As you may know from Facebook or Twitter, I got my first answer back about a PhD program, from Albany, and I was accepted! It's a huge weight off to find out that my credentials are good enough for any school. They didn't say anything about fellowships etc. so I still need to find out, but it's a very promising start.
On the downside, I just found out that Peninsula College, despite cashing my checks, hasn't sent out my transcripts anywhere. WTF? Apparently Albany didn't care, but that doesn't mean that no one else does; I already received a note from Rochester about it. I need to call them on Monday and yell at them, and hope that it doesn't hurt me anywhere.
Mom and Michael came and visited this weekend, and we all went and saw Fiona's school production of Annie. She did an amazing job as Duffy, and the play was a hoot to watch. I was super impressed at the ability of all the children to ad lib when things went wrong. On the downside, I feel like the director should have cut it for length, which would have made it easier for the children to learn their lines and blocking, and it would be less of a drain on them to do. Especially since they're doing it many times a day all weekend. But it was a great show, and it was good to see everyone. Afterward we went to Denny's, which we always did after Marin Civic Light Opera performances, so that was quite nostalgic. Of note, Denny's now has Amy's burgers, so Erin and I could actually eat something there that tasted good. Not my traditional post-musical patty melt, but still good.
I didn't do as much writing in February on my story as I would like, and only added as many words as I wrote in January or so, which is bad since I didn't start til mid-January. I just need to push past this same sticking place in the story that made me give up on previous attempts at writing this, and it will be smooth sailing. But for some reason there is just this place that I can't get the main character out of. I end up faffing about instead, then deleting it after, which is very frustrating. I'm going to make another run at it, but if I can't get out I'll just skip it and write what I know happens after to get a bit more momentum.
Also in writing news, I'm starting work on an article related to this post. I emailed questions to as many Saudi's as I'm friends with on Facebook or have email addresses for, and asked them to send them to everyone I know. I'll put their answers into the article, and hopefully we can get some opinions about the KSA from actual Saudis, you know?
In the final bit of writing news, The Mythological Dimensions of Neil Gaiman didn't end up accepting my article suggestions. I'm a bit disappointed, since I think I could have written interesting articles, and it would have looked good on my resume. But I'm not crushed, since it wasn't exactly always a dream of mine to write an essay about the works of Neil Gaiman, you know? It would have been a bit odd to write a chapter in a book that I doubt I would have done more than idly flipped through at a bookstore. I'd rather write things that I'm passionate about, and which I would definitely buy even if no one else would.
Since they were turned down, however, I'm putting up my abstracts here. I owe a thanks to my brother for helping me make them more readable. He is the ideal editor for me, since he always knows what I mean, and so can always tell if I don't hit it. It's funny, but when I write a rough draft of something there are bits that I know at some level don't work, but which I hope no one but me notices. (I don't just fix these points because I'm only half-aware of my opinion). But any point that I glide over he always picks up on.
Anyway, here's the first one. It's the grandiose, big-picture one:
Changing Stories: Neil Gaiman and Metanarrative
Stories change. This seems intuitively obvious for folktales told and repeated from generation to generation, though ironically verbally-transmitted stories move down the centuries with startling fidelity in oral cultures -- those responsible for keeping a culture’s myths have been expected to memorize and recall a staggering amount, from the rhapsodes in ancient Greece with the Iliad and the Odyssey, to the bards of Ireland with the hundreds of hours it takes to tell the Tain Bo Cualigne, to many more from virtually all known pre-literate cultures. But stories do change, and they do so even if written down to be preserved in print. This is because a story is created in the minds of the audience as an interaction between the heard or read tale and the context in which it, and they, exist. Trivially it is true that a person’s individual situation -- their mood, their life experiences, their plans for later in the evening and so on -- alter the way he or she appreciates a story. However it is equally true that a society as a whole reinterprets stories based on the other stories that exist in the culture, and more importantly the metanarative or mythology of the culture; that is, the overarching stories used to interpret the world around us.
This truth and its implications are explored in literature perhaps nowhere today more thoroughly and interestingly than in the works of Neil Gaiman. In this paper, I will look at many of Gaiman’s creations, such as the gods in American Gods and Anansi Boys, many examples from Sandman, his versions of the comic book superheroes in 1602, Beowulf, Snow White, Santa Claus, and so on. I will argue that his treatment of the way stories are shaped and reshaped by each other and by the changing overall mythology of a culture is full of profound implications for our understanding of mythology, culture and ourselves, and I will further argue that he does this with two fairly unique methods -- by forcing us to face the changing meaning of stories directly, and by showing us this process from the point of view of the stories themselves.
Gaiman’s work addresses the negotiation and conflict between narratives in several ways in his work. Most obviously, he rewrites stories with a radically new interpretation. This is common to many writers, and I would argue an inevitable part of the process of modification which a culture conducts on its stories all the time, though this is as noticed day-to-day as the process of continental drift. Gaiman however forces us to notice, as he makes the story profoundly different in connotation, while leaving the actual fundamentals of the story unchanged. This is a far more dizzying turn than simply taking, say, Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar and setting it in an office boardroom. Such a move leaves us with the illusion that the “real” story is unchanged, and only this particular version of the story is obviously different to what “really” happens. Gaiman’s retellings on the other hand, whether of Snow White, the story of Santa Claus, or epic myths like Beowulf, leave the story as little-touched as possible while profoundly changing its meaning, thereby infecting us, keeping us from ever seeing the story the same way again, and making us all-too-aware of the shape shifting stories can go through.
Even more radically, Gaiman makes the case in many of his stories for seeing the world of culture from the point of view of the actual tales. When looked at in this way, culture becomes a battle ground, with various stories warring with each other, forming shifting alliances with one another, and even betraying each other, as they vie for our hearts and minds and therefore for reality itself -- or at least for our explanation of it. Gaiman understands the mercurial nature of stories, which while able to bend to fit into new contexts, when added up together make our culture and us who we are. His stories both explore this idea and act on it: by changing the stories in our minds and our interpretations of them, he changes us as we read them.
The second one is more focused on one small point, in case they preferred something narrower. I also like it better, actually, even though I wrote it second:
The Unknown Within Us: a Look at the Work of Neil Gaiman
In traditional mythology, there are places onto which we project our subconscious fears and desires; the testing ground of heroes and the home of monsters. In the past the mystery was in the Woods, or the Sea, or perhaps under the Earth. However as Joseph Campbell has pointed out, in modern times these places have become too small to hold our dreams. Campbell argued that the new Unknown was Outer Space, an insight that famously inspired Star Wars as a modern-day myth, and which is also present in Star Trek’s idea of Space as the Final Frontier. But in many of his works, Neil Gaiman has taken a far more radical step -- he has placed the Unknown all around us: behind corners, under bridges, in cracked mirrors, in shadows cast on ordinary streets, or in our dreams. This radical move acknowledges our changed world while simultaneously arguing that these changes have made the world of myths more immediate than it has been before -- perhaps since cities first built walls to keep themselves separate from the darkness; certainly at least since the Enlightenment's bold claim of triumph over myth and darkness altogether.
In this paper, I will discuss the idea of a Great Unknown as an important part of mythology, the historical roots of the idea, and its effects on culture, narrative, and society. I will use examples from many of Neil Gaiman's works to illustrate the narrative move he has made of putting the wild, unknown places between and within the spaces in our world, such as the hiding gods in American Gods and Anansi Boys, the unnoticed world in Neverwhere, the Wolves in the Walls, the world of Dream in Sandman, what lies beyond the door in Coraline, the world behind the Mirrormask, and others. I will argue that this is not merely a convenient literary device to allow fantasy narratives to exist in modern times, but a statement with profound implications, both in the world of the story and in our changing understanding of myth and reality.
When the Unknown moves from somewhere beyond the city gates or the light of the fire we gather around to tell our stories, the world becomes infused with magic, dangerous possibility, and an imminent call to adventure. We are taken back to an earlier time before the civilizing dichotomy of what we can dominate and control, and the wild we cannot, which is kept safely outside. As our society expands the border of what we consider to be tamed to cover more and more of the world, we perhaps feel safer, or perhaps a bit regretful of the lost wilderness, but either way we experience a distinct feeling of separation. Gaiman reminds us in his stories that the repressed wildness has always been in our own minds and can never be eliminated; that the feeling of separation has always been an illusion. Myth and magic, the fabulous kingdoms and the monsters’ lairs, are always at hand, and the only necessary step to beginning the hero’s journey is a slight shift in perspective.
So there you go, abstracts to essays that will probably never exist. I will say that it was pretty uncool the way I found out that I hadn't been accepted. The email that was sent to everyone after the window for submissions closed said that the editors would take "the next week or so" to take a look at them and then let everyone know. Over two weeks late, I was a bit curious, so I re-read the email to make sure the time period was what I remembered. At the bottom of the email was a link to their twitter feed, and when I clicked on it, I noticed that a week earlier they had tweeted that they'd determined which essays were going in. I naturally emailed them and asked if they were going to send emails to everyone who submitted something or what. Several days after that i got an email back saying that my essays hadn't been accepted. Not very professional, even for a small publisher, but what are you gonna do.
The last update I have is that I'm planning to take the month of May off work and use that time to travel to any and all schools that accepted me. If it's only Albany I'll just go there and look at neighborhoods etc., but otherwise I think it's a good idea to go when students are still there to get an idea of which school would best fit me. I'll let you know how those plans develop.
I'll leave you with a recommendation: go find a way (*cough*manga fox*cough*) to read Yokohama Kaidashi Kikou. It's a really good depiction of a post-collapse world that doesn't devolve into Mad Max improbable nonsense, but which rather just paints a believable picture of the Long Descent.
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