Showing posts with label Subtext. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Subtext. Show all posts

Thursday, March 5, 2009

Barbara Hurd, Entering the Stone, Caves

Going where you aren't supposed to go--caves. Barbara Hurd recorded her experience with caving in Entering the Stone; On Caves and Feeling Through the Dark. Boston: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2003.

On p. 1 she explains,

"it's hidden space...an unexpected, inscruitable space. Strange things live in there--eyeless salamanders, albino fish, a prophet's ephanies....going into a cave might be like going into one's own mind, crawling around in the pitch-black, nook-and-crannied labyrinth of the human psyche."
For Hurd it definitely is.

I recommend Hurd's work highly. It's an example of very vivid writing as well as a strong feeling for what caves represent to us.

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post to this blog.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Wednesday, March 4, 2009

Going Where You Aren't Supposed to Go

On p. 27, Will and Henry are about to go places they aren't supposed to go. To extend the analysis of subtext begun a few days ago in a post on Jennifer Toth's wonderful book,The Mole People, check out L. B. Deyo and David "Lefty" Leibowitz, Invisible Frontier; Exploring the Tunnels, Ruins, and Rooftops of Hidden New York. New York: Three Rivers Press, 2003.

In their foreword [p. xv], the authors say,

In 1996 L.B. (Laughing Boy) Deyo and I created Jinx, the magazine of Worldwide Urban Adventure. In it, we published articles about exploration of the city's infrastructure, from climbing to the tops of bridges, to spending twenty-four hours in the subway system, to searching abandoned Air Force bases. Soon we began to receive correspondence from other urban explorers all over the world. We had stumbled upon a burgeoning community. A New York-based urban exploration group called Dark Passage, had gained notoriety for staging a four-course meal in an abandoned tunnel in Brooklyn. Ninjalicious in Toronto had created the first handbook for the urban exploration movement with Infiltration, the Zine About Going Places You're Not supposed to Go.
Isn't that part of what draws us to fiction? It brings us into the places in our lives where we're not supposed to go?

What do you think? I'd like to know. Post to this blog.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Monday, March 2, 2009

Mole People

Will's sliding through the sleeping city is the subtext of the story. Laurel Yourke defines subtext as: "The unwritten meaning that readers infer from what is implied rather than expressed through the dialogue or description." (Laurel A. Yourke, Take your Characters to Dinner, Lanham, MD: The University Press of America, 2000, p. 202)

In The Mole People, Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City (Chicago, IL; Chicago Review Press, ix), Jennifer Toth says:

The people of New York City who live underground are most commonly known as mole people. And it is no accident that the term conjures freakish image. I hope this book will reverse the horrible and striking image of 'mole people' simply by showing what I found.
The subtext of a city lies underneath the daily drama on the surface. Read this book and tell me it doesn't reveal a lot of the meaning of life up above.

But life underneath the conscious level isn't as awful and scary as we think, which is the subtext of this subtext.

What do you think? I'd like to know. And Christmas is coming. Order a copy of this book off this blog or go to www.amazon.com. It would make a good present for someone who loves classical music and murder mysteries.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Saturday, February 28, 2009

Underground Passageways

To start chapter 3, Will narrates: "Our taxi came at midnight and wound us through the sleeping city. The streets were pitch-black except for the Christmas lights everywhere." [p. 27]

This is what Will and Henry are doing, navigating their way around where no one else is looking.

There's an underground passage here in Philadelphia from City Hall over to 17th Street. You can go several blocks without coming up. There was a book published a while ago entitled The Mole People; Life in the Tunnels Beneath New York City (Chicago, IL; Chicago Review Press, 1993) about the people who live underground in the abandoned subway tunnels.

Something about caves and tunnels has always attracted me. I don't know what that is. It's like the subtext of our lives.

What do you think? I'd like to know. And Christmas is coming. Order a copy of this book off this blog or go to www.amazon.com. It would make a good present for someone who loves classical music and murder mysteries.

Writing is for me an entrepreneurial activity. For my entrepreneurship blog, to go www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for entrepreneurial real estate go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog

Wednesday, August 20, 2008

Stories promote subtext

On p. 54, Henry explains the issue related to his banishment from Kearney. I had Henry tell the story to show both what happened, allow Will to comment from a distant point, and show part of Henry's character. Stories allow the subtext to carry us along. The story teller doesn't realize what he's revealing about himself. He just thinks he's relating facts. But we come to understand the character better than the character understands himself.

If you find this or anything else interesting, post a comment. Download the book, or order it from amazon.com.

Writing for me is entrepreneurial. For my entrepreneurship course, go to www.hatman2.blogspot.com and for real estate 2.0 go to www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Saturday, August 16, 2008

Subtext

When Henry criticizes Will for wearing a hat indoors, what is the subtext? Does he mean that you shouldn't break social conventions? Not to stick out? A hat also calls attention to the wearer because only a small percentage of men wear hats. Does he mean that he doesn't want Will to get more attention than Henry? Maybe it also means that you shouldn't be limited in your life. A hat could represent a limitation.

Laurel Yourke, in Take Your Characters to Dinner (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, Inc., 2000), on p. 202, defines subtext as "the unwritten meaning that readers infer from what is implied rather than expressed through the dialogue or description."

Subtext is what stitches the novel together, and must work together with the exposition, dialogue, and description to reinforces its narrative drive.

If this or anything else I've written moves you, post comment.

Writing is for me entrepreurial. Check out my enterpreneurship course, www.hatman2.blogspot.com and my real estate 2.0 blog, www.yourstopforrealestate.com/blog.

Synopsis:

Ian Kearney, the director of the Kearney Music School, an elite musical training school in Philadelphia, dies after a fall from a balcony during a recital. World-famous cellist, Henry Harrier, recently forced from the faculty, returns to investigate Ian's death when his prized former student is arrested. Henry shows through his brilliant and single-minded pursuit of the truth that, as usual, they have it all wrong. This Sherlock Holmes-type mystery leads the reader through the world of classical music and lays bare the conflicts which dominate the lives of talented adolescents when placed under the pressure of studying for a demanding, stressful, and often elusive career as a classical music performer. Henry Harrier is part John Le Carre's George Smiley, part Arthur Conan Doyle's Holmes, and part Orlando Cole the beloved teacher, renowned chamber musician, and until his own retirement, the premier cellist of the Curtis Institute.

Author Profile:

Tim was born in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, on January 30, 1946. In 1951 he moved with his family to Schenectady, New York, where he lived through high school. He attended Baldwin-Wallace College, Berea, Ohio, from 1964 to 1968. He graduated in 1968 with a B.A. in history and philosophy. He received his Ph. D. in history in U.S. history in 1980 from the University of Wisconsin-Madison after spending 2.5 years in the U. S. Army. Most of his army service was completed in Wuerzburg, Germany, from 1969-1971. In 1972 he returned to Madison to complete his doctoral study. His dissertation, Those Who Moved; Internal Migrants in American 1607-1840, combined the statistical analysis of genealogical and biographical data with the study of traditional literary diaries, letters, and journals.

Tim was a market and survey research consultant from 1983 to 2000 and a smoking cessation researcher from 2000 to 2003. His consulting practice focused primarily on conducting community health needs assessment. He authored hundreds of market research reports and published a number of his assessments in Community Health Needs Assessment published by McGraw Hill in 1996 and in a revised volume published in 1999. In 2000 he joined the staff of the Center for Tobacco Research and Intervention of the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he conducted smoking cessation research. He published several articles in peer-reviewed journals and spoke at national smoking cessation conferences.

In 2003 he moved to Philadelphia and earned his real estate license. He now practices real estate, works on publishing his novels, and studies and teaches entrepreneurship.Tim has written a dozen novel-length stories, a volume of short stories, and about a 3-foot stack of pages poetry. He is currently working on earning his 4th million in real estate sales, publishing his novels, and working on an entrepreneurish handbook as a support for his students.

Tim is a trained violist and an experienced string quartet player. He is an avid listener to classical music and regularly attends classical music concerts. He has two grown children by his first wife and a stepdaughter with his second wife. He likes to cook, read, write, entertain, develop relationships, and help other people. Formerly Tim used to travel frequently. He doesn't so much anymore. Now he regards the combination of real estate practice, writing and publishing, and the teaching and studying of entrepreneurship as enough of a trip.