Pendergast

Literary devices.

Isn't it funny how memory works. I have been wanting to write about The Pendergast novels by Lincoln Child and Douglas Preston for some time especially to point out an interesting literary device, only I couldn't remember it. Not the literary device. that was simple. What I couldn't remember was the term....literary device. Rolling through my head was the term affectation which means a pose or act one 'affects' in order to present oneself as something (usually, something you are not as in an affected accent) But I knew I wasn't remembering the correct term. This morning as I walked down to the bus stop. POP into my head jumps the term literary device. Finally remembered the term I have been searching for for over a month. I would like to blame it on the fact that with 3.4 languages rolling through my head I just have to much vocabulary to keep it all straight, but I chalk it up to to much sugar and not enough sleep.

Anyway, on with the show. The literary device in these novels is one of perspective. When authors write novels they have to write in person. First person means the novel is written as though from that person's mind. You know only what that person knows. You can't read anyone's mind. Although sometimes authors will cheat a bit and slip conveniently into 3rd person omniscient in order to give us information they want. Now, we have introduced another person: 3rd person omniscient. From this perspective we the reader are clued in to everything. We know that the villain is secretly planning murder the protagonist and we know that the protagonist is completely clueless. Some authors will utilize a 3rd person format without the all-knowing aspect. This allows the reader to discover the thoughts and motivations of the characters based on their actions without hearing their thoughts. 2nd person novels and writing are less common because it is difficult to convey things from the your perspective.

What Child and Preston have done is to my mind quite distinct and like Pendergast himself borrowed from Sherlock Holmes. Now, I don't claim to be a Sherlock Holmes scholar (or any kind of scholar, just an average person with an avocation) but in the few Sherlock Holmes stories I have read, we don't get insight into the mind of Holmes except as he acts and explains himself to Watson. Pendergast is much the same way. Although Child and Preston have no problem revealing the thoughts and motivations of others Pendergast himself is rarely revealed. I noted this distinctly in Still Life with Crows. Through the entire book we 'hear' the thoughts of others but never Pendergast. We can only judge him by his actions, by what he does, and by what he says to other characters, and by their reactions to him. Whether this began as a conscious literary device or grew into one, we find it carrying on through the books. Only on the few rare occasions when Pendergast turns inward himself and meditates is his inner working revealed. I found this to be an powerful method of character development. It works much like real life. We learn about people largely through what we can observe and only rarely is their inner self revealed.

Citation Nods:
http://andromeda.rutgers.edu/~jlynch/Terms/index.html
http://www.uncp.edu/home/canada/work/allam/general/glossary.htm
http://mrbraiman.home.att.net/lit.htm

Literary Elements: Internal Consistency in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (Warning minor spoilers)

A few months back I did a seven week series on literary elements in J.K. Rowling's Harry Potter series. Undoubtedly the two people who read those posts know I am a fan of hers. Revisiting the series in that way gave me a new appreciation for her ability as a writer. One key feature of successful fantasy is internal consistency. In point of fact it is essential for not only fantasy, but all fiction and most non-fiction. Internal consistency is the concept that keeps character in character, keeps the historical references the same. For example, Dumbledore's nose. From our first introduction to Dumbledore, he is described as having a distinct, crooked, and previously broken nose. His nose carried all the way through to Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows where we finally learn how his nose was broken. There are two ways an author can maintain this internal consistency. One, the author can do their writing and then as the write new story lines they can simply check their previous writing to make sure they are consistent with what they have written before. Lots of writers do this, but this sometimes does create conflict as new story ideas and direction for a series requires the author to introduce new elements or "magics" (in the sense of 'and a unicorn magically appeared') to justify some novel (in the sense of new) idea. Authors do this when some thing jumps in out of nowhere and introduces some entirely new element to the novel or series in order to resolve a plot conflict.

J.K. Rowling seems to have taken a different approach. She seems to have very meticulously planned the end game of her book and the like a sculptor carefully chipped away the secrets until the consistent story is revealed as a masterpiece. Back to Dumbledore's nose. Not only was Rowling careful to give us good detail about Dumbledore's appearance, but she chose to reveal a clue about the end game right from the beginning. She knew that Albus and his brother Aberforth had fought, and why and what the causes and consequences of that fight had been. We like Harry were surprised to learn these details, but they were essential to Rowling and so she revealed them slowly and carefully.

Another enjoyable consistency was Harry almost swallowing his first snitch. Now, from the perspective of the Albus Dumbledore, he simply took advantage of the fact that Harry had caught his first snitch in his mouth, but from the perspective of the author, it seems likely that she had planned that out. She knew that Harry would need to receive the Resurrection Stone from Dumbledore in a secret way that would allow it to be revealed to Harry in the nick of time. She wrote in him catching the snitch in his mouth so that when Scrimegour passed it on to Harry it wouldn't reveal itself. Now, I suppose it would be possible to argue that Rowling like Dumbledore simply took advantage of her previous cleverness.

Oh, that's right, I thought it would be jolly clever to have Harry catch the snitch in his mouth, now how can I use that?

I tend to give her a bit more credit than that, of course she is always welcome to correct me.

Well, just two more examples of the effective literary elements in Harry Potter.

The Best of the Bull

I have usually avoided being very personal on this blog because I actually want it to keep a quite professional atmosphere. However, I was with colleagues when this occurred and it went out to the twitterverse so....

The folks in my office normally go out to break bread together. It is one of those great bonding experiences. Eating is a very social event. Well, this one was an extremely social event. It allowed for some incredible bonding. We went to a local restaurant Cowboy Grub on of the items on the menu is "The Best of the Bull"

My friend Jared decided that we needed to try it. Check out the results.

Really, this was a learning experience for me. Sometimes we have to open ourselves up to new experiences. Plus the prairie oysters (or Rocky Mountain Oysters as they are also called) weren't bad. Will I rush back for another batch. I doubt it, maybe for the spuds though! Did I learn something. Yeah, and I enjoyed good times with my friends. The power of which can never be underestimated. Oh BTW did I just give in to peer pressure???

He's decomposing

If you are one of the unfortunate people who have experienced the tragedy of reading A Series of Unfortunate Events, then you have the unique affliction of being acquainted with Lemony Snicket. Much to our dismay and consternation he has written another book.

This book is a new investigation into the darker side of what some people want us to believe is high civility, but is in reality probably a dark conspiracy involving organized crime. This book starts out with the vexatious Lemony Snicket encountering a Composer who has failed miserably at his job so miserably in fact that he is not composing at all but rather decomposing. Mr. Snickets thankless (thankless becuase we would rather he didn't do it not because no on thanks him) job is to investigate the "Orchestra" a group who much like another organization dresses up in finery and mysteriously carry strange locked black cases and often slip in through back doors. You can hear more of this book and read further dreadful details at the NPR website.

Citation Nod:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=101669557

The books already written by Lemony Snicket

Emotional Design by Donald A. Norman

Some more data has just been released regarding emotional design!

That sounded umm... well... melodramatic at best.

Reality is though, I really loved the book Emotional Design by Donald A. Norman. When I first read the book, I did a post on my learning blog trying to articulate what his book was doing for me, but I failed. Yet again, I found that he articulated much better what I was trying too than I could. There are two sides to how we think.

• We need freedom, safety and low stress in order to develop breadth to our thinking
• We need restriction, fear, and high stress in order to bring depth(Focus) to our thinking

The former is exceptional for generating massive amounts of creative ideas and novel solutions to problems. The former allows us to actually get work done.

But I guess, I will let him say it.

My White Dragon review

The White Dragon by Anne McCaffrey

My review

rating: 3 of 5 stars
This is one of my favorite of Anne McCaffrey 's books. Just a little spoiler it does have some description of human intimacy


View all my reviews.

More new Information on the Kindle!

Kindle was being touted as the iPod for bibliophiles, but I was arguing that dang it I dont' want to lug another technogeekgadget. I love the idea of carrying a library around with me, but I also like to listen to music and occasionally watch a movie. I thought I would just have to wait until those feature became more efficient on the Kindle. But wait....I can get my Kindle on my iPhone, or in my case my iPod touch. I haven't tried out the app yet, but as soon as I am done presenting at UELMA I am going to be downloading it and trying my first Kindle book. Hmmm... Now, what to buy?