annoying book
Jun. 14th, 2009 04:45 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI got a few books out the UEA library to read up about writing before I do some.
There was like half a shelf full of "The Seven Basic Plots" by Christopher Booker, so someone thought it was worth reading, and it looked promising. Rules! Guidelines! Neat and tidy!
The plots are "Overcoming the Monster" "Rags to Riches" "The Quest" "Voyage and Return" "Comedy" "Tragedy" and "Rebirth".
I started reading at Tragedy since that's effectively what I've been studying all year since seeing Hamlet.
His 5 stage plan for what happens in a Tragedy seemed to fit Macbeth fairly well, if you smoothed the play out a bit. But it don't fit Hamlet. Or a great many other things. I read his descriptions of a few stories, ones I know, and I don't necessarily recognise them from his schematic version. And then I read his 10 pages on Hamlet, and by the end of them I'm calling him rude words. Such utter rubbish!
But the bit that made me throw the book down was when he started talking about the Oresteia. He starts off mentioning how it's odd that Greek tragedy doesn't fit his 5 points - and, hello, clue, possibly Greek tragedy is real tragedy and your five points are not.
And then he starts a summary of the Oresteia. I got as far as "We begin with the tragic cycle which is unleashed when the great king of Mycenae, Agamemnon, returns home victorious from the Trojan War. During the years he has been away, his wife Clytemnestra has enjoyed a long adulterous affair with his cousin Aegisthus. At the prospect of her husband returning, she conceives a treacherous plan to murder him, succumbing to the fantasy that she will then be able to marry Aegisthus and settle down"
which is in the middle of a sentence but I at this point threw the stupid book back in the bag.
Bollocks was it about Aegisthus! Clytemnestra says clearly and repeatedly why she set out to kill Agamemnon, and it's because the cycle of death doesn't start with her. Agamemnon killed their daughter. That 'great king' was a lousy father and killed their daughter. So she kills him right back, "Act for act, wound for wound!" It has sod all to do with who she's shacked up with since the killing. It's all about "He thought no more of it than killing a beast, and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece, but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I laboured into love to charm away the savage winds of Thrace." He decided a good breeze to get them all heading off to the killing needed a good killing, and did a murder. "Didn't the law demand you banish him? Hunt him from the land for all his guilt? But now you witness what I've done and you are ruthless judges." She takes the law into her own hands because nobody else is doing anything about it.
And, yes, lets Aegisthus move in, but would you want to stay married to your child's murderer? Hell if.
So. I got a bit worked up there. Because there's some utter crap talked about Clytaemnestra in the middle ages, where they used her story in those 'all women are evil' books and left out all the subtlety and balance the Oresteia Agamemnon leaves in. And here's this bloke who reckons he's found the key to all stories and he's chucked out so much of this story it's back to being that old poison. Utter garbage. The actual play has the Chorus reckons "Each charge meets counter-charge. None can judge between them. Justice. The plunderer plundered, the killer pays the price." Pretty clearly they reckon Clytaemnestra had a point. Ignoring that invalidates any argument you want to make about that play.
... I'm wound up enough I Must Tell The Internets!
... I should probably just go sleeps.
So, anyway. Huge great book, carried it all the way home, am sending it back to the library after only reading about 30 pages all told, because it is talking rubbish and distorting the source texts beyond all recognition.
Drat.
There was like half a shelf full of "The Seven Basic Plots" by Christopher Booker, so someone thought it was worth reading, and it looked promising. Rules! Guidelines! Neat and tidy!
The plots are "Overcoming the Monster" "Rags to Riches" "The Quest" "Voyage and Return" "Comedy" "Tragedy" and "Rebirth".
I started reading at Tragedy since that's effectively what I've been studying all year since seeing Hamlet.
His 5 stage plan for what happens in a Tragedy seemed to fit Macbeth fairly well, if you smoothed the play out a bit. But it don't fit Hamlet. Or a great many other things. I read his descriptions of a few stories, ones I know, and I don't necessarily recognise them from his schematic version. And then I read his 10 pages on Hamlet, and by the end of them I'm calling him rude words. Such utter rubbish!
But the bit that made me throw the book down was when he started talking about the Oresteia. He starts off mentioning how it's odd that Greek tragedy doesn't fit his 5 points - and, hello, clue, possibly Greek tragedy is real tragedy and your five points are not.
And then he starts a summary of the Oresteia. I got as far as "We begin with the tragic cycle which is unleashed when the great king of Mycenae, Agamemnon, returns home victorious from the Trojan War. During the years he has been away, his wife Clytemnestra has enjoyed a long adulterous affair with his cousin Aegisthus. At the prospect of her husband returning, she conceives a treacherous plan to murder him, succumbing to the fantasy that she will then be able to marry Aegisthus and settle down"
which is in the middle of a sentence but I at this point threw the stupid book back in the bag.
Bollocks was it about Aegisthus! Clytemnestra says clearly and repeatedly why she set out to kill Agamemnon, and it's because the cycle of death doesn't start with her. Agamemnon killed their daughter. That 'great king' was a lousy father and killed their daughter. So she kills him right back, "Act for act, wound for wound!" It has sod all to do with who she's shacked up with since the killing. It's all about "He thought no more of it than killing a beast, and his flocks were rich, teeming in their fleece, but he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I laboured into love to charm away the savage winds of Thrace." He decided a good breeze to get them all heading off to the killing needed a good killing, and did a murder. "Didn't the law demand you banish him? Hunt him from the land for all his guilt? But now you witness what I've done and you are ruthless judges." She takes the law into her own hands because nobody else is doing anything about it.
And, yes, lets Aegisthus move in, but would you want to stay married to your child's murderer? Hell if.
So. I got a bit worked up there. Because there's some utter crap talked about Clytaemnestra in the middle ages, where they used her story in those 'all women are evil' books and left out all the subtlety and balance the Oresteia Agamemnon leaves in. And here's this bloke who reckons he's found the key to all stories and he's chucked out so much of this story it's back to being that old poison. Utter garbage. The actual play has the Chorus reckons "Each charge meets counter-charge. None can judge between them. Justice. The plunderer plundered, the killer pays the price." Pretty clearly they reckon Clytaemnestra had a point. Ignoring that invalidates any argument you want to make about that play.
... I'm wound up enough I Must Tell The Internets!
... I should probably just go sleeps.
So, anyway. Huge great book, carried it all the way home, am sending it back to the library after only reading about 30 pages all told, because it is talking rubbish and distorting the source texts beyond all recognition.
Drat.