“Often when I want to work but have nothing specific in mind, I’ll start with a familiar object, begin to draw it, and see what emerges. I just drew a banana that became a boat (maybe you saw?). It strikes me as a good diversion to start making a children’s story. I don’t know the first thing about children, so my story is going to be the one I wanted to see and hear as a child but never did.”
— From “The Golden Mean,” by Nick Bantock
From The Random House Group, via Facebook.
So I’m quoting classic 80’s comic books to friends yesterday, because that is precisely what a healthy, well rounded 41-year-old does.
I googled a page-shot for Bruce Wayne’s iconic “Yes, Father,” pledge, and it FINALLY occurred to me that Frank Miller’s “Batman: Year One” contains a parallel to Edgar Allan Poe’s “The Raven.”
The bat flies through the window and perches on Thomas Wayne’s bust; the raven flies through the window to perch on the “pallid bust of Pallas.”
If memory serves, I first read “Year One” in 1992. And I just got that.
“Flowers for Algernon” is a wonderful book, and is short and quite easy to read.
The film adaptation with a terrific performance by Cliff Robertson is also an old favorite of mine.
http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2014/jun/18/flowers-for-algernon-genius-daniel-keyes
As you might have gathered from previous blog posts, I really loved the free-verse narrative of Toby Barlow’s award winning “Sharp Teeth.” (Thank you, Super Smart Art Girl, for lending it to me.)
This isn’t exactly a werewolf novel. Am I a horror-hound-pedant if I point out that the monsters depicted are … weredogs? (I actually do get annoyed when Internet commentators get too upset when the infected from “28 Days Later” are referred to as “zombies.” Big deal.)
This is a great horror read, whether you enjoy poetry or not. Barlow does something both creative and effective — he employs poetry to perfectly capture the fluid, stream-of-consciousness thought processes of his characters. It works. Think about it — do we think in complete sentences, or are thoughts more like images, phrases and feelings?
And it’s a first-rate horror yarn. We’ve got packs of weredogs vying for control, both within their own ranks and throughout Los Angeles’ crime scene.
Barlow does a great job juggling multiple points of view, and crafting a really decent horror story. The most ambitious plan concocted by a weredog alpha is actually pretty scary. So, too, is a She-dog’s intimidation of a former oppressor.
Casting the main human protagonist as dogcatcher (really!) was darkly humorous. We even have a satisfying, if brief, explanation for the monsters’ origins that totally works.
And the best part of the book is … a little hard for me to describe. Barlow seems to perfectly capture the clanlike or packlike mentality of the weredog villains and anti-heroes. You actually can feel for them, because he captures their feelings and point of view so capably.
The poetry itself is often quite beautiful.
This is a great read that I cheerfully recommend.
1) Portrait of the Artist as a Jung Man
2) The Po’ Man’s Poe
3) Pay No Attention to the Nerd Behind the Curtain
4) All Auden, All the Time
5) Eric Robert Nolan: Sleep With Me and I’ll Write a Poem About It
6) The Boy Who Cried Wolf
7) Eric Robert Nolan: Slow In Writing Sequels
8) The Poetry of Andy Kaufman (I’m Still Alive and This Is My Nom de Plume)
9) Nolan Country For Old Men
10) Nolan Ventured, Nolan Gained
11) Eric Nolan: Preternaturally Garrulous (I’ve been told that I overuse both words.)
12) The Writing of Eric Nolan: More Wolves and Birds than a God Damn National Forest
13) Wait … That Guy Who’s Always On Facebook ALSO HAS A BLOG?!
14) Just Say Nolan
15) That 90’s Guy
16) British People Are Mean To Me
17) Nerdiopathy
18) I Know Why The Caged Nerd Sings
And we’ve yet to see a feature film or television series for Stephen King’s stunning, seminal “The Dark Tower” series?
“Under the Dome” is precisely my least favorite Stephen King novel. And I have read “Dreamcatcher” (which was quite good in places) and the somewhat-too-disturbing novella, “Rage.”
What’s next? A TV series based on Tom Clancy’s “Teeth of the Tiger?”
Sorry for being cranky today — this cold is kicking my @$$.
They need to make a “Gunslinger” film, at the very least, and have it star Clint Eastwood. I don’t care about his age, and we’ll forgive his chiding of invisible presidents. He simply IS Roland Deschain.
“The Lass Of Cessnock Banks”
On Cessnock banks a lassie dwells;
Could I describe her shape and mein;
Our lasses a’ she far excels,
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s sweeter than the morning dawn,
When rising Phoebus first is seen,
And dew-drops twinkle o’er the lawn;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s stately like yon youthful ash,
That grows the cowslip braes between,
And drinks the stream with vigour fresh;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
She’s spotless like the flow’ring thorn,
With flow’rs so white and leaves so green,
When purest in the dewy morn;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her looks are like the vernal May,
When ev’ning Phoebus shines serene,
While birds rejoice on every spray;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her hair is like the curling mist,
That climbs the mountain-sides at e’en,
When flow’r-reviving rains are past;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her forehead’s like the show’ry bow,
When gleaming sunbeams intervene
And gild the distant mountain’s brow;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her cheeks are like yon crimson gem,
The pride of all the flowery scene,
Just opening on its thorny stem;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her bosom’s like the nightly snow,
When pale the morning rises keen,
While hid the murm’ring streamlets flow;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her lips are like yon cherries ripe,
That sunny walls from Boreas screen;
They tempt the taste and charm the sight;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her teeth are like a flock of sheep,
With fleeces newly washen clean,
That slowly mount the rising steep;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her breath is like the fragrant breeze,
That gently stirs the blossom’d bean,
When Phoebus sinks behind the seas;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
Her voice is like the ev’ning thrush,
That sings on Cessnock banks unseen,
While his mate sits nestling in the bush;
An’ she has twa sparkling roguish een.
But it’s not her air, her form, her face,
Tho’ matching beauty’s fabled queen;
‘Tis the mind that shines in ev’ry grace,
An’ chiefly in her roguish een.
1780
Thanks to Burns Country for the text: http://www.robertburns.org/works/12.shtml
Auden would have made a fine horror writer. He would have.
Enjoy the frightening imagery of “O Where Are You Going?”
I am not sure, but I believe that this is part of a set of poems entitled “The Adventurers?”
“O where are you going?” said reader to rider,
“That valley is fatal when furnaces burn,
Yonder’s the midden whose odors will madden,
That gap is the grave where the tall return.”
“O do you imagine,” said fearer to farer,
“That dusk will delay on your path to the pass,
Your diligent looking discover the lacking
Your footsteps feel from granite to grass?”
“O what was that bird,” said horror to hearer,
“Did you see that shape in the twisted trees?
Behind you swiftly the figure comes softly,
The spot on your skin is a shocking disease?”
“Out of this house” ‚ said rider to reader,
“Yours never will” ‚ said farer to fearer,
“They’re looking for you” ‚ said hearer to horror,
As he left them there, as he left them there.
It wasn’t “Star Wars” (which I still consider fantasy) and it wasn’t “Alien,” which I wasn’t allowed to see in 1979.
It wasn’t even the various “Planet of the Apes” films, the Godzilla films, or the original “War of the Worlds” movie.
This comic book, which I somehow got a hold of at around age eight or nine, contained a story called “I’ll Remember You Yesterday.” It was a time travel story in which an explorer visits the future to find humanity destroyed and the planet colonized by aliens. Using clues from the future, he returns to the present to find and destroy the original alien colony, thus eliminating their beachhead and saving the human race. He died a heroic death, causing an avalanche that buried both him and the alien vanguard.
Ignore the content on the cover, even if it is quite well drawn. That story was “Alligator Alley,” and it was the lead story in the issue. It was about … hippies, and … sex, and people turning into alligators.
Despite those rather intriguing plot elements, it totally fell flat with this nine-year-old. It was too chatty, and it had a confusing climax with some sort of humanoid … alligator king. Breasts were everywhere. At least every other panel featured breasts. I’m pretty sure it should have been entitled “Breast Alley.” But I was nine, so … heroically machine-gunning aliens was far more entertaining for me. “You’ll never conquer Earth!! NEVER!!!”
Despite the loads of comics that I still own, this one has been lost to the years.
Someday when I am wealthy, I will have a framed copy of the story panels in my parlor. (I will have a parlor, people.)
Eric Robert Nolan, Author 