Today we were given one hour to write 200-300 word essay on one of three possible discussions. I picked the ethics of the first Superman stories. It seems that our hero did things that were not always, well, legal or, at least, not nice. Like–sort of like kidnapping and drugging. But these stories were written in the late 1930s and that world was undergoing some difficult times. (Damn, I wish I’d been THIS good this morning).
Basically that was my premise: that regular people who had no super powers would have been happy to be able to solve their problems as easily as Kal-el from Krypton did. The character (and his creators) seemed to feel that the results made the means okay.
What-ev-er. Superman is a fun read as long as you remember the times in which the story was written. I really need to get some Man of Steel stories from other decades to see how he and his stories change through the years.
Up, up and A-waaaaaaaay.

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Second day of class is behind me and one of the many things that is different is the classroom and the technology. The Berks Campus is relatively new as is the Franco Building. The classroom is large and in the front of the building. The ceiling is high to accommodate a screen—the projector is hanging from the opposite wall. Everything is run from the teacher’s podium that houses the computer. Such a change from the audio/visual machines of my distant or even more immediate past.
Assignments will include in class writing and three summaries of journal pieces, critical articles of graphic novels. And there will be quizzes and a final exam. It’s been years since I had to study. I am not looking forward to the tests—the writing is fine; the tests not so much.
I spent most of today doing the latest assignment. I finished reading The Superman Chronicles, Volume 1, which contains the first thirteen Superman stories in Action Comics and the first stand-alone Superman comic. Then I read half of Will Eisner’s book on comics. Actually it tells you how and why to create a comic strip a certain way, the importance of panels, the types of panels, the font of the text, the balloons. It seems that a lot goes into the execution of a comic.
And here I thought cartoonists just drew.
Now I must write ten questions on Superman for tomorrow’s quiz. Each one of us writes ten questions and then I guess the instructor picks ten to ask.
And one of the questions can NOT be: what was the name of the female reporter?
However, Clark Kent worked for what newspaper?
Hint: It WASN’T the Daily Planet.

I’m sure there are many critics—and authors—out there who will disagree with me, but I believe that Stephen King is one of the most important writers of my generation—important to readers and writers.

Let me very clear about this: important to readers and writers.

Let’s start with readers. He is probably one of the first writers of the second half of the 20th century to “tell the truth”. He didn’t sugar-coat his stories with fake romance or tangled mystery. He wrote (writes) from the gut and the heart. When I read The Stand, I knew that, or I felt that. I was too young (as old as the writer himself but too young in experience) to recognize it as a “knowing”. When I read Lisey’s Story years later, I knew it this time. It was as if he’d said to himself, What would my wife had done if I had been killed along that Maine road instead of just messed up a mite?

I’m rereading The Dead Zone. In fact I had the fleeting thought of rereading every King book and doing it in order of their publication date. I have many of them. But I decided to start this process with The Dead Zone, mainly because King calls the book one of his favorites. While reading it part of my brain is amazed that he writes “unnecessary” details—unnecessary, the reader may think, to the story. But in this second reading (and after listening to the author read On Writing for the umpteenth time), I’m aware of how necessary those details are. The devil is in the details, my friend, and in King’s stories “the devil” could be just that, “the devil” or it could be the way the reader becomes attached to the characters, in the details. Do I really need to know that Johnny Smith greets his date in a Jekyll and Hyde mask? Is that mask important in the rest of Johnny’s story. Damn straight it is. King is setting something up and doing it skillfully, maybe without even knowing it when he wrote it.

Because that’s what happens to real writers. Stuff gets written and the real writer sometimes doesn’t even know how it happens. King calls it (for him), “the boys in the basement”—letting the muse take hold of you. I call it fermenting. I think about a story, a concept, or the story that I’m working on and let my “girls in the basement” take over.

So for writers who say about King’s books, I would never read “that stuff”: Good for you. And too bad for you. You’re missing out reading a master-story-teller and teacher. However, read or listen to (I would advise listen to and at least yearly) On Writing.

No matter what your genre you can learn from this writer—probably the best of his/my generation.