The Double Falsehood of Double Falsehood

Here's a terrific article about how that "newly discovered" play by Shakespeare is anything but. I don't think my dear Shakespeare authorship fans are going to like what Ron "Shakespeare Cop" Rosenbaum at Slate has to say about them.

Generally, though, debunking "authorship" obsessives isn't even worth the Shakespeare cop's time. Talk about shooting fish in a barrel. The question is also almost entirely irrelevant. The point is not who wrote Shakespeare (though I'm entirely convinced Shakespeare did) but what Shakespeare wrote, and what is falsely passed off as Shakespearean. The "someone else wrote Shakespeare" types (and those who waste time arguing with them) are sad and pathetic because, frankly, life is short and if one has to choose between rereading King Lear or Othello and arguing about who wrote them, then one's priorities are profoundly misaligned. Any amount of time spent on the latter is subtracted from the former, alas.

What is Shakespeare really about? This is what Shakespeare is really all about:

Of course this is not to say Shakespeare can't write boring or even bad lines. I recently moderated a panel at the Brooklyn Academy of Music featuring the cast of Sam Mendes' production of The Tempest. Because I was hosting the panel, I saw it twice, and it was interesting to see how even good actors couldn't make some of the leaden comedy and words work. It left me thinking again about what made Shakespeare Shakespeare. But then we'd come to one of those great passages in The Tempest: "Full fathom five thy father lies/ and of his bones are coral made" and "like the baseless fabric of this vision/ the cloud-capped towers, the gorgeous palaces,/ the solemn temples, the great globe itself./ Yea all which it inherit, shall dissolve/ and like this insubstantial pageant faded/ leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff/ as dreams are made of/ and our little life rounded with a sleep."

Lines like this send jolts of lightning through you.

No effing scheiss.

It's a great article with an air detective story to it as Rosenbaum pulls apart the horrible writing that is being passed off as genuine Shakespeare. Enjoy!

The Double Falsehood of Double Falsehood

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Beware of Mary Sue

"You don't REALLY expect me to believe that, do you?"

A "Mary Sue" is a character too good to be true; someone who can do no wrong, fail no test, encounter no setbacks of any consequence. They're annoying, superficial, and if you're not careful, they can happen to you!

Whenever a character serves as an improved or idealized version of his or her author, as a vehicle for the author's fantasies of power, allure, virtue or accomplishment rather than as an integral part of the story, that character is a Mary Sue. He may resemble his creator in most respects, but he drives a hotter car, lives in a posher part of town and has a cooler job. She may be as moody and self-absorbed as the novelist who invented her, but instead of boring the people around her these traits only enhance her crazy-girl magnetism, making her the center of everybody else's world as well as her own.

Laura Miller at Salon gives advice on how to spot the Mary Sue and avoid it in your writing. Probably the first time I really encountered an annoying Mary Sue was in Bryce Courtenay's The Power of One, where the young boxing hero wins every match, can do no wrong, sees from the get-go the immorality of apartheid, etc. Once I realized the author had no intention of varying this theme, I gave up. Other famous Mary Sues include the heroes (yawn!) of Ayn Rand novels.

The best takedown of a Mary Sue that I've read (and one of the best skewerings of a bad book ever) comes from Jen McCreight at Blag Hag. This one is worth taking the time to read -- it's devastating, funny, and will make you keep a sharp eye on everything you write afterwards.

"Hello, Mary Sue...good-bye, art!"

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P.S. Next, how to resist making absolutely horrible puns!

Pictured: Sierra, skeptical as ever unless you bring her food.

Franco writes! Aaaaaand...well...don't give up the day job, Jimmy...

The story starts out simply, almost minimalist in tone. Why, it could be by another Hemingway.

But then it goes on. And on. And on.

Jeebus Christmas, James Franco is about the cutest damn thing I've ever seen on the silver screen, but he should just not try this writing thing. Nope. Acting, Jimmy; that's where it's at for you. Oh my; the run-on sentences. The meandering imagery and inner thoughts. The overuse of a certain four-letter word that begins with the letter F. Oh, my...

And before I even know it, or can enjoy the new look on Joe’s face, like a blubbery peekaboo face, so surprised, because I’m driving us right toward the vague beige shadow-filled wall, and I can only see and hear Joe for a second, a high-pitched thing that cracks for just a second, and for that second I’m with Joe’s voice on a plateau in the black of space, wherever it is that noise cracks like that and decibels live, and then it’s gone because there’s the metal sound so loud and it’s how I had always planned it to be, crunching, and a jerk and the front of my head is filled with the cold hollow sinus pain, the surprise punch in the nose that takes you back to childhood and there’s an immediate link to every other time you ever had your nose hit, by a ball, by a head, by your own knee, and after the surprise it doesn’t go away; but I’m still there and the tires behind me are screeching because my foot is still on the gas, and the car has gone a ways into the wall but it ain’t going any farther, and I look over at fat shit, and there is blood rolling out of a slice in his forehead, and some blood coming out of his mouth, and I think that it’s from the head gash until I see one of those teeth is now a black gap and he looks like a fat something-awful: hockey-player-pumpkin-cartoon-shithead, and he says,

"Why the fuck did you do that, Manuel?"

James, I want to give you writing lessons. Although I think (hope) we wouldn't get much writing done. Which, as far as the writing world goes, might just be all for the best...at least as far as, *ahem!*, you're concerned...

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