I don’t understand this anxiety about TV supplanting literature as the main cultural vessel for our stories. Why does it matter? To me, TV and literature are on the same team. It’s the stories themselves that matter: good stories are good stories, regardless of what medium they reach us through, and there are television shows on the air today that way down the line will be treated with the same level of legitimacy that the “classics” receive now. What’s really interesting is that I would bet that the few television shows that do endure will share the same basic themes as many of our most beloved and respected books. In fact, there have even been a couple of times that the most popular shows of our time have expressly borrowed or paid homage to  “great” works of literature, adapting them for a modern audience. Here are a few of my favorite examples:

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I wore his shirt – crisp and fresh from the laundry basket as I hung my own rain-soaked clothes to dry.  The conversation was sparse but the air was gravid with an intangible emotion.  By the end of the day, we had not touched once and he saw me off at the door, wearing my own clothes again.

He was merely an acquaintance but years after that moment he still represents the most romantic day of my life.  Those who know me know that I have trouble accepting traditional notions of romance and the labeling of anything as “romantic” is kind of a big deal for me.  Guys I’ve dated can tell you that I have wrinkled my nose at their many attempts to be romantic.  Guys I’ve dated can also tell you that my response to the first “I love you” is usually shoving something in my mouth that takes a really long time to chew.  It’s something that I’ve always felt really bad about – especially as a writer.  Falling in love is such a common theme in storytelling that the Anti-Romantic can really feel left out.

Over coffee with a friend earlier this week, we discussed the impracticality and inconvenience of falling in love.  Science has found falling in love akin to mental illness so… yikes – what do I need that for? My friend and I conceded to the fact that like any common virus, lovesickness will find its way to us one day regardless of how ready we are for it.  He added that the only thing we really have to fear regarding falling in love is if it were unrequited.  Read more »

My Grandfather in Venice Way Back When

I have always suspected the missing links between the scattered parts of my being lay within the life of my maternal grandfather.

My paternal grandparents are open books – my grandmother with her inexorable tongue and my grandfather with eyes that can’t betray a single emotion.  My maternal grandmother is a storyteller on speed – something always reminds her of something else and various tangents can be made within a single sentence.  My paternal grandfather, however, was a little less clear in his communication.  My uncle used to joke that all it took to keep my grandfather happy was his daily newspaper and a bowl of mixed nuts.  For years, I believed this to be the case – but as I got older, I suspected something much more existed within his alleged simplicity.

After he passed away in the fall of 2005, my aunt emailed our family scanned photos she found of him.  The photos dated back to the forties and consisted mostly of posed portraits.  I was excited to find that I looked quite a bit like my young grandfather since I grew up looking not quite like either parent.

It was, however, in a photo where his face was less visible that I found myself identifying with him most: in the middle of Piazza San Marco, stood my grandfather in an ascot and a three-piece suit – tall and full of quiet confidence.  Though we all knew that my grandfather suffered from a hushed case of wanderlust, we never knew he ever had the means to treat it. Read more »

True or False: New York City has a full-time paid storyteller.

Answer: True!  So exciting and unbelievable.  Apparently there’s this woman, Diane Wolkstein who was a teacher and a pantomime in the U.S. and France in the 60s.  She dreamed of being a storyteller when she got out of school, but didn’t think this wasn’t a real or viable career. Later she was hired by NYC’s Parks Department to run a summer program for kids and became renowned in the neighborhood for her stories. Her first public storytelling session got a ton of press and led to her getting hired by the Department as the city’s first and only official storyteller.

She’s been telling stories now for 42 years.  Here’s Wolkstein herself from a recent article:

“I read a lot,” Wolkstein said. “I have to read 100 stories to find one I can use. You have to find a story that moves you, because if it doesn’t move you it won’t move anyone else. That’s what stories are about, sharing your heart,” she added. “You cloak it with words, but what you’re really doing is exchanging love.”

You can check out Diane’s personal website here for more information on her upcoming appearances.

I apologize if the combination of this picture and the post title brings to mind disturbing images. It was unintentional

I took a walk this morning because the weather was simply too beautiful and I realized it’s been a couple days since I bought a lottery ticket.  Near my apartment is a New York Lotto vending machine, tucked away in the corner of a deli next to a stand of stale looking powdered donuts.  Last night, during one of my now common bouts of insomnia, I did a little research.  According to NYLottery.org, the “White Ice 8’s” scratch-off ticket has the highest probability of winning you some cash.  Just imagine: your investment of just $2.00 can come right back at you as $20,000.00.  For those of you whose minds haven’t been blown by the possibility, let me repeat: that’s 10,000 times the amount of money you originally put in! Can you imagine??? Two bucks! I have two bucks! Do I have two bucks? Wait, now.  C’mon.  I know I had two dollars tucked in between that receipt for my Starbucks Vivanno and that other receipt for a pack of Moleskines.  Whoa, did I really order three extra shots of espresso in my Vivanno at 55 cents per extra shot? What the hell is wrong with me? I’m definitely in no position to be spending money on overpriced “designer” drinks and notebooks, let alone throwing away a single penny of it on scratch off tickets.  It’s a sad realization – considering just a year ago, successful self-employment had me feeling pretty great about my financial status.  Great enough to buy multiple drinks from Starbucks in a day.  Great enough to be okay with a twenty dollar lunch.  Great enough to drop five hundred dollars on a pair of Jimmy Choos.  Great enough to sign a two year lease with my 750 square foot apartment in the East Village.  Of course, just a year later I make the decision of taking a break from “the greatness” of being a 23-year-old entrepreneur and find myself unemployed in this fun little recession of ours, wallowing in the disgust I harbor for the poor financial decisions I made the year before.  

A friend of mine recently referred to this second year out of college as a “sophomore slump.”  Considering myself a sophomore when I’m no longer a student is rather unnerving.  This friend and I had both experienced very successful first years out of school, so how did we suddenly end up back at square one? And why doesn’t square one have padded walls and provide sedatives? 

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Pretty much everyone I know loves and has a crush on Ira Glass.  Yeah, you know him, the host of This American Life, the radio series (and now TV series) broadcast every Sunday on NPR affiliates around the country.

The show, a favorite since childhood, picks a theme each week and presents a story or many stories expounding on that theme.  Many celebrity writers have built a name by producing shorts for TAL, including David Sedaris and Sarah Vowell, but many other voices add to the mix.

People are obsessed with this guy — he’s probably the most well-loved indie guy of all time.  Somehow he’s made it trendy to be awkward. But more importantly, the show has brought back the shared experience of radio — millions of people tune in each week to hear stories.

So I was thrilled to discover Glass’s video series on storytelling tips.  Check out the four-part series below: Read more »

I have a longstanding love affair with words. Truth be told, I can’t get enough of ‘em. I love long n’ languid complex sentences, extended metaphors, adverbs and adjectives and gerunds…oh my! I like to read a lot of words and I like to use a lot of words, and I live in constant fear that I am a member of a dying breed. I have long assumed that the pillars of eloquence have been crumbling down around us as “text speak” rapes the English language and inane Facebook status updates stunt the intellectual growth of the young. But I recently read an article by Clive Thompson in Wired Magazine that gives me new hope and urges me to see the evolution of language in a fresh light. Read more »

With 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye, Pride and Prejudice and Zombies, and even Star Trek, the notion of transformative work has been a particularly hot topic these past few months. Transformative work not only plays havoc with intellectual property law, but also with the audience as storytellers take our familiar, beloved characters and then subvert them entirely. Holden Caulfield is 76 years old and on the run from a nursing home, Elizabeth Bennett defends her family from hoards of zombies, and James Tiberius Kirk finds himself without a father and a long way to go before he can become captain of the USS Enterprise. The result is all the more shocking and enlightening given the juxtaposition of the transformed work with our knowledge of the original work.

It’s a compelling artistic endeavor. And transformative work is nothing new. Fans of Homer’s The Odyssey and The Iliad wrote their own books based on his works. Cervantes’ Don Quixote saw more than a few unauthorized published sequels. John Gardner’s Grendel, a re-telling of Beowulf from the monster’s point of view, was published to great acclaim (which, being one of my favorite books, I definitely recommend you giving it a read). Gregory Maguire’s best-selling Wicked, an alternate take on The Wizard of Oz, is now one of Broadway’s biggest hits. You get the idea.

But what about fan-made transformative works? While there are countless pieces of fan fiction and fan art out there, in which fans take their favorite characters and merely continue their stories, genuine transformative works are far less common. But as few and far-between as they may be, their stories really resonate.

After the jump, a short list of lesser-known, but by no means lesser-quality, fan-made transformative storytelling that challenge the old adage “there are no new stories.”

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I have a new addiction. Oh, and it’s so delicious. I just can’t seem to get enough. Each fix is only temporary and leaves me wanting more. But thankfully this addiction is free and doesn’t harm my body in any way. And it’s so simple, you’d never guess: The Moth podcasts. See, I spend a lot of time on trains. And while I am a voracious reader, I had the misfortune of inheriting severe motion sickness from my grandmother. Just like Granny, if I try to read more than a page or two while on a moving vehicle I break out in a cold sweat and feel like I’m about to hurl. So I’m left with hours and hours on trains with nothing to do but to listen to my iPod. Well, recently a dear friend of mine recommended that I download The Moth podcasts. And this dear friend opened me up to a whole new world of awesomeness. The Moth is kind of like a drug. Storytelling crack. Yes, The Moth is storytelling crack. And I urge you to partake. Read more »