Oscar Hijueols' intro to Jorge Luis Borges' “The Aleph”.

I FIRST ENCOUNTERED 'THE ALEPH" BY THE GREAT ARGENTINE WRITER Jorge Luis Borges one afternoon over twenty years ago, in 1973-I believe- when I was down on the Lower East Side visiting a friend, a young Armenian intellectual, such as one might meet at City College in those days. While he fiddled about in his kitchen (or walked his dog, or pleaded/conversed with his girlfriend on the telephone), I sat on his itchy, cat-haired, roach-egged couch, idly riffling through a pile of books that I had pulled from his shelves, among them a mildewed, jaundiced-looking, much-read-over pocketbook edition of THE ALEPH AND OTHER STORIES by Borges. Now, just a few days earlier I had been informed about the results of an aptitude test I had taken, the upshot being that I was apparently most suited for the profession of accounting. That well may have been my destiny, but I am happy (unhappy?) to report that the experience of reading "The Aleph" for the first of many times had a great effect upon me and my future; I have loved and will always love that story-and I will always be indebted to Borges for having written it-because, aside from its many wonderful qualities, it will always hold a special meaning for me: quite simply, "The Aleph" is the story that first inspired in me the desire to one day write.

As for the story itself, "The Aleph" is part love tale, told in a voice that is both obsessively introspective and delicately urbane; it has an undertone of near horror, like a ghost story-as in an Edgar Allan Poe tale the object of the narrator's love, Beatriz Viterbo, exerts a great power long after she has been dead; it has a quite visual, nearly cinematic, narrative that is a pleasure to read. Ironically, Borges, who suffered from a hereditary progressive blind-ness, had often spoken about the influence of film upon his writing. In the economy and vividness of its details, it is instructive to young writers-note how effortlessly Borges suggests the shifting universe by opening with a most introspective and bemused narrator noticing yet another new brand of Ameri-can cigarette being advertised on the billboards of Constitution Plaza in Buenos Aires. And it is quite funny-especially to writers-when, for example, the narrator, Borges himself, muses over the critical success of a decidedly second-rate talent, Carlos Argentino Daneri, who to the narrator's cha-grin has risen to the top of the poet's profession while the narrator has not.

For a final note; without betraying the essence of the story, which is the "Aleph" itself, nor this story's spectacular climax, I will leave the reader with my sense that in this work, as in certain others-"Funes, the Memorious," for example-Borges is really writing about and paying tribute to the writer's consciousness, which, through its command of and access to the imagination and language, can contain and replicate everything that has existed or will ever exist in this universe.

From YOU’VE GOT TO READ THIS. The following is the introduction by Oscar Hijueols to Jorge Luis Borges story “The Aleph”.

Say No to Censorship!

It is just plain silly that some of the books listed below are listed. On the other hand, I abhor some of the books on the list. But in the final analysis I strongly oppose censorship. What goes around, comes around. Some of the books we now live by could also be censored in the future.

The 100 Most Frequently Challenged Books of 1990–20001
from the ALA (American Library Association)

1. Scary Stories (Series) by Alvin Schwartz
2. Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite
3. I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings by Maya Angelou
4. The Chocolate War by Robert Cormier
5. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn by Mark Twain
6. Of Mice and Men by John Steinbeck
7. Harry Potter (Series) by J.K. Rowling
8. Forever by Judy Blume
9. Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson
10. Alice (Series) by Phyllis Reynolds Naylor
11. Heather Has Two Mommies by Leslea Newman
12. My Brother Sam is Dead by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier
13. The Catcher in the Rye by J.D. Salinger
14. The Giver by Lois Lowry
15. It's Perfectly Normal by Robie Harris
16. Goosebumps (Series) by R.L. Stine
17. A Day No Pigs Would Die by Robert Newton Peck
18. The Color Purple by Alice Walker
19. Sex by Madonna
20. Earth's Children (Series) by Jean M. Auel
21. The Great Gilly Hopkins by Katherine Paterson
22. A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle
23. Go Ask Alice by Anonymous
24. Fallen Angels by Walter Dean Myers
25. In the Night Kitchen by Maurice Sendak
26. The Stupids (Series) by Harry Allard
27. The Witches by Roald Dahl
28. The New Joy of Gay Sex by Charles Silverstein
29. Anastasia Krupnik (Series) by Lois Lowry
30. The Goats by Brock Cole
31. Kaffir Boy by Mark Mathabane
32. Blubber by Judy Blume
33. Killing Mr. Griffin by Lois Duncan
34. Halloween ABC by Eve Merriam
35. We All Fall Down by Robert Cormier
36. Final Exit by Derek Humphry
37. The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood
38. Julie of the Wolves by Jean Craighead George
39. The Bluest Eye by Toni Morrison
40. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Girls: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Daughters by Lynda Madaras
41. To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
42. Beloved by Toni Morrison
43. The Outsiders by S.E. Hinton
44. The Pigman by Paul Zindel
45. Bumps in the Night by Harry Allard
46. Deenie by Judy Blume
47. Flowers for Algernon by Daniel Keyes
48. Annie on my Mind by Nancy Garden
49. The Boy Who Lost His Face by Louis Sachar
50. Cross Your Fingers, Spit in Your Hat by Alvin Schwartz
51. A Light in the Attic by Shel Silverstein
52. Brave New World by Aldous Huxley
53. Sleeping Beauty Trilogy by A.N. Roquelaure (Anne Rice)
54. Asking About Sex and Growing Up by Joanna Cole
55. Cujo by Stephen King
56. James and the Giant Peach by Roald Dahl
57. The Anarchist Cookbook by William Powell
58. Boys and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
59. Ordinary People by Judith Guest
60. American Psycho by Bret Easton Ellis
61. What's Happening to my Body? Book for Boys: A Growing-Up Guide for Parents & Sons by Lynda Madaras
62. Are You There, God? It's Me, Margaret by Judy Blume
63. Crazy Lady by Jane Conly
64. Athletic Shorts by Chris Crutcher
65. Fade by Robert Cormier
66. Guess What? by Mem Fox
67. The House of Spirits by Isabel Allende
68. The Face on the Milk Carton by Caroline Cooney
69. Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut
70. Lord of the Flies by William Golding
71. Native Son by Richard Wright
72. Women on Top: How Real Life Has Changed Women's Fantasies by Nancy Friday
73. Curses, Hexes and Spells by Daniel Cohen
74. Jack by A.M. Homes
75. Bless Me, Ultima by Rudolfo A. Anaya
76. Where Did I Come From? by Peter Mayle
77. Carrie by Stephen King
78. Tiger Eyes by Judy Blume
79. On My Honor by Marion Dane Bauer
80. Arizona Kid by Ron Koertge
81. Family Secrets by Norma Klein
82. Mommy Laid An Egg by Babette Cole
83. The Dead Zone by Stephen King
84. The Adventures of Tom Sawyer by Mark Twain
85. Song of Solomon by Toni Morrison
86. Always Running by Luis Rodriguez
87. Private Parts by Howard Stern
88. Where's Waldo? by Martin Hanford
89. Summer of My German Soldier by Bette Greene
90. Little Black Sambo by Helen Bannerman
91. Pillars of the Earth by Ken Follett
92. Running Loose by Chris Crutcher
93. Sex Education by Jenny Davis
94. The Drowning of Stephen Jones by Bette Greene
95. Girls and Sex by Wardell Pomeroy
96. How to Eat Fried Worms by Thomas Rockwell
97. View from the Cherry Tree by Willo Davis Roberts
98. The Headless Cupid by Zilpha Keatley Snyder
99. The Terrorist by Caroline Cooney
100. Jump Ship to Freedom by James Lincoln Collier and Christopher Collier

The Thinking Period

For me, it begins with just thinking about what I want to write-the plot, characters, setting, mood, pacing, point of view, twists and turns, thematic structure, anything and everything that has to do with the story. I have learned it is a process I cannot rush. Sometimes it goes quickly and sometimes it takes forever. Think of it as a percolation period, when you let your ideas brew and the flavor of your story build.

Lots of ideas occur to me while this is going on. I don't write them down. I don't write anything down-except for names, which go on a name list I carry with me everywhere. But nothing else. It's a firm rule. I used to think that if I got an idea, I should write it down immediately so that I wouldn't lose it. Sometimes I would wake in the middle of the night with brilliant ideas that I would dash down on slips of paper so they would be saved for when I awoke the next morning. What happened was that either I couldn't make sense of them or they turned out to be not so brilliant after all. So I've changed my thinking on this. If an idea doesn't stick with me for more than twenty-four hours, it probably wasn't all that hot in the first place.

Anyway, this thinking period-this dream time-is crucial to everything that happens later, but particularly to the construction of my outline. I want to be able to picture my story in images before I try to reduce it to mere words. I want to think about the possibilities. Everyone asks a writer where he gets his ideas. You've already seen the chapter on that. The truth is that coming up with ideas is easy; it's making up the stories that grow out of them that's hard.

from Sometimes the Magic Works by Terry Brooks

The Future of Film

"Whatever it is called in the future, it's going to start with someone wanting to tell a story to someone else. I don't think there is anything in the technology or financing that can mess that up. Can they make stories and compelling dramas that are entertaining, charming, inventive, romantic, funny, that somehow moves forward the human spirit, and support the best of who we and what we are as individuals? Can we do that and still have it be a good business? That's the real challenge."

from a FRONTLINE Documentary about Movies

Structure

Without a structure you just might build yourself a Corvette without an engine or a rhinoceros without any legs: impressive to look at maybe, but neither one of those things is going anywhere. Faulkner made money in Hollywood because he understood these things. The structures he chose for many of his own novels might have been inimical to film structure, but he obviously knew the difference. And in The Reivers, he used his Hollywood know-how to build a different kind of novel.

An Interview with Les Standiford by Steve Glassman. Standiford is the founding director of the MFA program in writing at Florida International University.

Writing in Not a Profession

Writing is not a profession but a vocation of unhappiness.(Georges Simenon)

Schools of Literature Were Invented by Professors

We have now a whole bevy of writers who take pride in annoying the reader. They make him feel guilty and bore him. They weep on the reader's shoulder and this is proclaimed the very mission of the so called serious writer. The great writers always gave joy to the readers even in their tragedies. Kafka, Joyce, and Proust are great talents, but Kafkaism, Joyceism, and even Proustism have become a burden to young students. The fact is that all "isms" are bad for literature. Every "ism" is by its very definition a cliché. In literature and in art generally all schools and disciples are bad. The various schools and "isms" of literature were invented by professors. Tolstoy didn't belong to any school. Only small fish swim in schools.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Children Read for Story, Not the Author

Children are wonderful because they are completely independent readers. A child would not read a book because it was written by a "great writer" —a man with great authority. The fact that Shakespeare has written it will not impress a child‑the child will look over the story by himself and see if he likes it or not. You cannot impress a child by criticism. You cannot say, "This is a wonderful book because such and such critic has said it's wonderful." A child doesn't care about the critics, because the child himself is a critic. A child will not read a book because it was advertised in a very big way. He is actually a more independent reader than the adult, who is impressed by authorities, criticism, and big advertisements in the New York Times or on television. It's harder to fool children than to fool adults when it comes to literature.

from Conversations with Isaac Bashevis Singer

Novel: Due East

NOVEL: Due East by Valerie Sayers ****

Sometime in the early 90's I stumbled across HOW I GOT HIM BACK by Valerie Sayers at a used bookstore. I loved her mythical town, Due East, and its characters and searched for her other books. Her first novel (DUE EAST) was no longer in print and although I searched through used stores and wrote to several others, I could not find it. I did find four later novels (THE DISTANCE BETWEEN US, WHO DO YOU LOVE, and BRAIN FEVER), which also took place in the town of Due East. I enjoyed them tremendously.

Recently a made for SHOWTIME movie titled DUE EAST was advertised so I watched it with great anticipation. Although the movie was mediocre, I remembered I had never found the first novel, DUE EAST, by Sayers. Of course, now with half.com and alibris.com, out of print books are easy to find and within minutes I ordered DUE EAST.

The protagonist is Mary Faith Rapple, a pregnant 15 year old. Her mother died of cancer and the baby's father from an overdose of tranquilizers; and her own father is distant and preoccupied. Initially she clings to a virgin birth theory when talking to her dad and is determined to have her baby.

The character of Mary Faith Rapple is skillfully drawn with a wry sensitivity and innocence. The chapters alternate between the first person narrative of Mary Faith and the first person narrative of her dad until the last chapter, which is in third person. The town of Due East, with all its eccentricities, is all that I remember it to be, with the strong undercurrents of faith, sex, and the rejection of faith expected of a damn good southern novel.

My favorite line comes from when Mary Faith and her father go to church:

"All around me I could feel the electric buzz that Dr. Beady set off when he began to speak. In a few minutes, people would drift away, would stop listening to him, but for now, he had them; he had them lined up naked with their legs spread apart and they were trying to shield themselves. He loved those words sin and sinner: he sloshed them around in his mouth like wine and then spat them out, all over the congregation."

Adverb Recognition

Got to thinking. To edit unessential adverbs, we have to first be able to recognize them.

On adverb recognition--nothing you don't already know. After I typed this explanation, I decided it may be too much for your newsletter--probably even boring to most readers. But for whatever . . . .

Just because a word ends in -ly doesn't mean it's an adverb; for instance, the friendly youngster met the crew at the door. But the -ly can be considered a signal. When we see the signal, we must confirm our suspicion that the word ending in the suffix is an adverb.

A grammarian might explain modification, but a nongrammarian may consider an adverb's position in the sentence. If the word ending in the suffix can be relocated without changing meaning, it is an adverb. Although adverbs usually have places they sound and work best in sentences, adverbs are like gypsies--transient.

For example: The couple in the booth appeared to be arguing passionately. Passionately the couple in the booth appeared to be arguing. The couple in the booth passionately appeared to be arguing. The couple in the booth appeared to be passionately arguing.

Adverbs can even split infinitives: The couple in the booth appeared to passionately be arguing.

By the way, in addition to single words, adverbs can be phrases, in which case we can't rely on the -ly signal. But we can ask questions--such as where and when--to test the phrase. Consider the prepositional phrase in the following sentence: In the woods by the edge of the pond, the whipperwills called. "In the woods" not only can be relocated but it also tells where the whipperwills called; thus, the phrase is adverbial. Unlike the adverbial phrase, "by the edge of the pond" answers the adjectival question "which ones," or "which woods"; the phrase is an adjective and should remain next to the adverb, which it modifies.

from Joy Bagley, Night Writers member and WNCWriters Director, on adverbs.

Attacked or Unnoticed

I would rather be attacked than unnoticed. For the worst think you can do to an author is to be silent as to his works.

Quote from Boswell's LIFE OF JOHNSON

The Novel is No Longer Essential

The novel has been dwindling since the end of the 19th century, because of one inescapable fact, which is that it is no longer as essential to people’s cultural lives as it used to be. The movies replaced it, certainly, and television. Novelists have lost the sense that we make a difference." Norman Mailer

Southern Writers

I've been influenced by a lot of the Southern writers for their connection to the physical world, and their enslavement to it.

The Writer's Chronicle, May/Summer 2002
An Interview with Jayne Anne Phillips by Sarah Anne Johnson

The Zest of Good Storytelling

Stories teach by example, and by permitting us to safely participate in crises we hope to never get near. Quotidian life seldom offers opportunities for glorious heroism or grand agonies of defeat, but fictional entertainments offer those opportunities in abundance. Handbooks on fiction-writing persistently point out that at the climax of the plot the principal characters ought to be confronted with a choice that will be definitive, both in terms of the burgeoning chaos around them and in terms of their own psychologies. Often these are moments of personal reform and redemption, even of metamorphosis, as the hero goes against fate, against his or her upbringing, and becomes wholly different, new. Ethical grayness characterizes much of our human experience; and we change only incrementally, through a host of seemingly inconsequential decisions. The zest of good storytelling comes from its gross exaggeration of the frightening and mysterious process of change, so that we see heightened in THE ENGLISH PATIENT or SCHINDLER'S LIST the horrifying possibilities of wrong choices and the health to ourselves and others in choosing rightly.

from A STAY AGAINST CONFUSION by Ron Hansen

Present Tense

"Because flashbacks, summaries, and other techniques that allow us to manipulate the order and duration of time often destroy the illusion of presentness, most writers of present-tense fiction use them sparingly. . ."

ON THE OTHER HAND

"To the philosopher Mary Warnock, the principal consequence [of thesubordination of history] is the diminishment of the imagination. "The greatest enemy of imagination," she says," is to be locked in the present," for the imagination's primary purpose is to make connections between past,present, and future."

FROM Jauss' Remeberence of Things Present in the WRITER'S CHRONICAL (vol. 34, #5)

One of My Favorite Books: Walking Across Egypt

Walking Across Egypt (Clyde Edgerton)

Mattie Rigsby is another independent, strong willed senior citizen (this one as southern as the day is long) and her attempt to do something good is the grist of this hilarious, poignant novel.

Even now, as I write this, each of the books speak to me from the shelf and call out to me reminding me of roads traveled, experiences shared, and characters encountered.

O'Connor and Fanatics

About the fanatics. People make a judgment of fanaticism by what they are themselves. To a lot of Protestants I know, monks and nuns are fanatics, none greater. And to a lot of the monks and nuns I know, my Protestant prophets are fanatics. For my part, I think the only difference between them is that if you are a Catholic and have this intensity of belief you join the convent and are heard from no more; whereas if you are a Protestant and have it, there is no convent for you to join and you go about in the world, getting into all sorts of trouble and drawing the wrath of people who don't believe anything much at all down on your head . . . . If I set myself to write about a socially desirable Christianity, all the life would go out of what I do. And if I set myself to write about the essence of Christianity, I would have to quite writing fiction, or either become another person.

from Flannery O'Connor's THE HABIT OF BEING letter to Sister Mariella Gable, 4 May 1963

History is Not Truth

"History is not truth. Truth is in the telling." (Robert Penn Warren)

Great Writers are Either Husbands or Lovers

Great writers are either husbands or lovers. Some writers supply the solid virtues of a husband: reliability, intelligibility, generosity, decency. There are other writers in whom one prizes the gifts of a lover, gifts of temperament rather than of moral goodness. (Susan Sontag)

Fiction Must Tell the Ineffable Truth

. . . Art, by its very nature, cannot be written for the purpose of demonstrating a preconceived idea, even a religious or spiritual one. It must tell the ineffable truth about the human experience. The artist therefore has to be willing to go into that place in her soul which is so deep and so dark that she can't see her way around, where she can't rely on traditional knowledge or conventional ways of knowing, and she has to open her eyes to whatever's there.

Writing is an act of compassion, of empathy, of generosity of spirit, both from writer to character and writer to reader, and reading is the reader's act of reciprocal compassion. Writing is an act of faith, faith that if I tell a story honestly enough it will resonate in to the loves of people who haven't lived these things, faith that if I listen closely.

From a talk by Elizabeth Dewberry, novelist Many Things Have Happened Since He Died and Sacrement of Lies.