Sunday, June 23, 2013

 

Writing a novel


Just finished reading Geronimo's autobiography and he appears to have fought injustice most of his life until he surrendered and was a prisoner of war on a reservation.

Combining experience with creativity is a challenge but when you embark on a writing journey where the less than admirable are the majority it is time to question not the majority but the underpinnings of culture and its ethics.  Free will exercised within the confines of a particular culture, ethics and bias leads to a framework sometimes of deception practiced even possibly by the majority. 

One example comes to mind is H.G. Well's The Time Machine where the Eloi think alike to their detriment. 

Herman Melville's autobiographical book Typee portrays a world on ship that required him to jump ship and escape its unbearable conditions:

"The usage on board of her was tyrannical; the sick had been inhumanly neglected; the provisions had been doled out in scanty allowance; and her cruises were unreasonably protracted. The captain was the author of the abuses; it was in vain to think that he would either remedy them, or alter his conduct, which was arbitrary and violent in the extreme. His prompt reply to all complaints and remonstrances was--the butt-end of a handspike, so convincingly administered as effectually to silence the aggrieved party."

George Orwell's Burmese Days, a great book, seems shunned, for the protagonist commits suicide and the portrayal of colonialism is corrosive and unappealing.  The world of 1984 with an omnipresent state usurping all power and control may have been more prescient than many would like, although for those in political power there appear no reservations, no limits to the power of the state, for power and wealth or money are inextricably united.  Does this mean the application of the democracy and republic is flawed?

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