Nick Smith – Snopes

Blog Editor’s Discussion: March Madness Revisited

Nick Smith

It is once again, dear readers, the time of year when ESPN neglects all other sports to show you basketball replays, and people can think of nothing other than their brackets and their Cinderella team. As a lapsed fan of basketball, especially on the collegiate level, I confess that the tournament really doesn’t excite me very much. If I hadn’t researched it for this blog, that would probably have remained the case. After looking it over in writing this post, I gained a new respect for March Madness, not just as an event, but as a cultural ritual with a connection to history.

The beauty of sports is that they connect people from different eras and geographical locations. Modern sports are geared more towards exciting displays of athletic ability and physicality, but the more ancient ones were a product of practicality. Sports such as boxing, wrestling, fencing, kendo, archery, target shooting, and jousting, amidst a horde of others, served in both idealistic and pragmatic capacities. All of them began life as martial arts, designed to make someone more formidable in combat, whether it be at Agincourt or in a back alley. The evolution from national longbow training to the modern basketball championship was not simple, but it is explicable.

One of the most difficult aspects of training is motivation. When a population turns a violent art into a sport, they provide one of the oldest forms of motivation known to man: competition. The simple notion of competition is profound in its reach. Human beings love to compete, to show that they are the best. As a result of this, sports have grown far beyond their initial role as a motivational tool. Competition is an important thing, nationally and internationally. The Olympics is (largely) a show of goodwill and trust in the international community, and March Madness is an opportunity for old traditions and rivalries to carry on in the United States in a healthy way.

In pondering the idea of competition, I turned to famous examples in literature. William Faulkner understood the instinctive urge to compete better than most, and his writing reflects that. In Flags in the Dust, he writes of the Sartoris family following World War I, specifically Young Bayard. The heir to the family, he went to war with his twin brother and came back alone. Young Bayard proceeds to drink excessively, drive recklessly, and generally try his hand at any highly dangerous activity he can. He was plagued not just by survivor’s guilt, but by an unshakeable feeling that he was not truly a man unless he died in action, which he did while test-piloting a plane. That ideal was a product of his proud upbringing, and is indicative of Faulkner’s argument. Competition, as Faulkner views it, is good and proper, but it cannot be allowed to overcome everything else, or it will extinguish our species. He wrote many books about the flagging, destructive nature of honor in the dying South, and the effects it has upon its misguided disciples. I think he would be very receptive to the idea of sports as a regional, national, and international method of competition, one which doesn’t end in self-destruction.

So in retrospect, I have become a fan of March Madness, and I hope it continues to promote competition and greatness between athletes and fans for generations to come. What do you think of that, dear reader? Can you come up with any other famous examples of competition in literature?

Nick Smith is a senior English and History Major and Creative Writing minor from Alexandria, Virginia. Nick loves all flavors of literature, but he has always had a fondness for science fiction and fantasy, especially when paired with comedy.

Blog Editor’s Discussion: Self-Publication

Nick Smith

While I was brainstorming what I wanted to write this piece about (my version of brainstorming looking very much like drinking coffee and reading on my Kindle), I had a strange thought, which bloomed into a veritable forest of queries. What, I wondered, did the process of self-publication entail? How has the e-book changed the game, both for publisher and authors? Is it possible for average authors to make a living this way? After a mild argument with myself, I switched to decaf and went to work researching.

Amazon, it turns out, offers Kindle Direct Publishing ( https://kdp.amazon.com/ ) to anyone who has an account. There are several different programs for prospective authors to use in publishing e-books, but I think Amazon’s effort deserves place of pride for many reasons. Primarily, it is exceptionally user-friendly. As long as you put together and submit your work according to their rules, they will generally have it published and for sale within twenty four hours. Another major boon is the size of their audience. Publishing with Amazon means putting your work in front of an enormous amount of people, ostensibly translating to sales.

As with any business venture, however, there are negative aspects. While Amazon likes to advertise a 70% takeaway of profits on the part of the author, there are decidedly undermentioned caveats. First and foremost, if a sale is made outside of the United States or a specific collection of countries, the author gets 35% of the profits, due to the cost of trading in foreign currency. The same reduction is applicable if the work in question is published anywhere but on Amazon, or if it fails to meet minimum or maximum price guidelines (https://kdp.amazon.com/help?topicId=A30F3VI2TH1FR8#1-2_why_35 ). Obviously I understand that a business has to make fiscally responsible decisions, but I do wish some of these points were more clearly laid out in the advertisements, rather than hidden in the fine print. Even with those restrictions, I think Amazon offers an amazing service that should be celebrated.

Perhaps the most incredible thing that can be said about KDP is that it removes entry barriers, and de-stigmatizes self-publication to a high degree. Hugh Howey, author of the Wool series has stated that “Most of my months are six-figure months” (http://www.cnn.com/2012/09/07/tech/mobile/kindle-direct-publish/ ). Many authors like Howey have found financial and critical success in self-publication, success that might have eluded them completely had they stuck with traditional publication. By removing basically any restrictions on what can or cannot be published, Amazon, and businesses like them, have opened the floodgates. The resulting deluge of work can (fairly) be criticized as being typically bad, but it can also be recognized for enticing and developing some truly great writers. The great benefit of these communities is that they offer autonomy, as well as judgment-free support from a huge range of authors and readers, professional and amateur, in polishing authors.

I think that self-publication will not only grow at an extraordinary rate in the future, but that it will contribute to the creation of a new generation of great writers. Somewhere right now there are authors taking root, men and women who are obsessively honing their craft and growing under the tutelage and financial support of a broad community of literature-lovers. With the right environment, and enough people supporting them, they will surely bloom into something wonderful. What, dear reader, do you think of that?

Mastering Mischief

Nick Smith

“…passionate understanding, formal accomplishment, and serious mischief.”

By Grace Haynes

Shenandoah displays artistic work that meets the standards of “passionate understanding, formal accomplishment, and serious mischief.” This phrase touches on each aspect of creativity a writer seeks to achieve. After reading this statement on the first day of class, I felt excited to explore what Shenandoah is really about.

As writers, we begin our process with a passionate understanding. We feel a deep connection to an aspect of the world around us. We establish personal connections with our surroundings. We observe the minute details of everyday life. This could be the rich color of our favorite sweater, the crispness of autumn air, or the smell of old library books. We describe the relationships we value with friends or family members. We develop a passion for the details of life and expand upon it through our individual, creative interpretations. We express ourselves through this passionate understanding.

As writers, we mold this passionate understanding into formal accomplishment. Some qualify this achievement as getting a story or poem published in a literary journal. Others reach this goal by receiving an “A” on a school paper. I have watched my peers attain this formal accomplishment by reading their poems and short stories for an audience at Studio 11 in downtown Lexington. For me, reading one of my own stories to my grandmother fills me with this sense of accomplishment. But at its very basic meaning, it is the act of successfully transferring our thoughts—our passionate understanding—to words on a page through which reader directly relates.

And as writers, we stir up a little mischief along the way.

A spark of madness—a moment of disobedient thought—fuels our journey from passionate understanding to formal accomplishment. A muse strikes our attention, and an idea pops into our minds. Intrigue sends us on a quest to develop this thought. We silently observe situations like flies on the wall, careful not to spook our subject. Investigation, examination, consideration of our subject. Writing against the norm and establishing a new, unique voice of our own. Scheming and envisioning the ultimate idea we wish to portray.

As humans we are all born with a bit of mischief inside of us. As kids, we broke the “no talking during announcements” rule at school. As teenagers, we broke curfew and gave our parents fits. One summer, I pierced my ears without my parents’ permission, and needless to say, this disobedient act got me in a lot of trouble. I knew that I was doing the wrong thing, but the mischievous nature of the act was far too intriguing.

That’s the attraction—we’re drawn to the mischief that comes along with writing. There’s a temptation in writing about a complicated, sensitive subject. There’s a risk in portraying debatable topics. But the rebellion entices us and sends us on secretive missions to follow twisted plotlines or to uncover hidden truths. I’ve noticed rebellion in the submissions for Shenandoah, where some writers argue topics like race and religion and others reveal family secrets. The writers take a risk in exposing personal viewpoints or private information.

We are troublemakers, stirring up mischief that provokes thought within the minds of the reader. We present a story that makes the reader pause for a moment from their hectic routine. Something that makes the reader think. Something that evokes a quiet moment of self-reflection.

Or maybe we’re just giving a new perspective on a small, unremarkable detail of the world. It’s different and unique—there’s a rebellious nature embedded within the simple acts too.

As writers we pinpoint small moments of life through our passionate understanding and reveal the hidden beauty of the ordinary, completing a formal accomplishment by mastering the art of mischief.

So blog readers, what sparks mischief within you?

Best Book of the Year

Nick Smith

by Bella Zuroski

This Christmas, my family all packed into the car and ventured three hours east through heavy Western New York snows to spend the day with my dad’s side of the family. After dinner, I curled up in front of the woodstove with Mona, my Aunt Ellen’s sleepy pit bull. After about an hour or so of typical after-dinner conversation, my cousin Gena’s husband Derek asked me if I had my pick for Best Book of the Year yet. I had no idea what he was talking about, and experienced a slight panic – was this a thing I should know about? Gena looked at me expectantly. She is an English professor, so I was sure she expected her English major cousin, a senior in college, to know about it.

Best Book of the Year was not the big, official “thing” I had imagined. It was a tradition started by my Uncle Greg (Gena’s dad), who passed away last spring. It’s simple: at the end of each year, he and his friends would all get together to discuss the best book they had each read that year. This was the first year that would come to a close without Greg at the helm, and I could sense that Best Book of the Year had gained extra significance because of that.

When I tried to come up with my pick, I felt embarrassed. Sure, I could name a heap of books I had read for class. But had I read anything else on my own outside of the brick walls of Payne Hall, Washington & Lee’s English building?

I will never forget the rainy afternoon when Greg handed me my first copy of Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, or the bright summer day when he sat down next to me on the old concrete stoop by the front door and gave me Betty Smith’s A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. I read those books day and night with no regard for sleep or any other apparent priorities. I had no cell phone buzzing in my pocket or plans to make – just the pure, unbridled delight of more pages to turn. As I struggled to come up with a Best Book of the Year that hadn’t been assigned on a syllabus, I realized how much I missed the little girl who used to get lost for hours, days, even whole summers at a time in the pages of a book.

As our lives get hectic, it is easy to forget how to take the time to get lost in a book. It starts to feel like there is no time for anything outside of our daily routine. Are you a college student, tired parent, professional, and/or someone who has to read a lot for your job or in your daily life? If you are, I am sure you know how flipping on the TV or playing another round of Candy Crush often seems easier than opening a book.

There is magic in language that cannot be found anywhere else. In the hustle and bustle of life, this magic can be easily forgotten. Greg was the person who really showed me what it means to be a reader. I think we all have our own Greg – not necessarily the person who taught us how to read the letters on the page, but the person who helped us to see the magic. Recently, I saw a post on his Facebook page that said, “Book of the year just isn’t the same without you.” When I clicked on this woman’s profile, Facebook told me that she lived in Seattle, Washington. Missing Greg, my heart swelled in bittersweet happiness when I thought that somewhere, somehow, he had crossed paths with this woman and shared that same magic with her. This Christmas, I received a very well timed reminder to never let that magic go.

Next year, I promise to have my pick for Best Book of the Year ready. Will you?

The Unlimited Western: A Character Trope

Nick Smith

I love Westerns. I realize that most people love a good Western, but they typically require a quality example to appreciate the genre’s beauty. I, on the other hand, love all Westerns regardless of their competence. After all, how would we appreciate the mastery of an Oscar winning performance without a field of its spaghetti based peers? In this spirit I have watched many, many Westerns of varying quality in an effort to determine overarching themes, and I believe I’ve finally chased one down, cornered it, and beaten it into submission. Modern Westerns seem to rely in large part on the role of the ultimate badass, a character who relies on brains, strength, skill, and otherworldly luck to forge a path through the world.

Westerns both great and terrible are replete with examples of this phenomenon, typically in the form of an antagonist, but often enough as the lead character or an ambiguous combination of the two. The one defining, unchanging trait of this trope is an enforcement of the character’s personal morality, goals, and beliefs about the world around them through an application of their own power. Cormac McCarthy’s novel No Country for Old Men personifies evil in the form of Anton Chigurh, an assassin hired to kill the protagonist and retrieve the money he stole from the site of a botched drug deal. In the novel Chigurh kills indiscriminately, often choosing to let a coin flip decide the fate of one of his victims, and always surviving and overcoming through his power and skill. Chigurh’s warped sense of chaotic guidance provides a good baseline for the ultimate badass of the Western, a character capable of fighting the order of the world and winning.

>Once I realized the simplicity of the definition other examples began to stack up, some portrayed quite differently than Chigurh. In the 2007 version of 3:10 to Yuma the outlaw Ben Wade overcomes the men taking him to a train bound for prison, can easily escape, and yet chooses to board the train and honor the dying effort of his captor Dan Evans. The film implies that Wade will escape from prison on a whim in the future, clarifying that he chose to be arrested simply to let the world know what Dan did, because he felt like doing that. Similarly, in any of the iterations of Clint Eastwood’s Man with No Name series or the portrayals of Wyatt Earp in both Tombstone and Gunfight at the O.K. Corral, the heroes are all unstoppably powerful fighters.

But why? Why do Westerns have to rely on an unstoppable pinch hitter as a plot device? I believe it is a combination of two beliefs, the first an abiding love of the romanticized freedom of the West, and the second a desire to see the world in black and white. The West has always been a symbol of freedom for the American people, but never has it been viewed as more so than the mid to late nineteenth century, a time when a single determined individual could forge their own fate. The end of that century represented the death of individualism on a particular level; no more could a skilled gunman battle law and order and win, the frontier became civilized. Added to this was an innate desire on the part of audiences for early Westerns to see polarizing themes, black and white, right and wrong, good and evil. People wanted their heroes and villains to be romantic, to stand for morality and overcome all obstacles with their power.

In the modern era this has evolved. Some Westerns still follow the white hat/black hat mold but often the villain is the most compelling character, and a flawed morality is the driving motivation in the film. The Western is a product of history and idealization and its focus and voice will always be changing, but it will likely never shed the role of the ultimate badass.