Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Story genesis--A Song For the Yellow Prince

"A Song For the Yellow Prince" is my Hans Christian Andersen story. But I didn't know that when I wrote it.

I love Andersen for two reasons. First of all, he's a great writer. Second of all, he's a great writer whose work has taken on a life of its own. Stories like "The Little Mermaid" and "The Ugly Duckling" have become true fairy tales, part of the human experience. And that's why I find his work so inspiring.

Andersen is not an unknown, uncredited genius, like the neanderthal who came up with "Little Red Riding Hood" or these other Germanic fairy tales. He was a writer. A memoirist who turned to fairy tales. A failed playwright, a failed actor. A possible bisexual with a strong persecution complex. A fervent self-promoter. A flesh and blood human being who was alive less than two hundred years ago, and whenever you read his work, you can see the human he was in every drop of ink. The obsessions: childhood trauma, childhood love, unrequited love, underdogs, death, heavy duty Christianity. His work doesn't have morals. What's the moral of "The Little Match Girl"? That being poor sucks? What's the moral of "The Little Mermaid"? That Andersen was having an existential crisis about mortality? These are not fables. They are short stories, the same as any short story writer pens nowadays. Andersen put his quill to paper and let his obsessions take hold, and the whole world loved him for it.

His theme of unrequited love has always stuck with me. I remember the young boy who grows up to be the obsessive creep in "Ib and Little Christina." The woman he loves rejects him, then dies, and his final victory is adopting her daughter, who of course looks just like her. Creepy. These unavailable women pop up repeatedly in his stories, and usually the relationships lead to tragedy, like in "The Steadfast Tin Soldier." Many of his stories are sad. Not the nihilistic brutality you'll find in a Grimm Brothers story, but a sense of inevitable loss, like you get from Shakespeare.

"A Song For the Yellow Prince" is probably the most fairy tale-like of the stories I've published, and I think it's the saddest in this new collection. It's also the baby of the collection. I began writing it in August of 2012, after Six Gallery said I could put a fifth story in the book. I wrote it while I was crashing at my friend's loft in the Mission, and finished it on a horse ranch in Louisiana. It was actually inspired by a prompt from the San Francisco reading series, Bang Out. There's a theme for each reading, and writers are encouraged to "bang out" submissions. One of the themes from that year was "Mix Tape." I started thinking of a short story, something fable-like I could write around the mix tape idea. I knew I wanted to do something other than the traditional "these songs make me remember these good ol' times" idea that mix tapes were made for. I missed the deadline, as I'm prone to do, but now I had this idea of a pre-analog mix tape. Vinyl records broken and glued back together. The image stuck with me, and other images grew from there. A boy and a girl who looked like twins. A sick boy in a bed. I indulged my obsessions with language and music, particularly the history of black music. I let language guide the story, thinking first of what images I'd describe, then where it would go. And in a relatively short time, I had a story, with equal parts poem in it.

That's why I call it my Andersen story. He knew to sometimes let the story meander and see where it would take him. The fairy tale genre allowed for this. And in following his obsessions, he found beauty, every time.

Better Late Than Never...

Here's a link to my post on

Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Chapter 107: In Which I Write About Robert E. Howard

I recently ran across this essay I wrote for a "Bible as Fiction" class at Mills. The assignment was to write a comparative piece between the Bible and a work of fiction based on the Bible. I'm pretty sure my professor was thinking of Faulkner. I went her one better: Robert E. Howard. It's a simple essay, not good enough to send to any Howardian journals. Still, I think it's pretty interesting. Enjoy.

The Neverending Wheel:
The Cyclical Nature of Politics
In The Book of Exodus and The Hour of the Dragon

            In his book The David Story, Robert Alter describes the tale of King David as the Bible’s “most unflinching insight into the cruel processes of history and into human behavior warped by the pursuit of power.” However, the effect of politics on the individual is explored in-depth in an earlier section of the Bible: the Book of Exodus. Exodus is the famous tale of how Moses, an Israelite raised in the Egyptian court, is exiled from Egypt and enlisted by the Hebrew God to lead the Israelites out of slavery. While primarily know as a story of liberation, Moses’ quest is also a story of political maneuvering. In order to accomplish this emancipation, the neophyte prophet must learn how to attract followers, negotiate with other powerful figures, divide his responsibilities among subordinates and maintain the loyalty of his followers. As the story progresses, a narrative emerges about how, no matter who is wielding the power, political systems are endlessly replicated.
            A novel that alludes to the Book of Exodus is Robert E. Howard’s The Hour of the Dragon (1935), Howard’s only novel-length work about his most famous creation: Conan the Cimmerian. The story of Dragon is that Conan, once a wandering barbarian, has risen to the throne of Aquilonia, the most powerful kingdom in Howard’s fictional Hyborian Age. Conspirators overthrow Conan, using the aid of a resurrected sorcerer named Xaltotun. Conan goes on a quest to find the only artifact that can defeat Xaltotun, and in doing so regains the monarchy. Along the way, the barbarian king learns the political realities of holding a throne.
The Hour of the Dragon features several motifs which allude to Exodus: an army buried beneath an avalanche, staffs that become snakes, supernatural plagues, themes of religious persecution, a slave rebellion, and a journey into Egypt (as opposed to a journey from Egypt). Like Exodus, it tells the story of an aristocrat forced into exile, who then faces the reemergence of a great supernatural power, and discovers his purpose in life through liberating his people. None of Howard’s letters during the writing of Dragon express influence by the Exodus story, but the allusions are too frequent and exact to be coincidental. As an American southerner born in the first half of the 20th century, Howard undoubtedly knew Biblical scripture through its sheer cultural prevalence. Also, other writings of his from the time show the influence of Judeo-Christian mythology, the most obvious being “A Witch Shall Be Born” (1934), in which Conan is crucified on a tree. What distinguishes the allusions is that they are presented as the inverse of Exodus. His characters are presented as the moral/ethical antithesis of their Exodus counterparts. A cynical look at Biblical myth is understandable given Howard’s existentialist worldview (a view which serves as the common theme throughout the Conan story cycle), but these inversions also serve to shed light on Exodus as a political tale. The Book of Exodus is a story about the cyclical nature of politics, and how the structures of power are endlessly reinscribed. This is demonstrated by two Howardian parallels: Moses/Conan and God/Xaltotun.
            In understanding how the Book of Exodus shows the repetition of political systems, it is first necessary to understand the character of Moses and the political climate he is raised in. The first example of a political entity in Exodus is the pharaohs of Egypt, an autocratic government that bases its rule on slavery, religious repression and murder (New International Version, Exodus 1.11-14). Although Moses, being the adopted son of Pharaoh’s daughter (2.10) is raised in this climate, his character is marked by compassion. Moses is exiled because he kills an Egyptian who he sees beating a Hebrew slave (2.11-12). However, he does not flee until the following day, when he tries to break up a fight between two Israelites. They assert that he is not “judge” over them (2.14). It is important to note that Moses does not argue or try to assert his authority; he has no desire to be “judge,” and his self-exile is not just in fear of Pharaoh’s reprisal but a rejection of the Egyptian power structure. Moses’ next act of compassion says more about his character: he sees the daughters of Jethro being driven from a well by a group of shepherds (2.16-17). Not only does Moses drive the shepherds away, but he also waters the daughters’ flock. This shows that his kindness extends not just to people of his immediate geographical tribe, which is a progressive stance when considering the prevalent feudalism in Biblical stories. Though the political milieu that Moses grew up in is one of persecution, he is shown to be a person who rejects that system. The fact that he will come to perpetuate it confirms the cyclical nature of politics.
            Moses receives his introduction to politics when he speaks to God through the burning bush (3.16-18). God promises to help the Israelites gain freedom from Egypt and lead them to the Promised Land, with Moses as liaison between him and the people. In doing so, he mentions Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, invoking the covenant with Abraham, which dictates that all of Abraham’s descendants will receive prosperity in the land of Canaan in return for their worship (Genesis 17.1-8). Later in the story, God mentions the word “covenant” specifically (Exodus 6.4). The covenant as a political arrangement will be discussed later in this essay. Swayed by the majesty of God, Moses accepts the position as God’s prophet to the Israelites. One of his first concerns is that he does not speak well (4.10-13), so God instructs him to enlist his brother Aaron to do the actual oratory to sway the people. Moses is now thinking in practical terms of gaining authority and how these responsibilities are allotted. He divides power with Aaron in order to better influence the masses, and in this way is introduced to politics.
            In terms of courage, martial prowess, compassion and tribal loyalty, Conan is very much like Moses. While the conflict in Exodus is Israelites versus Egyptians, the conflict in Dragon is Aquilonians versus their age-old enemies, the Nemedians. Like Moses, Conan kills when he sees enemies attacking one of his people:  “He had crossed the frontier an hour ago. He was standing on his own soil, watching the murder of one of his own subjects” (Howard 86). Though Conan is not a natural born Aquilonian, he shows a paternalistic attitude toward the subject, telling the foreigners: “Do Nemedian jackals set themselves up as executioners and hang my subjects at will? First you must take the head of their king” (87), and proceeds to kill them. Also like Moses, he rejects the current political system and its intrinsic values. When his army is routed by Xaltotun’s magic, he still wishes to fight to the death. His squire implores him to “yield with the dignity becoming one of royal blood,” (39), to which Conan replies “I have no royal blood . . . I am a barbarian and the son of a blacksmith.” He is a warrior first, and a king second. Moses and Conan are both iconoclasts, rebels who physically and symbolically fight the structures of power. Where their paths diverge is their reaction to the supernatural element. As mentioned above, Moses readily accepts the aid of his deity. Xaltotun offers the deposed Conan a similar deal: “I wanted you alive and unhurt. You may fit into my scheme of things . . . You are a bad enemy, but might make a fine vassal” (49). Conan rejects his offer vehemently, and thus begins his rivalry with Xaltotun. This scene is a reversal of the burning bush scene, in which Moses accepts supernatural aid. A major facet of Conan’s character is self-determination, along with distrust of the supernatural, and because of this his quest is the inverse of Moses’. Moses embarks on a steady path of reinscribing the old systems of power, while Conan, in rejecting Xaltotun, appears on a path to create a new system that reflects his own personal views.
            Although Moses begins as a character with no interest in power, his concern for Israel turns him onto a politician, and makes him complicit in the restoration of a system he once rebelled against. Over the course of the Exodus narrative, he serves as God’s liaison to the Israelites, and gains their supplication through a combination of Aaron’s words and God’s miracles (Exodus 4.29-31). He then serves as liaison to Pharaoh (5.1), and subsequently becomes the mortal hand through which God enacts the Ten Plagues. It is important to note that Pharaoh has no agency during this portion of the story: God states that he is the one making Pharaoh deny the Israelites freedom, in order to send the Plagues and provide an example to both the Egyptians and the Israelites of his majesty (10.1-2). Thus, God’s motives seem less altruistic than political. This is reaffirmed when God states that, through killing the firstborn of Egypt, he will show himself to be greater than Egypt’s gods (12.12). God is literally vying for authority against other faiths, using the Plagues as a tool to ascend to power within the regional pantheon. This gives a political air to Moses’ role. Moses is helping God reestablish his dominion after an absence of 430 years using “shock warfare” tactics. In return, God helps the Israelites. God’s final plague is the murder of the Egyptian firstborn (11.4-8), a direct parallel to the first Pharaoh’s actions to quell the Israelites (1.22), giving Moses a complicity in the reinscription of a particular political tactic: the murder of children.
            In The Hour of the Dragon, Conan serves as Moses’ foil. At a similar point in his own story, after refusing the supernatural, it is established that he is creating his own political system. Conan seems as bent on a new style of government as much as Moses is not. He once more shows compassion by sneaking into Aquilonia’s capital city to rescue a supporter from execution: “I’m going into Tarantia after [Countess] Albiona tonight . . . I’ve failed all my other loyal subjects, it seems--if they take her head, they can have mine too” (Howard 110). Later in the novel, an ally offers to help him start a war of conquest, to which he says: “Let others dream imperial dreams . . . I have no desire to rule an empire welded together by blood . . . It’s one thing to seize a throne with the aid of its subjects . . . It’s another to subjugate a foreign realm and rule it by fear” (145). Conan, though a hardened warrior, is decidedly anti-imperialist. He also believes that the will of the people should matter to a ruler. In reference to a religious sect that is unpopular with the dominant faith, Conan “refused to persecute the followers of Asura or to allow the people to do so on no better evidence than was presented against them” (125). In addition to religious tolerance, he also lowers taxes, and, after regaining his authority, does not punish the Aquilonians who, in their fear, welcomed a new king following reports of his death. This representation is intentional on the part of Howard, who goes to great lengths to make Conan’s aristocratic enemies seem cruel, greedy, insane, imperialist, classist, and, in Xaltotun’s case, demonic. The idea of a “just” ruler is not prevalent in his day and age; Conan is forging a new way. In this manner, his story acts as an alternate version of Moses’, showing how political systems can be altered. This further highlights the cyclical politics in Exodus.
Much of the Exodus story after the Israelites enter the desert is devoted to Moses acting as a politician, learning how to wield power. For instance, Moses judges all disputes between the Israelites, until his father-in-law suggests he divide this exhausting responsibility with trusted subordinates (Exodus 18.17-23). When the Israelites grow unsatisfied from hunger, he is the one to calm them (16.1-8). He takes on the responsibility of consecrating the priests, thus creating another branch of power (29.1). He even grows frustrated with his people when they ask for water, showing the mental effect this responsibility has on him (17.1-4). The story makes it clear that he is a student of politics, getting better at the art as he goes along. All throughout this period, Moses is still marked by compassion. Even when the Israelites stir against him, his natural impulse is to provide for their wellbeing. It is this very characterization that shows the futility of political change. Although Moses retains his defining character trait, and could possibly develop a society that is more progressive than the one he left, that cannot stop him from reestablishing political norms, especially given the conservative nature of God’s politics.
Two events show the complete reinscription of the system. One is God’s establishment of laws which subjugate women.  From the outset, Exodus features strong female characters. It opens with Pharaoh’s decree that every male child born to the Israelites must be drowned in the Nile (1.22). However, the patriarchal nature of Egypt’s rulership is challenged by women. First, the Israelite midwives refuse to kill the male children (1.17-21). This is followed by the rebellion of Moses’ mother and sister, who send the newborn downriver in a basket so that he will not be killed (2.3-4). Women are also instrumental in the story of Passover (12.1-12). God orders the Israelites to eat a specific meal of lamb and unleavened bread while the plague passes through Egypt. Since the hearth was a woman’s responsibility, the women have just as strong a role in the ritual as the men who slaughter the lamb, and save their people from God’s plague by marking their homes as Hebrew homes. All of the agency that women gain during the emancipation is negated at Mount Sinai. The third law that God dictates on Sinai allows fathers to sell their daughters as slaves (21.7-8). Moses says nothing to oppose this misogyny, silently denying the role of women in the Exodus, as well as establishing a slave culture (21.2-4). Though the Israelites have recently been oppressed, this is not taken into consideration when they reinscribe the oppression within their own society.
The second moment is when Moses surrenders his own compassionate nature to maintain control, thus establishing a society exactly like that of Egypt. Fearing that their leader has abandoned them, the Israelites worship the golden calf while Moses is on Sinai, causing Moses to perform a political balancing act (Exodus 32.5-35). God tells Moses to leave him so that he may contemplate how he will “destroy” the idolaters. Moses begs for God not to strike down his people, evoking the covenant with Abraham. He uses diplomacy to quell the god’s wrath. After he has destroyed the calf, Moses sees that some idolaters are still behaving out of control. He subsequently enlists the Levites to slaughter three thousand of the idol worshippers. In light of his conversation with God, this is shown to be contrary to his nature. He massacres his own people, not to appease God, but to maintain his personal authority and the discipline of the camp. Moses maintains order through oppression, just as the Pharaoh who commanded the death of the Israelite sons. It can be argued that every political action Moses takes is in the best interest of the Israelites, and this is confirmed by the fact that he successfully leads them through the desert to Canaan. He is in a powerful position and has to make hard decisions. However, this does not change the fact that he establishes an identical political system to the one in Egypt. In the beginning, he kills out a sense of justice; in the end, he kills for political expedience. Through Moses’ actions, the Book of Exodus shows how political change is futile, no matter how well-intentioned the politician. The same systems are replicated by someone who once opposed them.
            For all that Conan is the antithesis of Moses, his ultimate fate reinforces the cyclical nature of government. Howard repeatedly emphasizes that Conan’s reign is tenuous because he has no heir. As one of his allies says: “The barons who followed you loyally would not follow one of their own number . . . You were the cord that held the fagots together . . . If you had had a son, the barons would have rallied loyally to him” (Howard 103). Xaltotun’s ally, Valerius, easily takes the throne because the people “cried out that any king was better than none, even Valerius, who was at least of . . . the old dynasty” (103). In the span of Howard’s Conan cycle, this is the third uprising against Conan, and the second time he has been dethroned. Despite all of his physical and moral strength, his monarchy is fragile. Thus, Conan’s final victory is not accomplished on the battlefield, but in the marriage bed.  At the end of the novel, the defeated Nemedian king, Tarascus, asks Conan what ransom he desires for his life. Conan speaks of Zenobia, the Nemedian harem girl who freed him from Tarascus’ dungeon: “[Zenobia] shall be your ransom, and naught else. I will come . . . for her as I promised. She was a slave in Nemedia, but I will make her queen of Aquilonia!” (274). Conan, who strikes the more rebellious path than Moses, ultimately gives into political expectations by creating a dynasty. The fact that Howard’s Moses figure succumbs further demonstrates the Exodus tale as one of repetition. Even in the antithetical version, established systems win.
The character of Moses establishes a political system in which the Israelites replicate the oppression of the Egyptians. The character of God also demonstrates the cyclical nature of politics, but in a different manner: he is restoring a political system with himself as the authority, and, in fact, uses the Exodus as a means to increase his political power. The villain of The Hour of the Dragon, Xaltotun, provides a thread with which to view God’s actions politically.
Through Xaltotun, Howard makes his most explicit Biblical allusions. Xaltotun’s first act is to help his co-conspirator Tarascus become king of Nemedia. In this passage, Howard evokes The Plague of the Firstborn ( Exodus 11.1-8):

     The Year of the Dragon had birth in war and pestilence and unrest. The black plague stalked through the streets of Belverus, striking down the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquet board . . . A hot, roaring wind blew incessantly from the south, and the crops withered in the fields, the cattle sank and died in their tracks.
     Men cried out on [the god] Mitra, and muttered against the king; for somehow, throughout the kingdom, the word was whispered that the king was secretly addicted to loathsome practices . . . In one night the king died with his three sons, and the drums that thundered their dirge drowned the grim and ominous bells that rang from the carts that lumbered through the streets gathering up the rotting dead. (Howard 21-22)

            The reference to “the merchant in his stall, the serf in his kennel, the knight at his banquet board” is very close to the Biblical language, and the death of the king’s sons reflects that of Pharaoh’s firstborn. The references to crops and cattle allude to other of the Ten Plagues. Where Howard differs from the authors of Exodus is that there is no sense of beneficence to this plague. Xaltotun is not attempting to liberate anyone; the plague is an entirely political move thought up by the priest Orastes to “set Tarascus on the throne of Nemedia . . . in such a way that no suspicion will rest on Tarascus” (19). Tarascus’ coronation precipitates more politics: “Men said the gods were satisfied because the evil king and his spawn were slain . . . Such a wave of enthusiasm and rejoicing as swept the land is frequently the signal for a war of conquest” (22). Even though God goes to extremes, it can still be argued that the Plagues were reciprocity for the Israelites’ long and harsh enslavement. Xaltotun uses plague to manipulate the populace and make them favorable towards a war with Aquilonia. By making his God-like character’s actions explicitly political, Howard sheds light on God’s own intentions in the Exodus.
            To further the allusion, Howard has Xaltotun do another skewed version of a miracle from Exodus. To defeat Conan’s army, Xaltotun drops the sides of a mountain defile on them. According to the squire who witnesses this: “The cliffs have crumbled! . . . They have thundered down into the defile and crushed every living creature in it!” (37). This alludes to the Parting of the Red Sea. During that famous passage, God tells Moses that he will “harden the hearts” of the Egyptians to make them pursue the Israelites into the supernaturally created channel (Exodus 14.17). God uses his powers to lure the Egyptians to their destruction by drowning (14.26-28). Howard furthers his allusion in that Xaltotun tells Conan he used hypnosis to lead Aquilonians to their doom: “Hypnotic suggestions would not have invaded your mind . . . to make you mad, and rush blindly into the trap laid for you, as it did the lesser man who masqueraded [in your armor]” (Howard 49). Through Xaltotun, Howard casts a sinister aspect to this miracle. Xaltotun is the antagonist of the piece, a despot who uses black magic to replicate miracles from Exodus. Essentially, The Hour of the Dragon is a version of Exodus with God cast as the villain, where the Moses figure fights against God.
            To understand how this relates to the political cycle, it is important to understand the context of Xaltotun’s character. The mortal villains of the novel resurrect the long-dead sorcerer “to aid [them] to rule [the Hyborian] kingdoms” (18). In other words, he is enlisted for political alliance. Xaltotun spends the majority of the novel double-crossing his allies like Valerius and Tarascus, and has his own agenda based around political restoration. Orastes establishes early in the novel that the land in which most of the story takes place once belonged to Xaltotun. “The barbarians who overthrew Acheron set up new kingdoms . . . Where the empire had stretched now rose realms called Aquilonia, and Nemedia . . . The older kingdoms of Ophir, Corinthia and western Koth . . . regained their independence . . .” (17). Xaltotun was the main political faction in ancient Acheron, being the “high priest of Set in [the capital] Python” (14). Later on, a fearful Orastes tells his allies that Xaltotun’s ultimate goal is the resurrection of his evil homeland: “He plots the return of Acheron, with its towers and wizards and kings . . . It is the blood and bodies of the people . . . today that will furnish the mortar and the stones for the rebuilding” (236). The revival of Acheron is itself a sinister rendition of God’s covenant with the Israelites. At the beginning of Exodus, God has been absent from the Israelites’ lives for 430 years (Exodus 12.30). He has not spoken directly to the Hebrew people since the time of Jacob. Both God and Xaltotun are seeking a second domination over land and peoples that they once controlled. God succeeds; Xaltotun does not. In Dragon, Xaltotun is just one of many characters seeking different agendas (Orastes, Tarascus, Baron Amalric, Valerius, the priest Hadrathus, Count Trocero, General Pallantides, Conan, the wizards Thoth-Amon and Tuthothmes). It is Howard’s most politically-minded work, and explicit in the double-crossings that occur in politics. By representing God as simply another player in a game of thrones, Howard shines light on God’s covenant as the reestablishment of a political entity.
            As mentioned above, the purpose of the Ten Plagues was to reestablish God’s dominion as the one deity in a polytheistic region. However, also mentioned above, the horrors of the plagues were as much to frighten the Israelites as the Egyptians. It is within this frame that God reestablishes the covenant with the Israelites on Mount Sinai. In aiding them, he successfully gains a political advantage over them. The resulting covenant has far more laws than the pact with Abraham, and is heavily skewed in God’s favor; he has a law to dictate practically every aspect of their lives. On Sinai, he establishes laws for the treatment of slaves and punishment for personal injury (Exodus 21), personal property and social responsibility (22), justice and the celebrations with which to honor him (23). These are the first of many laws that God establishes, and a large number of them specifically relate to how he wants to be worshipped. While God is a deity, and from a mythological standpoint higher in the hierarchy than any monarch, he is still an autocratic figure. While Moses seems most interested in aiding the Israelites, God is primarily invested in the minute details of governance. Thus, on Mount Sinai, a government is born. God is also favorable towards slavery, property, and the subjugation of women, which makes him not only politically conservative, but reflective of the Egyptians. In the reestablishment of God’s dominion, by way of the covenant, Exodus shows the repetition of political structures. God is a force who, unlike his parallel in The Hour of the Dragon, succeeds in his restoration.
Much of God’s character reflects someone with a personal agenda. For instance, when talking of his plans for the Egyptians, he implores the Israelites to “plunder” them (3.22). This is very strong word choice, reflecting a level of partiality that enhances his monarchical portrayal. At the start of Exodus, he has not contacted the Israelites for generations. During the intervening period, they acquired much political agency through Joseph, although that was stripped from them by the Egyptians. While there is no evidence to support that God purposefully delivered them into the hands of Egypt, as he would later deliver them to the Philistines when they disappointed him, he does ignore his people for 430 years, and takes the opportunity presented in Exodus to increase his agency. This is in keeping with his portrayal as a politically-minded individual. In evoking the covenant, God allows himself to create laws which vastly deplete the Hebrews’ agency at a time when they are politically weak, and in doing so goes beyond the more vague parameters he set with Abraham. Thus, the Abrahamic covenant as God’s political system is not only reestablished, but strengthened. As a politician, God’s authority is increased through the Exodus. The cycle is completed.

            Through The Hour of the Dragon, Robert E. Howard takes a cynical look at the Book of Exodus. However, in setting up Conan and Xaltotun as foils for Moses and God, his own politically-minded characters help illustrate the perpetuation of establishments in Exodus. Exodus is not a story of conventional morality or easy choices. The reinscriptions of authority within it tell a compelling story about the nature of politics, and how it affects nations and individuals.

Sunday, July 21, 2013

Chapter 106: Story genesis--Graveyard Shift

Confession time: I'm not crazy about zombies. They just don't interest me. I've always had a passing interest in their relation to the Afro-American voudoun religion, but never enough to do any real research. I like horror movies, but not ones with zombies. They always seemed so limited. They chase people around and kill. Big whoop.

Then, at some point, zombies became big business. 28 Days Later happened. Max Brooks happened. Left and right, authors were putting out zombie books. Zombies never went away. There's been a steady stream of films since Night of the Living Dead decades ago. But now they were big money.

Nope. Not interested. How cool can a monster be if all he does is grunt? Then again, I loved Robert Rodriguez's Planet Terror, which I saw opening night as part of the Grindhouse double bill. I loved Shaun of the Dead. In these movies, as with the best stories, the premise was only window dressing. Neither are about zombies. Shaun is about family. Planet Terror is about the consequences of war.

Even those movies had the same rote narrative. People die. They come back to life. They kill others. Infestation, apocalypse, rinse, repeat. So I was a bit stumped when Leo Svirsky, of Baby Killer Estelle, commissioned me to write a zombie story for his album.

Leo and I were both students at the University of Maryland. This was during an ill-fated attempt at graduate school, so I was a bit older than him. Leo was a a piano prodigy. Good guy. Baby Killer Estelle was a great duo; I'd seen them perform a few times at DC shows, and their piano-punk always took things to another level.

Leo and I frequented the same open mic, where he saw my first feature, in which I read an early version of "Safe Space." Afterward, Leo informed me the story had melted his brain, and the lightbulb went off over his head that I should write the liner notes for his second album. He asked me to write a short story for the notes. needless to say, I jumped at the chance to be Neil Gaiman to his Tori Amos.

His caveat: it must be about the conflict between anarchy and capitalism, and feature zombies.

My thought: "Well, shit."

A challenge. At first I thought to do some kind of voodoo narrative. Something in Haiti having to do with globalization.  A virus. Corrupt UN aid workers. Yeah, I know. I'm sure they used that plot in some Resident Evil game. It was hard for me to even think about zombies without slipping into cliche.

Funnily enough, what I came up with was also kind of inspired by Leo. Maybe, in a subconscious way. We were at a show watching this group called Chugga Chugga. They had a song about how they were afraid of the zombie apocalypse. After which, Leo said how awesome it would be if we were all zombies, and we could just eat each other's brains and live in harmony.

Other guy: "Anarcho-zombieism?"

And I ended up writing a story about zombies who fight The Man. Ultimately, I don't think I avoided cliche. Zombies as laborers. Seems a pretty textbook metaphor. Zombies are symbols of the working-class. There's a billion of them who fight as one, they're dirty, they stink, they don't show much education, and have nothing resembling organization or finesse. Zombie apocalypse narratives are stories of upper-class fear.

Which of course, makes it interesting to juxtapose them with the other popular post-millennial monster: vampires. Vamps are symbols of the high-class. Every one of them gorgeous, sophisticated, privileged, descended from a Romanian count. Anybody who tells you class isn't the major issue of our times has not looked at the bestseller list.

So, anyway, a textbook metaphor. But that provided a springboard for the story to grow. First I had the zombies, then I had the conflict between capital and human desire, then I had the retail store, then I had the zombies breaking script by living (un)life to the fullest. Before I knew it I had a novella in which I kill everyone who ever pissed me off.

It was fun writing this self-indulgent revenge fantasy. The zombie genre allowed me to write the J-horror levels of violence I could not put into my more, you might say, normal stories. It was a brutal and bloody homage to the anime I watched as a kid. The writing was kind of sloppy, as I viewed it as a fun thing I was doing as a favor to a friend. A fun thing that people have since told me is their favorite story of mine, and became the centerpiece of my next book. It's become one of my favorites too.

The album (later called Awaken Necropolis) went on hiatus, but Dan McCloskey liked the story. So I ended up trimming my long tale into a much shorter one for the Cyberpunk Apocalypse zine. The major casualty was the love story with Christine, whose whole character was shrank to one scene. Then the album was put out. The result was that, in 2010, a story I never expected to see the light of day ended up being published twice. First as a short, then months later as a novella with illustrations from someone who I believe Leo met while studying at The Hague.

My favorite memory of the genesis of "Graveyard Shift" was my 26th birthday. I wanted to get together a group of my friends and read a story to them. Being able to read a whole piece, not just a snippet, was my gift to myself.

Artnoose baked some brownies and I grabbed some PBR. A friend of mine ended up bringing a cake. They sat in a circle and I read "Graveyard Shift" for an hour, with Dan on the computer playing music cues I pulled up on Youtube. He played Kelly Clarkson. He played "Magic Man" by Heart. He played the anime soundtrack music I'd been gorging on at the time. The story was made to be read out loud, and we all had a great time. It was altogether very cozy and familial, which is strange when speaking about a story where jugulars get ripped and intestines spill pink blood.

We all hung out afterward and danced to some New Jack Swing. Since a bunch of people were home, we took a house photo. That's the power of zombies: bringing people together.

So a story that I was initially not very jazzed to write became the novella it is now. Let us give thanks for anarchy, and zombies, and all combinations of the two.

Saturday, July 20, 2013

HARD TIMES BLUES book launch July 24th!

This week, I read two more chapters of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and released my second book. Mourning the loss of Brooklyn's unique culture to gentrification, celebrating my book with a party. It's at Pegasus on Shattuck, and here are the specs:

Elwin Cotman, along with guest readers Terra Brigando and Miquela Alejandrewill be celebrating the launch of his second story collection, Hard Time Blues (Six Gallery Press, $12.00). Cotman's Blues is another trip through the dreamlands. These five lyrical and satirical fables look at the lives of the dispossessed through a fabulist lens. 
Pegasus Books Downtown
2349 Shattuck Avenue
United States

Yes! Come party with me! There will be wine! And maybe some cake? I'm working on it. It's done, and now is time to rejoice!

I thought long and hard about who I'd like to read with me, out of the many Bay area writers whom I admire. Miquila Alejandre and Terra Brigando are two of the most powerful young artists in the literary scene. Miquila's work is both fun and heartbreaking, and she reads with the confidence of one who knows her characters and story inside-out. I saw a video of her work on the Litseen youtube channel and became an instant fan. Terra was in my MFA class at Mills. Her writing leans more toward the heartbreaking side of things, and is so sophisticated that, of course, it makes me insanely jealous.

Here is some footage of Terra reading.

Here is some footage of Miquila:

Both of these women are the real deal. I can't wait to see them read.

In less fun news, next week I will have to pick up my books from the Oakland UPS, whose office way out by the airport, and whose professionalism...leaves something to be desired. The last time I had books shipped to Oakland, their driver managed to twice not deliver my package, despite my being at home. Ring a doorbell, maybe? Or the time they told me to drive out to pick the books up, only to reveal they'd put them on the truck. Like many an Oaklander, I endure this UPS franchise. Time to see what new adventures they lead me on.

But enough of that. Celebration!

Sunday, July 14, 2013

Chapter 105: In Honor

When I was first learning to drive, my dad would do the supervision. At this point in time I lived in suburban Maryland, a heavily forested area, and we would take the backroads because they didn't have a lot of traffic. Eventually we pulled off the road...and someone pulled off behind us.

It was a white man. Not a cop. Not anyone with any kind of authority. But he proceeded to give my father a lecture about how dangerous his driving was. I was driving too slow for this guy's tastes. I listened to this from the car, where my dad commanded me to stay. When my father explained that he was helping his son (as everyone with a learners permit needs supervision), the man continued to berate him about the dangers of doing so. Dude was seriously aggressive about it. And my 50-something year-old father apologized.

Now, he could have told the guy to mind his own business. At which point, the white man could have killed both him and his son and gotten away with it. Or the man could have called the police...who could have killed him and his son and gotten away with it. My father grew up in the South and had seen blacks killed for far less. Because he was a responsible parent, he kowtowed, and apologized, and deferred. Getting indignant was not a luxury he possessed.

Flash forward fifteen or so years. I work in education. Currently teaching middle school. More specifically, I'm teaching a civics course about the US Constitution. I did everything in my power not to dwell too long on the history of the thing, as to not lionize slaveowner rapists like Thomas Jefferson, and move on to its relevance in the here and now of the students' lives.

As a teacher, I feel a lot of the time I'm selling kids dreams. I tell black children that going to college is the key to equality. Getting a career will somehow protect them. If only through silent complacency with this narrative, I convey to them that things are different than 100 years ago. First of all, they aren't. Second of all, the kids know they aren't. An innocent childhood is something black people don't get. Every child knows that no amount of degrees, or money, or awards, will shield you from the bullet of a racist vigilante.

In America's eyes, a young black male will always be a thug who needs to be put down. That's been my experience. I have never been a black woman, so don't pretend to know how racism affects them on an internal level.

I know plenty of people who've stayed away from the internet during the trial, to avoid the flood of racism poured on Trayvon, his family, and his friends. Personally, I really like to know what I am up against. I read the comments. There are white people out there who hate black people with a passion. Millions of them, with an all-consuming hate that cannot be reasoned with. And they just received a major victory.

There's tons of talk about this verdict, and I won't say much, because there's nothing to say. The reality of American racism is obvious. The fact that we haven't progressed since the lynching days is only shocking to white people.

Vigilance is important. We need to protect ourselves, as Trayvon tried to protect himself. Courage is important. We should not give into the fear that would make us stay off the streets we have a legal right to be on. Anger is important. It is our most potent emotion, the one that drives us to action.

Memory is also important. It is so important. Black people are constantly told to forget. Forget slavery, forget Jim Crow, forget everything that happened or is happening to us. When your enemy wants you to forget, remembrance becomes a weapon. Seventy years later, people remember the name of Emmitt Till, not the child-killing animals who murdered him.

We need to be critical, make sure that the story emerging is our story. For instance, I always found it insidious that we only learn about Emmitt Till in relation to lynching. He is put up there as the quintessential dead black child for a reason. For even the most progressive person, there's that niggling thought in their mind, "Maybe he deserved it." Yeah, that lady was probably lying, but if she wasn't, what kind of idiot whistles at a white woman in the deep south? How did he expect not to get killed? These thoughts aren't right, and they clearly don't absolve his killers, but there's that little thought that perhaps he can shoulder some of the blame.

Never mind all the black children killed prior to that, by lynch mobs, or massacres like Tulsa. What did they do to deserve getting killed? We are told to forget them, when we should honor them as we do Trayvon.

One thing I always found inspiring in the Till trial is that his great-uncle took the witness stand.
I can't imagine the courage it took for Mose Wright to even enter that hostile courtroom filled with sneering drunks, stand up there and point the murderers out in court, knowing they would be acquitted on the virtue of being white. He could have been lynched for opening his mouth and he did it anyway.

Such courage is not dead. Rachel Jaentel knew she was going to be mocked, and persecuted, and criticized for her being poor and black. She knew just like Mose Wright did that the killer would get off, because black people don't get to believe in fairy tales. But she did what was right. She should be honored as well.

I live in Oakland. There were protests after the verdict, and riots, and a name that kept coming up. Oscar Grant. Another black life ended because by racism. His name is now a rallying cry for the community. People in Oakland are already forgetting the name of the cop who executed him, just like Americans will ultimately forget some fat pansy who couldn't win a fair fight against a child. As long as there is Oakland, there is Oscar Grant. As long as there is America, there is Trayvon. Memory is a weapon. We do not stay dead.

Saturday, July 13, 2013

Friday, July 5, 2013

Chapter 104: In Which I Discuss Promo

Arrrrgh! Eleventh hour edits. Reading the same stories over and over, coming up with less and less to say. Somehow still coming up with basic grammatical typos in stories I've been working on for years.

My cellphone died recently. Like, it won't turn on at all. Every time I press the button, the screen comes up, stays a few seconds, and goes. I took out the battery and was literally blowing into it like an old Nintendo cartridge. Ah well.

I went to Pride in San Fran today. Not really my scene, as I don't like big crowds, but I had to check out the celebration. And it was a celebration. Flags waving. People dancing--more specifically, grinding--on window ledges. Literally millions of activists have been working hard for decades to get gay marriage passed in California. And while that's just a drop in the bucket as far as rights go, it means something. Everybody was right to be dancing as hard as they were.

I hadn't been to Pride in years. I forgot how many boobs, asses, and ding-a-lings you'll see there. Honorable mention goes to the S&M dudes in pony masks.

Getting ready for my book. I'm taking the promo one day at a time. I got together a press release and sent it to some websites/blogs on Friday. Today is final edits. And I booked a book launch! It'll be at Pegasus in Berkeley on Wednesday, July 24th. 7:30 pm. There will be a few surprises. I don't have time to send the release to all the sites I want to, so promo for Hard Times Blues will be mostly word-of-mouth. Like it's always been with my work.

The Piper's Christmas Gift
I've been reading books about NYC at the fin de siecle in order to get details right on my own book. Reading The Magician by Maugham. The dialogue, which mostly consists of rich people talking trash to each other, is stellar. I also read the first chapter of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn and feel it's going to be a favorite.

Also read this great book:
It's got some great pictures of old subway stations, but most is left to my imagination. I have to piece together what these subways look like from descriptions in the text. One thing I love about NYC in general is the mishmash of architectural styles, so I adore reading about the tulip-shaped light fixtures and little nymphs engraved on the station signs.

I'm reading old issues of St. Nicholas online. Here's the great fan page that lead me to them: A beautiful site. Kipling's in thse 19th century issues, as well as Mark Twain's later Tom Sawyer stories. As a fan of children's lit, I could get lost in those archives.

St. Nicholas is altogether charming. It's interesting because I really don't think kids nowadays would be entertained by these innocent nursery rhymes and stories. Of course, many of the stories are horribly racist. Many of the writers don't like blacks. Or Native Americans. Or Russian Cossacks. And, my god ,the pictures! It's weird to look at beautiful illustrations where the Anglo are all photo-realistic, but share the same frame with cartoon stereotypes. The racism, besides being fascinatng from a historical perspective, is also relevant to my book. A major theme is how images affect children's self-esteem. My protagonists have literally no positive representations of blacks around them. The best they get is Little Black Sambo. When I was a kid, I often felt degraded and marginalized by the images I saw of black people. It had to be worse at the fin de siecle, when every book out there was "comical darky" this and "lazy Negro" that. Nevertheless, St. Nicholas is a brilliant magazine, packed with fun and information and a plethora of history. There's nothing like reading an account of electricity from back when it was first harnessed, and thinking, "little does this writer know..."

Oh, and I'm currently reading one of their Christmas issues, so it's doubly charming. Although I'm not Christian, I've been liking the idea of Christmas lately. Aside from the Nativity, everything about the holiday, from the tree to Santa to the yule log, is taken from the pagan. Santa is an avatar of Odin, for Thor's sake. And every year we get together to give gifts, not even aware of how are customs reflect the Winter solstice from thousands of years ago. Add to this the Nativity, what I view as the most positive myth about Jesus Christ, and certainly the most whimsical. Add to this the elaborate mythology about Santa Claus, which includes children writing letters. Letters! Add to this the Christmas carols, most of which are Victorian in nature, and you have one of the world's most thoroughly unmodern holidays. That's why A Christmas Carol, with its ghosts and Grim Reaper, will always feel right, while modern-day Christmas stories about department stores and setting up lights have to work hard for my interest. Everything about Christmas is so magical, so spiritual, so connected with images of night, and stars, and carolers, and men in stovepipe hats, and druids, and fauns, and New England villages covered in snow.The whole holiday feels like it belongs to some bygone age. I think I might have to start celebrating it, in some way.