Inferno Assignment

Inferno Assignment
This project will take place over the next few weeks. Using Dante's model (a hierarchy and divine retribution), you will create a contemporary Inferno for sinners who have existed since Dante's time. All of your sinners, including your guide, must be deceased. Your guide will be a flawed human being, but likable. Your narrator should like him/her and so should your reader.



Your guide should possess wisdom and compassion.
Your sinners can be taken from history or they can be fictional "stock" characters--or a combination of both.

Your setting is open to interpretation, but it must make sense. There are better parts for the milder sins and worse parts for the stronger sins.

There will be five levels and each level will contain a category of sin and its own setting and characters.

You should have a strong opening--logical and according to Dante's style--a good "hook."

Individual stories have clear beginnings, middles, and ends
Ends of stories transition into next story
The work comes together as a whole
Each story is also capable of standing alone

Character development: includes strong dialog and movement

The story shows rather than tells. Elements of the story--character development, the environment, can be sensed.
Setting the scene--makes sense in terms of punishment. Setting is vivid; it can be perceived in terms of the senses.

The writers uses similes or metaphors. The writer uses at least two Biblical or classical allusion (in the entire piece).

Voice: Narrator and guide have consistent and believable voices
Follows Dante's paradigm

Is factually correct (if using real people--and you are using at least one); is believable if using stock characters
Sinners and guide must be deceased

It must be correct in terms of mechanics--spelling, usage, punctuation, and sentence structure

As always, diction is important. It's not about using the biggest word, but the best.

As a rule, and to please me, have a character speak first, and then mention his/her name. I'll give you examples in my own Inferno.

This project will be worth three test grades:
1. Process--includes research, outline, and at least two edited rough drafts
2. Final product as a whole
3. Best individual story (selected by you).
Here are some questions students had about the project last year. Maybe you have some of the same questions now:

1. Is there a guideline to the length of the paper? Approximately what length is appropriate for each story / level?
It should probably be at least five pages because each canto should be at least a page--typed and double-spaced--if you are to accomplish what you need to accomplish in the rubric provided.On the average, cantos are a page to a page-and-a-half-long, though they may be as much as two pages. Try to keep it under that.


Each canto has to include similes and/or metaphors, (and at least two cantos must include a mythical allusion) and simple but descriptive language, and dialog. Getting a whole page is actually easy when you include dialog, which you must do.
Each time a character speak, he/she gets his/her own paragraph. For example:


"Where do you think you are going," asked a vaguely familiar woman in a navy blue dress.
"You and I have business to attend to, and on this very day."
"I was just touring the city," I said, pointing to the Planet Hollywood just ahead.
"I am your tour guide," said the woman.
"I don't recall employing a guide," I said.


Do you see how each time a different speaker spoke, she got her own paragraph? Note too, that I usually just said "said." You don't need to dress up "said" too often. And avoid "stated" altogether. We rarely state things, especially when speaking in the vernacular. Besides, I hate the word because it is so often used and misused.


By the way, I never started with: A vaguely familiar woman said, "Where do you think you are going? You and I have business to attend to, and on this very day."

Pointing to the Planet Hollywood just ahead, I said, "I was just touring the city."

Note the difference in the rhythms. If I put I said or She said before the quote itself, it tends to interrupt the rhythm of the piece. Unless you are writing in poetry, then avoid it altogether.


2. Can the Inferno take place in the future? No. And all characters except the narrator must be dead.


3. Can it be an art project with a summary? No. I want you to learn how to write. I want you to learn by showing me, not telling me. This project employs techniques that writers use. By employing them, you will be able to identify them and all or most of your future English teachers will thank me. Some already have. :)


4. Can more than one person use the same or a similar theme? Yes. But each work must be original to that student. While you will be peer-editing each other's work, it will be your own work. If two people submit the same work, I will consider it plagiarism. This is individual work. You will pledge it, just as you would pledge a test. By the way, I reserve the right to "Google" or check phrases for plagiarism in other ways, say "Lexus-Nexus."


5. If you are using unfamiliar words (say, a dialect or slang), should they be explained? Yes. Footnotes are a good way.


6. Avoid placing your Infernos in works written by other authors. There is too much of a chance of copyright infringement.

7. When in doubt about anything, ask the teacher.



Sample A


Part I: My Inspiration and Getting to Know Her Better


I'm going to make Virginia Woolf my guide for now.

Why Virginia? She's a great writer. She's witty. She's an atheist and a suicide so she fits the criteria.

I will start by looking at some of her writing--and showing you an example. The first thing I want to do is to establish a kind of voice for my guide. I will also be establishing a voice for my narrator. Remember, your narrator is not the same as you. It can have some things in common with you, but it is not you. If you make the narrator yourself, you will be too restrained. I'm an experienced writer, so you can trust me on that. My narrator will be wittier than I am, more self-confident, and definitely outgoing. She will be a good match for the likes of Virginia Woolf. The real me would probably be speechless in such esteemed company. The real me would be searching for witty things to say but only thinking of the inane things instead. The real me would think of all kinds of witty things to say after the encounter has ended and would probably have talked too much or too little and revealed all the wrong kinds of things. The real me is pretty shy around adults.

The fictional me, however, has time to think. I can think of all the witty things to say because I have time and can actually EDIT what I say. I love and hate editing. Whether I love or hate it, it's work and one of the main reasons for assigning this project.

Now, let me take a look at some of my favorite passages by Virginia Woolf and analyzing them in order to establish a voice for my guide: From the opening of Woolf's novel, Mrs. Dalloway:

"Mrs. Dalloway said she would buy the flowers herself. For Lucy had her work cut out for her. The doors would be taken off their hinges; Rumpelmayer's men were coming. And then, thought Clarissa Dalloway, what a morning--fresh as if issued to children on a beach. What a lark! What a plunge! For so it had always seemed to her, when, with a little squeak of the hinges, which she could hear now, she had burst open the French windows and plunged at Bourton into the open air. How fresh, how calm, stiller than this of course, the air was in the early morning; like the flap of a wave; the kiss of a wave; chill and sharp yet (for a girl of eighteen as she then was) solemn, feeling as she did, standing there at the open window, that something awful was about to happen; looking at the flowers, at the trees with the smoke winding off them and the rooks rising, falling; standing and looking until Peter Walsh said, "Musing among the vegetables?" --was that it?--"I prefer men to cauliflowers" --was that it? He must have said it at breakfast one morning when she had gone out on the terrace--Peter Walsh.... She stiffened a little on the kerb, waiting for Durtnall's van to pass. A charming woman, Scrope Purvis thought her (knowing her as one does know people who live next door to one in Westminster); a touch of the bird about her, of the jay, blue-green, light, vivacious, though she was over fifty, and grown very white since her illness. There she perched, never seeing him, waiting to cross, very upright. For having lived in Westminster--how many years now? over twenty, --one feels in the midst of the traffic, or waking at night, Clarissa was positive, a particular hush or solemnity; an indescribable pause; a suspense (but that might be her heart, affected, they said by influence) before Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air. Such fools we are, she thought, crossing Victoria Street. For Heaven only knows why one loves it so, how one sees it so, making it up, building it round one, tumbling it, creating it every moment afresh; but the veriest frumps, the most dejected of miseries sitting on doorsteps (drink their downfall) do the same; can't be dealt with, she felt positive, by Acts of Parliament for that very reason: they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands, barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment of June" (3-4).

What do I love about Woolf? The diction, the rhythms, the way she puts me into the moment, even into her very thoughts. I love the way she loves and celebrates her city--London.

I have given you an idea about how to choose a guide.

Now I am going to choose a place or, in my case, places. Woolf loved and lived in London but she also spent time in the country--at her sister's house and on the east coast of England. When she committed suicide at the age of 61, she lived in the country in a place she named "Monk's House."

I was going to make the setting Monk's House, but it's very small, so I think I'll either start it or end it there. I know--it will be a tour of the places that Virginia Woolf lived or loved.

London--Regent's Park, St. James Park

Bloomsbury

Piccadilly Circus

Soho

Westminster Abbey

Big Ben

Talland House--the Woolf family's summer home, overlooking the sea

Charleston--the home of Woolf's artist-sister, Vanessa Bell. Also the home of Clive Bell and Duncan Grant. Many famous visitors, including famous economist, John Maynard Keynes and writer E. M. Forester.

Knoll Castle--childhood home of Woolf's best friend, Vita Sackville-West. It figure predominately in Woolf's novel, Orlando. Hey, Vita could be a sinner!


End with Monk House. Woolf moved here when the Germans were attacking London. She lived here with her loving husband, Leonard. Woolf ended her life here, by packing her pockets full of stone and walking into the river to drown herself.

As preparation, I might watch the movie, The Hours, again. That will be part of my research.

Do you see that by developing the setting, I have almost developed an outline for my Inferno?

Characters will include some real people (certainly, I will include Sackville-West and Bell and Grant and maybe Keynes), but it will also include stock characters. My characters will be sensitive artistic types (at the upper levels) and harsh, blathering critics and sexists and racists near the bottom.

Since Kurt Vonnegut died two years ago, I will have to include him. Instead of virtuous pagans, I'll make him a virtuous and non-fundamentalist atheist.

Forgive the redundancies--but that was part of my processing or thinking last year:

Your Infernos will have five levels, with at least one sinner per level. I say "at least one sinner" because you may choose to speak to or interact with more than one. The one I planned for last year had nine levels--yours needs only five.

I. Starting place--London--Piccadilly Circus. A lot of strange and tattooed and pierced people. Pickpockets. Menacing non-London cabs. Planet Hollywood. Rescued by a tiny older woman that turns out to be Virginia Woolf.

2. She takes me to St. James Park and then to Bloomsbury. Here we encounter the Virtuous Atheists.

3. We walk through all the tourist spots, stopping in the National Portrait Gallery where we will meet some artistic-type ghosts.

4. We find ourselves in Regent's Park. We go to the zoo where we encounter those who are cruel to animals. At the end of this one, we will watch a Punch and Judy show.

5. The British Museum--a compendium of man's inhumanity of man as well as some wonderful exhibits of cultural artifacts abducted by the British.

6. The War Museum--with a focus on World War I & World War II.

7. Talland House--as a child, Woolf was sexually abused by her older half-brother. She will encounter him here.

8. Charleston--Vanessa Bell was married to Clive Bell and the mother of two boys. She is an interesting historical figure who was probably not a candidate for mother of the year because she was interested only in her artistic pursuits and her decades-long affair with the artist, Duncan Grant.

9. Monk's House--where Woolf took her own life and took her brilliance away from all of us in doing so.

Preparation for the First Draft:

Because writing is a process, I am going to model some of my process in creating.

This morning, for example, I started thinking about how I would write an Inferno. Virginia Woolf is my guide. Though I already know a great deal about her, I found myself revisiting some of her writing. My two favorite books are A Room of One's Own (a book about writing and sexism) and Mrs. Dalloway. The first is non-fiction and the second is a novel.

Both are written in stream-of-consciousness style.

Actually, because I had decided to start in Piccadilly Circus, I revisited that place, via some photographs I had taken in 1996 and the internet. I will go back to the article I printed later today.

I want to get a sense of Woolf's voice first, because I will be recreating that as much as possible. I want to get to know Virginia, in a sense, and because I want to get to know her, I am referring to her by her first name from this point forward. Now, I am looking at passages from A Room of One's Own.

I'll put some of them down here, so you can get an idea of her voice. Notice the style--stream-of-consciousness--and the significance or seriousness of what she is saying. Notice too, that she often uses humor--often sarcasm--when conveying the seriousness of her topic.

A Room of One's Own begins with the first-person narrator expressing anxiety about a speech she is about to give--a speech on the topic of "Women and Fiction." She is walking across a university's grounds (she calls it Oxbridge--a combination of Cambridge and Oxford--a place then forbidden to women students) and is worrying about what she will say, when she is confronted by a campus security cop (called a beadle), a working-class guy who is probably only high-school educated, who takes on a position of superiority over her as she, in a sense, trespasses. I want you to pay attention to how she uses words normally associated with war in this encounter. Note the punctuation--or the lack thereof. She does this on purpose because it impacts the rhythms of the piece. I have also highlighted some of the passages I liked as well as some of the individual words:

"All I could do was to offer you an opinion upon one minor point--a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction; and that, as you will see, leaves the great problem of the true nature of woman and the true nature of fiction unsolved. I have shirked the duty of coming to a conclusion upon these two questions--women and fiction remain, so far as I am concerned, unsolved problems. But in order to make some amends I am going to do what I can to show you how I arrived at this opinion about the room and the money. I am going to develop in your presence as fully and freely as I can the train of thought which led me to think this. Perhaps if I lay bare the ideas, the prejudices that lie behind this statement you will find that they have some bearing upon women and some upon fiction. At any rate, when a subject is highly controversial--and any question about sex is that--one cannot hope to tell the truth. One can only show how one came to hold whatever opinion one does hold. One can only give one's audience the chance of drawing their own conclusions as they observe the limitations, the prejudices, the idiosyncrasies of the speaker. Fiction is here likely to contain more truth than fact" (4).

"Lies will flow from my lips, but there may perhaps be some truth mixed up with them; it is for you to seek out this truth and to decide whether any part of it is worth keeping. If not, you will of course throw the whole of it into the wastepaper basket and forget all about it" (4-5). (note the sarcasm)

"Here then was I (call me Mary Beton, Mary Seton Mary Carmichael or by any name you please--it is not a matter of any importance) sitting on the banks of a river a week ago in fine October weather, lost in thought. That collar I have spoken of, women and fiction, the need of coming to some conclusion on a subject that raises all sorts of prejudices and passions, bowed my head to the ground. To the right and left bushes of some sort, golden and crimson, glowed with the colour, even it seemed burnt with the heat, of fire. On the further bank the willows wept in perpetual lamentation, their hair about their shoulders. The river reflected whatever it chose of sky and bridge and burning tree, and when the undergraduate had oared his boat through the reflections they closed again, completely, as if he had never been. There one might have sat the clock round lost in thought. Thought--to call it by a prouder name than it deserved--had let its line down into the stream. It swayed, minute after minute, hither and thither among the reflections and the weeds, letting the water lift it and sink it, until--you know the little tug--the sudden conglomeration of an idea at the end of one's line: and the cautious hauling of it in, and the careful laying of it out? Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth cooking and eating. I will not trouble you with that thought now though if you look carefully you may find it for yourselves in the course of what I am going to say. "But however small it was, it had, nevertheless, the mysterious property of its kind--put back into the mind, it became at once very exciting, and important; and as it darted and sank, and flashed hither and thither, set up such a wash and tumult of ideas that it was impossible to sit still. It was thus that I found myself walking with extreme rapidity across a grass plot. Instantly a man's figure rose to intercept me. Nor did I at first understand that the gesticulations of a curious-looking object, in a cut-away coat and evening shirt, were aimed at me. His face expressed horror and indignation. Instinct rather than reason came to my help; he was a Beadle; I was a woman. This was the turf; there was the path. Only the Fellows and Scholars are allowed here; the gravel is the place for me. Such thoughts were the work of a moment. As I regained the path the arms of the Beadle sank, his face assumed its usual repose, and though turf is better walking than gravel, no very great harm was done. The only charge I could bring against the Fellows and Scholars of whatever the college might happen to be was that in the protection of their turf, which had been rolled for 300 years in succession they had sent my little fish into hiding" (5-6).

First Draft of Canto I:

Let me talk about process.

I reviewed the information and pictures on Piccadilly Circus and then didn't use most of it. As I began to write, I began to hear Virginia's voice come through so I went back to A Room of One's Own and used a direct quote from there and put it in Virginia's mouth.

Also, though I write in first person, the narrator and I are not one and the same. I hate places like the Hard Rock Cafe and Planet Hollywood.

Also, my character is not a member of the Richmond Education Association. I am.

I began writing in the past tense and then remembered that I prefer writing in the present, so I changed everything and liked it better.

By the way, this program is not allowing me to indent paragraphs, so I am going to write block style. When you write your Infernos, tab or indent at least five spaces. Do not use the block or business style or you will lose points.

Anyway, here goes--Canto I--First Draft:

There is something vaguely familiar about the woman who approaches me just as I leave the tube station and enter the neon glare of Piccadilly Circus in London. Her clothing seems dated, somehow, a navy blue dress with a hip length bodice and a pleated skirt, double-breasted and with a sailor collar with white stripes. Her long grey hair is tied back into a bun at the nape of her neck, but a few careless strands dance about her face, which is remarkably unlined, though she's sixty if she's a day.

She can not be familiar, of course, because the only people I know in London are my cousins, the Keens. Perhaps she thinks I am a long-lost relative of hers, and that is why she gazes in my direction. It is of no concern of mine, surely. And besides, I have things to do, places to go, people to see.

Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with neon and people, mostly younger and with multiple tattoos and piercings. There are some older people also, with unfortunate tattoos and piercings, much of which has expanded with weight and now sags with age. I turn away.

The Planet Hollywood sign, with a larger than life picture of Elvis in Vegas disco get-up, his hand pointed skyward Saturday Night Fever style, beckons. All the other tourists seem headed in that direction, so that must be the place to go. I wonder if it's as cool as Toronto's Hard Rock Cafe, I consider, and then decide it's probably even cooler.

I step onto the cobbled streets and have just passed the public square where artists do portraits or caricatures for ten pounds, when I feel a tap on my shoulder. I turn to see this troubling woman, smaller than I had originally thought, standing and smiling.

"I'm just a tourist," I begin explaining. "I don't even know where I'm going."

"I know you're a tourist," she says in that wonderfully clipped elite-Londoner's dialect. "I have come here for you."

"I don't recall having made plans for a tour guide," I say as I file through my brain for the plans I had made with the tourist agency. No, a guide would have been nice, but its price was too dear and I would prefer to spend the money at Harrods' or Marks and Spencer or even on an extravagant evening out.

"I know you turned down the guide," she says. "In fact, I know everything about you."

Now I start filing through my brain to see if I might have done anything to alert the Department of Homeland Security other than to vote the Democratic ticket. I'm not even a member of the teacher's union, so it's not likely that.

"No, I'm not a spook for Homeland Security," she says.

"How could you know," I say, and before I can finish, I find myself transported like Ebenezer Scrooge, to a rose garden in Regents Park.

"I know all," she says calmly and turns me in the direction of one of the lakes near the Japanese gardens. "I see all. You too will come to see all."

She takes my trembling arm and guides me past the Princess Diana pink blooms and toward the lake where the mallards and swans glide about while Canada geese fly in and out, hither and thither, if you will. Why am I thinking this way? Hither and thither. The weeping willows are in full lamentation, the lake reflects what it chooses of sky and bridge. Something about a fish.

"Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth eating," she says and I know from this moment on that this, impossible as it seems, is Virgina Woolf.

Draft 2 of Canto I--

I realized that I left out the mythical allusion and I want to make sure I am using at least one simile, so here goes round two. I'll put any changes I make in boldface and make my similes red and my mythical allusions blue so you can see my work:

There is something vaguely familiar about the woman who approaches as I leave the tube station and enter the neon glare of Piccadilly Circus in London. And yet, much of her demeanor seems strange, even alien because it is dated somehow. She wears a navy blue dress, with a bodice that stops at the hips, where a belt rests at the top of a pleated skirt. It has a sailor collar with white stripes.

(Note that I broke up that paragraph. I felt it was getting too long)

Her long grey hair is tied back into a bun, but a few careless wisps dance about her face, which, I note with interest, is remarkably unlined, though she's sixty if she's a day.

She can not be familiar, of course, because the only people I know in London are my cousins, the Keens. Perhaps she thinks I am a long-lost relative of hers, and that is why she gazes like a lost sheep in my direction.

(Technically speaking, "like a lost sheep" could be a Christian mythical allusion too because of references to Christ as the Good Shepherd)

Piccadilly Circus is ablaze with its famous neon signs and odd assortments of people. While the tourists move about like those new to the Underworld,* the primary residents are young, with garish hairstyles--Mohawks and dreadlocks and spikes, many are covered with multiple tattoos and piercings. There are some middle-aged residents as well, with tattoos and piercings that are rather unfortunate, having expanded with weight and sagged with age. From them I turn away.
(*reference to Greek mythology)

The Planet Hollywood sign, with a larger-than-life picture of fat Elvis in Vegas disco get-up, his hand pointed skyward Saturday Night Fever style, beckons. The other tourists seem headed in that direction, so that must be the place to go. I have never been and wonder if it's as cool as Toronto's Hard Rock Cafe. Since this is London, I decide that it must be even cooler.

I step onto the cobbled street and have just passed the public square where, for a ten pound note, one can have one's portrait or caricature done as other tourists walk past. Watching one of these displays, I am startled by a gentle tap on my back. I turn to find the strange woman, smaller than I had originally calculated, standing before me, a wan smile upon her face. She is so tiny that she reminds me of one of the residents of the Sidhe, the Irish otherworld.

"I'm just another tourist," I say. "I don't even know where I'm going."

"I understand that," she says in that wonderfully clipped dialect of the upper-crust Londoner. "It is I who is here at your service."

"I don't recall having hired a guide," I say, remembering that the guide package offered by the travel agency would have been too dear for my budget. A guide would have been nice, but I wanted to be able to spend my money at Harrods' or Marks and Spencer or even on an extravagant evening out. Besides, cousin Peter has turned out to be a great guide. He had grown up around here.

"I know that you turned down the guide package," she says. "In fact, I know everything about you."

Now I start filing through my brain for anything I might have done to alert the Department of Homeland Security other than to vote the Democratic ticket. I'm not even a member of the teacher's union, so it's probably not Homeland Security.

"No. I am not a spook for Homeland Security," she says.

"How could you know," I say, and before I can finish, I find myself transported like Ebenezer Scrooge to a rose garden in Regent's Park.

(Note that I took out a comma from the passage above. I wanted a different rhythm in that sentence).

"I know all," she says coolly. With her slender fingers upon my back, she turns me in the direction of one of the lakes near the Japanese gardens. "I see everything. Soon, very soon, you too will see everything."

She takes my now-trembling arm and guides me past the rose garden and toward the lake where the mallards paddle and the swans glide and the Canada geese fly in and out, hither and thither. How odd. Why am I thinking this way? Hither and thither. The weeping willows are in full lamentation, the lake reflects what it chooses of sky and bridge. Something about a fish.

"Alas, laid on the grass how small, how insignificant this thought of mine looked; the sort of fish that a good fisherman puts back into the water so that it may grow fatter and be one day worth eating," she says and I know from this moment on that this, impossible as it seems, is none other than Virginia Woolf.

Ms. Losen's First Draft of Canto II (Later Changed to Canto III)


Brainstorming for Canto II (in place of other Canto II, which is now Canto III) Canto II is now for the Atheists

ince this is now the second canto, I will probably use some of the transitional material I have already prepared in the original second canto--now the third, so forgive the repetition. This will also mean that I will have to change the beginning of the third canto, however, so you will have new material there.



By the way, notice how I do quotes. I rarely write like this:


Virginia said: "Let's go to the party."


Instead, I will usually write like this--when doing prose. If you are doing poetry, it's another story. You may take such liberties, especially if they contribute to the meter or rhyme scheme. You are also braver than I am. Poetry requires a great deal more editing, as you know.


"Let's go to the party," Virginia said.


OR:


"Let's go to the party," Virginia said, "because it will be so much fun."


OR:


"Let's go to the party," Virginia said. "I know lots of people there."


Note that there is no period after "party." It's a comma.


Style-wise, if I'm having a character ask a question I'll do it as follows. First, I'll never say "questioned." Remember George Orwell. Keep it simple. Just say "said" or "asked" as follows:


"Should we go to the party," she asked.


OR:


"Should we go to the party?" she asked.


OR:


"Should we go to the party?" she said.


Do not say "queried," "requested," or anything else like that. Keep it simple. Simple is good.


And please remember that different speakers have their own paragraphs. It's easier to keep track of which character is speaking that way.


And also remember that I want you to paint a picture for me. That is why research is important for all students. You need to know what things are called.


Use my work as a model for yours if you are doing prose--at least in terms of its picturesque qualities, the way it follows the rubric, and the punctuation. I recommend that you read your own work aloud. As an experienced writer, I learn a lot about what isn't right with my own work, just by the way it sounds.


Since I am going to start Canto II with the atheists, I am going to place in Bloomsbury, a part of London where Woolf lived and shared ideas with other brilliant minds of her generation. Besides, I thought Vonnegut might enjoy this area too.

I always picture the setting of the Virtuous Pagans as being like the Harvard University campus--not such a bad place to be. That is why I think Bloomsbury will be fitting. It will not be a sad place, but a place that Woolf and others enjoyed while they lived on this earth and a world that she can continue to enjoy in the afterlife. Creative pursuits are often done in private but they need to be nourished with public discourse. Ideas bounce off other ideas; surrounding yourself with bright people (especially if they are bright in areas that you are not) is a way of enhancing your own intelligence and creativity.

Since I want to describe what is around us, I have had to do some research--not only on Bloomsbury and its history but also on architectural terms so that I can adequately and simply describe it.

Creative writing goes way beyond pulling stuff out of your head. In order to bring it to life, you need an adequate vocabulary. The other benefit to this, is that you become more knowledgeableabout the world at the same time.


First Rough Draft of New Canto II:
We have just arrived at the Tottenham Court tube station and we find ourselves standing in front of some three-story Georgian mansions.

"Virginia," I find myself saying, instantly regretting the lack of formality.

"You may call me Virginia," she says, and her eyes twinkle and her mouth widens into a Cheshire-cat grin.

"Virginia," I say, only half-believing the word or my senses.

"Not to be mistaken with the Commonwealth or the Virgin Queen," she says, her eyes full of mischief. She opens her arms and enfolds me in them.

"I know this must be a shock," she says. "It was for Dante too, but look what he did with the experience. The Woman Upstairs, the one the earth has called God for centuries--and 'God' is appropriate still--just felt that the process needed an update, that new times called for new interventions. After all, a woman is now running for president of the United States!"

"Woman Upstairs," I repeat. "Woman Upstairs?"

"A rose is still a rose by any other name," says Virginia. "Woman Upstairs. God. Allah. The Big Cheese. It's all the same. I don't know why people make such a big deal about the nomenclature. It's one of the problems with the human race, I suppose, that thing you call 'Free Will.' First, one takes a bite of some forbidden fruit, then another one kills his own brother, which angered his mother to no end, mind you. Boys will be boys. Whatever. It made his earthly mother mad but his divine one even angrier. She sentenced him to wander, with a mark upon him so that he would not be killed. I guess it was all part of her plan, something I still don't understand, but all that did was cause him to tell others about how dangerous women were, how they needed to be controlled."

"Does Hillary eventually win?" I ask. "Does she even win the primaries?"

"I can't tell you that. Well, actually, I could, but I won't," she says.

"Besides," says another voice, and I recognize the figure as none other than Kurt Vonnegut, "you have bigger fish to fry."

"Kurt--Sinead, Sinead--Kurt," says Virginia. [My narrator got christened Sinead because of my bald head, like 1980s pop-star Sinead O'Conner. I hope you like it.]

"Pleased to meet your acquaintance," says Kurt. He extends his hand like a banker about to close a big deal.

I am speechless.

"We are here in Bloomsbury," says Virginia, "because this is a place where we atheists thrived back in the 1920s. If we had time, you'd get to talk to the likes of artists Duncan Grant, Dora Carrington, Roger Frye, and my own sister, Vanessa Bell. Or you could hear John Maynard Keynes talk about current economic policies and why the world is in such a mess. Or, since you will be teaching his novel, A Passage to India, this year, you could engage in a discussion with my friend E. M. Forster."

"I wouldn't know where to begin," I say.

"Just ask questions. That is why you are here," she says.

"Is it painful," I ask.

"No, it is fitting," says Virginia. "Look about us. We are in a beautiful setting, in these elegant homes and we are surrounded by the best and the brightest of our generation and even other generations," she says, nodding at Kurt.

"What about God?" I ask.

"God is God," she says. "I know She's there and I know I'm supposed to be in despair because I can't be with Her, but I'm not. The experience is very much like what it was when I was on earth, except that now I no longer have to suffer those lengthy bouts of depression or mania."

"It's more like the Greek underworld, neither here nor there," says Vonnegut, which makes me remember that Vonnegut's master's degree was in anthropology. "It's like being a perpetual student, one that never graduates. And you have all these cool people all around you all the time, fighting and arguing and having a good old time. What could be better than that?"

"You have a point," I say, though I am tempted like Eve to go further. In deference, however, and because I have no wish to make them consider their own situation undesirable, I say nothing.

The first thing I wanted to do was to transition from the previous canto. I ended the last canto with recognizing Virginia Woolf, so I am echoing that by saying her name in the first sentence. Also, because I was going to be meeting new sinners, I did some research.

This canto is about those who abused their substance with substances and includes rock stars Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, Jim Morrison, and Kurt Cobain. Because of space limitations, I am going to concentrate on Cobain. Besides, it will enable me to use that whole "remember me" thing that Dante uses. I began my process by looking up information on the various singers. That was how I learned that they all died at the age of 27.

I remembered to include a mythical allusion in this draft. I allude to Eurydice, wife of Orpheus, who was snatched too soon into the Underworld.

By the way, notice how I punctuate--where the quotation marks go, where the speaker is in relation to the quote, and how I capitalize. I want you to imitate this.

Well, here goes:
"Virginia," I find myself saying, instantly regretting the lack of formality.

"You may call me Virginia," she says, and her eyes twinkle and her mouth widens into a Cheshire-cat grin.

[note the allusion--to Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland]

"Virginia," I repeat, only half-believing the word or my senses.

"Not to be mistaken for the commonwealth or the Virgin Queen," she says, her eyes full of mischief. But then her smile disappears. She opens her arms and before I know it, enfolds me in them.

"I know this must be a shock," she says. "It was for Dante, too, but look what he did with it. The Woman Upstairs, the one the earth has called God for centuries--and God is all right still--just felt that it was time to repeat the process, that we needed to revise our old ways of thinking. After all, a woman is running for president."

"Woman Upstairs," I repeat. "Woman upstairs?"

"Don't make such a big deal about it," says Virginia. "It's been that way since Day One. That's what you get when you give humans free will. First, one takes a bite of the forbidden fruit, and then another one kills his own brother, which angered his mother no end, let me tell you. She grounded that boy and then God made him wander the world with the mark of Cain.

Everywhere he went, he spread the word about how dangerous women were and how they needed to be controlled. It was pretty easy to do, too, because women were often incapacitated with carrying and nurturing children."

"Does she win," I ask.

"Does who win," Virginia says.

"Hillary," I say. [Remember that I wrote this in the spring of 2008]

"I can't tell you that. Well, I could, but I won't," she says. "Besides, we have bigger fish to fry. You have been chosen for this journey because of your skills as a journalist. When we finish, you will write a story, one that will convey to the world how they should live."

Virginia takes my arm and we begin to move rapidly through space, the various worlds we pass a blur of color and a cacophony of sounds.

We stop in a small, dingy flat with peeling wallpaper, chipped and broken particle-board furniture, and a sofa and some chairs with their foam stuffings exposed by fraying upholstery. The room stinks of body odor and cigarettes and a sweet acrid smell I can't quite identify. The single window is open and we can hear the sounds of traffic and people shouting and fighting in the streets. The yellowing aluminum blinds, covered in a thick layer of dust, reverberate with the sounds, sending dust particles dancing into the air.

"Where are we," I ask, my face as pale as Eurydice when she finds herself in the Underworld.
"Soho. In a crack house, heroin haven, crib, whatever you want to call it, it pretty much means the same thing--despair," says Virginia.

A pale young man, unwashed, with long, blond hair and a week's growth of beard, approaches.

"This is where those who abused their substance with substances now reside," she says. "Among the most famous here, you will see four who left the world at the age of 27. Janis Joplin, Jimi Hendrix, Jim Morrison, and...."

"Kurt Cobain," I finish. the young rock star's eyes widen and he moves toward us slowly, as though walking through ocean waves.

"How is Frances Bean," he pleads. "How is my baby girl? Has Courtney done anything to her? Does she still love her daddy? Does she still remember her daddy?"

"I haven't heard anything about her lately," I say.

His eyes widen in terror and tears form at the corners of his eyes.

"She's fine," I say, "or she must be. You know as well as I that no news is good news with Courtney. Frances must be sixteen now and I am sure that she remembers her father, as do millions of American fans. Why, you're even a character in a novel by Nick Hornby."

The face relaxes but the tears remain. "Tell her I'm sorry," he says. Tell her I'm very, very sorry. And make sure she remembers me. Tell her not to forget her daddy."

"I will," I say. Cobain turns away and moves back toward a crowd that has gathered in a corner.
I recognize Hendrix and Joplin and Morrison. I begin to walk toward them when Virginia touches my sleeve.

"If we had the time, you could interview the others, but the fact is, we do not," she says.

"Besides, their stories are much the same and we have many more stories to hear in the realms beyond."


More Brainstorming and Outline:


I don't know if I will have time to write a second draft today, but I'm putting down some notes for my revisions.

I had thought about including Sid Vicious among the rock stars and deliberately did not, because he died of a heroin overdose at the age of 21. So I might turn the flat into a seedy nightclub lounge, complete with a big bouncer. Sid might try to get in but he gets tossed by the bouncer. I might call the club "27"--modeled after a NYC club called "21." I'm liking this idea more and more....

Here is an outline:
Canto I--meet Woolf at Piccadilly Circus

Canto II--Those who abused their substance with drugs (dead 27-year-old rock stars)

Canto III--Men and women of genius who abused their gifts with drink--Dorothy Parker, F. Scott Fitzgerald, William Faulkner, Ernest Hemingway, James Joyce

Canto IV--Men of genius who used others for their own gratification--Paul Gauguin and Pablo Picasso

Canto V--People who abused their powers of charisma to incite hatred in others--Maud Gonne and Howard Campbell (a character in several Vonnegut novels)

Canto VI--Those who look the other way when atrocities are committed

Canto VII--Those who participate in atrocities while under the power of a charismatic leader

Canto VIII--Those who use religion and patriotism to justify oppressive behavior

Canto IX--Those who oppress women and other large groups of people--the Taliban, whitesupremacists, slave-owners, the "Oxbridge" system.


Preparation for Canto III (Later to become Canto IV)
I started with research: William Faulkner September 25, 1897-July 6, 1963, born in New Albany, Mississippi, married Estelle Oldham in Oxford, Mississippi

F. Scott Fitzgerald--Born 9/23/1896 died December 21, 1940--a second heart attack. Born in St. Paul, Minnesota, went to Princeton. Married Zelda Sayre. The Great Gatsby. The lost generation--characterized as a lush in Hemingway's A Movable Feast. Maybe I could have Hemingway and Fitzgerald get into a fist-fight. Need to look up info on Hemingway.

Dorothy Parker (August 22, 1893-June 7, 1967), author, poet, critic, screenwriter. Also known as Dot or Dottie.


I found a bunch of her witticisms and might use some of them:

"Wit has truth in it...wisecracking is simply calisthenics with words."

"The two most beautiful words in the English language are 'check enclosed.'"

"As for helping me in the outside world, the Convent taught me only if you spit on a pencil eraser, it will erase ink."

"Maybe it is only I, but conditions are such these days that if you studiously correct grammar, people suspect you of homosexual tendencies."

"I was the toast of two continents: Greenland and Australia."

"Sorrow is tranquility remembered in emotion."

"It's not the tragedies that kill us. It' s the messes."

"He [Robert Benchley] and I had an office, so tiny that an inch smaller and it would have been adultery."

"Men seldom make passes/ At girls who wear glasses."

"She runs the gamut of emotions from A to B."

"As one delves deeper and deeper into Etiquette, disquieting thoughts come. That old Is-It-Worth-It blues starts up again softly, perhaps, but plainly. Those who have mastered etiquette, who are entirely, impeccably right, would seem to arrive at a point of exquisite dullness. The letters and the conversations of the correct, as quoted by Mrs. Post, seem scarcely worth the striving for. The rules for finding topics of conversation fall damply on the spirit."

"As artists they're rot, but as providers they're oil wells; they gush. Norris said she never wrote a story unless it was fun to do. I understand Ferber whistles at her typewriter. And there was that poor sucker Flaubert rolling around on his floor for three days looking for the right word."

"If you're going to write, don't pretend to write down. It's going to be the best you can do, and it's the fact that it's the best you can do that kills you."

About modern-dance innovator, Isadora Duncan: "Here was a great woman; a magnificent, generous, gallant, reckless, fated fool of a woman. There was never a place for her in the ranks of the terrible, slow army of the cautious. She ran ahead, where there were no paths."

"I went to a literary gathering once....The place was filled with people who looked as if they had been scraped up out of drains. The ladies ran to draped plush dresses--for Art; to wreaths of silken flowerets in the hair--for Femininity; and ,somewhere between the two adornments, to chain-drive pince-nez--for Astigmatism. The gentlemen were small and somewhat in need of dusting."

"I don' t want to review books any more. It cuts in too much on my reading."

"If this world were anything near what it should be there would be no more need of a Book Week than there would of a Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Children."

"I have heard it said that it took Messrs. Shipman and Hymer [the playwrights] just three-and-a-half days to write their drama. I should like to know what they were doing during the three days."
So much of what I do before I write, is research.



I'm beginning to think that famous writers' quotes will be a source for inspiration. I am planning to include Hemingway and Fitzgerald and maybe even Joyce so I looked up some of what they said.


I found many of the quotes funny, others inspiring to me as a writer. I hope that this works for you too! As I was typing these in, I found myself thinking about how to incorporate them, how to develop characters.


After I finish, I plan to go for a walk. That is one way that I can start to bring my ideas together. There is something about the fresh air--especially in weather like this, that helps me to think, to clarify ideas, and to put them in order. Perhaps this might work for you.


By the way, some of the writers use mild profanity. In order for you to have access to this page, I am going to have to make substitutions. You will be able to tell, however, because I haven't changed the word--just filled in some blanks with the right number of letters.



First, however, I'm going back to Parker:


Quotes from Dorothy Parker (1893-1967)


I don't care what is written about me as long as it isn't true.

I might repeat to myself slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations from minds profound--if I can remember any of the d_ _ _ things.

I've never been a millionaire but I just know I'd be darling at it.

If you want to know what God thinks of money, just look at the people he gave it to.

Take care of the luxuries and the necessities will take care of themselves.

The best way to keep children home is to make the home atmosphere pleasant--and let the air out of the tires.

This is not a novel to be tossed aside lately. It should be thrown with great force.

That would be a good thing for them to cut on my tombstone: Wherever she went, it was against her better judgment.

The cure for boredom is curiosity. There is no cure for curiosity.



Quotes from James Joyce (1882-1941):


A man of genius makes no mistakes; his errors are volitional and the portals of discovery.

Better pass boldly into that other world, in the full glory of some passion, than fade and wither dismally with age.

Christopher Columbus, as everyone knows, is honored by posterity because he was the last to discover America.

I am tomorrow, or some future day, what I establish today. I am today what I established yesterday or some previous day.

I fear those big words which make us so unhappy.

I want to work with the top people, because only they have the courage and confidence and the risk-seeking profile that you need.

I've put in so many enigmas and puzzles that it will keep the professors bus for centuries arguing over what I mean, and that's the only way of insuring one's immortality.

Ireland is the old sow that eats her farrow.

Ireland sober is Ireland stiff.

Irresponsibility is part of the pleasure of art; it is the part the schools cannot recognize.

Nations have their ego, just like individuals.

No pen, no ink, no table, no room, no time, no quiet, no inclination.

Poetry, even when apparently most fantastic, is always a revolt against artifice, a revolt, in a sense, against actuality.

Shakespeare is the happy hunting ground of all minds that have lost their balance.

The artist, like the God of creation, remains within or behind or beyond or above his handiwork, invisible, refined out of existence, indifferent, paring his fingernails.

The demand that I make of my reader is that he should devote his whole life to reading my works.

There is no heresy or philosophy which is so abhorrent to the church as a human being.

Think you're escaping and run into yourself. Longest way round is the shortest way home.

Whatever else is unsure in this stinking dunghill of a world a mother's love is not.

When I die Dublin will be written in my heart.

Writing in English is the most ingenious torture ever devised for sins committed in previous lives. The English reading public explains the reasons why.

Your battles inspired me--not the obvious material battles but those that were fought and won behind your forehead.



Quotes from F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896-1940):
A big man has no time really to do anything but just sit and be big.

A great social success is a pretty girl who plays her cards as carefully as if she were plain.

Action is character.

Advertising is a racket, like the movies and the brokerage business. You cannot be honest without admitting that its constructive contribution to humanity is exactly minus zero.

After all, life hasn't much to offer except youth, and I supposed for older people, the love of youth in others.

All good writing is swimming under water and holding our breath.

An author ought to write for the youth of his own generation, the critics of the net, and the schoolmaster of ever afterwards.

At eighteen our convictions are hills from which we look; at forty-five they are caves in which we hide.

Cut out all these exclamation points. An exclamation point is like laughing at your own joke.

Either you think, or else others have to think for you and take power from you, pervert and discipline your natural tastes, civilize and sterilize you.

Everyone suspects himself of at least one of the cardinal virtues.

Everybody's youth is a dream, a form of chemical madness.

Family quarrels are bitter things. They don't go according to any rules. They're not like aches or wounds, they're more like splits in the skin that won't heal because there's not enough material.

First you take a drink, then the drink takes a drink, then the drink takes you.

For awhile after you quit Keats all other poetry seems to be only whistling or humming.

Forgotten is forgiven.

Genius goes around the world in its youth incessantly apologizing for having large feet. What wonder that later in life it should be inclined to raise those feet too swiftly to fools and bores.

Genius is the ability to put into effect what is on your mind.

Great art is the contempt of a great man for small art.

I like people and I like them to like me, but I wear my heart where God put it, on the inside.

I'm a romantic; a sentimental person thinks things will last, a romantic person hopes against hope they won't.

I've been drunk for about a week now, and I thought it might sober me up to sit in a library.

In a real dark night of the soul, it is always three o'clock in the morning, day after day.

It is in the thirties that we want friends. In the forties we know they won't save us any more than love did.

It's not a slam at you when people are rude, it's a slam against the people they've met before.

Life is essentially a cheat and its conditions are those of defeat; the redeeming things are not happiness and pleasure but the deeper satisfactions that come out of struggle.

Men get to be a mixture of the charming mannerisms of the women they have known.

Never confuse a single defeat with a final defeat.

No grand idea was ever born in a conference, but a lot of foolish ideas have died there.

No such thing as a man willing to be honest--that would be like a blind man willing to see.

Nothing is as obnoxious as other people's luck.

Personality is an unbroken series of successful gestures.

Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy.

Some men have a necessity to be mean, as if they were exercising a faculty which they had to partially neglect since childhood.

Speech is an arrangement of notes that will never be played again.

The easiest way to get a reputation is to go outside the fold, shout around for a few years as a violent atheist or a dangerous radical, and then crawl back to the shelter.

The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.

The victor belongs to the spoils.

The world, as a rule, does not live on beaches and in country clubs.

There are no second acts in American lives.

Though the Jazz Age continued it became less and less an affair of youth. The sequel was like a children's party taken over by the elders.

To a profound pessimist about life, being in danger is not depressing.

To write it, it took three months; to conceive it, three minutes; to collect the data in it, all my life.

Vitality shows in not only the ability to persist but the ability to start over.

You can stroke people with words.

You don't write because you want to say something, you write because you have something to say.



Quotes from Ernest Hemingway (1899-1961):


You lose it if you talk about it.

Writing, at its best, is a lonely life.

A man can be destroyed but not defeated.

A man's got to take a lot of punishment to write a really funny book.

A serious writer is not to be confounded with a solemn writer. A serious writer may be a hawk or a buzzard or even a popinjay, but a solemn writer is always a bloody owl.

About morals, I know only that what is moral is what you feel good after and what is immoral is what you feel bad after.

All good books are alike in that they are truer than if they had really happened.

All modern American literature comes from one book by Mark Twain called Huckleberry Finn.

All my life I've looked at words as though I were seeing them for the first time.

All our words from loose using have lost their edge.

All things truly wicked start from an innocence.

Always do sober what you said you'd do drunk. That will teach you to keep your mouth shut.

As you get older it is harder to have heroes, but it is sort of necessary.

Courage is grace under pressure.

Cowardice, as distinguished from panic, is almost always simply a lack of ability to suspend the functioning of the imagination.

Every man' s life ends the same way. It is only the details of how he lived and how he died that distinguish one man from another.

Fear of death increases in exact proportion to increase in wealth.

Forget your personal tragedy. We are all bit_ _ed from the start and you especially have to be hurt like he_ _ before you can write seriously. But when you get the damned hurt, use it--don't cheat with it.

The world breaks us all. Afterward, some are stronger at the broken places.

Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.

You must always be prepared to work without applause.

A writer's problem does not change. He himself changes and the world he lives in changes but his problem remains the same. It is always how to write truly and having found what is true, to project it in such a way that it becomes a part of the experience of the person who reads it.

Survival with honor, that outmoded all-important word, is as difficult as ever and as all-important to a writer.

Now is no time to think of what you do not have. Think of what you can do with what there is.

Hesitation increases in relation to risk in equal proportion to age.



About F. Scott Fitzgerald: His talent was as natural as the pattern that was made by the dust on a butterfly's wings. At one time he understood it no more than the butterfly did and he did not know when it was brushed or marred.


I don't like to write like God. It is only because you never do it, though, that the critics think you can.

I know now that there is no one thing that is true--it is all true.

I learned never to empty the well of my writing, but always to stop when there was still something there in the deep part of the well, and let it refill at night from the springs that fed it.

I like to listen. I have learned a great deal from listening carefully. Most people never listen.

I never choose a subject--my subject rather chose me.

I've tried to reduce profanity but I reduced so much profanity when writing the book that I'm afraid not much could come out. Perhaps we will have to consider it simply as a profane book and hope that the next book will be less profane or perhaps more sacred.

If a writer knows enough about what he is writing about, he may omit things that he knows. The dignity of movement of an iceberg is due to only one ninth of it being above water.

If you are lucky enough to have lived in Paris as a young man, then wherever you go for the rest of your life it stays with you, for Paris is a moveable feast.

If you have a success you have it for the wrong reasons. If you become popular it is always because of the worst aspects of your work.

In modern war...you will die like a dog for no good reason.

It's none of their business that you have learned how to write. Let them think you were born that way.

Madam, all stories, if continued far enough, end in death, and he is no true-story teller who would keep that from you.

My aim is to put down on paper what I see and what I feel in the best and simplest way.

Never go on trips with anyone you do not love.

Never mistake motion for action.

Never think that war, no matter how necessary, nor how justified, is not a crime.

No weapon has ever settled a moral problem. It can impose a solution but it cannot guarantee it to be a just one.

Pound's crazy. All poets are. They have to be. You don't put a poet like Pound in the loony bin.

Prose is architecture, not interior decoration, and the Baroque is over.

Somebody just back of you while you are fishing is as bad as someone looking over your shoulder while you write a letter to your girl.

That is what we are supposed to do when we are at our best--make it all up--but make it up so truly that later it will happen that way.

The terrible mood of depression of whether it's any good or not is what is known as The Artist's Reward.

The best way to find out if you can trust somebody is to trust them.

The first panacea for a misguided nation is inflation of the currency; the second is war. Both bring a temporary prosperity; both bring a permanent ruin. But both are the refuge of political and economic opportunists.

The good parts of a book may be only something a writer is lucky enough to overhear or it may be the wreck of his whole da_ _ life and one is as good as the other.

The man who has begun to live more seriously within begins to live more simply without.

The only thing that could spoil a day was people. People were always the limiters of happiness except for the very few that were as good as spring itself.

The world breaks everyone and afterward many are stronger at the broken places.

The world is a fine place and worth fight for and I hate very much to leave it.

There are events which are so great that if a writer has participated in them his obligation is to write truly rather than assume the presumption of altering them with invention.

There is no friend as loyal as a book.

There is no lonelier man in death, except the suicide, than the man who has lived many years with a good wife and then outlived her. If two people love each other there can be no happy end to it.

There is no rule on how to write. Sometimes it comes easily and perfectly; sometimes it's like drilling rock and then blasting it out with charges.

There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.

Wars are caused by undefended wealth.

All are apprentices in a craft where no one ever becomes a master.

When I have an idea, I turn down the flame, as if it were a little alcohol stove, as low as it will go. Then it explodes and that is my idea.

When writing a novel a writer should create living people--people, not characters. A character is a caricature.

You can wipe out out your opponents. But if you do it unjustly you become eligible for being wiped out yourself.

Revising My Outline:


I just realized that I did not have a place for a Virginia Woolf or Kurt Vonnegut--the brilliant writers who are atheists. Besides, I want to use Vonnegut's voice as well as Woolf's. I think they would have fun and that I will have fun with them.

I'll put the Atheists in the first canto because I do not want them to suffer. I want them to have a kind of life that they would have had on earth, to be surrounded by other brilliant minds. Even though Woolf committed suicide, I will not assign her to a lower realm because she had a biochemical disorder that could not be properly treated back then.

This will mean, of course, that I will have to eliminate another canto. I have not yet decided which one but I will keep you posted.

I really hope that by going through the process myself you get a better idea about what I expect from you. Writing can be fun and rewarding, but it's hard work and it's always a good idea, even when writing fiction, to start with research. Fiction, after all, has to tell the truth....


Kurt Vonnegut Quotes
Since I plan on meeting Kurt, I thought I would include some of his quotes. Again, this is part of my process.


Any person who expresses rage and loathing for a novel is preposterous. He or she is like a person who has put on full armor and attacked a hot fudge sundae.

I want to stay as close to the edge without going over. Out on the edge you see all kinds of things you can't see in the center.

If you can do a half-a_ _ ed job of anything, you're a one-eyed man in a kingdom of the blind.

Laughter and tears are both responses to frustration and exhaustion. I myself prefer laugh, since there is less cleaning up afterward.

Say what you will about the sweet miracle of unquestioning faith, I consider a capacity for it terrifying and absolutely vile!

Those who believe in telekinetics, raise my hand.

Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before....He is full of murderous resentment of people who are ignorant without having come by their ignorance the hard way. --Cat's Cradle

Thanks to TV and for the convenience of TV, you can only be one of two kinds of human beings, either a liberal or a conservative. ''Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004

There is a tragic flaw in our Constitution, and I don't know what can be done to fix it. This is it: Only nut cases want to be president. --"Cold Turkey," In These Times, May 10, 2004

Here is a lesson in creative writing. First rule: Do not use semicolons. They are transvestite hermaphrodites representing absolutely nothing. All they do is show you've been to college."--Man Without a Country
Humor is an almost physiological response to fear. --Man Without a Country

I think that novels that leave out technology misrepresent life as badly as Victorians misrepresented life by leaving out sex. --Man Without a Country

1492. As children we were taught to memorize this year with pride and joy as the year people began living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America. Actually, people had been living full and imaginative lives on the continent of North America for hundreds of years before that. 1492 was simply the year sea pirates began to rob, cheat, and kill them. --Breakfast of Champions

The chief weapon of sea pirates, however, was their capacity to astonish. Nobody could believe, until it was too late, how heartless and greedy they were. --Breakfast of Champions

New knowledge is the most valuable commodity on earth. The more truth we have to work with, the richer we become. --Breakfast of Champions

Charm was a scheme for making strangers like and trust a person immediately, no matter what the charmer had in mind. --Breakfast of Champions

I can have oodles of charm when I want to. --Breakfast of Champions

Maturity is a bitter disappointment for which no remedy exists, unless laughter can be said to remedy anything. --Cat's Cradle

Here's what I think the truth is: We are all addicts of fossil fuels in a state of denial, about to face cold turkey. --Cold Turkey

Another flaw in the human character is that everybody wants to build and nobody wants to do maintenance. --Hocus Pocus

During my three years in Vietnam, I certainly heard plenty of last words by dying American soldiers. Not one of them, however, ever had illusions that he had somehow accomplished something worthwhile in the process of making the Supreme Sacrifice. --Hocus Pocus

Well, the telling of jokes is an art of its own, and it always rises from some emotional threat. The best jokes are dangerous, and dangerous because they are in some way truthful. --Interview, Mcsweeneys.net

We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful what we pretend to be. --Mother Night (He is speaking of the novel's tragic hero, Howard Campbell, an American playwright who moved to Germany, married a German, and eventually became a talk-radio guy who speaks hateful words about Jews while encrypting Nazi secrets to the Allies)
Just because some of us can read and write and do a little math, that doesn't mean we deserve to conquer the Universe. --Hocus Pocus

A purpose of human life, no matter who is controlling it, is to love whoever is around to be loved. --The Sirens of Titan

Like so many Americans, she was trying to construct a life that made sense from things she found in gift shops. --Slaughterhouse Five

All time is all time. It does not change. It does not lend itself to warnings or explanations. It simply is. Take it moment by moment, and you will find that we are all, as I've said before, bugs in amber. --Slaughterhouse Five

How nice--to feel nothing, and still get full credit for being alive. --Slaughterhouse Five

And so it goes. --Slaughterhouse Five



Thursday (28 May)

Reading quiz on "Inferno," cantos 6-11. We may or may not go over it in class. You will receive a rubric for your contemporary versions. I'll discuss it briefly but start thinking about what you may want to do. We will read cantos 12 & 13 in class. Take notes. You are responsible for finishing through canto 15.
Write a simile on love--one that expresses heartbreak. It doesn't have to be a boyfriend-girlfriend thing; you could also have your heart broken by the end of a friendship or the death of a pet.

Monday (1 June)
Turn in similes. Reading quiz on Cantos 12-15. I will try to have a more extensive hand-out on the project. We will read cantos 16 & 17 in class. You need to read through Canto 22 by next Tuesday. For tonight (or in the time left over in class). That will be due on ___________. Write a simile on a physical struggle. Explain what the struggle is (maybe running the marathon? Anything like that) and then write a simile about it.

Friday
Collect similes. Remember to read through canto 22 by Monday/Tuesday.








Background on Dante:



Some general facts:


Aristotle was the only approved "Pagan" philosopher. The church based its hierarchy on Aristotle's ideas about order.


The church was very hierarchical. It was also the only form of government. It ran the schools, the judicial system, and the trades. You had to be good to the church in order to get anywhere.


Though fortune-telling and astrology were highly forbidden, they were lucrative trades and therefore widely practiced, even by popes, who would have their own charts done. They would also have their [illegitimate sons'--called nephews'--where we get the word "nepotism"] charts done. Up until the 1100s or so, priests could marry. But marriage meant that they could not rise in the church's hierarchy.


Courtly Love--the idealization of another (usually a man's idealization of someone else's wife)--was also highly practiced. It was, of course, condemned by the church (as idolatry as well as lust), but socially speaking, it pervaded the culture. The man's love for the idealized woman ennobled him. It made him behave more civilly; it made him a better soldier, one who sought to right wrongs and rescue those in distress. It made him humble. Overall, it made him a better human being. Love ennobled him. Dante's Inferno, is to a large degree, a tribute to Beatrice, a woman he had first met at church when they were both children. Poor Beatrice married another man (an arranged marriage, typical among the noble classes) and died in child-birth when she was only in her twenties.


There are layers of Heaven, Hell, and Purgatory. Purgatory is the place where repentant believers go to cleanse (to purge) themselves before they get into heaven. There are seven deadly sins--and pride is the deadliest, perhaps because when we are full of pride, we have a hard time admitting any weaknesses. Lust is the least of the seven deadly sins, perhaps because lust resulted in the creation of more potential Christians. Lust starts not in the body but in the mind. As soon as one has thought about it, one has sinned. Acting upon it only compounds the sin. You will see that those in the deepest reaches of the Inferno are guilty of compound sins.


Very few get a straight shot into Heaven. Most either go to Hell (for non-belief and/or for non-repentance) or to Purgatory (belief but repentant). Some corrupt priests sold indulgences. A parishioner would pay the priest or higher official for forgiveness of a future sin. Or a parishioner, knowing that his Uncle Joseph might be in Purgatory, and wanting to hurry that journey through, might pay a cleric to say a special prayer or even a mass for Uncle Joseph. A parishioner might also pay a cleric so that he could get that new church contract. Corruption occurred within the hierarchy of the church, but that did not mean that all were corrupt. It's kind of like the news; we usually only read about the bad things because the good things are less interesting or newsworthy.


Usury is another concept that will come up in the next couple of cantos. Today, usury means lending money at exorbitant interest rates. The word has been used often in referring to the payday-lending industry and recent legislation.


In the Middle Ages, usury meant lending money at any interest rate. One was supposed to make one's living off of one's talents--talents like painting, shoe-making, building, copying manuscripts, etc. You were not supposed to make money from money. Part of this is a sign of Medieval anti-Semitism. You will see that in the canto.