Blog Change

Just a placeholder note. I'm converting the previous blog, "The Ochosi Chronicles," to a new page, "RodDavisWriter.com" in order to expand the scope of postings and information. Basically it will become my own website and I hope be easier to find under this name. I can't use "RodDavis" per se because it's already being used. If you go there, sorry, it ain't me.

I'll be redesigning the page soon as well and it will look more like the web pages of other authors.

Thanks and hope to see you here.

Rod

Randall Williams, Huck Finn on 60 Minutes

I just watched "60 Minutes." I have always admired Randall Williams, both as an editor and a friend, but never more so than now, as his voice broke acknowledging the "sin"--a powerful, emotional, accurate word--of racism in Southern white people that the Movement helped to confront and thus transformed. But if on the "60 Minutes" interview he'd said the "evil" or the "immorality" or whatever of racism, I'd still have gotten the point.

Words are codes, but there's more than one code, and, as the Buddha said, ultimately a word is just a word. The meaning doesn't hinge on the word, but on the feeling, the awareness, the truth. It's a paradox of writing.

What is it about replacing "nigger" with "slave" in Huck Finn that inspires such absolute chest-beating outrage from the bourgeois lit crowd? I mean, is preserving 219 repetitions of an offensive and violent racist word that central to Twain's meaning? Do these academic critics love the N-word that much? Is it that titillating to them? That's what I wonder.

Suppose the book were translated into French, or Spanish, etc.? And suppose a slightly different connotative epithet were used. Would it make any difference? How many of us know if Homer has ever been translated accurately, or Tolstoy or Camus or for that matter the Bible? Or what about a foreign film where the subtitles or dubs are botched? Is the meaning lost in translation?

Twain was too good a writer to hang everything on what was a kind of slang, and who can say if he deliberately employed massive redundancy or if it simply was of no more concern to him than dozens of other phrasings or word choices, and that, had an editor called him on it, he might have replaced it with "slave" or something else. He was a man of commerce as well as letters.

But no one called him on it. That's not true anymore. Twain's masterpiece isn't at risk for being "sanitized." It is at risk for being banned. There's a difference. Now, because of this ridiculously controversial NewSouth edition (which at a 7,500 print run scarcely threatens the original text or the reading opportunities of adults) teachers who want to teach Huck to kids--or "children"-- in any of the thousands of classrooms where that is not allowed, now can do so. It's a trade-off worth the price of a racial epithet. I'll bet Twain would see it that way. And I'll bet Kindle will, too.

Voodoo persecution and voodoo validation

This Reuters story (http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE6BN2P420101224) out of Haiti on the lynching of voudou priests is disturbing on so many levels. First, that the violence stems from utterly preposterous attacks on the religion last January after the earthquake, when evangelicals and other mostly right-wing Christian religious figures tried to blame the disaster on the presence of the voudou religion in Haiti. This is a direct consequence of that.

Second, if the orisha truly were to be held accountable for natural acts of destruction such as earthquakes and hurricanes, why would they punish their own followers? Ochosi and Ogun and the other protectors of the faith would be among the many orisha who would argue for punishment of those who have enslaved, oppressed, murdered and otherwise harmed the religion and its adherents, whether in Africa or in the New World. Haiti would be protected and a paradise for its people if voudou really were in charge there. But of course pursuing this whole line of ascribing powers and affixing blame to supernatural entities is pointless on its face and is the cause of much violence and destruction globally. The current wars in the Mideast and Southwestern Asia cases in point.

Killing anyone in the name of religion reaps nothing other than more killing, in an endless and irrational loop of revenge and righteousness.

Why write? For whom?

A friend and veteran author/journalist now teaching at a respected state university is trying to answer, for his students, one of the enduring questions about writing. Without elaboration, here is his letter posting the issue, and then a brief answer following. With any luck, some of the students might chime in:

The question: This semester I have tried to teach a course in "creative" nonfiction to a class of creative writing and poetry majors.
The main thing I've noticed is that they say "I write for myself," and compose accordingly. They don't like the idea of having to make note of facts or write in standard, grammatical ways. It's all self-expression to them.
Seeing them drove to ask what I thought. I came to the conclusion that all communication is an attempt to manipulate and that, other than knowing how to write a clear sentence, the most important skill is assessing the minds of readers. In nonfiction, we write to seduce them, it seems. In a sense we write for ourselves--we avoid stories we don't think we'd like--but we also must answer to editors, readers and bureaucracies.
I kept thinking and finally I came up with a nearly sloganized form of this: we are all the prisoners of other people. Writing is an attempt to enlarge the space of our confinement. One has to be wary of the jailer--the reader--in order to get away with as much.
Do you agree? Or am I condemning the "creative" types based on knowing on the naive or mediocre ones?

My reply: I think that "writing for myself" is logically disingenuous. Writing is per se an act of communicating with others. Now, it's possible that one wants to achieve a high standard of artistic merit, either "artistic" based on standards common to the leading theories of the genre or perhaps some additional personal standards. I think an artist who has very high sense of esthetics, for example, may exceed those of the leading theories and that's why artists (including writers) have to above all be loyal to their own sense of what is good or artful. But I don't believe that anyone would engage in any of this without an implied audience. Aristotle: speaker, subject, audience. So there's always an implied receptor. A writer who says it is for self-expression is probably just lying to himself or herself.

That opens the door to what the audience should get, what should be provided, and so on, and that is just basically endlessly contingent.

So what you say that writing is an attempt to "enlarge our confinement" is true, in my opinion. It doesn't matter if it's fiction, nonfiction, poetry, etc....poetry in particular requires an audience, same as plays or screenplays. I don't think any form is inherently superior, for that matter. For myself, fiction offers a greater avenue to life-truths by far; but nonfiction is the grist of the world-as-we-know-it.

Paris Review interviews-a friendly WikiLeaks for literature

This new access to the great reviews in The Paris Review (I love the '60s interviews--Waugh, Kerouac, etc.) are a remarkable gift to the world and a must-bookmark for writers. It's like a friendly WikiLeaks for literature.

Thanks, Paris Review.

http://www.theparisreview.org/interviews

NewSouth Books authors definitely care about Katrina

A recent article in The New Republic made the argument that novelists have done little in writing about Hurricane Katrina. Maybe in TNR circles, but not in those of NewSouth Books, the acclaimed independent publisher based in Montgomery, Alabama [and publisher of my novel, Corina's Way].

Have a look at this post linked below to a new entry on NewSouth's blog:

http://www.newsouthbooks.com/pages/2010/09/29/newsouth-novelists-do-care-about-hurricane-katrina/

One thing not mentioned is that Tony Dunbar's novel, Tubby Meets Katrina, was the first post-Katrina novel published, and remains a good read and a vivid reminder of those days during and after the storm.

I don't think there's a statute of limitations on when fiction can illuminate an event, or an era, or an idea--or anything. But the illuminations of Katrina are definitely in progress.

Keeping voudou validated

Check out Adam Nossiter's story in the NYT about a priest in Benin seeking to create validation of the ways and importance of the voudou religion. Link below:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/14/world/africa/14benin.html

This is an enduring issue for Western media, not to say the general public and the religious community. Coverage of the Haitian earthquake devastation has brought the Haitian practice of vodun a little more attention, but I think mostly it continues to view the religion as a cult practice at the fringes of respectability. This isn't many steps from the outright suppression of the religion that followed its importation under slavery into the Caribbean and the Americas. Today, in the U.S., where I have principally studied voudou (the New Orleans term), the religion remains at the fringes of acceptance and mostly is treated as a stereotype based on centuries of falsehoods. In American Voudou, I tried to bring the American practice to light as much as I could. I think the title character in Corina's Way also shows the strength and passion of the practice here. And I do believe there has been something of a revival of interest in voudou or orisha worship within these shores, but I can't say it's really make great inroads outside of limited communities or some segments of academia. But something is better than nothing.

I continue to hope that the orishas and their followers will be accorded the respect given any other religion, although it is a constant struggle to make inroads, even among those who seem to be willing to extend tolerance to other kinds of beliefs.

But the gods of Africa remain among us.