horribile visu

[truepenny]

And then there are the things I wish Teresa Nielsen Hayden wouldn't post on Making Light. (Don't forget to read the comments.)

Brad, Brad, wherefore art thou, Brad?

I tend to think of W. Shakespeare as an easy-going, tolerant type of guy, a little bemused at how worked up people get over his plays. But I also like to think that at this, even my version of W. Shakespeare would draw the line. Because this is just abominable.

Comments

[papersky.livejournal.com]

Changing the end is abominable, and anyway, if they wanted a happy ending there already is Bowdler's version -- I think, some C.19 version with a happy ending. (They did Antony and Cleopatra too, which horrified me more, because R&J is a story, but A&C is history.)

There's something odd about wanting a book with your name in. It's different from calling a character after someone, and it's different even from the production of Cinderella I wrote and produced when I was in school where the Ugly Sisters had the names of two of the staff. I don't understand it. Would I enjoy a story better if the central character were called Jo? In fact, no, this had happened, and I find it distracting, it doesn't cause more identification but more distancing. (Well, except with Little Women but that's different. I'd identify with Jo March even if I hadn't been called after her.)

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

I can't remember which Victorian company it was, but there was one that performed alternate versions of Romeo and Juliet on alternate nights.

And have I told you abuot Nahum Tate's King Lear, the one in which Cordelia marries Edgar? Aspiring dramatists should read it and Shakespeare's back to back, to see how thin the line is between tragedy and melodrama.

I've never understood the (apparently prevalent) idea that reading books about oneself is enjoyable. Because, no. I read books precisely because they aren't about me. That's the point. And I don't like characters to have my name, either. It's jarring and gets in the way of the fiction.

[pameladean]

There's a really prevalent belief amongst people who want to write, do write, teach writing, or edit some kinds of fiction, that "the reader" (there is no such animal, mind you) wants to "identify with" the protagonist. You would not, if you have happily heretofore been unexposed to this nonsense, believe how very MUCH nonsense flows from this essentially erroneous first principle. The exhortation to not describe the protagonist physically, lest the reader's identification be thrown off by the wrong hair color (geeze Louise, as if any reader worth zir salt would let that get in the way, even if zie did like identifying with a character in the first place, which I suppose some readers must) is only one example.

Argh. Rant surfacing. Must stop.

Pamela

[truepenny.livejournal.com]

It's one of those things, like Aristotle's theory of tragedy, that somehow everyone learns in high school and therefore we will never be rid of.

OTOH, I had creative writing students make exactly that complaint about a story I assigned (Lorrie Moore's "Beautiful Grade"). The protagonist's 50, they whined at me. We can't identify with him. The story's boring. The only time I've been closer to actual homicide in the classroom was when this same class of (otherwise fun, lively, and frequently brilliant) students couldn't understand why I made them read "The Lottery." They thought that was boring, too.

[penmage.livejournal.com]

That's frightening. And if someone really wants their name in the play so badly, well, just read it with your names. And that "happy ending version"? :shudder: