Alice in California
I’ll be at the Los Angeles Times Book Festival on Sunday April 27th, at UCLA on a panel to discuss magic and literature at 12:00. The panel is called Magic in Everyday Life with authors Aimee Bender, Alex Espinoza, and Yxta Maya Murray.
My individual reading is at 3 of the same day and I’ll be reading from my new novel. The Third Angel.
Please come if you’re in LA --- I can’t wait to hear what everyone has to say. I have my own theories about “magic” in literature and where it all began.
Fairy tales, after all, were women’s stories, kitchen tales, told by grandmothers and mothers to children. They were life-lessons wrapped in symbols that were so deeply psychological a child could “feel” their meaning even before he or she could intellectually understand what was at their heart. If such tales were written down at all, it was in cheap blue notebooks – fairy tales were called Cahiers Blue.
So where did the magic begin? Myth, religion, folk tale, fairy tales – in my opinion magic has always been an integral part of literature and realism is the new technique. Am I an anti-realist, or am I just written that way?
Just a note: One of the masters of magic, and one of my literary heroes, will be at the festival on Saturday -- if you’re there go see the icon of icons, Ray Bradbury. A genius, a one of a kind writer, his fiction changed my life.
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Thomas Dotson says:
Amazing
What a great lecture! I would actually like to attend this, but won't be able to. I'll have to tell my friend Soren who is a big fan of yours.
Thanks for keeping the community informed and if this isn't on the Red Room events calendar for you, I'll make sure it gets there.
Thomas Dotson - Red Room Staff.
Heather Goyette says:
I May Be There!
That weekend, I'm going to be down at UCLA (my alma mater) for the UCLA Alumni Scholarship State Finals, and while I have the day on Saturday to roam the campus, I may be in scholarship events on Sunday. (I'll see if I can get lunch off.) Either way, I'm excited that you're participating and wish you the best.
- Heather Goyette, redroom.com
Eric Nichols says:
Break a leg!
Do stop by Kerckhoff Coffeehouse while you're down there, and absorb some good jazz vibes for me. Too bad UCLA is so far away these days... which is why Alaska starts with "alas"! (The opening scene in my novel, Plasma Dreams, takes place in Kerckhoff).
When I was working for the UCLA Plasma Physics department, I used to stay in a B&B in Brentwood (within walking distance of UCLA) whose proprietor was a good friend of Bradbury's; I think a copy of every one of his works was in the house somewhere! Sadly enough, my path never crossed with the Master's.
Eric Nichols,
North Pole, Alaska
Kim Hoffman says:
Magic in writing
Our earliest literature is intertwined with magic. I would think this would include cave paintings and petroglyphs. Symbols as directions or as visualization, a way of calling forth beast or spirit? At some point, early on, consciousness entered into world, and we became aware of our environment. And since then, we've been searching for the right words to explain existence. Was a time, not too long ago, when poets and scientists and doctors were essentially equal. Perhaps unfortunately, techology altered that equasion, and nerds seem to have, well, at least more money, if not actual respect. While the sciences have contributed to our physical well being, they have also made the world as dangerous, if not more so, than it ever was; and haven't necessarily brought us any closer to understanding from whence we came.
" If you don't believe in God/don't quote him/ Valery once wrote/when he was about to give up poetry..." Jack Spicer
Gods and magic riddle our first epics. The Bible, theater, songs, all presented various Gods, or God, into their contents for educational, spiritual, and adventurous reading - or listening.
As the writer partakes in the act of creation, perhaps more so than the other arts, as he/she stages a fictional world that in many ways must be equal to our own - holding that mirror up to nature - and assumes, if not a God like attitude, then at the least an elve or fairy like stance - in which fateful decisions are made for each character, comes an alchemical reaction which at its very best enables both creator and reader to reach a broader understanding of their journey. A gifted author is probably as close as any scientist, or acid head, to explaining those large questions we are born with.
Each novel is a fairytale - a breadcrumb leading somewhere.
Good luck with your new book.