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D.R. Ranshaw

D.R. RANSHAW

A Dark and Stormy Night

3/28/2016

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A cliché
is what we all say
when we’re too lazy
to find another way
 
and so we say
 
warm as toast,
quiet as a mouse,
slow as molasses,
quick as a wink.
 
Think.
Is toast the warmest thing you know?
Think again, it might not be so.
Think again: it might even be snow!
Soft as lamb’s wool, fleecy snow,
a lacy shawl of new-fallen snow.
 
Listen to that mouse go
scuttling and clawing,
nibbling and pawing.
A mouse can speak
if only a squeak.
 
Is a mouse the quietest thing you know?
Think again, it might not be so.
Think again: it might be a shadow.
Quiet as a shadow,
quiet as growing grass,
quiet as a pillow,
or a looking glass.
 
Slow as molasses,
quick as a wink.
Before you say so,
take time to think.
Slow as time passes
when you’re sad and alone;
quick as an hour can go
happily on your own.
                -A Cliché by Eve Merriam
 
Today, I’m sitting firmly astride the fence (oops, a cliché). It’s an uncomfortable position I generally don’t like and one I attempt to avoid whenever possible, because, as I’m always exhorting students, people need to have the strength of their convictions. (I’m also quick to add they need to have the honesty and courage to examine those convictions periodically and see whether, in the light of new evidence and new life experience, those convictions still withstand scrutiny as true. And when I say ‘convictions,’ I’m not speaking of absolute truths, by the way. Although that’s a completely separate topic we can talk about another time, because yet again, I digress.) Sitting on the fence also goes against everything I teach about writing essays. Take a stand, I sternly tell students. You can’t argue both sides of an issue, I tell them. So yes, kids, I’m violating my own rule today. Classic case of do as I say, not do as I do. Oops. Was that another cliché?
 
As you may have surmised from the poem at the beginning, I’m discussing clichés. And as you may have also surmised, I’m of mixed feelings about them. Merriam evidently laboured under no such problem, because her poem comes out firmly --- although gently --- against. And... she’s right in everything she says about them.
 
We most often associate a cliché with a tired, overused expression, verbal or written, but it can apply equally to characters or situations, fictional or real life. A big part of the reason why we employ clichés is because, I think, for whatever cause, many people frequently just don’t feel particularly creative, and clichés are a way of inserting at least something into the conversational or literary void. Merriam makes this point really well: replacing clichés with something creative requires... well, creativity. It’s easier to simply put our brains on autopilot --- even though when that happens, the results are often not pretty. Case in point: as a university student --- back in the Dark Ages, as my students like to say in their clichéd way --- one of my summer jobs was at a historical park that came with a village of real and replica buildings. As an exhibit interpreter at the police barracks, I was required to don the uniform of the Royal Northwest Mounted Police (yes, the famed Mounties), and my gosh, if you think for one minute people don’t engage in clichés, you have never worked a job interacting with the general public. Allow me to share a few thoughts from that job that remain with me, 35 years later: people are not nearly as original as they think; not nearly as creative as they think; and not nearly as humorous as they think. We could devolve these depressing truths into a diatribe about humanity’s collective intelligence/creativity in general, but again, I digress, and besides, I’m not feeling particularly misanthropic today. (Actually, it was mostly a pretty good job, but that’s a whole ‘nother topic, too.)
 
So anyway, clichés are tired. Overused. Creatively bankrupt. Frequently make us roll our eyes (especially for literary types generally, English teachers specifically).
 
And yet...
 
Here’s the rub, as Will might say: clichés work. We can all identify with them, can all relate to them, and there’s one primary reason why: many times, our lives are just one long damned string of clichés. They’ve been done endlessly before --- that’s why they’ve become clichés. I know, I know: that’s one horrifying truth, isn’t it? We all want to think our lives are startlingly original, full of unique adventure, romance and Searching For The Truth (except, evidently, those tourists at my job all those summers ago, who seared me day in, day out with their clichéd inanities). We all want to think our thoughts are full of original insight and intelligence and wit. Unfortunately, the truth is, for most people most of the time, they’re not. That’s why we want to read about Frodo setting off for Mount Doom. Because, even if it would be insanely dangerous in real life --- even if, in all likelihood, we would hate every single minute while we attempted it --- it sure doesn’t sound dull. And it’s definitely unique. (Well, unique in one sense. Just about the oldest plot line in human history is the struggle of good against evil, and much of everything literary since Adam, Eve and the snake has mostly just been a rehash of that, with details changed. But never forget that details are important.)
 
Now, let’s be clear: this is not meant as an indictment of our lives (well, not absolutely, at any rate). I don’t have my grump on about life --- at least, not today. In defence of people, I want to acknowledge that the slings and arrows of outrageous daily fortune do tend to wallop the creative mickey right out of us (including me). So okay, use clichés if necessary. Just do it sparingly. And if you can possibly summon the creative energy to be a little more original, then absolutely, do so. As Merriam says: “Before you say so (use a cliché), take time to think.”
 
Because even if it really is a dark and stormy night... there’s better ways of saying so.

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Beyond Eeyore

3/21/2016

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"Good morning, Pooh Bear," said Eeyore gloomily. "If it is a good morning," he said. "Which I doubt," said he.
"Why, what's the matter?"
"Nothing, Pooh Bear, nothing. We can't all, and some of us don't. That's all there is to it."
"Can't all what?" said Pooh, rubbing his nose.
"Gaiety. Song-and-dance. Here we go round the mulberry bush."
                -The World of Pooh by A.A. Milne
 
Ah, Eeyore, the most dejected and famous donkey in literature. (Admittedly, a fairly small niche.) Pooh isn’t actually oblivious to Eeyore’s negativity --- like most things in the Hundred Acre Wood, Pooh takes it rather pragmatically --- but also like most things, it really doesn’t faze him much. Pooh moves on. And therefore we do also.
 
Because... really, we’re following Pooh. Frankly, Eeyore is a bit player --- which I’m sure wouldn’t surprise him. “I thought so,” he might gloomily declaim. “Upstaged by a bear. A clueless bear at that. It figures.”
 
Most of us find Eeyore by turns amusing and sympathetic (possibly pathetic) --- although I suspect that’s because he isn’t the protagonist of A.A. Milne’s beloved stories. But what if Eeyore was the protagonist? Would his attitude become wearing? I think so. Too much negativity in a protagonist is very difficult to live with after a while. I was thinking about this just the other day.
 
It all started when I showed my students the film Dead Poets’ Society, which despite some cutesy moments has many really nice ones --- I like it a lot. A pivotal character is well played by a young Robert Sean Leonard, who went on to star in the television series House... and I started ruminating about that series (talk about free association moments). The protagonist of House was a medical doctor named Gregory House (scruffily played by Hugh Laurie, another actor I enjoy). I watched faithfully for the first few seasons, but eventually just... stopped. Not because House was Eeyore, or even Eeyore on steroids... no, no; the gloom would actually have been easier to take. Gregory House was one of the most unlikeable protagonists I’ve ever run across. He wasn’t gloomy. He may have been depressed, but if so, he coped by lashing out viciously --- at everyone. He was arrogant. He was self-destructive. He was cynical. He was misanthropic AND misogynistic. All of the above. In the extreme. He was just nasty. To say House was negative is like saying the Pacific contains some water.
 
Now, we all have our off days, but my gosh, House made his negativity into some sort of obsessive life train wreck. I watched as long as I did because I sought redemption in this man. There’s got to be some good in him, I thought. Nope. Couldn’t find any. But he was a medical doctor, you say. He cured deathly ill people afflicted with bizarre ailments. That indicates compassion, right? Nope again. He was only interested in those patients because of the intellectual problems they afforded. He couldn’t have cared less about them as people, as individuals. He maligned friends and enemies alike (Robert Sean Leonard played his best friend, and I was incredulous how the character was such a doormat for House’s various abuses).
 
Eventually, I gave up. Gregory House was a toxic excuse for a human being, and I just couldn’t continue watching him spew his toxicity at everyone and everything. I also couldn’t understand why people put up with him as they did. I don’t care how brilliant someone is, if he’s as awful as House, he’d either be fired or people would leave. Unless they’re masochists. (Maybe they didn’t have a choice, you say. Uh uh. There’s always a choice. I know --- from personal experience.)
 
Another protagonist I really didn’t like: Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever in a fantasy series by Stephen Donaldson. The protagonist --- who could be a close relative of House, for all we know --- discovers he has leprosy before being yanked into another world, where he promptly sexually assaults a woman. He was an angry, amoral character like House, and apparently I’m not the only one to think so: Wikipedia quotes reviewer James Nicoll as saying Thomas Covenant would win a "special lifetime achievement award" for the "most unlikeable supposedly sympathetic protagonist.” Yep. Donaldson lost me after the first book. I know people like House and Covenant exist. But do I want to encounter such protagonists in my leisure reading? Again, nope. I want to like protagonists, maybe identify with them --- not despise and hate them.
 
I enjoyed the Hunger Games trilogy, but also didn’t really like Katniss Everdeen very much, although with her, it’s not that she’s amoral or misanthropic. As I said in a previous post: “Katniss,” I wanted to tell her, “I get it: you don’t want to be the hero. I don’t really care. You’re drafted, ‘cause strange as it may seem, you are the Katalyst.” (Sorry. Awful pun.) “So suck it up, sweetheart, and stop being sulkily reluctant about it. You’re the hero. Deal with it. I’m not saying you have to behave like you’re having the time of your life, but I want a little more can-do mentality and a little less moody teen angst from you.”
 
There’s nothing wrong with giving protagonists issues. After all, in Gryphon’s Heir I bestow on Rhiss, my protagonist, a lack of self-confidence that borders on crippling at times. We all struggle with stuff. We’ve all got baggage. That’s part of being human, and giving protagonists baggage makes them relatable. But I also think Rhiss is a pretty likable guy. In fact, he resembles Tolkien’s protagonist, because both Rhiss and Frodo doubt they have what it takes to be a hero. But like Frodo, when confronted with the choice, Rhiss sighs, spends a minute privately wishing he didn’t have to do this... then puts his hand up and volunteers, saying, in effect, “I’m not sure I can do what’s needed... but... I’ll try.” That’s what’s needed in a protagonist, I think: more Frodo, less House.
 
Because, as American poet Max Ehrmann wrote in his poem Desiderata: “Avoid loud and aggressive persons; they are vexatious to the spirit.”
 
You betcha, Max. Good advice --- in life and literature.
 
 

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In Praise of Mentors

3/14/2016

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Picture
Around the end of this month, a student teacher will be coming to work with me in a five week practicum. This won’t be the first student teacher I’ve ever worked with, and it’s always quite a lot of work --- for both of us. For the student teacher, after being fed all kinds of theory --- some of which is of clearly dubious value, interjected the grizzled veteran in cynical disbelief --- it means being thrown abruptly into the deep end, trying to absorb the realities of living in the trenches (if you’ll forgive me for mixing a couple of metaphors). For many aspiring teachers, it’s something of a reality check --- sometimes shockingly so. There are all kinds of novels and films set in schools, but I have yet to encounter one that really manages to accurately capture the essence of what goes on in a classroom. Although (he said with a twinkle in his eye) I enjoyed Roald Dahl’s novel, Matilda --- and in the film version, Pam Ferris was absolutely marvelous as Miss Trunchbull, the Headmistress of Crunchem Hall. (I won’t go so far as to say that the aptly named Darkton School in my novel Gryphon’s Heir was modeled after Crunchem Hall... but there may have been some inspiration...along with the works of Charles Dickens...) But I digress.
 
So student teaching is a lot of work for the student teacher; but it’s also a lot of work for the mentor teacher --- at least, if we’re doing our job properly. Mentors --- the word comes from a character in The Odyssey who was mentor to Telemachus, son of Odysseus/Ulysses --- are the “wise advisors” who come alongside those new to a craft or profession and try to impart their knowledge and wisdom to the newcomers. It involves a great deal of both demonstration and explanation. So why do I take on this additional duty, when there’s still planning and marking and photocopying and marking and parent contact and marking lurking in my day’s background? Because it’s important work. Too often in our society, the accumulated wisdom and skills of older people are dismissed or denigrated or discarded as being out of touch or reactionary or obsolete. And maybe there are cases where that’s so, but there’s a heck of a lot that experience can teach, and the skills of older people need to be passed on to younger. Why should it be necessary that the wheel has to be constantly reinvented? And it’s not only one way, either --- mentorship doesn’t flow in just one direction: the older can learn from the younger. I frequently do.
 
Mentors are also great --- nay, essential --- elements in our stories. Why? Well, think about it: more often than not, protagonists tend to be a fairly clueless bunch. Now, maybe that’s unfair --- let’s use the word “unseasoned” instead of clueless (although sometimes, the two are interchangeable). Just as in real life, mentors guide our protagonists through the “slings and arrows of outrageous fortune,” dispensing a word here, a modicum of wisdom there, and always, practical lessons garnered from their own painful experiences. And sometimes, as long as they don’t get too heavy-handed about it, story mentors can explain things to us readers, too. Just as we need mentors in our lives, so do the characters in our stories. After all, where would Frodo have been without Gandalf? The Pevensies without Aslan? Arthur without Merlin? Eragon without Brom? Harry without Dumbledore? Luke without Obi-wan? Katniss without Haymitch?
 
And look at that list. Why do all those mentors have to be men? (The same could be said of nearly all the protagonists on the list, too, by the way.) Why are we shutting out half the species? Or making them into Lady Macbeths? (Because it could be argued --- eww --- that she ‘mentors’ her husband, but definitely not in any kind of healthy fashion. Pretty twisted harpy, she is.) Reflecting on it, here’s a suggestion if you’re considering writing a mentor character: make the mentor female, regardless of the protagonist’s gender. I did, in Gryphon’s Heir, with great results, if I do say so myself. Her name is Arian (ah RYE ann), and she’s a crusty but extremely capable older woman who’s not at all intimidated by the exalted status of her young charge, Rhiss. Just what he needs. Really. She’s one part exasperation, one part philosopher, and one part forbearance, and I love listening to her speak when I transcribe what she says. (After all, she comes up with the words; I just write them down. Sometimes, what she says quite surprises me... which is delightful.)
 
So connect yourself to a mentor. Or connect your protagonist with one. In either case, you might be pleasantly surprised at what ensues.

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Evil Inc. 2

3/7/2016

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In my last post, I talked about villains who actually thought they were behaving heroically. Our capacity for delusion and rationalization is truly incredible, isn’t it? And yet... today I want to talk about another category of deluded literary villain, but to do so we need to veer over into the pathetic. (And we should start by quoting the immortal Inigo Montoya from Princess Bride: ‘you keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means.’ The word ‘pathetic’ today tends to have a pretty negative connotation. But according to Mr. Webster, the ‘pathetic’ actually means “arousing pity, sorrow, etc.” which is what I intend here.)
 
So... pathetic villains. Seems almost a contradiction in terms, doesn’t it? ‘Where can we find an example?’ you ask. Well, I know just the place and person: Roald Dahl, well-known and beloved children’s lit author. Who can forget classics like James and the Giant Peach, The BFG, Fantastic Mr. Fox, and so on?
 
But...
 
Did you also know Dahl wrote creepy stories that were definitely not children’s lit? (Unless you wanted to give the wee ones nightmares, any road.) Stories that involved some really dark stuff. I’m thinking of one short story of his in particular: The Landlady. Seventeen year old Billy Weaver, newly employed by an unspecified company, makes his way to the city of Bath, England to take up his position. He arrives on the evening train. Where to stay? A porter suggests a pub nearby, but en route, Billy encounters a house with a small sign in the front window advertising bed and breakfast. Feeling strangely compelled, Billy knocks on the door and at once the Landlady answers it. Not a minute or two later, but at once. Strange. (That should have been his first clue, but like characters in these kinds of stories everywhere, Billy is woefully unable to reconcile apprehension with self-preservation. We can, but that’s because we’ve read stories and seen films of this type many times before --- apparently the characters in these kinds of stories have never had the same experiences.) Billy decides to stay the night at the Landlady’s B and B, and although he doesn’t know it, he’s doomed the moment he steps over the threshold.
 
What does the Landlady actually do to her victims? (Dahl never gives her a name --- intentionally so, I suspect, because he doesn’t want to really personalize her.) Well, she poisons them: a nice, steaming mug of tea laced with everyone’s favourite nightcap, cyanide. And then, after they’re dead, she stuffs them and keeps them. She’s into taxidermy in a big way, our landlady is. As she says sweetly to Billy in one of several moments of foreshadowing, “I stuff all my pets when they pass away.” She is very sweet. Dahl goes out of his way to make her both sweet and very strange in vague but troubling ways. Billy notes that she’s “off her rocker,” speculating that perhaps she lost a son in the War and never quite got over it, but he never feels threatened by her.
 
And here is where the genius of Dahl’s characterization shines through: the Landlady is pathetic in the original sense of the word. She doesn’t know she’s a villain. She murders innocent young men who come to her B and B, but doesn’t really understand that she’s doing anything, much less doing anything wrong. She may well have lost the only person close to her, and it tipped her over the edge.
 
There really are people out there like that, tragically. They wander aimlessly through life, fairly unbalanced and teetering gently on the precipice of madness, but as long as nothing truly devastating happens to them, they’ll continue to teeter harmlessly. But if that terrible event does occur, it’s enough to give them the gentle push over the edge. Now, the Landlady doesn’t explode in a mindless fury of random mass violence, the way some of these types do today with depressing regularity. No, she targets her victims very carefully, and selects them quietly, one at a time, simply because she’s lonely and wants someone to talk to. But she really doesn’t realize that she’s doing anything wrong.
 
In real life, these kinds of people are both terrifying and shocking, and are the authors of much misery and destruction, but as a story character, the Landlady is fascinating because we really feel sorry for her and want to like her --- but at the same time, she does this gruesome thing that is so repelling, so... so evil, that we’re genuinely shocked --- as I suspect Billy is, when he belatedly puts it all together in the last couple of sentences in the story. She’s a great character, and a great villain.
 
And if she offers you a cup of tea, beware the smell of bitter almonds.

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    Author of The Annals of Arrinor series.  Lover of great literature, fine wine, and chocolate. Not necessarily in that order.

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