Successful Writer Blog

I first encountered The Artful Edit when a writer recommended in the paper that someone should translate the book into Hebrew. Although I have not found a publishing house that is willing to translate it, I must say that reading Susan Bell’s book, in the few hours I had free this month (I got married a week ago), was an enlightening experience. I found this book to be one of the best manuals that deal with the not-so-glamorous work of editing.
No one likes to read their own work over and over again in order to mend his or her writings – most writers prefer to let other people (like me) read and edit their precious words. Don’t misunderstand me; I believe that developing a skill like editing one’s own work is an invaluable and important one. I, for example, can only edit my own work if I leave what I’ve written for six months and then come back to it with fresh eyes. In a way, only then can I look at it in the eyes of a stranger, not a lover of the text.
Still, in this bright book the examples for edited text are famous (she even uses The Great Gatsby), the matters are discussed in a clear language and that only proves that the writer knows what she is talking about. I had to learn and develop topics like micro-edit (editing on the sentence by sentence level) and macro-edit (editing characters, symbols, topics with a wider view) by myself while editing books. But, here, these tools are being handed over after deep thought. One thing I can say is that the book gives you a map of editing tools and styles such as editing version after version (using drafts and revising) or editing while you write. Personally, I think editing while you write is a method that fits poetry more than prose.
The bottom line of the book is that no matter how good your editor is you have to be strict with yourself too and do the most before you start the editing process.

Jeanette Winterson’s book about a foster mother and son in 17^th century England is a travel novel that sometimes reminds some of Calvino’s work. This book gives a new meaning to science fiction because the ’science’ that is being challenged here is not the usual mathematics, physics or philosophy but rather history and the science of feelings. In other words, Winterson teaches us that science fiction doesn’t have to be about the future, it can also be about the past. What’s so special about this book is that even though it has references to historical figures such as Charles I, it isn’t an alternative history, because history runs its course along the book and no one denies what happened. The real protagonists of the book are not historical figures; most chances are that they never really existed. Most of all, if you read the opening lines you can see that Winterson, like The Bible, does not accept the idea that there is a present, past or future. The book breaks the chronological order of times and more than that Sexing the Cherry defies reality and that’s what makes it science fiction. We have to take a break from reality when words become a palpable thing where a banana is seen as a devilish obstacle. We can think that the idea that there is a city where people live above an open alligator pool is preposterous or the fact that two lovers can choke on their own words is weird, but don’t we all live on the edge of danger? And even though choking on one’s word is a metaphor to reality, where people are being hurt by words, even that is presented to us with the means of defamiliarization. One of the lessons that I take from this book is that science fiction doesn’t have to be science but a way to challenge our wit and feelings by looking at reality in a whole different perspective. And that is what great literature should do.

In the upcoming weeks we shall deal with gender and Polish literature, and if possible, we shall combine both.

2020   is one of a very small group of Israeli science fiction books, what is interesting that a great portion of those books are being written by women like Sara Blau or Hagar Yannay. This book is special because unlike Asaf Gavron’s Hydromania that was described in the newspapers as “sci-fi that isn’t sci-fi”, he is following the model of stretching the present reality (and in the case of the chaotic Israeli reality he should receive a reward for at least trying to do so). 2020 tries to tell a story that takes place in America in the near future, about a society that doesn’t have physical or mental love because of a virus that is a combination of AIDS and the swine flu.

Sometimes it works, sometimes there are glitches, for example, when the scientist begins to sing an Israeli children’s song there is no way that he could have known this song, and I wonder how the editor of the book did not notice this mistake. The book flows naturally and what is special is the fact that the hero of the book is a male doctor and the female author succeeds in understanding his point of view. This is a point that I will deal with in the following weeks the passing from gender to gender in literature. This book reminded me of the classic Dune, where the writer Frank Herbert knew the world of Bedouins in the Mediterranean in an in depth way. Similarly, 2020 is a book based on a world of science that Chamutal Shabtai, the daughter of one of Israel’s greatest writers Yaakov Shabtai, knows very well and I believe that in science fiction one must know his back yard very well in order to write this sort of book. JR Tolkien invented a world and a language but he did his homework on ancient civilizations, literature and languages. If one betrays the laws of his own world, it’s a greater sin than mistakes in realistic literature.

I believe that the whole purpose of literature is to teach us something about life. Even when one writes a poem about a tree we would have no knowledge about that particular tree without the writer as a filter. Science fiction asks the questions about life not in the past or present, but in some sort of imagined future. When you read a book like Solaris by Stanislaw Lem and you are amazed to see that the hero is reading something as traditional as a book, how do you react? One could ask should there be a limit to fiction in science fiction? Or must every detail in the book be imagined? Can one imagine complete surroundings that will be alternative to one’s own? These are all perplexing question.

I believe that science fiction isn’t really about the future; it’s about some sort of extended future that is being created by the present. In order to ask philosophical questions about the future, one should start with a connection point to the present. If this connecting point between the future and present should be books then let it be books, if one has to remember one of Einstein’s theories in order for the reader to feel at home while one asks about the meaning of life, then so be it.

Sci-fi books that were published in the sixties bear the mark of the philosophical and moral question of that time. The ideas, for example, that humans are superior and there are second class robots are parallel to questions about colonialism and human rights. I don’t believe that those questions were ever solved. One can see that those books deal with morals because whenever a book begins with murder or death this is a signal that moral questions are about to be dealt, especially in the work of Asimov or Philip K. Dick.

I love the way pseudo-science (invented theories by fictional scientists) is being poured into Solaris and this is something that should be learned by those who wish to put philosophy as the queen of their book. One must remember that she is but a slave of the plot. In the following article I shall try to show another aspect of creating an imaginary universe.   

The book Memorias Postumas de Bras Cubas by J.M. Machado de Assis is a wonderful book that very much reminds me of Stern’s The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman but instead of trying to tell the story of his life and failing in birth, this story begins with death. How could it be that a story is being written after death? There is no explanation and this book, like Tristram Shandy, pushes the boundaries of literature of its time and has a fine mixture of acute self awareness and even science fiction. Death causes one to take another look at one’s life, and this book tells the story of great missed opportunities and high expectations, but finally results in disappointment for the hero.

Karl Marx once said that history repeats itself twice, as a comedy and then as a tragedy. The first book, The Death of Artemio Cruz, was the tragedy and Memorias Posthumas is the comedy because this book is filled with humor in its depiction of life in the second half of the 19^th century. In this case, like the first novel that we discussed this week, we learnt something about the nature of human life, which is the most important thing of all. This book, like every masterpiece, is ever fresh, and as the editor of the Hebrew edition says, “It gives a deeper humanistic meaning to the biblical saying, ‘All is vanity and a striving after wind.’”

Next week we shall deal with English satires with the hope of showing how they influenced their time and what they are based on.

Three famous stories by Quiruga that represent three different points of view about death were translated into Hebrew by Tal Nitzan, respected translator. The first, Sunstroke, tells the tale of the death of a farmer called Jones in the area where Quiruga lived. No human in the story is aware that Death is approaching. The character of Death looks exactly like Jones and the only creatures that can see him and try to protect their master are the farmer’s dogs. What is so special about this story is the mixture of realism and spiritualism. In this short story we learn a great deal about the farmer’s life and if we have to answer the question of whether Death is evil or good. One can say that dying is as random as a spin of the roulette wheel and when it is draws nearer to you there will be no remorse.

Another story that seems to support this theory is The Dead Man, which tells of another farmer who dies in a freak accident when he trips over his machete. The author tries to understand what the dead man feels like while he is dying and describes his death in a very realistic way. The reader gets an insight into how he is trying to cling on to life and the usual things that happen every day. The moment of death is still something we do not experience from first-hand experience but from a point of view of an animal, in this case a horse that loses his reverence towards his master the moment he dies. As long as his master lived the horse dares not to leave the banana field, but the moment he dies the horse starts walking. This very much reminds me of another story by Quiruga, With the Stream, which describes the death of a person from snakebite, but in the last case the death is physical and sharp.

The third story I would like to mention is The Son, when we know about the death of the main protagonist from the very beginning. We know that death is expected but the dead kid continues to live on in the father’s mind and this idea of life after death is another option that could be examined and make a very fine opening for a story. 

You live without choice and you die without choice, according to an old Hebrew idiom. It seems that anything I can say about death would be a cliché. I believe I chose death or several aspects of death as a topic this week because it creates instant drama and can open up a range of possibilities for representation and morals. In La Muerte de Artemio Cruz (The Death of Artemio Cruz) by Carlos Fuentes, the death has some sort of a surplus. This is not only because its hero is larger than life like Kane in Citizen Kane – and there are many points of similarity between the two protagonists – but also because, like Perry commented about the book, it’s “several alternative books” – the story is told in three voices that are all connected to the protagonist. Like Falkner’s style of writing, this book doesn’t give details too soon and forces you to read it again and again, and every time you find new sides to the story. The thing that I like the most is the way that it tells the history of modern Mexico through the life of this one person, which is an idea that one can adopt and use, as was famously executed on screen in films like Forest Gump.

Wan can’t really hate the protagonist of the book, but you can’t like him either. The ambivalence is all over this book and this is its true force. The fundamental question for me in this book is about the freedom of choice and what seemed free is actually decided in advance. This book has also a refreshing point of view towards Americans by showing that they are not the smart and sharp businessmen they would like to consider themselves, as they are easily fooled by Cruz. I wish I could have quoted several lines here so you could see the beauty of the language of the book but I couldn’t find an English translation. No wonder it was an international bestseller in the 20^th century and, in my opinion, is well worth discovering.

The Italian novel, Il serpente by Luigi Malerba, tells the story of a man who killed his wife. What is so special about it is his confession which is false or partly false. From the beginning, we know that the hero is about to kill his wife who he hates. We know that he buys a gun, but he is trying to deceive us by investigating another murder case of a man and his wife. This investigation teaches us about our own character’s morals, which are an important tool for writers. Between the chapters the author plants thoughts and ideas that connect to the story and teach us about the morals of the character and their relation to Christianity and the profane. I won’t tell you the ending I’ll just give a hint that this madness and twist of morals as seen through alien eyes is very fascinating, but doesn’t end well for the hero, who eats the woman he loves.

There are many detective books that follow a crime through the eyes of the detective. However, there are not so many that tell the story from the criminal’s point of view, I believe that this point of view is something very modern that began sometime in the 20^th century. Other examples of artworks that share the point of view of the criminal and the detective include Edgar Alan Poe’s ‘The Tell Tale Heart’, Chaplin’s film Monsieur Verdoux and Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr.  

One must remember that when a sordid thing occurs, (such as the act of cannibalism found in this book), the morals and the truth should be reestablished. This week I tried to show you a more original angle about morals. Next week we shall deal with books about people who were deprived of feeling – those with mental health problems.

When I opened this book, I didn’t find anything that I expected. The very first chapter reminded me a little of Stephen King’s work, only deeper and darker, because the evil comes from real people. Any writer should take lessons from the research and the language that Cormac McCarthy is using. It is no wonder that this sort of book was adopted for the cinema, because of the realistic dialogues and the descriptions that catch your heart. This is hardcore realism that emphasizes the book, as an art form, has a raw power that other mediums fail to possess. On the other hand the morality of this book shows that every good deed will be punished and what went wrong can not be mended, like the hero’s attempt to bring water for the dying man in the beginning.

One of my writing students asked me while I was reading this book, ‘why do I try to make all of her stories visual and decrease the amount of philosophical thoughts contained within?’ I told her that I believe that the advent of films has taken books to another level, because the visuality that was developed in the last century took away some of the burden of description and raised the beat of the book. For example, Tolstoy’s War and Peace would not be published today because readers no longer need or have the time for such descriptive writing. And if one is looking for an answer of how a book should be in the fast-paced age of the film, you could do no worse than read this book.

Heinrich von Kleist is one of the main writers that made western literature what it is today. His work influenced major writers like Kafka, and his stories have not lost their edge two centuries after they were written. Michael Kohlhaas is probably his best work. The story, like Hamlet, is based on a true figure of a house trader who was robbed by the authorities, was not compensated and therefore went on a crusade with a gang of robbers and farmers to demand justice. In the end, Michael Kohlhaas was tortured on the wheel and executed in a very vicious way. In this story the hero loses his wife and belongings, which sends him on a quest to retrieve two of his horses that were labored nearly to death and to return them to their original condition. What is interesting in the story is that the justice does not prevail and he pays with the price of his life. His vengeance is never fulfilled because that would end the story.

The story shows us that justice can not be made out of injustice, and many innocent people die because of this mad quest for justice that is making what seemed reasonable in the beginning ludicrous. Even though it was written as some sort of protest against the French rule of Germany, the fact that it deals with the question of justice and morals, represents the philosophical ideas of its time. The story proves the idea that we have already established – that a good work of art uses the spirit of its day (zeitgeist) and remodels it.

It’s probably one of the first works that shows how pathetic the people who rule us really are. Another thing that should be learned is the way the focus on the main character is lost and in this manner we lose our appreciation to this man and begin to see the bigger picture. The showdown between Kohlhaas and Martin Luther is probably the father of all moral showdowns in American literature and films. Since this is the beginning of realism, the plot is logical and realistic for most of the time, but there is a mixture of the supernatural towards the end which is not a very bad idea to take from this plot. I strongly recommend that you read about it and read the story, because many authors can still learn valuable lessons from it.