My notes on re-reading Harold Scheub's work on oral narrative structures and performance. They have shaped the way I think of the fantastic in narrative and how it functions, and by extension, how those "electric moments" when the real and the fantastic are combined in narrative. Notes from Harold Scheub's Story: an evident […]
The Shaping of Story: Working Through Ideas Read More »
Amid all this heavy lifting of my research notes, I re-read my essay, "A Chorus of Clowns and Masked Comic Theater" " written for Realms of Fantasy on the history of clowns, from antiquity to the Marx Brothers. It's funny, and I enjoyed re-reading it as it provides a comprehensive view of the different
Interlude in the Research: Call in the Clowns, Satyrs, Fools, and Nymphs. Read More »
Balafon performance in the streets of Conakry, Guinea. ©1963 Emile Snyder Among the unique documents that have floated my way over the years was a manilla folder full of gorgeous black and white photographs my father took in the Ivory Coast, which was developed there, and some of them might have also been
Putting Together My Father’s Research With The Photos: West Africa 1963-64 Read More »
"Traveling is brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” –Cesare Pavese
The Novels of Mythic and Perilous Travel Across Borders Read More »
There are moments in writing that feel so spontaneous that it is hard to believe they have come from oneself but instead are descended in the form of a writerly-grace. When Jane Yolen and I wrote Except the Queen, we began by separately creating characters, each with their voice and chapters, intuitively stitching them together
One Does Not Say No to Baba Yaga Read More »
I am bringing an old post back because I wanted to review again the fabulous discussion on women's art, especially the work of Katherine Ace and the events that surround and shape the direction of women's lives. And re-reading it again, I still find it as fascinating and with much to offer as when we
Katherine Ace: The Open Ended Metaphor Read More »
Probably because my status has shifted from mother to um…crone (even though I don't have the long white braid wrapped around my head like a secret ninja whip — wouldn't that be cool? )…I have been rediscovering with a new found pleasure all those story variants of the old woman who went to hell and
To Hell with a Handbag. Read More »
I recently came across this beautiful folk song — sung here by Tim O'Brien, whose mournful fiddle is as haunting as the song. It is an odd combination of of martial spirit, the soldier's success in battle, pride in his accomplishments at having served with brave commanders and an unanswered longing for a woman whose
Foreign Lander and the Life of the Sailor/Soldier Read More »
“Traveling is a brutality. It forces you to trust strangers and to lose sight of all that familiar comfort of home and friends. You are constantly off balance. Nothing is yours except the essential things: air, sleep, dreams, sea, the sky – all things tending towards the eternal or what we imagine of it.” –Cesare
The Spine of a Novel That Tends to the Eternal Read More »
One of the greatest pleasures is reading Sicilian folktales midday while drunk on a dense-full-bodied beer (16.2 percent) produced locally in Boulder. Like the beer, the stories are rowdy, naughty, mythic, and full of gullible and wise fools who make donkeys appear to shit gold, drive menial men to do self-destructive things and conspire to
Plank’d and Research Read More »
