Wednesday; "Gone With The Wind"...

[ozarque]

I just want to mention something here, in case you're not already aware of it. I want to mention the extraordinary craftsmanship that's demonstrated by Margaret Mitchell in Gone With The Wind. The density of it, and the way everything in it is woven together; the immediacy of it. It's truly remarkable, and I wish I could write that way. It's

Comments

[sturgeonslawyer]

Yeah. I love that book ... and hate it. It's questionable whether it was worth doing, but it's done so well that it becomes art regardless of its content.

[icecreamempress]

The characters are really vivid.

So vivid that she has to put in huge undigested passages of racist blah-blah, because the characterization leaves no doubt that the moral compass is solidly with the black characters, and that the white characters are either amoral (Scarlett, Rhett, Scarlett's dad) or vague and useless (Aunt Pittypat, Scarlett's dad after her mom dies) or actively evil but thinking they're good (proud Klan member Ashley Wilkes). The only good white person in the whole book is Melanie.

So Mitchell seems like she every now and then has to call this compelling narrative to a screeching halt to throw in some blather about how terrible Reconstruction is, or how some carpetbagging overseer is manipulating naive formerly enslaved black people for his own benefit, or how scary black men and lower-class whites are lurking to rob and rape Scarlett. Just so we don't lose track of who's actually supposed to be the good guys here.

The scene where Ashley joins the Klan is pretty goddamned heinous, though.

[elorie]

It's sort of a case study in "being an artist in a racist society." She sees it, she gets it...but has been raised on We Don't Talk About That. And wants people to read her book, naturally.

She took some of the money she made and created a scholarship for medical students at Morehouse.

[icecreamempress]

She took some of the money she made and created a scholarship for medical students at Morehouse.

I didn't know that, and that's a lovely bit of news.

[amaebi]

Yeah, on the sentence level she's not wonderful, but she has pace and structure that are admirable indeed.

[interactiveleaf]

I know just what you mean. She often switches tenses in the middle of sentences, her grammar is *ahem* original and I don't mean that as a compliment, and yet the story just moves.

[harimad]

I may read the book after all. I've avoided it for years because of the content. On the other hand I've seen "The Birth of a Nation" several times for for its cinematographic qualities, so why not?

Off-topic

[anonymous]

Apologies for being so far off-topic, Suzette, but I've lost my contact information for you.

I'm most of the way through "The Most Human Human: What Talking With Computers Teaches Us About What It Means To Be Alive," and I'd like to recommend it to you--and anyone else out there.

Philip

Re: Off-topic

[ozarque]

Philip, my new e-mail address is ocls at cox.net. And that's a letter L, not a numeral 1.

[obzor_inolit]

[houseboatonstyx]

That sounds like an interesting process of creation. I can see how it might produce a result tightly interwoven and well-paced -- if the writers are willing to leave some bits on the cutting room floor.

Actually I visualize the group spreading out all these cards ON the dining room floor, dining table, etc. ;-) Then mixing and matching the cards like puzzle pieces, making their decisions briskly, on grounds other than feeling immersed in the characters' emotions (as an author often feels, especially on early draft).

[obzor_inolit]

[houseboatonstyx]

Especially if done in the dining room of an old southern house full of old southern antiques. ;-) Of course I was just imagining that.

But really, the image made me think of three different ways an author might perceive zir own material at different stages.

1. how the character feels
2. how the reader will feel reading the book (suspense building etc; 'plot skeleton')
3. how the events logically connect -- as with a timetable etc

#3 would be the view of a stenographer with an eye to logic, deadline, word count, etc. (Hm, this gets back to Ozarque's old posts about feeling vs visual vs auditory. From this stenographer's eye view, auditory [sentence rhythm and such] would be scarcely noticeable at all.)

Btw, your comment with the links showed up in my email though not here, apparently. Thanks!