lookingland

last night's movie: El Dorado ~ the only john wayne movie i'll actually watch (because i love robert mitchum and james caan). it's a great script too. don't get me wrong, i like john wayne as a person just fine ~ he was a good egg. as an actor and a cowboy, not so much.

i hadn't seen this movie in years though i would consider it (oddly enough) a major influence for me as it mixed comedy and the old west in way i really dug. the film was just as i remembered it and a good time was had by all (except maybe McCloud and the ed asner character).

~ * ~

(for anyone who may be the least bit concerned: yes, i really and truly am destroying the book ~ but don't worry, the book shall rise again!).

why the book is headed for the pyre:

i'm dredging up research as i dilly dally about taking the writing plunge. last night i pulled up my file on Cedar Run and was horrified to realize (or recollect ~ surely i must have known this) that the alternate name of Cedar Mountain is Slaughter Mountain (not Slaughter's Mountain). i already have taken enough literary license with the title of my book by calling it From Slaughter's Mountain instead of From Cedar Run as it more properly should be in the first place (this is a north/south era-appropriate thing that fanatics will shred). it would just make it all the worse to then be wrong about the name altogether.

i considered that i might justify it in the book if someone calls it Slaughter's Mountain and makes a point of saying it, but i think i'll just change the name of the book to From Slaughter Mountain ~ that's not too bad, but it will take some getting used to.

(i actually did a facepalm when i saw this. i have no idea what i was thinking ~ clearly i wasn't).

but i'm not just burning the book over the title, the problem with the title just serves to accentuate the real problem: that not only am i not so confident in my research, but i'm beginning to realize how much i still have yet to do! i coasted through the first part of the book because it didn't seem to require much in depth knowledge of anything. as private soldiers, i just stuffed everyone in a column and put them to march (the book is essentially a long march with flashbacks culminating at antietam creek). as they move up the echelon, however, and as the war escalates, it gets necessarily more complicated.

part of the problem is the way i wrote the book: naturalistic dialogue set into an impressionistic (even pontillist) split first-person narrative. using stephen crane as a model*, i carefully avoided naming most everything and everyone so as to keep it universal in some sense, though anyone plugged in to the war would "get" which brigade they're in, etc. it was my way of creating dual levels on which to enjoy the book that would invite a non-familiar audience in without alienating them with names and tactics and manuevers, but also provide a deeper participation on the part of those "in the know". i thought i was being brilliant.

file that also under what was i thinking?

it doesn't work because it defies believability that no one ever says the name of the regiment, no one ever talks about where they are or where they're going (except vaguely: the junction, the depot, etc.), no one ever talks about the chain of command except a brief (and disparaging) mention of the swell-headed general [jackson] and a very oblique reference to uncle robert [e. lee].

it works for crane because his book has a unity of action. it starts at one skirmish and ends at another without a whole swatch of time and travel in between. he even gets away without ever naming any of his characters in the narrative (we get their names from the dialogue). his story is more intentionally universal and works on that level. mine isn't. mine is specifically a journey from the spring draft of '62 to gettysburg and beyond ~ and all the stops along the way. it sprawls and it's told from the intimate viewpoints of those involved. The Red Badge of Courage runs about 120 pages ~ mine will likely run over 500 for the three "books" (geh).

* for those of you who don't know it, The Red Badge of Courage was heavily edited when it was originally published in 1895 to make it more palatable to audiences. the publishers felt it was too "dark" and cut huge sections of it, including an entire chapter. whenever i'm referring to the book, i'm referring to binder's restored edition from 1979.

so there's that problem. and the problem of the nameless regiment, which is based (perhaps far too strongly) on the actual 21st Virginia Infantry (link is to the F Co. reenactor's unit). i don't have an alternate name and find myself in the awkward position of having to come up with one. i've always thought of them as the 21st (a fictional 21st), but sticklers will crucify me for it.

all this technical military stuff is almost too geeky even for me, but i gotta do it. if i were clever, i would change them to the 48th Virginia Independents (or Volunteers) ~ 48 being a sort of "magic" number in the world of the story. but that's a hard choice to let go of ~ an association i've had for fifteen years. i'm considering it. i feel i have to because it just seems odd to try to get away with no one ever calling the regiment by name. problem there is: there's also already a 48th Virginia Infantry. the other possible option is to lose the number altogether and give them a nice, patriotic name (like the "Richmond Grays"). i dunno man, this is a real conundrum.

i know on the one hand it seems like a senseless thing to fuss over. on the other, i don't like mucking around in known history. the 21st was its own regiment and deserves not to be pilfered for fictional purposes. its for this reason i don't include any interaction between my fictional characters and historical personages. likewise, the name of one's regiment was one's whole identity in the war. it was a source of pride. to avoid giving them a name is too unrealistic and frankly unfair.

game plan:

1. disinter the old: find my old order of battle notes. maybe they will clue me in as to what i was thinking (though i doubt it) with regard to the original organization of the regiment.

2. nerdy war details: make a new timeline and echelon so that it's clear where they are on a given day and whose command they are under. also, rework the numbers. the regiment was originally about 600 strong if i remember correctly. i need to firm up those numbers.

3. the title: make some hard decisions about reconnecting the title to the overall book and consider changing their participation at slaughter mountain. i have them run from the battle (not sure on what i based this; assuming Jones' brigade skeddaled because i must have got the idea from somewhere). but if the book is to be called From Slaughter Mountain i wonder if i should jack up the action at slaughter in a way that will carry more weight. it might be sufficient that it's their first battle, that they run, and that fletcher stays on the line and kills ed alexander there (oh the joys of fragging). it just gets lost the way the story is told now. the story is told post-slaughter mountain on the road to antietam (hence the "from", i guess). but really it ought to mean more than that.

4. chronology: make really hard decisions about thrust. the book has a sort of weird non-linearity about it which isn't confusing if you understand that it's two lines moving forward together which eventually dovetail at the final battle, but figuring out that structure can be confusing as all get out. i don't want to tell the story in chronological order and i don't want to tell it in media res. but there's got to be a more effective way to handle the flashbacks.

5. voices: revist all the narrative voices and tighten up their throughlines. make big decisions about what to do with mr. morse and with charles sharp (voice no. 3). sharp has to do double duty or he needs to be cut. right now he's main function is as an expositional "device". that's really bad. if fletcher is the oblique narrator and morse is the reliable narrator, then sharp needs to be more keenly the unreliable narrator and we need to somehow be cued in by the end that morse, esoteric as he may come off, is the one telling the whole truth, whereas sharp is embellishing completely (as a choral voice he "creates" the myth of both fletcher and morse's camp reputations as larger-than-life). i'm not sure how to do this. the objective is that we hear these crazy stories from sharp, then get variant angles from morse and fletcher who are just struggling to make it through each day. where this works in the book now is in seeing how much morse and fletcher don't realize that each longs to be more like the other when, in fact, both are completely "faking" who they are. i think this is why their break works: it's the point at which they realize that they don't want to be like each other and, in fact, fear what the other really is.

anyway, this is getting to be the longest post ever and i've got so much work to do, so i better get to it.

~ * ~

Gaily bedight,
A gallant knight
In sunshine and in shadow,
Had journeyed long,
Singing a song,
In search of El Dorado.

But he grew old --
This knight so bold --
And -- o'er his heart a shadow
Fell as he found
No spot of ground
That looked like El Dorado.

And, as his strength
Failed him at length,
He met a pilgrim shadow --
"Shadow," said he,
"Where can it be --
This land of El Dorado?"

"Over the Mountains
Of the Moon,
Down the Valley of the Shadow,
Ride, boldly ride,"
The shade replied --
"If you seek for El Dorado."