The Bedeviled Book

 Which You'll Either Displace, Be Divested of, or Read to Demolition

I have heard tell of the legendary work of fiction that is Good Omens. Yet, while I knew the basic premise of the plot and was aware of its massive fan-base, it was not these things that had first reached me. 

 

 

The first time the infamous reputation of Good Omens entered my awareness it was on a post online which discussed the book's notorious reputation for being stolen. The writer rued the amount of copies they had had to purchase in order to replace those that been regrettably lent to a friend who, naturally, neglected to return it. 

 

One might ask why the unfortunate soul continued to lend their precious copies of the novel to people, repeatedly not learning from their mistake. 

It could well be that the book, in a nefarious effort be read by as many irreproachable readers as possible, simply wanted to leave its former master. Perhaps the master himself (the book's original owner) had become so possessed by its wicked humour, masterful plot, and clever devils that they were at the mercy of its will. 

Or, conceivably, the book may just be that good. 

 

 

 

I later heard of other strange habits the book had acquired. Apparently, the novel has a nearly diabolical way of turning strange shades of brown, being dropped in the bath, or totally falling apart at the spine so that it must later be carried in a plastic bag like a dead thing.

I certainly do not think that any of this is the author's fault, both of whom I much admire. Unless of course, somewhere along the way, a curse of destruction was placed on it in a ploy to sell as many copies as possible. 

The book's foreword, however, will tell you about the author's puzzlement at the state of some of these books which they later find themselves signing, as if taking credit for the disheveled thing in some ironic way. So, unless we are to accuse them of lying, one can only assume the books bedevilment is a thing entirely separate of them. 

I was cautious when reading the book. I did not take any baths with it. I kept my tea at a safe distance. I made sure to keep it far away from open flames, especially when leaving the thing unattended in the same room as my scented candles. 

Yet as I read Good Omens I quickly realized that no amount of caution was enough as not long after beginning the thing my copy literary started to skin itself alive, like some sort of snake. 

It began slowly at first, and though I made sure not to pick at its dead skin, trying hard to avoid touching it at all, every time I took up the thing the damage seemed to have only gotten worse. 

 

Meanwhile, the cheeky little devil on the cover looked so cocky and calculated that I found I quite mistrusted him. I certainly had not heard him on radio 4, though he kept telling me that I had. Perhaps I need to start paying closer attention when Freddie Mercury comes on. 

 

 

I finished the novel late one Thursday night, exhaustion looming over my head. I thought it would be the end of it all then, as there were no obvious stains or tears beyond the continual shedding of its plastic skin, when, to my own surprise, I received a confession that made it all click into place. 

It could not have been closer to the end of the book even if it had tried. Luckily, I read every word, down to the author's bios in the back. Terry Pratchett went last, relating from beyond the grave that "P.S. (Neil) really, really likes it if you ask him to sign your battered, treasured copy of Good Omens that has been dropped in the tub at least once and is now held together with very old, yellowing transparent tape."

Pratchett, you sneaky bastard. It all makes sense now. 

 

These were my first thoughts as I read those words. Then, before I knew what I was doing, I went online and ordered myself some clear book-tape. 

Only the best for the best, that's what I say; and if Neil likes it this way, who am I not to oblige?

 

 

An Empty Room in a Half-Constructed Castle

:Stashing the Discovery Writer into Constricted Chapters and What Happens After

 

There is little advice out there on how to edit a book when you are a discovery writer. Unwritten chapters are always unruly and unpredictable, and we discovery writers thrive in that kind of play field. 

Already written chapters, though, these are much too ordered and familiar, and thus, can feel like a bore, especially when at the end of a series of unedited chapters, empty and unexplored ones await. The discovery writer hopes to make quick business of them, editing them in rapid succession. 

Few things are worse than coming across a chapter and finding that something unnamed is missing. A chapter that feels incomplete can drive the discovery writer to madness. 

For you see, we cannot simply craft good chapters. We unravel them, unearth them from some unknown place. Thus, at times, no amount of skill or experience can capture a thing that does not want to be found out so easily. 

After all, the discovery writer rarely discovers the same way twice, and thus, knew methods of discovery need constantly be found. 

The constricted playing field of an incomplete chapter soon starts to feel like a prison when there is so little room for new things to be stirred. 

 

 

Another writer once said that the first draft of a book is like shoveling sand into a box so that you can build sand castles later.

But being a discovery writer means getting carried away sometimes, and, most of the time, the first draft looks more like a box of sand with half constructed castles left abandoned.

We are much too playful a lot to be expected merely to shovel, and when an exciting idea comes to us, we do not like to wait before the fun can begin, and so, we build fractional castles in the pits we find. If we get bored we simply tell ourselves we will be back later to complete them, and so, we leave them behind, at least, for a time.  

 

So, the discovery writer will inevitably continue on with the brief thought that the castle was almost done anyway and that it shouldn't take too much work later to complete it. 

We can all imagine what happens next: time passes, the writer has many adventures and eventually returns, finding to their dismay that the castle does not look nearly as complete as they remember. 

 

 

 

There are so many things to consider when writing a book. It is easily to forget to note them all. Naturally, there are some things that you do not discover until the second time you pass through. Some things aren't noticed until one has spent a great deal of time speculating and possibly obsessing over a chapter, feeling a bit like a half baked detective who knows in their bones that some detail is being missed but can't quite make out what it is. 

We know still that we have been here. We have vague memories of the fun we had. We do not, however, know what has changed. Is it our perception or the creation that has been altered and left unsatisfied? 

More often than not, once the thing which has so long evaded you is discovered it will be so jarringly obvious you will not be able to think of anything else. Sometimes it is a quick fix of the narrative, a thread with a unintentional loop straightened out or line with a small rift that needs mending. But, sometimes, and that is to say this particular time to which I am referring, one finds oneself inside a small void. 

 

I myself recently came across one. 

I must say, I thought it suspicious when, pausing inside a chapter near the end of Part One, I found that I had carelessly left a whole room utterly devoid. Not a line of description was in it. 

I knew that there was something missing. But how, I wondered, could one misplace an entire room, especially when that room is at the top of a tower? 

 

Now, this would be little to fret over under normal circumstances. The details of a setting are something I do not tend to until I've come through at least twice. But I have been here in this chapter (and thus, in this chamber) at least four times now, and never had I noted the gaping hole that was this rather large, rather baffling space. It utterly escaped my attention, and so, it immediately peaked my interest.

 

The size of it was one thing to consider, for I knew it be a colossal space. I had discussed the view from its windows and drawn the reader's attention to its rising form on more than one occasion. But the inside, I realized, was otherwise a mystery. 

 

I admit, the discovery put an abrupt halt in my progress, and even now, weeks later, I am still here, lost in this empty room, trying to decipher what it means.

 

It is a different kind of discovery I am experiencing now, for in my book I have found a narrative gap in the form of a large room, which, beyond its vastness of size, is much too mysterious and strange to not also have some secret vastness within the plot. 

What ever I fill it with, I know it cannot alter the plot too consequentially; cannot even stray into the chapters surrounding which were completed long ago; it cannot do much but be, and add; cast shadows into the narrative and give flickers of the story.

What else could be stashed away into secret chambers where characters don't so much as utter a line? What else but secrets of the plot?

So, as I shift through its contents and study its walls, I see shadows and secrets unfold. 

I know I have seen these shadows before, in my musings and vague designs; I have plotted these schemes; I wrote these secrets into private notebooks once, and so, it is not their existence that surprises me.

I did not, however, expect to find them here. For the life of me, I cannot remember stashing them all away up in this tower, in this room which, day by day, becomes less empty, but no less puzzling.

That is, perhaps the most perplexing part of it all: for, if I didn't stuff them in this chamber, who did?

 

 

From Dreams to Domination

:The Drastic Transformation of the Cinematic Universe as seen through Two Books Meant for Children 

 

Whatever goes into the process of deciding what to read next, one cannot argue that it is largely open to coincidence. Any number of things can influence a choice that seems so fundamentally simple, and so, I usually don't overthink it. 

The reason I mention this is because I recently read two books that were mediocre at best. But they struck up an interesting discourse when placed next to one another. Other than their target audience, the books did not resemble each other. Both were books meant for children, and both were discovered in the middle school library where I work. The genre and setting, however, were very different; even its orphan protagonists had little in common with one another beyond their own orphan-hood. 

And yet, at its imaginative core, both works offered a look at a young mind's relationship with the stagnant television. When placed opposite one another, they told the tale of the ever changing world seen inside the screen, which has descended down from its wondrous dreamland and been slowly transformed into a device of frightful domination.

 

The first of these books was The Invention of Hugo Cabret, which I am sorry to say was a grand disappointment. I remember being entranced by the film, and admit, I was likewise enchanted by the imaginative pieces within the book. 

It being so, I found it a horrid shame that the book was so poorly written. Indeed, I quickly realized that any magic the story holds is borrowed from its influences, namely, Georges Méliès, and even this was largely harmed by the awful writing. (I did not think this possible, but alas, it seems it was.)

 

I will not speak more of it here, only say I can at least credit the film version with introducing me to the first snippet of Trip to the Moon which I ever had the pleasure of seeing. I remember that I was immediately captivated, and, although I do not remember much else about the movie now, that image has never left me. 

I later wrote a short story inspired by it. Evidently, even just a few brief flashes of this early cinematic masterpiece seen through the lens of another film entirely was enough to influence my imagination (Read the short story here). 

 

The second book, which I have not quite yet completed, is none other than The Mysterious Benedict Society, which, while it started off wonderfully mysterious, has since become rather tedious. 

Indeed, nothing all that interesting might have come of reading these two books if I had not put these two stories in conversation with one another. 

 

 

I have already talked about the wonder that is the film world in The Invention of Hugo Cabret. Georges Méliès, the only character that was at all interesting in this narrative, is based off the real life visionary, illusionist, and film director by the same name. (For those of you who don't know him, look up Trip to the Moon on YouTube. You will not be disappointed.)
 

Méliès is rightfully credited with creating the stuff of dreams. As the book puts it, seeing one of his films was like dreaming in the middle of the day.

The Mysterious Benedict Society, though, has an entirely different take on cinema, or, as it was more recently called, television. In this book, television and even the radio are dangerous weapons used to send out hidden messages meant to control a nearly dimwitted society. 

The really strange part is that both views on film are true, in their own time and scope. While the cinema of the past awakes and entices the imagination, making dreamers of its audience, today's movies more often than not leave its audiences feeling uninspired, lackluster, and unsatisfied. 

 

 

 

While The Invention of Hugo Cabret acts as a sort of love letter to the works of Méliès, seeking to plant an adoration for classic cinema in its child audience, The Mysterious Benedict Society reads like a warning which, at the very least, seeks to create a wariness towards television in its young readers.

 

When the protagonist of The Mysterious Benedict society is asked on one of the mysterious tests whether he likes watching television, he almost answers yes. But then, upon further consideration, he realizes he really doesn't enjoy watching television at all.

 

Part of the tragedy is that many modern films have indeed become something trite, even benumbing. But the greater misfortune is that most of us don't seem to mind it. Indeed, we often don't even think long enough about it to realize that perhaps we don't like watching television at all. We've merely been entertained enough by it not to mind it. After all, who thinks twice about something that lets them turn off their brain so effectively? 

This is not to say that all modern movies are bad. Indeed, some are quite fabulous. 

But one cannot forget that the same thing that used to nurse children into dreamers now harms their minds, leaving them feeling lackluster, forcing them to slowly lose interest in other activities. One quickly sees where the novel gets its ideas of a dimwitted, thoughtless society.  

 

It is easy to preach everything in moderation, and yes, likely too much television is part of the problem. But even so, many modern film makers have become lazy and money obsessed, pumping out films with so little heart in them, they feel plastic and unreal.

The same stuff that used to inspire dreams now spawns imaginative horrors like Neil Gaiman's Media, a godly being that commits mass menticide by speaking through the voice of your television. 

  

There is indeed some horror at the core of The Mysterious Benedict Societies and the cautionary story it tells about television's powers for evil. After all, the conspirators behind the mind control ploy use the voices of children to send out their secret messages. 

That is ultimately how society is turned: with children's voices repeating dangerous ideas, though they themselves know not where they come from. 

In the end, the only conclusion one can come to is that the cinematic universe was a far safer and more simple place when film merely awoke a desire to dream instead of these slow killing apparitions.

Two Cups of Tea and One Book

What strange and mysterious things ensue, I do not know. But I found that one cup of tea quickly led to two as I read this afternoon.

 

Meanwhile, the day changed its course countless times, drizzling onto my window just to let the sun slip out for a while not long after. Then, later that evening, it started to snow sparsely. 

The day sure was eventful, and I found, though I am a quite a few chapters in, I still don't know what to think of it. 

 

As one test led to another, and I watched quietly while each of the three very resourceful children passed each obstacle differently, brilliantly, strangely.  

 

I half expect Lemony Snicket to come slinking out from some corner where he has been silently watching and admit, as if to make a point, that not even he knows what is going on and what all this could mean. 

 

 

The book begins like most of this nature do, with something strange stemming from some adult thing, like business trips, or moves to new homes due to financial struggle. More often than not, it is an uncertainty in an issue of child custody. This one begins with something even more adult and mundane, an ad in the paper with these inquiring words: "Are you a gifted child looking for special opportunities?"

The words are also printed on the back cover in red letters. 

One should note two things about this statement: first, it is addressed directly to a child, not the child's parents; and second, it slips in the words gifted, and special, which every child wishes to be.

 

 

These words are less strange on the back of a book than they would be printed in the paper. 

But I imagine any child (or adult) would be reading this book for the same reason they would note the ad in the paper with keen interest.

 

I am, of course, not a child. But I was unfairly not allowed enough time to be one, and so, I often like to read as if I still am one.  

The world is far more mysterious and whimsical when you are young and unfamiliar with issues of custody or financial struggles. A child is less likely to question the premise of a book, no matter how mysterious, just so long as it intrigues them or allows them the chance to be gifted and special, which admittedly, not only children wish to be.  

 

Perhaps by the third cup of tea the part of me that still reads in the voice of Lemony Snicket (or rather, Jude Law) will have a better sense of what is going on.