Maybe it is like this as you describe, because in this style of talking/writing about something that has happened in past, using present tense, person is re-living events right now, in memory, and so is 'now' because person is re-experiencing events even though they are over and passed. When a person has extremely powerful event occur to them, they re-experience them as though happening right now, and so not uncommon to use present tense, even though is really a memory, and passed. 'Flash backs' are 'right now'.

Wow, rockzmom,

this is quite a good discussion on the topic with a number of interesting comments:

Originally Posted by writingsuga

... I think sometimes the topic your writing about will make a big difference regarding which tense to use. Present tense is for action, action, and attention (as I call it)...

Originally Posted by Ryan G. Hagger

I've read a number of present tense stories and found they tend to be more character-driven than plot-driven. In present tense the story's focus is on the character -- not the plot. However, there are publishers who'd rather have character-driven stories, and there are those who want stories that are plot-driven. Either way, I guess it boils down to taste. I personally enjoy stories in past tense rather than in present.

Well, the "Time Traveler's Wife" is now in my reading list for sure. By the way I was quite surprised with the option of second person narration, so my reading list is certainly lengthened.

Older daughter's English class is now on to... Frankenstein. Yet again another book I never read. Never saw any of the movie versions either.

You can get the book legally online in English HERE

Book updates: Older daughter had to Read Catcher in the Rye (which we already talker about in this thread and I posted a vocabulary thread about). Now for mandatory summer reading, younger daughter has to read it! Poor girl. Well, maybe she might actually like

For mandatory summer reading... older daughter she has to read:
Life of Pi by Yann Martel (which is being made into a 3D film by Ang Lee)
The Secret Sits by Robert Frost

We dance round in a ring and suppose,
But the Secret sits in the middle and knows.

The Tiger by William Blake
Some things that fly there be (#89) by Emily Dickinson
Do Not Go Gentle into That Good Night by Dylan Thomas
and Aunt Jennifer’s Tigers by Adrienne Rich

Then... Select one of the poems and write an essay in which you compare and contrast a particular aspect of this poem to the novel Life of Pi.

While looking to the Life of Pi in the used book store, I came across a copy of Dreams of My Russian Summers by Andrei Makine. This book is the first novel in history to win both the Prix Goncourt and the Prix Medicis plus the Goncourt des Lyceens. It was actually written in French and translated into English. Here is a link to the review from The New York Times

The first of Makine's four novels to appear in English, this autobiographical novel won the 1995 Prix Medicis for Best Foreign Fiction as well as France's prestigious Prix Goncourt, never before awarded to a non-Frenchman. Its coming-of-age story describes young Andrei's summers with his French grandmother Charlotte in the remote Russian village of Saranza. She came to Russia as a Red Cross nurse during World War I and fell in love with a Russian lawyer who went off to the front and later died a premature death from his war wounds. Charlotte and Andrei spend many summer evenings sharing her memories of turn-of-the-century Paris. As the adolescent Andrei struggles with his identity?is he Russian or French?he discovers that it was possible for Charlotte to live in such a foreign land and retain her "Frenchness" because of her love for her husband. Andrei finally reconciles these contrasting facets of his identity and eventually emigrates to France. Makine has fashioned a deeply felt, lyrically told tale.

I hope that maybe... I'll be able to read this one over the summer. Has anyone read this book already???

Older daughter has now been assigned The Handmaid's Tale. I remember watching the movie back in 1990, but I never read the book.

The Handmaid's Tale is a dystopian novel, a work of science fiction or speculative fiction, written by Canadian author Margaret Atwood and first published by McClelland and Stewart in 1985. Set in the near future, in a totalitarian Christian theocracy which has overthrown the United States government, The Handmaid's Tale explores themes of women in subjugation and the various means by which they gain agency. The novel's title was inspired by Geoffrey Chaucer's The Canterbury Tales, which is a series of connected stories ("The Merchant's Tale", "The Parson's Tale", etc.).


The Handmaid's Tale won the 1985 Governor General's Award and the first Arthur C. Clarke Award in 1987, and it was nominated for the 1986 Nebula Award, the 1986 Booker Prize, and the 1987 Prometheus Award.

I read the short stories collection "Bears discover fire" by Terry Bisson. In the stories "Two Janets", "Two Guys From the Future" and a couple of other stories I've encountered an intriguing writer's trick which I've never met before: being a male author he wrote some stories as a first person female character (as if a female character tell us the story herself).

I have some mixed feelings about the experience. Probably it is because I knew that the author is a male and I expected the male person who would told me the story, probably the author did not care too much for the reader to "feel" the female character but rather he was focused on the plot.

Well, did anybody read something written by a male author where the story is told by the first female person? Actually there are tons of vice versa examples where a female author tells the story from the first male person. For an example, Agatha Christi. But it is what would any publisher expect or probably even ask from the author. As it was mentioned in the thread about Ryan Reynolds "Girls will go to a guy movie if it’s good, but guys will not go to a movie if it appears to cater to girls". So, why would a male author write a story in the way as if it was written by a women?

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

Well, did anybody read something written by a male author where the story is told by the first female person?

"The Collector" by John Robert Fowles

Вторая часть романа представляет собой «дневник» Миранды, во время заточения её в подвале дома, купленного Клеггом, вкупе с воспоминаниями девушки.

Коллекционер (роман) — Википедия

Ну и про Красную Шапочку не забываем. Все-таки, девочка же сама там говорила: "Бабушка,а почему у тебя такие большие зубы?")))

Originally Posted by CoffeeCup

I have some mixed feelings about the experience. Probably it is because I knew that the author is a male and I expected the male person who would told me the story, probably the author did not care too much for the reader to "feel" the female character but rather he was focused on the plot.

Well, did anybody read something written by a male author where the story is told by the first female person? So, why would a male author write a story in the way as if it was written by a women?

The Fault In Our Stars Author John Green has done this and he did it as a teenaged girl. They are currently making a movie out of The Fault in Our Stars as well. Here is a link to an answer he gave about writing from girl's point of view so to speak..

The Fault in our Stars author John Green on sick-lit, zombies and writing through the eyes of a teenage girl | Sugarscape |

Originally Posted by rockzmom

The Fault In Our Stars Author John Green has done this and he did it as a teenaged girl.

Originally Posted by John Green

... I empathized really easy and well with her as a character, so once that happened it came naturally, but of course, it took eight years to get there.

It was really a challenge to dare to put it this way.

Originally Posted by diogen_

Ну и про Красную Шапочку не забываем. Все-таки, девочка же сама там говорила: "Бабушка,а почему у тебя такие большие зубы?"))

Все-таки там "Жила-была в одной деревне маленькая девочка". Т.е. повествование ведется от третьего лица, а не от самой девочки.

Все-таки там "Жила-была в одной деревне маленькая девочка". Т.е. повествование ведется от третьего лица, а не от самой девочки.

Ну а дальше-то Шапочка начинает “отсебятину плести”: - Иду к бабушке и несу ей пирожок и горшочек масла и т.п. и т.д. Чем это принципиально отличается от того, как Пуаро с Гастингсом у той же Агаты Кристи “воркуют”?

I have some mixed feelings about the experience. Probably it is because I knew that the author is a male and I expected the male person who would told me the story, probably the author did not care too much for the reader to "feel" the female character but rather he was focused on the plot.

Well, did anybody read something written by a male author where the story is told by the first female person? Actually there are tons of vice versa examples where a female author tells the story from the first male person. For an example, Agatha Christi. But it is what would any publisher expect or probably even ask from the author. As it was mentioned in the thread about Ryan Reynolds "Girls will go to a guy movie if it’s good, but guys will not go to a movie if it appears to cater to girls". So, why would a male author write a story in the way as if it was written by a women?

Я так, честно говоря, и не понял (если опуститься с высот метафор и сравнений на грешную землю), в чем заключаются трудности письма от имени женщин:
-В загадочной женской душе, ее иррациональности и непостижимости?
-Ограниченности мужской способности к эмпатии и воспроизведению чужого “потока сознания?
-В том что это просто нехорошо, и “настоящие мужики ни за что на свете такими делами заниматься не станут?
-Никому такое чтиво не интересно?
-Стилистические трудности?
-Что-то другое?

Ну и в чем заключаются "mixed fillings"? Что там так не понравилось?

Ну а дальше-то Шапочка начинает “отсебятину плести”: - Иду к бабушке и несу ей пирожок и горшочек масла и т.п. и т.д. Чем это принципиально отличается от того, как Пуаро с Гастингсом у той же Агаты Кристи “воркуют”?

First person narration is the narration by a person who has participated in the story him/herself.
Third person narration is the narration by a person who does not participate in the narrated story.
In the both ways of narration the narrator can recite what other characters said (or thought) it is called direct speech.

In the case of the "Little Red Riding Hood" it is neither the young girl nor the big bad wolf who tells us the story, even though there is direct speech of the both of them in the story. It is somebody else who was secretly running behind the red riding hood and listened and scripted everything she and the big bad wolf said. It is called the third person narration.

While in the "Hercules Poirot" stories it is Hustings who tells us the story. And he refers to himself as "I" in all the parts of the text outside of direct speech quotations. This is called the first person narration.

Я так, честно говоря, и не понял (если опуститься с высот метафор и сравнений на грешную землю), в чем заключаются трудности письма от имени женщин:
-В загадочной женской душе, ее иррациональности и непостижимости?
-Ограниченности мужской способности к эмпатии и воспроизведению чужого “потока сознания?
-В том что это просто нехорошо, и “настоящие мужики ни за что на свете такими делами заниматься не станут?
-Никому такое чтиво не интересно?
-Стилистические трудности?
-Что-то другое?

Let's imagine that you have two friends, a man and a women, who have watched a movie you did not. You ask them to describe the movie for you two decide whether you want to watch it or not. But currently they are unable to see you in person but are ready to send their descriptions by e-mail. I bet you find out which description is written by whom even if you will not look at the sender's e-mail address. So if a male author want to write a story as if it was written by a women he probably would need to put some efforts to do it a little bit different with respect to his general writing practice.
I don't know would these efforts be big or small I never tried it myself.

Ну и в чем заключаются "mixed fillings"? Что там так не понравилось?

I didn't say I didn't like it. I just said it was unexpected and I was curious how frequently male authors do it this way.

In the case of the "Little Red Riding Hood" it is neither the young girl nor the big bad wolf who tells us the story, even though there is direct speech of the both of them in the story. It is somebody else who was secretly running behind the red riding hood and listened and scripted everything she and the big bad wolf said. It is called the third person narration.

While in the "Hercules Poirot" stories it is Hustings who tells us the story. And he refers to himself as "I" in all the parts of the text outside of direct speech quotations. This is called the first person narration.

В таком случае Агату Кристи вообще нельзя приводить в качестве примера. Главным героем является Пуаро, и он произносит диалоги от третьего лица. Большая часть произведений цикла наполнена диалогами от его имени. Гастингс выполняет сугубо вспомогательную функцию, лишь оттеняя своей дремучестью гения бельгийца. Не исключаю толику плагиата по отношению к паре Холмс-Ватсон в качестве причины возникновения героев Агаты Кристи.

Я по-прежнему не понимаю, чем диалоги типа “Бла, бла, бла” – сказала Красная Шапочка” более естественны в написании, чем диалоги “Бла, бла, бла” – я сказал” при “половом расхождении” автора и главного героя. По-моему, тут сугубо дело индивидуальных предпочтений и не более того.

Let's imagine that you have two friends, a man and a women, who have watched a movie you did not. You ask them to describe the movie for you two decide whether you want to watch it or not. But currently they are unable to see you in person but are ready to send their descriptions by e-mail. I bet you find out which description is written by whom even if you will not look at the sender's e-mail address. So if a male author want to write a story as if it was written by a women he probably would need to put some efforts to do it a little bit different with respect to his general writing practice.

Почему, на ваш взгляд, женщине требуется меньше усилий войти в образ мужчины и написать соответствующую историю, чем наоборот (мужчине войти в образ женщины)? Почему первый вариант более “естественен” чем второй?

So, why would a male author write a story in the way as if it was written by a women?

Просто так захотелось написать. Муки творчества. Возможно, такая “смена пола” поможет принести большую популярность и увеличить тираж.