Zombies equal terrorist threat

I would link to the news site where this story originated instead of sending you to it via Neal Pollack (via Bookslut), but there's a picture of Kenny Chesney on the news site and pictures of Kenny Chesney always upset my stomach.

Anyway, an 18-year-old in Kentucky has been arrested for writing a story about zombies taking over a high school. Who knew that's a felony offense in Kentucky? It's enough to make you hope that the boy really was trying to organize an armed take-over of the school as the police believe in order for the whole thing not to sound so foolish.

I had to fortify my mind with a rereading of Doris Betts' "The Ugliest Pilgrim" before I could go to sleep last night. It was even better than I remembered and seemed a direct response to the wretchedness of the play I mentioned last night. You want to write about a girl's pilgrimage to achieve outer beauty when inner goodness ought to be the goal? You want to write about overcoming fear and inhabiting the Kingdom of Love? Let Doris Betts be your inspirational guide! Watch as she sets Violet Karl, horribly scarred by her father in an accident involving an ax, on the pilgrimage path to Tulsa, Oklahoma, to convince a television preacher that she deserves to be healed of her crippled face just as much as anyone with a bad kidney or a limp:

"The young man wears glasses with no rims. In this glare, I am reflected on each lens, Vi-oh-LETTE and Vii-lut. Oh his desk is a box of postcards of the Hope and Glory Building. Of Glory. Of Glory.

"I am afraid.

"I feel behind me for the chair.

"The man explains that he is presently in charge. The Preacher's speaking in Tallahassee, his show taped weeks ahead. I never thought of it as a show before. He waits.

"I reach inside my notebook where, taped shut, is the thick envelope with everything written down. I knew I could never explain things right. When have I ever been able to tell what I really felt? But it's all in there—my name, my need. The words from the Bible which must argue for me. I did not sit there nights since Papa died, counting my money and studying God's Book, for nothing. Playing solitaire, then going back to search the next page and the next. Stepping outside to rest my eyes on His limitless sky, then back to the Book and the paper, building my case.

"He starts to read, turns up his glitter-glass to me once to check how I look, then reads again. His chair must be hard, for he squirms in it, crosses his legs. When he has read every page, he lays the stack down, slowly takes off his glasses, folds them shining into a case. He leaves it open on his desk. Mica shines like that, in the rocks.

"Then he looks at me, fully. Oh. He is plain. Almost homely. I nearly expected it. Maybe Samuel was born ugly, so who else would take him but God?"

I had no idea until I did an Amazon search this morning that Beasts of the Southern Wild, which includes "The Ugliest Pilgrim," had been reissued. My copy is an old library discard.

Actual dialogue

Narrator 1: Much-Afraid stared at him in bewilderment.

Much-Afraid: Make my feet like hinds' feet. . . How is that possible? And what would the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Love say to the presence of a wretched little cripple with an ugly face and a twisted mouth, if nothing blemished and imperfect may dwell there?

Shepherd: It is true that you would have to be changed before you could live on the High Places, but if you are willing to go with me, I promise to hlep you develop hinds' feet. Up there on the mountains, as you get near the real High places, the air is fresh and invigorating. It strengthens the whole body and there are streams with wonderful healing properties, so that those who bathe in them find all their blemishes and disfigurements washed away.

Narrator 2: The Shepherd told her of another thing that would have to be changed.

Shepherd: Not only would I have to make your feet like hinds' feet, but you would have to receive another name, for it would be impossible for a Much-Afraid to enter the Kingdom of Love. Are you willing to be changed completely, Much-Afraid?

Narrator 2: She nodded her head and then said very earnestly

Much Afraid: Yes, I am.


Do I need to say here that we are very upset? We knew S.'s drama instructor wanted to do a religious play this spring rather than Shakespeare for a second year in a row. We were okay with that although we would definitely have preferred Shakespeare.

What we were not aware of is that the instructor adapted the play herself. The script reads like a narrative, doesn't it? I am assuming the narrators and the "characters" who do nothing more than say their allegorical names and provide some stage direction in their dialogue have been written into the script so that there will be a part for every student in this "life changing" production.

Here's some more from the script:

Narrator 2: For hours poor Much-Afraid lay sleepless on her bed.

Much-Afraid: The thorn in her heart was throbbing and aching in a manner she could scarcely bear.

Narrator 1: Suddenly she sat up alarmed.

Much-Afraid: The Shepherd came and called me as he promised, but I didn't go to him or give any answer. Suppose he has gone and left me behind!

L. thinks he should drop the class. I certainly think we could put the time to better use, but I hate for S. to quit simply because we don't like the play. Grrrr. And even C., who used to work for a drama production company, had heard this one was highly regarded!

Franklin again

My interest in Ben Franklin's autobiography, which had begun to flag, was revived by yesterday's reading of chapter 8.

He observes that "few in public affairs act from a mere view of the good of their country, whatever they may pretend, and though their actings bring real good to their country, yet men primarily considered that their own and their country's interest were united, and so did not act from a principle of benevolence" and "that few still in public affairs act with a view to the good of mankind."

He discusses Poor Richard's Almanac, first published in 1732, and mentions he considered it "a proper vehicle for conveying instruction among the common people, who bought scarcely any other books."

He discusses his newspaper and says he took care to exclude "all libeling and personal abuse, which is of late years become so disgraceful to our country. Whenever I was solicited to insert anything of that kind and the writers pleaded, as they generally did, the liberty of the press--and that a newspaper was like a stagecoach, in which any one who would pay had a right to a place--my answer was that I would print the piece separately if desired, and the author might have as many copies as he pleased to distribute himself, but that I would not take upon me to spread his detraction, and that having contracted with my subscribers to furnish them with what might be either useful or entertaining, I could not fill their papers with private altercation, in which they had no concern, without doing them manifest injustice."

He goes on: "Now many of our printers make no scruple of gratifying the malice of individuals by false accusations of the fairest characters among ourselves, augmenting animosity even to the producing of duels; and are, moreover, so indiscreet as to print scurrilous reflections on the government of neighboring States, and even on the conduct of our best national allies, which may be attended with the most perncious consequences."

He mentions a minister found to be plagiarizing sermons: "I rather approved his giving us good sermons composed by others than bad ones of his own manufacture."

He begins studying languages in 1733, learning in turn French, Italian, then Spanish. He then realizes he understands much more Latin than he would have imagined possible and questions the conventional wisdom of learning Latin first: "We are told that it is proper to begin first with the Latin, and having acquired that it will be more easy to attain those modern languages which are derived from it; and yet we do not begin with the Greek in order more easily to acquire the Latin. It is true that if we can clamber and get to the top of a staircase without using the steps, we shall more easily gain them in descending; but certainly if we begin with the lowest we shall with more ease ascend to the top; and I would therefore offer it to the consideration of those who superintendent the education of our youth whether, since many of those who begin with the Latin quit the same after spending some years without having made any great proficiency, and what they have learned becomes almost useless, so that their time has been lost, it would not have been better to have begun with the French, proceeding to the Italian and Latin. For though after spending the same time they should quit the study of languages and never arrive at the Latin, they would, however, have acquired another tongue or two that, being in modern use, might be serviceable to them in common life."

He uses the death of his own son by small pox to encourage parents to inoculate their children.

He touches upon his own interest in public affairs and discusses the establishment of the Union Fire Company.

I don't think I'm going to require S. to read all of the autobiography when we do American lit next fall, but he's definitely going to have to read chapter 8.

Poems and stories

"A remembered poem is not like a remembered fact; a memorised poem is like a relationship that develops with time. You can mull the poem over at different times and places and even the shortest poem will take on new shades of meaning and significance. "

A lovely post today at Book World on the relevance of memorizing poetry: I can't think of a better use of your next several minutes than to go read it and think about which poems you'd like to fill a notebook with.

Want to read the ten best online short stories of 2004? Want to vote for your favorite? Thanks to storySouth's Million Writers Award , you can do both. The Notable Stories of 2004 link is worth exploring as well--there are some well-known writers mixed in with the newer folk publishing online these days.

March

Geraldine Brooks' Year of Wonders, a novel about the plague of 1666 as experienced in an isolated village in England, was a book I just had to buy in hardback. My reading of it, however, was then plagued with a series of distractions—a weekend trip to DC to see friends and attend Laura Bush's first annual book festival and see Dwight Yoakam at Wolf Trap during which time I was the last car hit in a four-car accident (man, did that ever eat up a lot of time) and I got Kinky Friedman's autograph and I found out I'd won an almost complete set of Alias Smith and Jones videos for a much higher price than anyone sensible (i.e., L.) could have imagined in an ebay auction due to my having set my reserve in the stratosphere prior to leaving for DC. . . Well, surely I'd be able to concentrate on the book once I was back home.

But the day after I returned was Sept. 11. It was a feat of sheer endurance to complete Year of Wonders much later that month, and Uncle Tom's Cabin, which I read immediately afterwards, did nothing to dispel the the drudgery of reading. I had to resort to rereading the screenplay to Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and the script to the pilot of Alias Smith and Jones for the nth time before the joy of reading returned to me.

Anyway, that's all background for why I want to give Geraldine Brooks another chance to totally engage me. Her new novel, March, told from the perspective of the father of the March sisters in Little Women, who served as a stand-in for Bronson Alcott, Louisa May's own father, seems a good place to start. The novel is reviewed today in the Christian Science Monitor. The cover is lovely. This is one I'll get around to, but definitely won't buy in hardback. And I want to read more about Alcott, probably via Carlos Baker's Emerson Among the Eccentrics, before I do.

There was a noise at the door--a scraping and shifting--and we all looked up to see Ludwig struggling with something there against the backdrop of the rain. His hat had been knocked askew and water dripped from his nose and chin. It took a moment, one shoulder pinning the door open, and then he lifted a cage--a substantial cage, two and a half feet high and maybe four feet long--through the doorway and set it down against the wall. No one moved. No one said a word. There was something in the cage, the apprehension of it as sharp and sudden as the smell it brought with it, something wild and alien and very definitely out of the ordinary on what to this point had been a painfully ordinary night.

--T.C. Boyle, "Tooth and Claw"