Preparing for Canto III--changed to canto IV on 4/10

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."

Brainstorming Revisions 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 my 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, white supremacists, slave-owners, the "Oxbridge" system.

Canto II--Draft 1--changed on 4/10 to canto III

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.

"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."

Draft 2

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 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 Canto I Rough Draft

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.

Also, 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:

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.

The Writing Process

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:


"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 rain 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 f 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 weds, 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).

Week of April 7 - 18 Agenda & Assignments

Monday / Tuesday, April 7 & 8

Turn in the typed answers to the questions provided last week and your outlines. I want to be able to see them and grade them. I'll have them sent home so that I can also give you feedback. Make sure your names are on them.

Homework: Continue working on your Infernos. By Wednesday/Thursday, I would like for you to have typed, completed rough drafts of your first three cantos. These should be typed and double-spaced and you should have two copies of your rough drafts because I want you to get feedback from two different people. You do not have to take all that advice but take some if it is valid. Since your outlines and answers to questions were to have been typed, you should still have those as guidelines. Also, bring in your rubrics sheets. You will be giving them to your peer-editors to evaluate your work.

Wednesday /Thursday, April 9 & 10

Begin Peer-editing. As you are doing so, Ms. Lyle will walk around and check that you have completed the assigned work. Then begin writing the next six cantos, which will be due the following Monday/Tuesday, April 14/15.

Friday, April 11

Work quietly on Infernos. Completed rough drafts of cantos 4-9 are due--typed, and double-spaced, on Monday/Tuesday. A completed canto rough draft means that it has a beginning, middle, and end and includes the elements in the rubric provided.

Monday / Tuesday, April 14 & 15

Ms. Lyle will check that you have completed the six canto rough drafts--typed and double-spaced as required as you begin peer-editing with the rubrics. When the peer-editing is done, then begin rewriting your work. The final project, complete with bibliography, print-outs of research (if applicable), and all rough drafts or brainstorming or outlines or anything else involved in the process part, on Wednesday and Thursday, April 23rd and 24th.

Wednesday / Thursday, April 16 & 17

You have the entire class period to work on your Infernos. Even if you think it is done, work on it some more. Remember, the process part is a test grade in itself. If I hear that you are not working on your Infernos in class, I will think you have not edited enough and that will impact the grade you receive. I am a writer that edits usually at least 9 or 10 times and even then, will usually find something I could have done better. And I have been writing for decades.

Friday, April 18

Again, you have the entire class to work on this big project. It is due on April 23rd & 24th.