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Pardis Mount

April 19th 2010 09:26

Almost everyone has heard about the 7 wonders of the world; however, very few know the eighth wonder, as I call it, since it is not registered as one in any record or history books. It is in fact unknown even to the nation wherein it is located. The 8th non-man-made wonder in my opinion, is located in my native land, Iran, and is called the nearest place to sun, or the ancient Pardis Mount (located in Boushehr State, South or Iran, in Jam county in Asalouyeh).

This post is not at all about literature but I liked to share it, in case anyone interested in archeology would be reading my blog.

The focal and amazing points about this mountain are as follows:

1. The peak is the closest place on earth to sun, since it is the highest one from equator.
2. A fire-temple is located on the peak, where Iranian emperor, Jamshid (the fourth emperor) was born and baptized.
3. A magnificent magnifying zone covers about 50 – 100 meters around the mountain, which pulls even autos parked within the zone.
4. The herbs growing there are used for making Advil and have many other medical benefits.
5. Dates of the place are unique and used for making diabetes pills and sugars.

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Once in a Lifetime, Daniel Steele

April 19th 2010 08:42

Once in a Lifetime, by Daniel Steele, has a nice but monotonous and cliché plot. The novel, being so lengthy (about 500 pages) could have been made shorter if the long descriptions and sometimes tedious dialogues between characters were omitted. The length is increased only because it is narrating a whole lifetime of routine activities, while only 3 major things happen in the whole story. There’s not much challenge involved, everyone and everything seems perfect and even the disasters are described as if happening merrily to such levels that the reader cannot commemorate with the characters. There’s not much passion put into the novel.

Danielle Steele’s way of writing is immensely plain and the sentences are usually short. There’s hardly any need for anyone to look up the words in the dictionary and lacks the skillfully inscribed sentences or phrases in such works as those of Jane Austen.

On the whole, everything is so plain, simple, suggestive and non-challenging, that the reader cannot even identify a perfect and striking climax.
The novel has so many spare and unnecessary parts which could be easily omitted and reduced to only 200 pages.

However, I liked the novel because it is a THOROUGH description of an author’s lifestyle and her maturing in the art of writing. For anyone like me who’s interested in screenplay writing, I really enjoyed the sense and the real motif of the novel, which in my opinion is that it’s never too late for starting a bright career. Quite contrary to the regret I feel when reading English literature’s history and learning how the masters of literature seemed to be geniuses who started their career as a writer early in life; while reading Once in a Lifetime, I felt the gusto and zest to learn and write more, since it is never late.

The story starts with Daphne having an accident and being run by a truck on one Christmas night while being severely injured. She has been kept in intensive care for a couple of days while the story is being narrated from about 13 years earlier.

Daphne was a journalist when she was given the task of interviewing Jeffrey, which ultimately led to their falling in love and getting married. Nevertheless, their only daughter, Aimee and Jeffrey die in a fire accident on Christmas night, which also causes massive injuries to Daphne, who was held in intensive care while being pregnant.

After recovery feeling so miserable and devastated, she keeps on surviving only with the hope of her son-in-born. Her son, Andrew is born and she devotes all her life and energy to him, while all of a sudden she gets to know that her son is deaf. Unable to deal with this failure, she sends Andrew to a School for the deaf.

The loneliness and the void she feels and the enthusiasm she feels for writing journals of her life shifts her career towards being a writer. She keeps writing journals, then short stories and later on novels. She gradually becomes a great novelist and her novels keep selling.

Later on she gets to know a truck driver much older than her, but again loses him in an accident. Deciding to devote herself and her life to her son and work only, she moves to LA as a playwright for Hollywood. Again she meets tremendous amounts of success, while falling in love with an actor, Justin. Their one-year relationship ends so abruptly since Justin isn’t a committed type of person.

Later, on her return to New York to spend time with her son, she falls in love with Mathew Danes, the new director of Andrew’s School, but never permits anyone to learn about her love, since she assumes Mathew is getting married. A month later she gets crashed by a car and that’s when her secretary informs Mathew of the news and her love for him. Mathew rushes to her and informs her of his love, and they decide to marry as soon as she gets better.

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Was Shakespeare Really a Genius?

April 11th 2010 06:35

http://stantonssheetmusic.wordpress.com/2009/04/

Although I am aware that Thomas Rhymer was labeled as lacking critical judgment in his days and even now for condemning Shakespeare’s superiority and though I am quite aware of John Dennis’s agreement with him that Shakespeare may have not been that much a big deal, I unfortunately agree with them in some aspects. However, I too am aware that I might be opposed to by so many other critics and admirers of Shakespeare, BUT, with all due respect, I believe Shakespeare hadn’t been that much a genius as Homer, or Chaucer or even Marlowe, his contemporary.

However, I strongly advocate his supremacy in sonnet and his skill and boldness in investigating new subjects but in writing screenplays, I believe he wrote for the market only and not for literary and artistic ends. That’s why although some of Shakespeare’s plays like The Merchant of Venice or Romeo and Julliet or Hamlet (although Hamlet’s subject is said to have been taken from Ur-Hamlet, a contemporary play), etc. are so rich in material and poetry, they still contain some degrading parts that keep repeating in his works.

Shakespeare in my opinion is a tragedy writer and not a comedy writer. In such works as The Merchant of Venice, the tragic parts are so brilliant and impressing, while as soon as we get to comic parts where the ladies disguise themselves as men, the plot turns into a burlesque.

In A Midsummer Night’s Dream also which is designed to be a total romantic comedy the triviality and insignificance of the plot is highlighted. Shakespeare’s use of fairies and mistakes made by them and how they intermingle human life, even the play being practiced and played in front of the duke are so ridiculous that I believe even Shakespeare didn’t put much time into composing them.

That’s why Homer’s everlasting epic like Illiad and Odyssey, or such enduring works as Beowulf, Malory’s Morte Darthur, etc. keep being imitated and repeated in different forms by different playwrights and authors and still the exact scenario attracts us so much that even its grotesquely fictitious characters do not impede us from believing them as true and by watching and reading them we feel the same catharsis Aristotle had emphasized, while in some of Shakespeare’s market plays (as I call them) such impression is never achieved.

However I do not totally reject Shakespeare and his works. As I mentioned beforehand I really do appreciate his sonnets and those non-market tragic plays he has produced, but he in my opinion, Shakespeare is not the genius everyone emphasized. His history plays aren’t that marvelous in plot, since the plot has been taken from historic sources such as Holinshed’s History. His comedies too aren’t rich in dialogue and causes. Whatsoever his intentions in writing plays, I believe the label genius is much deserved by other great writers in history such as Becket, Homer, Marlowe, Tolstoy, Dickens, etc. in other words, Shakespeare is a poetic-diction genius only.

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Prelude

April 11th 2010 06:08

http://www.lambsongs.co.nz/butterfly.htm

When I started studying literature, I had no idea where it was going to lead me. Unfortunately, in Iran due to its educational system, even in higher education, one does not have that much option in choosing his/her major of interest for studies. We have an entrance exam that requires a year or two of full-time study to get passed. Even after passing the exam with a good grade, there are lots of other criteria that affect your admission in the major you like, such as the different merits given to those applicants whose parents are professors, or had been participants or even martyrdoms in war, etc

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