Recommendations for the best historical bildungsroman (coming-of-age) fiction at Shepherd.
Shari McNally
Discover the best books. Shepherd feels like you are browsing the best bookstore in the world. Passionate experts recommend the best books to read on every topic imaginable.
Shari McNally
Discover the best books. Shepherd feels like you are browsing the best bookstore in the world. Passionate experts recommend the best books to read on every topic imaginable.
Carmilla: A Queerly Fractured Fairy Tale
How will they retrofit this queer web series for primetime?
SD McNally. Medium. 2018.
Cited in The Global Vampire. The Transmediated Lesbian Vampire. Natalie Krikowa. Ed. Cait Coker. McFarland & Co. 2020;48-59.
How will they retrofit this queer web series for primetime?
SD McNally. Medium. 2018.
Cited in The Global Vampire. The Transmediated Lesbian Vampire. Natalie Krikowa. Ed. Cait Coker. McFarland & Co. 2020;48-59.
Literature and her trick frogs
Shari McNally
Stories are like frogs: living creatures. You may not enjoy frogs, but you cannot deny they are alive. What the human population does not grasp is that literature has lungs, it breathes, has a heart that beats inky blood through its pages. Like a frog, a story thinks, feels, it is alive. A story has a soul and a truth it understands about its existence.
Stories and frogs have their own Gods—yet we vivisect both.
My son is taking an AP literature course. They are learning to tie a story to worktable, arms and legs spread, still alive, heart beating, lungs gasping (for now it is in terror), a knife posed over the pulpy belly that rises and falls with each breath.
I worry for my son’s soul under the tyranny of vivisectionists.
We entered a time, not so long ago, when we decided we wanted to understand the entire universe, so we vivisected everything under sun and stars so we might see the inner workings of all. That’s because we are clever and want to become even cleverer.
Now we’re (w)holistic. Well, not really. But we try.
We stopped the vivisection of frogs and now dissect only what is dead. Medicine is attempting to be whole-r. Still, too few doctors come out of medical school recalling a human body is more than an inventory of parts.
But, unlike frogs, we never stopped the vivisection of art and literature. Knowing the mechanisms and the anatomy of story is fine but is it ever again breathing and whole?
The first time I read brilliant fiction, I realized the writing resisted vivisection. It's like a trick frog—cut it open and there are no guts, just white light. Blinding white light. You can’t see anything for the brightness. As if the soul of the story is all that's left to bear witness. But, as you have likely guessed, we put on a pair of sunglasses and do it, anyway.
And why shouldn’t we? Someone must, mustn’t they? How else shall we know the posterior mesenteric exits the Iliac? These are important things to understand, no one shall argue this point.
Yet.
All that poking and prodding about in the guts never reveal why a story is alive. What miracle occurs to grant it breath? What singularity explodes to begin its life?
A true story refuses vivisection, even while you slice it open. Those trick frogs taught me the difference between a story with a soul and one constructed like Frankenstein. While having similar parts, only one is organic and alive.
Perhaps it matters little how a frog is put together. Take the pulse. Is it alive?
Shari McNally
Stories are like frogs: living creatures. You may not enjoy frogs, but you cannot deny they are alive. What the human population does not grasp is that literature has lungs, it breathes, has a heart that beats inky blood through its pages. Like a frog, a story thinks, feels, it is alive. A story has a soul and a truth it understands about its existence.
Stories and frogs have their own Gods—yet we vivisect both.
My son is taking an AP literature course. They are learning to tie a story to worktable, arms and legs spread, still alive, heart beating, lungs gasping (for now it is in terror), a knife posed over the pulpy belly that rises and falls with each breath.
I worry for my son’s soul under the tyranny of vivisectionists.
We entered a time, not so long ago, when we decided we wanted to understand the entire universe, so we vivisected everything under sun and stars so we might see the inner workings of all. That’s because we are clever and want to become even cleverer.
Now we’re (w)holistic. Well, not really. But we try.
We stopped the vivisection of frogs and now dissect only what is dead. Medicine is attempting to be whole-r. Still, too few doctors come out of medical school recalling a human body is more than an inventory of parts.
But, unlike frogs, we never stopped the vivisection of art and literature. Knowing the mechanisms and the anatomy of story is fine but is it ever again breathing and whole?
The first time I read brilliant fiction, I realized the writing resisted vivisection. It's like a trick frog—cut it open and there are no guts, just white light. Blinding white light. You can’t see anything for the brightness. As if the soul of the story is all that's left to bear witness. But, as you have likely guessed, we put on a pair of sunglasses and do it, anyway.
And why shouldn’t we? Someone must, mustn’t they? How else shall we know the posterior mesenteric exits the Iliac? These are important things to understand, no one shall argue this point.
Yet.
All that poking and prodding about in the guts never reveal why a story is alive. What miracle occurs to grant it breath? What singularity explodes to begin its life?
A true story refuses vivisection, even while you slice it open. Those trick frogs taught me the difference between a story with a soul and one constructed like Frankenstein. While having similar parts, only one is organic and alive.
Perhaps it matters little how a frog is put together. Take the pulse. Is it alive?
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