George Frideric Handel

This past Sunday was the 335th birthday of German/British composer George Frideric Handel, according to the old Julian calendar. March 5th is his birthday according to our current calendar.

In my opinion, Handel was one of the greatest composers ever. His music was impressionistic before there was any Impressionism movement. In an age of patronage, Handel was a businessman and his own boss for most of his career. In the course of his life he made and lost several fortunes, and died a millionaire by today’s standards.

David Vickers has given us a colorful synopsis of the great composer’s life and you can read it here: https://www.gramophone.co.uk/features/article/the-mysteries-myths-and-truths-about-mr-handel

However, what is not generally known about Handel is that he was a consummate philosopher. He wrote one philosophical treatise: his last oratorio, Jephthah. The musical drama was a rebuttal to Alexander Pope’s An Essay on Man.

An Essay on Man, published 1733-34, is a poetic philosophical treatise vindicating the ways of God vis-a-vis His interactions with humans (line 16). The poem presents the natural order of things that God has decreed for human beings.

Pope goes on to argue that since it is impossible for finite humans to know the purposes of the infinite God, human beings have no right to complain about their lot in the Great Chain of Being (lines 33-34). Instead of complaining, people should simply accept the premise that “Whatever is, is right.” (line 292)

An Essay on Man found great acceptance and admiration throughout Europe. Among it’s admirers were Rousseau, Voltaire, and Kant. In fact, Kant used to read the poem to his students; and Pope’s philosophy was an important contributor to Kant’s own philosophy of religion.

While an early admirer, Voltaire later rejected Pope’s deterministic optimism and lampooned it in his book Candide.

However, Handel beat Voltaire’s rebuttal by 8 years — publishing, in 1751, his own rejection in the form of the magnificent oratorio, Jephthah.

In Jephthah, Handel questions, with biting sarcasm, that is brilliantly portrayed in the musical interpretation of the text, Pope’s assertion that “Whatever is, is right.”

The Biblical account of Jephthah is fairly short. He sets out to fight Israel’s enemies and vows to God that if God honors him with victory he will sacrifice to God the first thing he sees upon his return from the battlefield.

Foreshadowing is nothing new, writers and readers. And low and behold, what is the first thing Jephthah sees? Why, of course, his only daughter. The Biblical account clearly implies Jephthah kept his vow, after allowing his daughter a year’s reprieve.

However, such an interpretation wouldn’t fly in 18th century London. So the librettist, the Reverend Thomas Morell, took a page from the story of Abraham and Isaac and had an angel spare Iphis, Jephthah’s daughter, from death — but to honor the vow, she could not marry and had to remain a virgin her entire life.

And of course, Iphis has a lover, Hamor. Talk about star-crossed lovers!

Through the musical interpretation of the text, Handel roundly damns Pope’s sentiment, “Whatever is, is right.”

Whatever is, is not always right. The punishment for Jephthah’s misguided and witless vow falls squarely on two  innocents: Iphis and Hamor, the young lovers who have their whole lives ahead of them. And according to Handel, that is definitely not right. Those two should not have to suffer for Jephthah’s misguided zeal.

It’s as if Handel was saying, no loving and fair God would ever commit such a travesty of justice. Spare Iphis from death, but commit her to the lifelong death of separation from the one she loves? Bah! Humbug! And no father should have to honor such a vow based on belief in religious duty that flies in the face of religious common sense. Jephthah had just defeated the followers of Moloch who practiced human sacrifice!

Yes, indeed, Pope and his absurd position be damned!

You can listen to the oratorio here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0N0N-o3KAsk

The performance is 2 hours and 40 minutes of some of the most poignant and sublime music you will ever hear. Never has philosophy been so easy to enjoy!

George Frideric Handel was and is a giant among composers. He wrote French music better then the French, Italian music better than the Italians, and German music better than the Germans (although some would cite JS Bach as the exception). No British composer until Ralph Vaughan Williams could even come close to Handel.

Handel was a great musician and a great philosopher. Happy birthday, George!

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading! (And listening!)

Bookmans

Tucson has the most wonderful used bookstore. It’s called Bookmans, and this privately owned company is amazing. It’s a used book superstore. 

In fact Bookmans is an Arizona treasure, with 3 locations in Tucson, 2 in Flagstaff, and 1 each in Phoenix and Mesa. The company’s been in business since 1976. Check them out at bookmans.com!

The other week I was visiting my dad who lives in Tucson, and set aside one morning to go to Bookmans. Of course I came away with some exciting new gems to add to the library.

The Mad King by Edgar Rice Burroughs

I like Burroughs. He knew how to write a rousing adventure yarn. In fact, he was the model many editors pointed to when advising new writers on how to write.

The Mad King is new to me and I’m looking forward to the read.

Prisoner’s Base and The Black Mountain by Rex Stout

I love the Nero Wolfe series by Rex Stout. In fact, the books are among the very few I re-read. Once upon a time I had the entire series. Today I’m in the process of rebuilding my collection. These two are very welcome. Very welcome indeed!

The Lost Wagon Train by Zane Grey

When a kid, I used to watch Westerns on TV. Shows such as Gunsmoke, Wagon Train, Bonanza, The Lone Ranger, Have Gun — Will Travel, and many others. But I didn’t read Westerns until recently.

Zane Grey is still considered one of the kings among Western writers. So I added this one to my growing Western collection.

The Girl with the Deep Blue Eyes by Lawrence Block

Lawrence Block is an incredibly amazing and versatile writer. I very much like his fiction, and his books for writers are nonpareil. Block can entertain you like few others, and teach you everything you need to know about the writing game. Block delivers, so this one I added to my collection and have already started reading it.

Those were my Bookmans “purchases”. I put that in quotes because that day was my very lucky day. I was one of two winners to get my books for free! How can you not love a bookstore that gives away books?

Reading is the best entertainment. Books are portable storytellers who are always with you. I have many hundreds of physical books and over a thousand on my iPad. Plenty of stories to take me to places and times I could never visit in person.

To me, the person who does not read fiction can only experience the here and now. And as wonderful as that can be, it’s a life devoid of imagination — and that’s only half a life.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time — happy reading!

Get It Right The First Time

For those who know and read science fiction, you know what a giant Harlan Ellison was and still is in that genre. Even if you’ve never read anything by Ellison, you know the name.

Ellison was born 27 May 1934 in the city I grew up in: Cleveland, Ohio. He died on 27 June 2018 at the age of 84 in Los Angeles, California. His first publishing credits came in 1949 and started a long and prolific career.

Ellison was born too late to be part of the pulp magazine scene, as the pulp mags were dying out about the time he started his writing career. Yet the way in which he worked was very much in the manner of the pulp fiction writers.

I must confess that I haven’t read any of Ellison’s work. By the time I became acquainted with his name, my reading of science fiction was on the wane. However, I was very interested in an article Eric Leif Davin sent out to the members of PulpMags@groups.io on Ellison’s work habits. Because I’m very much interested in why some writers are able to maintain high quality and yet be exceedingly prolific in their output, and how is it they are so prolific in the first place.

One of the things that creative writing teachers teach and the publishing industry itself promotes is the virtue of re-writing. Yet virtually every prolific writer does not re-write. They simply don’t have time. They get it right the first time. Or at least mostly so.

Mr Davin began his article noting two points about Ellison’s writing:

Harlan Ellison produced first drafts quickly, and there was nothing careless or thoughtless about them. If you’d like to read one of his first drafts, just read any of his stories. What you see is what he wrote, first time, last time. 

Harlan Ellison was a fast writer and did not re-write. He got the story right the first time. In this, he was no different than such prolific wordsmiths as William Wallace Cook, Edgar Wallace, Hugh B Cave, H Bedford-Jones, Max Brand, or Dean Wesley Smith (although Smith calls himself a three-draft writer).

Mr Davin goes on in his article to say how he watched Harlan Ellison sit in a bookstore window and type a story from start to finish from noon to five each day. Ellison had been doing that for a week. At the end of the day, Ellison would give the typescript to one of the bookstore clerks who would duplicate it and give a copy to whoever wanted one if the person bought $10 worth of books. Davin got a copy and when the story was published, verified not a single word had been changed from the typescript. And Mr Davin was not alone in this assertion. Editor and author Ted White confirmed that this was how Ellison worked.

Five hours, one story. That’s prolific. Five hours, one story, no re-writing. That’s knowing what you want to write about.

It’s my opinion that we writers listen to the advice of people who do not make their living by writing fiction. We accept as sacred shibboleths the words of creative writing teachers who make their money by teaching — but generally have few or no publishing credits of any consequence to their name. As George Bernard Shaw wrote: those who can, do; those who can’t, teach.

For myself, I’d rather listen to those who know the business. They are themselves writers and writers who make money from their writing. People like Dean Wesley Smith, or H Bedford-Jones, or William Wallace Cook, or Erle Stanley Gardner. Or Harlan Ellison.

Mr Davin wrote that after sitting in the bookstore window for five hours typing, Ellison was eager to talk to people and would answer questions.

A female reporter from a local college newspaper asked him the first question: “Why do you write just one draft?”

“Because I get it right the first time,” Harlan answered. 

Mr Davin went on to note:

After a few others asked similar questions, I ventured my own: “Are there any circumstances under which you can’t write?”

“Absolutely none,” Harlan replied. “If you’re a true writer, you can write under any conditions...in the middle of a party, riding in a car, in a store window, anywhere.”

That is an amazing statement. A true writer can write anywhere.

As I write this, I’m putting Ellison’s statement to the test. I’m visiting my dad who likes to listen to music and is hard of hearing, even with his hearing aids.

I certainly don’t want to tell the old guy that he can’t listen to his music because I’m writing and like it quiet when I write. And I certainly don’t want to have a non-productive week by not writing. Nor do I want to insult him by putting in my ear plugs and donning my ear muffs to keep out the noise.

So I just write. And you know what? Ellison was right.

Mr Davin complicated his question with a follow up. Outlining an impossible writing situation; at least impossible for most of us. Ellison responded:

“You can write one paragraph, or one sentence, sitting by yourself on the toilet. If you do that every time you go to the bathroom, it adds up. Or you can go into a closet, shut the door, turn on a light, and write. Proust wrote “Remembrance of Things Past” in a small closet. It was cork-lined to keep out the noise, but it was a closet.

  

A writer writes. And, if you really are a writer, nothing can stop you. You’ll write anywhere, under any conditions, you’ll just do it. It’s that simple.”

So what can we take away from Mr Davin’s article on Harlan Ellison’s writing?

I think it is this:

• Writers write. They don’t make excuses. They just write.
• Writers don’t need to re-write. They just need to get it right the first time.
• Write fast. By writing quickly, one captures the muse’s inspiration before it evaporates. The work generated from the creative side of the brain is always better than the work from the critical side of the brain.

I know writers, including some who are to me very dear people, who spend more time giving excuses for not writing than they spend in writing. Now I can understand that. Because I was one of them.

But I broke out of that self-defeating dynamic thanks to an article by Lawrence Block in Writer’s Digest. It was the most valuable advice I ever got out of that magazine. We procrastinate, make excuses, for a reason. Find the reason, conquer it, and you will no longer procrastinate. 

I no longer procrastinate. I did so because I was afraid of failure and affirming my parents’s opinion of me that I’d never make it as a writer.

I got rid of that fear once I realized that what they thought didn’t matter. I discovered that only what I thought mattered. Since coming to that realization, I’ve been writing like a crazy man. And I’ve discovered that there are people out there who like what I write. The naysayers are rarely right.

Ellison was on the money: writer’s write.

Ellison was also on the money when he said: no writer needs to re-write. Just get it right the first time.

I can say that I am mostly there. My first draft is basically the story. I do some tweaking and minor editing, but nothing major is ever changed. One does not need to re-write to make the story better. Write in the heat of the creative brain. And follow Heinlein: don’t re-write (that is, keep the critical brain out of it), unless an editor tells you to.

I found Mr Davin’s article to be profoundly inspirational. Harlan Ellison was living proof that all those sacred shibboleths are merely words. Follow them if you want. But you don’t have to. And you might end up a better writer if you don’t.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy one-draft writing!

A Matter of Style

My whole career is based on the idea that the formula doesn’t matter, the thing that counts is what you do with the formula; that is to say, it is a matter of style.

—Raymond Chandler

I’d seen Raymond Chandler’s name, and that of his most noted creation, Philip Marlowe, around for decades before, I actually read anything from Chandler’s pen.

All I can say is that I’m glad I made Mr. Chandler’s acquaintance.

The first story I read was Chandler's first published story, “Blackmailer’s Don’t Shoot”, back in February 2018. However, over a year passed before I picked up another Chandler story. That story was “Killer in the Rain”, which I read this past Christmas Day. I followed it up with “The Curtain” on the third of January of this year, and six days later finished The Big Sleep, which is a fix-up novel put together from “Killer” and “Curtain”.

What captured my attention and stirred my interest in Chandler is his style. Quite simply put: it is beautiful. Almost poetic, it is perhaps the most lyrical prose I’ve read. Murder mysteries elevated to the level of literary fiction.

And this is directly related to Chandler’s approach to the art of storytelling. He wasn’t overly interested in the plot. Chandler strove to give the reader interesting characters with believable behaviors, and an emotively moving atmosphere.

What HP Lovecraft emphasized as most important for supernatural horror, the atmosphere of the story, Raymond Chandler also emphasized for the murder mystery. Characters and atmosphere — not plot — carry the day.

Erle Stanley Gardner wrote that the problem with the murder mystery was the utter simplicity of the plot.

A murders B, but the police think it’s C, until the detective gets C off the hook, and pins the deed on A.

The simplicity of the murder mystery plot is undoubtedly what drove Chandler to emphasize characterization and atmosphere over plot.

When I read Chandler, I’m caught up in the mood of the story that the atmosphere produces. I’m caught up in the dilemmas of the very lifelike characters. I’m sucked into the story by the descriptions of the people and places.

Raymond Chandler was an artist using words instead of paint and brush.

As a writer, I am inspired by what he did with the written word. Chandler showed writers and continues to show writers that the most formulaic of genres can be turned into glorious art. That we writers can transcend the confines of our genres and produce not only entertainment, but timeless literature.

Comments are always welcome! And until next time, happy reading (and great writing)!