“Omissions are not accidents.”    –Marianne Moore

For a class on modern professional communications, I have been assigned the topic “the future of the book.” So, through research and my own personal opinions, I have to determine where the book is going. And while I have noticed a lull in the print book vs. e-book debate (I, myself, am sick of it), I think it’s safe to say that we need not assume that “digital” and “future” are synonymous. At least not when it comes to reading. The future of the book comes down to two words: flash fiction.

Next semester at Washington and Lee, the standard Creative Writing: Fiction class will receive an exciting facelift. Instead of surveying some of the various genres of fiction, this course will study exclusively the short-short story through reading and writing the like. This course is anticipating a major shift in the literary trend toward shorter stories, backed by a not-so-recent but still relevant study that sites students’ diminishing attention spans. As a result of the digital age—where our access to information no longer requires combing library shelves across multiple floors but instead means a quick Google search—the average American’s attention span has decreased from 12 minutes to 5 minutes in the past 10 years. Wow. I’ll try to make this brief…

This is, of course, not a new genre—its roots go back to Aesop’s fables in 600 BCE. But it appears to be emerging in new ways. There are dozens of flash fiction anthologies on the market right now that feature stories by writers such as Lydia Davis, Tobias Wolff, and Robert Olen Butler, and I’m sure plenty of older authors of the genre come to mind—Hemingway, Kafka, Chekhov to name a few. Brevity, an online magazine focused solely on extremely short stories—750 words or fewer—has been around for over a decade. But should we expect even more anthologies, collections, or genre-specific journals in the near future?

Because of the digital shift in publishing, writers, more than ever, must anticipate and write what the public wants (see “Highbrow Horror and American Literature” among the posts below). And if the general public is experiencing a decrease in attention span, then it seems that the short-short is what we ne…

While perusing my late uncle’s poetry collection Anniversary Songs, I read the words that comforted him during his final years, words that he wrote, no less. While many of James Wronoski’s poems are written for his wife in an attempt to eternalize his love for her, the poet directly addresses his cancer in others. Sometimes, he even addresses them both.

I’ve recognized this in other works, that the words I’m reading are a way of coping with some sort of ailment, be it physical or emotional. I’ve found it in poetry, memoir, and even fiction. The writers’ words heal. There’s an intimacy in allowing others—strangers—to read these emotionally charged words, and it moves me every time.

Catharsis: “The purification of emotions by vicarious experience, esp. through drama.” Aristotle originally used this word in his work on dramatic theory titled Poetics. He used catharsis as a metaphor for how tragedy affects the spectator. Works by various authors, poets, and playwrights succeed in evoking sympathy in the reader or viewer. Perhaps this explains why books—be it fiction or non—poems, plays, and arguably most often movies, can bring tears to audience members’ eyes. By experiencing fear, sorrow, and pain, the readers or viewers can purge these excessive emotionsand are cleansed.

But what about the writer? What readers possess is the work in its finished stage. They don’t see it from proposal to publication like the writer does. They don’t have access to the drafts, rewrites, edits, and scraps. But that process is as important to the writer as the final product.

Mimesis: “Imitation; spec. the representation or imitation of the real world in (a work of) art, literature, etc.” Writers often recreate their past experiences through words. They don’t simply purge their emotions, but rather, they acknowledge them. Bringing these events back to life allows some writers to cope.

In the late 1800s, psychoanalyst Josef Breuer developed a psychological treatment for individuals who suffer from hysteria. Breuer’s patients, while under hypnosis, recalled traumatic experiences to evoke emotions that may have been suppressed or forgotten after the trauma. By doing so, the patients noticed their hysteric symptoms dissipated. And I’m under the impression that authors accomplish this completely consciously, intentionally, successfully, and throughout each and every stage of the writing process.

While Aristotle considers how tragedy affects the spectator, he does not address how, or if, tragedy affects the performer. I have found, while reading memoirs, poetry collections, and even novels, that writers often write for both themselves and their reader, and it is worth considering this relationship, especially when the writer invites the reader into a private and personal experience.

Reading Autobiography, a guide written by Sidonie Smith and Julia Watson, references “scriptotherapy,” a term coined by Suzette Henke in her book Shattered Subjects. Smith and Watson define this word as a response “to signify the process of speaking or writing about trauma in order to find words to give voice to previously repressed memories.” They identify it as an important method to consider when interpreting autobiographical texts, explicitly or not.

Last spring for Shenandoah I recommended Natalie Diaz’s When My Brother Was an Aztec. In the post, I discuss how Diaz’s poetry is admittedly autobiographical, and the reader can infer from her jarring, if not graphic, entries that writing this collection provided a means of coping for Diaz. This is not to say her writing cured her of her post-colonial traumatic stress, but it at least remedied some wounds.

Likewise, I believe my uncle’s poetry accomplished a similar goal. He wrote in the late stages of cancer and his poems allowed him to confront his disease head-on. One of his poems in particular addresses his cancer directly.

By acknowledging their respective ailments—one physical, one emotional—both poets are able to use the power of writing for good.

But this mechanism is not exclusive to poets. Memoirists also find comfort in exploiting their troubled pasts. Mary Karr’s The Liars’ Club retells her dysfunctional childhood with an alcoholic, and sometimes pyromaniac, mother and an occasionally absent father.

It even applies to fiction. Marilynne Robinson’s epistolary novel Gilead features a dying narrator, Reverend John Ames, who writes letters to his young son. Rev. Ames laments that his son will grow up fatherless, and he attempts to quell this regret through these letters. He writes with the intention of creating a legacy for his son—an all-inclusive genealogy and stories about his own father—but ends up providing himself with closure.

Wronoski, Diaz, Karr, and Robinson’s works were each part of a long and intensive process that no doubt featured countless edits, rewrites, and scraps that each offered another kind of satisfaction. Discovering the perfect details, no matter the form, can itself be cathartic, perhaps even more then the purgative nature of spilling emotions onto a first draft.

These examples demonstrate why writers write, and even why readers read, why painters paint or musicians compose. The list is unexhausted on both accounts; the medium does not change or dictate the cathartic or mimetic nature of art. Artists can find—via an accumulation of words, of paint, or notes—the perfect confines for their unique experiences.

*Catharsis and Mimesis as defined by OED.

My English capstone class focuses on the study of memoir. Our class, comprised of one professor and six students, gathers each week around a conference room table to discuss and to analyze the practice of self-writing. Our studies cover an array of works, ranging from fiction to personal essays to memoirs. We’ve read Marilynne Robinson’s fiction novel Gilead, Joan Didion’s personal essay In Bed, and Mary Karr’s memoir The Liars’ Club. Supplementary to reading major works, our professor throws in theoretical texts that examine the practice of writing memoir, the multitude of creative choices involved and the tools needed to create a successful piece. The narrating “I” vs. the narrated “I.” The incorporation of historical episodes. The methods of humor, spirituality, reflection. And the ever-popular “show don’t tell.” We read, we analyze, we discuss. We gather the information and the skills we’ve collected from our studies to create our own pieces of self-writing. At the end of the term, we will culminate our capstone class and our careers as English majors with our own memoirs.

I’ve studied memoir and creative non-fiction in a multitude of English classes throughout my college career. I struggle with my own self-writing, specifically with selecting a piece of my memory to analyze or an episode of my life to portray to my audience. I’m still trying to find my groove with the practice and to discover my unique voice. But I think that’s why I’m so drawn to reading memoir and to the work itself. I’m struck by the art of self-writing and the way writers creatively craft and portray episodes of their lives. I admire David Sedaris’ self-deprecating humor. I respect Joan Didion’s journalistic approach to recounting her personal memories. Right now, I am particularly enthralled with Mary Karr’s writing after studying The Liars’ Club in my English class. She’s a creative genius who carefully depicts incidents of her turbulent childhood with vivid details and captivating descriptions. She takes on a child’s point of view to portray the turmoil of her youth, presenting the darkest of moments with poignant clarity and without vilifying any particular character.

My capstone class studies great works of memoirs whose authors shine brightly in the world of their genre. However, another side to the worlds of memoir and autobiography is emerging. With the rise of popular culture comes the rise of a new wave of memoir, where individuals with present-oriented stories publish books about themselves. These individuals write autobiographies or memoirs for an immediate audience by pinpointing a story that sells, that grabs the public’s attention, that exposes scandal or hardship, and mass produces the book across the country. First came the celebrities, publishing books about their lives in Hollywood and rise to fame, such as Tina Fey’s Bossy Pants. Next came musicians, athletes, politicians, reality television stars, etc. Now regular Americans who believe they have a compelling story to tell are publishing memoirs about their life

struggles and overcoming hardships. Don’t get me wrong—many of these books are interesting, insightful, and entertaining. But the books contain transient subject matter and poor technical writing skills. These new memoirs and autobiographies top Amazon’s bestseller list, which drives the books’ popularity up even further because readers go to the list to select a read that fellow Americans are reading as well. The books on the list are entertaining and lack the threatening nature of more powerful, well-written books, such as Mark Twain’s autobiography. I, personally, would select Amy Poehler’s new autobiography Yes, Please over Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir as a summer beach read. But if I wanted a compelling story told through exquisite prose, I would choose to read Grant. The pop-culture oriented subjects of today’s memoirs and autobiographies entertain and enthrall us, but after a few years they are forgotten and left to collect dust on our bookshelves, while Ulysses S. Grant’s memoir withstands the test of time and continues to be read over one hundred years after his death.

The rise of transitory memoirs and autobiographies urges me to wonder what will happen to memoirs from Mary Karr or Joan Didion, the well-written memoirs that carry weight and hold substance in the literary world, over time. Books such as Life is Not a Reality Show: Keeping it Real with the Housewife Who Does it All by reality television star Kyle Richards and Kardashian Konfidential by the Kardashian sisters are on bookstands and best-seller list. The pop culture memoirs delve into the superficial lives of reality television stars and grasp the public’s attention. The present-oriented autobiographies feature an entertaining story, but the fundamental elements of the writing itself are subpar and poorly crafted. The temporal works of our society’s current politicians, athletes, and celebrities fail to incorporate general wisdom or relatable life stories that establish a direct connection with the audience and contextualize the subject matter so much that in a few years, the works may become obsolete in the eyes of the American public. A variety of factors contribute to a book’s longevity and success, just as the case with songs, fashions, and even sports. Predicting what will achieve longevity in our society is almost impossible. Perhaps current sensations do indeed contain the gravity and wit to captivate the audience’s attention throughout time. While I prefer the memoirs of Mary Karr, Joan Didion, and the likes, I wonder how the rise of popular culture will affect the literary memoir. Will the substantial works of Didion and Karr withstand the test of time, like the memoirs by Mark Twain and Ulysses S. Grant?

What do you think? Which type of memoir do you prefer? Will the memoir greats, like Mary Karr, become overshadowed by reality television stars? Where do you see the practice of self-writing in 10 years?

Continuing the theme of persistent pop culture trends established by last week blog’s post, we turn now to a subject nominally more realistic than zombies and monsters: the impossibly perceptive detective whose greatest power seems to be his ability to remain relevant over a hundred years after first coming onto the scene.  After only the briefest time out of the public eye, Sherlock Holmes has returned in full force, with not one but two big-budget television shows undertaking the task of bringing the Victorian detective into the twenty-first century world of DNA tests, forensic evidence, and relative societal intolerance for the original’s opium habit.

Many people have speculated on why Sherlock Holmes remains such a compelling figure, but none have yet provided a fully satisfactory answer.  Les Klinger, editor of the Holmes-inspired anthology A Study in Sherlock, argues that his appeal comes from his status as an outsider, telling NPR, “He is driven by a pursuit for justice, but it’s his own brand of justice, and I think part of us yearns to be like that: strong, independent, above worries, above how we fit in with society.”  Philosopher John Gray, in a fascinating piece for the BBC, describes Holmes as “a servant of reason” who is also “a romantic hero ready to defy authority in order to stand by his sense of morality.”

But perhaps even more than his anti-authoritarian leanings, what truly defines Holmes in the mind of the public is his rationalism.  Paradoxically, Holmes’s intelligence both gives him a timeless appeal and marks him as a creature of the Victorian era.  Bear with me as I turn briefly to a book not about Sherlock Holmes: Joseph Conrad’s The Secret Agent, published in 1907 but set in 1886.  The events of that narrative are set off when the subversive Mr. Vladmir orders his agent provocateur Mr. Verloc to attack the Greenwich Observatory.  When Verloc questions the merits of attacking an observatory rather than a more politically relevant target, Vladmir responds,

The sacrosanct fetish of to-day is science [ . . . ] Any imbecile that has got an income believes in that. He does not know why, but believes it matters somehow [ . . . ] They believe that in some mysterious way science is at the source of their material prosperity [ . . . ] The [bombing] must be against learning—science [ . . . ] The attack must have the shocking senselessness of gratuitous blasphemy. (Conrad 21-22)

Though Mr. Vladmir is obviously a dubious individual morally, he does accurately describe the elevated position that science occupied in the Victorian psyche.  The effects of the Enlightenment were in full swing, Darwinism was radically reshaping how humans viewed their relationship to the natural world, and reason was seen as the answer to all problems. Holmes is almost a personification of that era’s belief in the infallibility of reason: with nothing more than his eyes and his brain, he can solve any crime and set every injustice to right.  While the horrors and tragedies of the last century have somewhat taken the shine off of reason’s power to satisfactorily explain the world, people still wants to believe that the world can be figured out through intelligence and attention to detail, and Holmes offers us a role model in that regard.

Another aspect of the character’s endurance that I feel is not properly appreciated is the simplicity of the elements needed to make an authentic-feeling Sherlock Holmes story. Because everything that is distinctive about the Holmes canon is internalized within its characters, his stories take better than most to contemporary updates.  Compare, say, the mythos of Arthurian legend or of Robin Hood: so much of what makes those stories distinctive lies in their setting and time period.  Take Arthur out of Camelot or try to set Robin Hood in the twentieth century and it just won’t work.  You have removed a vital part of what made it an Arthurian story or a tale about Robin Hood.  In contrast, the only elements one needs to retain to have an authentic Holmes story are a detective named Sherlock with a friend named Watson, who together solve mysteries with little more than their wits.

Of course, it is impossible to talk about Holmes’s enduring popularity without acknowledging the ways in which the character has changed and adapted over the years. Entire books could be written exploring these changes, so I’m just going to touch works from the last few years.  The Holmes-related media of the twenty-first century have each reflected contemporary trends in their own ways.  The abominable 2009 film Sherlock Holmes and its sequel, A Game of Shadows, tried to capitalize on the superhero craze by casting Robert Downey, Jr. and turning Holmes’s analytical prowess into the superpower of pinpointing his opponents weaknesses during the many brawls into which this Sherlock blunders.

The BBC’s excellent Sherlock is more true to the heart of the character, though thanks to changing laws regarding smoking in public, Benedict Cumberbatch’s Holmes has to slap on nicotine patches rather than smoke a pipe.  Reflecting changing awareness of and attitudes toward homosexuality and gender, Sherlock makes a running gag out of Holmes and Watson being mistaken for a romantic couple.  Interestingly, whereas Holmes is essentially asexual in the original stories, both Downey’s and Cumberbatch’s respective Sherlocks both nurse explicitly romantic interests in Irene Adler.  (On some level, it makes sense that a Victorian audience would be more comfortable with an asexual hero than contemporary viewers.)  The CBS show Elementary takes the prize for the most out-there treatment of Adler, however.  Spoilers ahead: in Elementary, Adler and Holmes are former lovers, but in this adaptation, Adler is also Jamie Moriarty, and she is eventually revealed as Holmes’s arch-nemesis.  Even before this reveal, Elementary made waves by casting Lucy Liu as Dr. Joan Watson.  Given the paucity of important female characters in Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories, I feel that we now have a Sherlock Holmes television show in which both one of the leads and the show’s greatest villain are women says a great deal.

No blog post can possibly do justice to the questions of why Sherlock Holmes has proven so enduring or how later adaptations reflect their time periods.  I have not even touched on other noteworthy Holmes-related works, like Michael Chabon’s The Final Solution, or the Basil Rathbone movies that defined Holmes for a generation.  What’s clear, though, is that the sleuth is here to stay. As we get ever farther away in time from the Victorian world that gave birth to Holmes, I for one will be watching with interest to see what contemporary and future artists do to keep Holmes relevant to the modern world even as the modern world rapidly changes.

What do you think, fellow readers?  Do you have a favorite Holmes story?  How about a favorite parody of the sleuth?  Have you encountered any particularly fascinating permutations of the Holmesian mythos?

Halloween is fast approaching, and with it all of our favorite standby nightmares; ghosts, werewolves, witches, vampires, and zombies lurk around the corner, waiting to thrill us with their wickedness. When I was little, I used to regard Halloween with a mixture of apprehension and excitement− apprehension for the inevitable ghost stories that would keep me up at night, and excitement for the candy I could binge eat to pass the sleepless hours. Halloween holds less anticipation for me now. This may be partially because of my increased cynicism and decreased sweet tooth, but is also due in no small part to the fact that those familiar Halloween monsters no longer belong solely to that one October night.

Of course, America has had a long love affair with monsters, and I do not mean to imply that we have only just discovered a penchant for the macabre. But our relationship with the creatures that go bump in the night seems to have developed beyond what it once was. The horror stories of the past have often been limited by their genre. Elvira’s Movie Macabre may have had its fans, but the fact cannot be avoided that it was considered gimmicky and enjoyed only a niche audience.

Blockbusters like the Twilight franchise and 2009’s horror-comedy film Zombieland have proven that monster movies can be more commercially successful than ever before. Furthermore, Twilight’s choice to portray a vampire as its dreamy love interest indicates a new attitude toward the old, recognizable ghouls. Novel-turned-Hollywood film Warm Bodies goes so far as to cast a rotting zombie as its romantic protagonist. It’s almost as if our childhood nightmares are the new “cool kids”.

Besides garnering the commercial success that goes hand in hand with their new popularity, monsters are also breaking through previously strict barriers of genre, attaining in some cases critical acclaim; television shows such as The Walking Dead and American Horror Story, which can only be classified as monster stories, have received many accolades, including nominations for various Golden Globe Awards. Even more remarkable than this is the appearance of well-regarded and literarily relevant works of fiction dealing with the monstrous and fantastical.

We have been discussing this trend in my 21^st Century North American Fiction class, and recently read an article by Joe Fassler published in The Atlantic, entitled “How Zombies and Superheroes Conquered Highbrow Fiction”. In it, Fassler writes:

Discounting a few notable (and unclassifiable) isoladoes like Toni Morrison, Margaret Atwood, and Don Delillo, our literature unfolded in diners, standard issue automobiles, and the living room […] But now, only eleven years into a new century, American literary culture has undergone a sea change. A group of high-profile literary writers have fled what we call “real-life”− and their numbers are growing. Literature shelves now commonly feature Halloween party staples: Zombies, werewolves, and vampires […]

Fassler’s chosen example of this change in American literature is Colson Whitehead’s Zone One, a novel following a survivor of the zombie apocalypse as he and his fellow humans attempt to rebuild. The novel’s status as a piece of literature rather than a piece of valueless entertainment is indicative of our shift in attitude toward monsters.

Fassler seems to believe that our new fondness for “Halloween party staples” is not merely a fad, but promises to be a lasting trend in New American Fiction. Undoubtedly, their popularity has already lasted longer than expected. This leads us to wonder why monsters and their like found their way into the limelight in the first place. What is it about them that fascinates and attracts us?

Perhaps it is has something to do with Fassler’s assertion that literary writers are rejecting “real-life” in favor of the fantastic. Doing so certainly leaves them the possibility of representing the issues they deal with in a more metaphorical way. For example, in his collection entitled Thinking Dead: What the Zombie Apocalypse Means, Murali Balaji compiled a series of essays speculating on the reason for our obsession with zombies. His introduction says of zombie apocalypses:

There are social and psychological ramifications as well, particularly as they relate to our fear of Others, insecurities over self-reflection and the deep-seated paranoia over the possibility of an apocalyptic event.

According to Balaji and many of his essayists, the zombie apocalypse becomes something of a metaphor, representing anything from the fright of the destruction of the traditional American family, to tensions felt toward and by the gay community, to fear of the usefulness of a white-collar workforce in the face of economic turmoil. Some of these connections may be a little tenuous, but the general message remains that one can use the fantastic to more creatively address otherwise difficult themes. At the end of his “How Zombies…” article, Fassler articulates a series of points, collected with the help of several fantasy writers, detailing some reasons why what he calls “genre fiction” has gained popularity in recent years. They are as follows:

1. Our day-to-day lives becoming more science-fictional.
2. For writers, pop-culture influences are now as important as literary influences.
3. Literary tastes are increasingly global.
4. Stories with mythic dimensions are timeless.
5. Financially− and aesthetically− genre pays.

Michael Chabon, in the introduction to his essay collection, Maps and Legends, argues that the fantastic−monsters, magic and science fiction− is the direction in which American fiction must head. He proffers that this new writing, “haunts the boundary lines, the margins, the secret shelves between the sections in the bookstore. And that is where, if it wants to renew itself in the way the novel has done so often in its long history, the short story must, inevitably go”.

What do you think? What is the reason for our newfound fondness of the fantastic and morbid? Will it really last, or has the monster (and particularly the zombie) fad already played itself out? Is Chabon correct about the next phase of American Literature?

If you ever want to provoke an English major to physical violence, express your opinion that an adaptation (whether in filmed or stage form) of a book is equal or even superior to the literary source material.  For most lovers of the written word, it is heresy to suggest that the intellectual meat of a work of fiction can do anything but suffer in the process of translation to another medium.

To some extent, this view is understandable.  In the majority of cases, one is simply able to pack more meaning into a narrative conveyed in written form, where the length of the work is determined by the content, as opposed to a movie or play that must keep its run-time below certain parameters.  But I fear that we lovers of literature may be too eager to dismiss all adaptations.  In a few rare cases, new adaptations of existing works have allowed the translators to use the original source material to explore new and artistically exciting themes and ideas.

Last May in London, I had the opportunity to see the Playhouse Theatre’s production of George Orwell’s 1984.  The Playhouse Theatre’s adaptation by and large keeps the dialogue and plot intact, but they have added in a few choice elements that I found to be phenomenally intelligent additions.  My favorite part ended up being the play’s closing scene, which is not found in Orwell’s original but is entirely the work of the playwrights.  After the Party finally breaks Winston’s spirit, the narrative jumps forward a hundred years to show a group of people discussing how Big Brother fell after Winston’s death.  The audience begins to think that maybe this play will end happily until one of the women wonders, “But, I mean, wouldn’t they. . . If the Party. . . How do we know the Party fell?  Wouldn’t it be in their interest to just structure the world in such a way that we believe that they were no longer. . .”  Just then, a child comes up to her, singing “The Bells of St. Clemens” (a symbol of impending doom in both the book and the play) and leads the woman off-stage.  It is a thought-provoking and phenomenally powerful way to end the play, and in my opinion it is just as intelligent and artistic as anything Orwell wrote.  By adding this scene, the playwrights touch on themes that the book does not.  They suggest that overt violence is not the only kind of oppression and offer a more nuanced reflection that is even more applicable to today’s post-PATRIOT world than Orwell’s original.

The best other example I can recall of an adaptation substantially adding to a work in a way that enhances the final product is Akira Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood, his masterful reimagining of Macbeth.  In Throne of Blood, Kurosawa moves the narrative from Scotland to medieval Japan.  Even beyond the setting change, Kurosawa makes a few choice alterations to the base story that allow the famed director to explore themes that are different from those in the original Macbeth, but that carry just as much intellectual weight as those in the Bard’s best work.  Several of the changes that Kurosawa makes serve to convey the director’s own pessimism about authority figures and the inescapable cycle of violence in which rulers are eternally trapped.

Whereas Shakespeare presents Macbeth and his cruelty as the exception rather than the rule, Kurosawa goes out of his way to stress that the brutal warlord Washizu, his Macbeth stand-in, is far from unique among would-be sovereigns.  In the Scottish play, Macbeth’s predecessor and eventual victim Duncan is a blameless ruler who “hath borne his faculties so meek, hath been/ so clear in his great office, that his virtues/ Will plead like angels, trumpet-tongued, against/ The deep damnation of his taking-off” (1.7.17-19).  In Throne of Blood, Kurosawa indicates that Washizu’s ruler, the Great Lord Tsuzuki, had come to power himself by murdering his own predecessor, thus making him guilty of the same crime as Washizu.  This detail may seem small but carries significant moral ramifications.  By placing Washizu’s treachery in a context where usurpation is the norm, Kurosawa expands the narrative’s focus from simply being the tale of one man’s madness into exploring the violence that rulers utilize to gain and maintain power.

The Bard’s Macbeth ends relatively happily, with the titular villain being slain by Macduff.  In contrast, Kurosawa’s Throne of Blood climaxes with the murder of Washizu by his own archers, and closes with a scene of enemy troops approaching the castle as a thick fog falls—and when the cloud lifts, the entire castle is gone and an unseen chorus wails, “Look upon the ruins/ Of the castle of delusion.”  Shakespeare’s play ends with the restoration of the rightful order and the proper monarch, but Kurosawa does not seem to believe that the cycle of violence and treachery is escapable through any means but the release of death and total desolation.

I won’t go so far as to declare that any version, either original or adaptation, of 1984 or Macbeth is the superior work of art, but I do wonder if we are doing ourselves a disservice by taking it for granted that an adaptation must be an inferior product.  Rather, we should acknowledge that the changes that often come with the adaptation of a literary work into another medium are not necessarily a bad thing, but can, in the hands of capable artists, be an opportunity to take the story into new intellectual terrain.

I have had a love affair with the nonfiction essay for quite some time. There is just something about the look of first-person prose on the page, or the sound metaphorical curtains make, as they are ripped ajar, exposing a window into the author’s personal exploits. Yet, in recent years I have witnessed the collection of fellow admirers grow increasingly fewer. The memoir genre has become synonymous with pretension, self-promotion, and less associated with the finer literary arts. I speculate this has much to do with the current generation’s fascination with what some might term an “over-share” culture, where nothing and no one is sacred, a culture for which baby boomers have nearly perfected a disdain.

For the millennial generation, the writer most known for putting it all out in the open is twenty-eight year old Lena Dunham. Dunham shook the celebrity world almost overnight with her success as writer-director-producer-actor of the hit HBO series Girls. On Tuesday, Dunham’s rumored 3.5 million dollar book deal hit the stands, as well as my Amazon shopping basket. The world got a sneak peak in early September when The New Yorker published an excerpt entitled, “Difficult Girl: Growing up, with help.” It is on all accounts a well-crafted essay: her prose is neat, quippy, and always subtly (if not habitually) self-effacing. She weaves a series of experiences neatly together, all reflections on her lifelong relationships with psychiatric therapists and the significant, strange bonds that can manifest from sharing the intimate details of your life with a professional, a stranger. Each glimpse into the personal life of Dunham’s psychologist, Margaret, provides her with thrill and validation for their one-sided relationship. She ruminates on the smallest details,

Then there is the autumn day I come in to find her with a shiny black eye. Before I can even register my shock, she points to it and laughs: “A bit of a gardening accident.” I believe her. Margaret would never let anyone hit her. She would never let anyone wear shoes indoors. She would always protect herself, her floors, her flowers.

The irony is not lost on me. Dunham learns the art of self-exposure from a young age, draws on this in her professional career, and now her literary one. In the many anticipatory reviews surfacing over the last few weeks leading up to the release of her book, Not That Kind Of Girl, I have heard Dunham’s work categorized as a memoir, a collection of personal essays, an autobiography, self-help, and something akin to an advice column. These diverging critics, unable to decide which genre to pigeonhole Dunham into, got me thinking. What does the leap from nonfiction essayist to memoir look like? Dunham is by no means capable of reflecting back on a long life of mature experiences, tying the knot of her life into a neat bow of profound meaning. She uses moments from her youth and young adulthood she finds potentially interesting as inspiration for creative prose. Which raises the consideration, if a twenty-eight year old can write a memoir, then maybe there is more to this dreaded genre than meets the eye.

A New York Times book review labeled Not That Kind of Girl a “Memoir-ish” literary exploit, “a kind of memoir disguised as an advice book, or a how-to-book (as in how to navigate the perilous waters of girlhood) in the guise of a series of personal essays.” But this explanation is incomplete. Dunham’s essays are nonfiction, but manipulated. Her prose is confessional, yet imaginative. She admits within her pages that she is an, “unreliable narrator,” fabricating details as needed. Her work, like the author herself, refuses classification and points to the beginning of a contemporary motif that might be here to stay: celebration of the eccentric, the unabashed. Many have criticized Dunham for putting a magnifying glass to a culture saturated with privilege and the benign dilemmas that ruffle the feathers of the white, middle/upper class. Less controversially, others have wondered why a young person, who has had so much success in the booming market of premium television, would take the risky shift into the print medium, especially as book sales have come under attack with the emergence of eBooks and Kindle. But there is one moneymaking trend that seems to prevail over all, which Not That Kind Of Girl takes very seriously: shameless self-exploitation. Dunham exposes her flaws and turns them into entertainment, rather than leaving them as idle sources of ridicule for others to deploy. The New York Times Magazine summed up their praise rather poignantly,

She is perhaps to the millennials what J. D. Salinger was to the post-World War II generation and Woody Allen was to the baby boomers: a singular voice who spoke as an outsider and, in so doing, became the ultimate insider.

In the wake of such admiration, the literary world sits poised, ready to accept a new function of the nonfiction memoir genre: the cultural observer. A celebrity wrote Not That Kind Of Girl, but this is not a tabloid rag of celebrity gossip. In the weeks to come readers and critics will decide whether Dunham’s ascent into literary recognition will land amongst the Bad Feminist Roxane Gays of the world, or in the sale pile next to Mindy Kaling’s Is Everyone Hanging Out Without Me? — no offense Mindy. I think it is possible for personal essayists to trade in such unsightly trademarks as “narcissistic” or “hack” for the nobler pursuits of creative freedom and prose that probes at the pulse of modern-day life. It is time for some nonfiction light to shine on contemporary talent, and that talent might look a lot like Lena Dunham.

Last Sunday, I attended the first session for a one-credit course I am taking called Cross-Cultural Theatrical Experiences. Professors Holly Pickett and Shawn Paul Evans both taught classes abroad last spring term studying theatre and developed this new course as a reflection on our experiences abroad.

My class, Shakespeare In Performance, travelled to Stratford-Upon-Avon and London, UK to study several of Shakespeare’s plays and see them performed at some of the most prestigious theaters for Shakespeare in the world. Some might ask, why is it important to see Shakespeare’s plays in performance? Why not just read the plays? Before the course, I found myself wondering how it would feel to walk the streets Shakespeare walked in Stratford, see the home where he was born, and walk across the Thames towards Shakespeare’s Globe Theatre.

Students from Professor Pickett’s “Shakespeare In Performance” in front of the Globe Theatre in London

Our reintegration Cultural Theatrical Experiences course seeks to reflect upon the experiences we had abroad and especially how theatre can still be relevant to our lives. After our conversation in class on Sunday, I started thinking about what it was like to see Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus at the Globe Theatre in London. Really, I shouldn’t use the verb “see.” It was an experience. As a groundling at the Globe, the play is really more like a rowdy sporting event. This was especially true for Titus, which is Shakespeare’s most gruesome and violent play. This week I have been thinking more about how written works translate into theatre, and ultimately how they relate to our lives and the world. To read Titus is one thing – you see violent descriptions and stage directions revealing murders, rape, and mutilation – but to see it, to be there amongst the victims, is an overwhelming and shocking experience. I was struck ultimately by the role of women in Titus Andronicus, and how the performance amplified the written word in this particular play.

The Globe’s performance of Titus Andronicus certainly opens up a lot of questions about society, especially war and violence. I found the role of women particularly important and extremely shocking in this production. Women in this production are almost always victims of violence, sometimes participate in violence, and are almost always sexualized in Titus Andronicus. In Act I Scene I of Titus Andronicus, the Romans sacrifice Tamora’s son’s life. Tamora, Queen of the Goths, begs Titus for mercy and pleads with him to spare her son’s life. Indira Varma’s performance in this role highlights the immense pain that haunts a mother after her son’s slaughter.

Tamora’s sons, Demetrius and Chiron, attack and rape Lavinia. Following this act, the brothers cut off Lavinia’s hands and cut out her tongue so that she could not speak of her attackers. Flora Spencer-Longhurst’s performance as Lavinia was extremely traumatizing, but also moving. It was incredible how shattered Lavinia’s character seemed when she came out onto the stage, mutilated, unable to move, unable to speak. It was not even the blood coming from her body that disturbed me, but the pure emotional trauma that Lavinia endured. Her innocence destroyed, her body ravished. The physical manifestation of this pain was apparent, despite Lavinia’s inability to vocalize the brutality of it the way that Tamora does in the first scene.

Flora Spencer-Longhurst as Lavinia at the Globe

Although these violent events are the same in the written play as they are performed live, it leaves the viewer with a completely different feeling in her gut. Several audience members fainted and many of us felt sick to our stomachs watching the gruesome acts performed in this play. There’s something different about seeing things on an actor’s face and in her gait and her voice (or for Lavinia her lack of voice) that shakes your bones and gnaws at your heart. Shakespeare wrote his plays for performance for a reason – he knew that they would have more power to influence the audience when they were acted, lived almost, rather than only read.

While literature can have powerful implications and reactions, I find something valuable in a dramatic experience that is very different from reading the words on a page. We still relate to these issues in life today: the power-hungry characters, the violence, the tragedy, the treatment of women – that’s the reason so many people felt faint or actually fell to the ground in the Globe Theatre that day. Shakespeare wrote a play that meant something to his audience and continues to mean something to us today. Seeing this on stage and putting a face to a name and seeing a real woman as a victim makes us feel these implications on a grander scale. For now, I’ll continue to read what I can and see literature performed whenever possible to gain that extra perspective.