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Discover The Secret Bookstore

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Welcome to New York’s Brazenhead Books, the not-so-secret, secret bookstore, hidden away in a man’s apartment in Manhattan. After he was forced out of his storefront thanks to the obscene costs of New York real estate, rather than close shop and box up his dream, the owner found an alternative that you have to see to believe.

Beautifully shot and scored, I am moved every time I watch this wonderful documentary. It captures everything that is beautiful about books.

https://vimeo.com/26293855

 

The Space Between “A” and “The”

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I happened upon this old radio interview with William Carlos Williams today. About three minutes into the broadcast, William recites his famous “Red Wheelbarrow” poem, but he makes a small in size, large in implications mistake. Take a listen to the early portion of this video:

http://youtu.be/3mLzU3dF6gY

(Do take the time to listen to the whole interview. Though for our purposes today, we need not listen any further than five minutes in or so.)

Williams says:

so much depends
upon

the red wheel
barrow

glazed with rain
water

beside the white
chickens.

But the poem is actually about “a red wheel barrow.” (Allow me to pause here to mention the word wheelbarrow has no hyphenation in the poem, a both frustrating and fascinating mistake or decision.)

So what is the difference between a red wheelbarrow and the red wheelbarrow? To some, I imagine there is no difference. The scene is so compact and discreet, it might as well be the red wheelbarrow because there are no others presented, no rival wheelbarrows.

However, I think the red wheelbarrow is different — if only in slight degrees. The red wheelbarrow implies there are multiple wheelbarrows. It implies there is something singular and specific about this certain red wheelbarrow, in this certain location. It in some ways turns our focus to the dew and chickens and the color red, the distinguishing elements of the wheelbarrow.

The word the in this instance carries a degree of undertones, a subtext of something peculiar or even sinister. By specifying the red wheelbarrow, it suggests there are other wheelbarrows. And since it would not be the working red wheelbarrow or something to imply it is the only usable wheelbarrow (as the original poem suggests) makes me wonder if perhaps there is something even more important than the wheelbarrow’s farm-related duties. Perhaps there is dried blood at the base of the wheelbarrow. Suddenly the pastoral, slice-of-farm-life poem contains a whiff of murder mystery.

Is that drawing a bit much from the difference of a single article? Yes, probably, maybe. It was the natural path my mind wandered when I first considered the difference between the two words, so maybe it is not so radical? Or maybe, if the poem had always been the, I would have never trod down that line of thought.

But we can at least suggest this: When a poet has only twelve words to convey a meaning or scene, so much depends upon the space between a and the.

What 26 Minutes of Twilight Silence Can Teach Us

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Clearly, the Twilight Saga, with over a hundred millions books sold, does some things right — does them well, even. Elements about the characters connect with the readers. The story is enjoyable for at least a few million people. We — non-Twilight-enjoyers — berate the series quite a lot, perhaps too much. But there is just so much rate to be.

Take, for instance, this wonderfully edited selection of scenes from the Twilight Saga movies. Compiled by the YouTube channel Screen Junkies — the channel that produces the ever-popular Honest Trailers series — the following clip contains about 26 minutes of Twilight characters staring at each other:

A drug for Hollywood directors, “meaningful stares” make it into nearly every Hollywood movie. These scene anchors often mean nothing to the viewer. They can sap a plot’s rhythm and insert unnecessary punctuation for more necessary dialogue and actual physical action.

But this is not just a Hollywood problem. This is a first draft problem. Too often in my own writing, I return to a scene and find it rife with boring action. “Jason looked at the parcel in Stef’s hand.” Or: “Williamson watched the leaves swirl away.” Or: “I studied the veins in her hand.”

A little bit of this kind of writing can be okay. Sometimes we, as authors, need to discretely communicate that a particular character noticed an event or visual characteristic somewhere. But more often than not, especially when writing from first person or third-person close, the readers intrinsically assume any descriptions are noticed or at least obvious to the main character or speaker.

So instead of describing “her hand,” I can more efficiently apply a verb to the description and keep the passage more efficient. “The veins in her hand throbbed blue.” Or even better, I could have those vivid hands performing a plot-pushing action: “The veins in her hand throbbed blue as she squeezed my throat.”

Now we’re talking! Which is more than Twilight did in those 26 minutes.

*Zing!*

M is for Mom and Mars

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newstargazing

When I was a toddler living in East Fort Myers, my mom bought me a Fisher-Price red plastic telescope. She showed me how to insert rectangular slides with images of the moon and planets through the viewfinder.  The telescope couldn’t show me the real night sky, just the printed images, but sometimes the two of us would sit and watch the moon with our naked eyes from an outdoor picnic bench, while neighbors shouted obscenities at each other from open apartment windows.

After my two brothers were born, we moved to a house across the river in North Fort Myers, and I started school. By fifth grade I had been wearing thick-rimmed glasses for a few years and had been picked on regularly, even by close friends. I sometimes wished I was a robot, even imagined what it would be like to be a perfectly programmed machine and not a weak, pale little boy with freckles and a bowl haircut. Faking sick was my reprieve, which became a daily occurrence.