Novelty and the Novel
By Donald Maass | April 7, 2021 |
Chattering teeth. Wind them up, set them down, and instantly those plastic choppers are clack-clacking away faster than a jackhammer, skittering around in circles on a Formica table top. For a boy in the early 1960’s, there was nothing better.
Well, except maybe for X-Ray spectacles, trick handcuffs, a dribble glass, rocket kits, coin tricks, ant farms, muscle builders, hypno-coins, two-way radios, snake-in-a-can, joy buzzers, invisible ink or fake vomit. These mail-away delights could be found in the classified ads in comic books and Mad Magazine, to which I was devoted.
Most of those items were manufactured by the estimable S.S. Adams company of New Jersey. They knew their market and worked tirelessly to improve their products. (Itch powder was particularly difficult to get right.) To get these necessities, you had to send away. In those days there was no Amazon offering expedited delivery. You had to wait for weeks, tingling with anticipation so long that you almost forgot what you’d ordered so that when the package eventually was stuffed into your curbside mailbox, it was Christmas in July.
Chattering teeth belonged to a category of goods called novelties. Novel. Ties. Yes, it makes one think of water-squirting neckties but it also, for us, recalls the story form that is the unifying topic of this blog site. Novels. Surely that shared root word is not an accident?
The Roots of Novelty
The word novel derives from the Old French nouvel, meaning young, fresh, or recent, and comes from the even older Latin novellus, which meant the same thing, and which was diminutive of the Latin novus, meaning new and novella meaning new things.
The use of novel to mean a fictional prose narrative began in Italy in the Sixteenth Century, originally referring to short stories in a collection (as, say, by Boccaccio), then in the Seventeenth Century began to describe longer prose tales. (Before that such a story would have been called a romance.) The root word gave rise to other English words too, such as announce, need, neon, newborn, news, pronounce and renew.
The need for novelty is hard-wired into our brains. When we encounter what is different than expected, dopamine is released. It arouses our interest and drives us to seek the reward of exploring and learning. I’ll spare you the math behind Bayesian Surprise, but suffice it to say that substantia nigral/ventral segmental area (SN/VTA) in our brains lights up when we try a new route, travel to new places, try on new clothes, try a new approach, get a makeover, redecorate, meet someone interesting, see new things, encounter the unexpected or discover something we didn’t know before.
If you look more closely at the toy novelties of a Sixties childhood, it becomes apparent that their appeal lay in more than surprise or amusement. Each novelty in some way said something about who we long to be. Novelties stirred up our feelings: our dread, our dream of flying, our curiosity about our neighbors, our desire to be strong, our feelings of disgust, our need to be absorbed, our need to be amused, our fear of appearing foolish, our hope of being unlike anyone else, our delight at being in on something that others aren’t, our hope that magic might be real.
Novelty excites our curiosity in a way that ordinary things cannot. The effect of a written novel on readers depends on verisimilitude—the suspension of disbelief that allows us to feel that the story’s events are really happening—but it also depends on novelty. That which is unlikely, unexpected and sudden stirs our interest, makes us eager, and propels us forward in a narrative.
For our purposes, we can define novelty as an element in a story which surprises, excites, intrigues, runs contrary to expectations, is incongruous or which we simply find amusing, particularly when such an element is touching or terrifying, evoking something that we long for or fear.
Novelty as Practical Craft
In practical terms, how is novelty introduced into contemporary fiction? Science fiction, fantasy, horror, dystopian, paranormal, slipstream, fables and altered reality tales might seem automatically a novelty banquet. Realistic novels, on the other hand, might seem inherently to be novelty-starved.
Neither proposition is necessarily true. Spec fiction can lean on dull, familiar tropes and lack novelty. Realistic fiction can play with curious, exciting, amusing and unlikely characters and events and provide us with great novelty. There’s no inherent advantage or pitfall in your type of story, whatever that may be, it’s all in how you approach it.
Here are some ideas for providing novelty in your novel:
- Pick a character in your novel to make eccentric. How can this character’s behavior be odd? How can he or she behave in ways that are outside social norms, conventions or propriety? Who can be a rebel? Who can have a notorious past?
- Which character could be rigid, fussy, dogmatic, shrill, convention-bound, old-fashioned, judgmental, or set in his or her ways? What’s the greatest length to which this character will go to resist change? What can this character do to surprise us?
- Who can have an unusual profession? Who can do a common job in an uncommon way? Who can be the most unlikely math genius, orator, emergency responder, drunk, chess demon, nude dancer, travel guide, fashion icon, philosopher or cheat? [Note: check the website TV Tropes for over-used stock characters.]
- Who can come to the door unexpectedly? Who can make an uncharacteristic choice? What decision can be a shocker? Who can fall in love when it’s least likely? What’s an unexpected reversal of fortune? Where’s the place we don’t expect a monster to hide? Whom can suddenly drop deadIntroduce a random variable. Roll the dice. Pick a card from the deck of chance. Throw a dart at a list of archetypes. Turn a plot template on its head. Have an argument with your genre. Break a rule with panache. Do something in your novel that no writer has ever done before.
- What is something readers can learn about through your story? What doesn’t the average citizen know? Which character is an expert in that topic? What is the greatest unanswered question or unsolved mystery in this area? What is this subject’s most intriguing and unexpected fact?
- Where can your story take us that is wondrous? What might we not expect to find in your setting? What is legendary there? What is magical there? What is better than expected? What is this place’s dark, cruel or ugly side?
- Invent something that doesn’t exist. What is the modern version of an old machine, or the old solution to a modern problem? What is logical once you think about it, except that nobody thinks about it? Who has unusual insight into people? How can you make your readers think?
Novelty as Necessity
BTW, I do not mean to suggest that only the old mail-away novelties appealing to boys are worthy of study; however, I have not been similarly inspired by the classified ads found in the vintage romance comic books that were aimed at girls. Those fell into several broad categories. One was products for weight loss (“Stay fit and Slim By taking Amphetamine”) or weight gain (“Try Amazing New Wate-On”). Also pedaled were bust-enhancing braziers, waist-reducing undergarments (the “Compreso-Belt”), and schemes to sell dresses or greeting cards for extra pocket money.
(Also unhelpful were the comic book stories themselves. One, “I Still Hear Wedding Bells”, ended with the heroine’s last-panel declaration of happiness: “Now I wouldn’t trade my new job of housewife for all the professions in the world!” -Lonely Heart #12, September 1955. Needless to say, I struggle to fit that into my understanding of the Heroine’s Journey.)
Mail-order novelties were cheap diversions and hardly durable but they gripped a youngster’s imagination for a reason. Dead skeleton jaws do not move. You can’t easily escape from handcuffs. Rockets soar high into the air. Ant farms are endlessly busy. Coins impossibly vanish from your hand but then can reappear in your friend’s pocket. Anyone can get muscles. Anyone can master mind-power. A can of nuts doesn’t ordinarily hide a snake. There are hidden messages. We are all-too-ready to believe that gross stuff is real.
Sure, those novelties were made of cheap plastic and rubber but, in another way, they were made of the stuff of our dreams and nightmares. We identify with what’s familiar, certainly, but we do not—I would say that we cannot—immerse in a story the setting, characters and events of which could be anyone’s or anywhere. Ordinary is for 9AM. Novelty keeps us turning pages past midnight.
To sum it up: We anchor in what is human but set sail on a voyage because it offers us novelty. For fiction writers, however, there is nothing accidental about that. Hand me a can of nuts with a coiled-spring snake inside and I’m yours for the duration. Novelty in novels is a necessity and—best of all—to obtain it you don’t have to put a dollar in an envelope and send it through the mail. It’s right there in your imagination.
What’s novel in your novel? Share!
[coffee]
Donald Maass (he/him) founded the Donald Maass Literary Agency. in New York in 1980. He is the author of The Career Novelist (1996), Writing the Breakout Novel (2001), Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook (2004), The Fire in Fiction (2009), The Breakout Novelist (2011), Writing 21st Century Fiction (2012) and The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2019). He has presented hundreds of workshops around the world and is a past president of the American Association of Literary Agents (formerly AAR).
My brothers were the ones who sent away for gimmicks. The world of money-makers is always about SOMETHING NEW. Books were that for me, and still are. In my own current work, I have focussed on wondrous, the flip side of which can be frightening–because humans want the new but often fear how to accept it, react to it. It’s the bright shiny coin in the dirt that when you dig it out there are creepy crawly things clinging to it. I’m currently reading Margot Livesey’s THE BOY IN THE FIELD. From one experience of three younger characters, she is able to dig into each of their lives. They didn’t find a rubber ball, a pornographic magazine, but a bleeding human being. And she goes on from there. Novel? Yes. On so many levels. Thanks.
Been looking forward to Margot Livesy’s novel, you’ve given me a push to get it. For an American take on a similar premise, try Robert R. McCammon’s Boy’s Life.
Hey Don–Thanks for outing S.S. Adams. They still owe me for their terribly misleading ad in the back of an issue of Strange Tales. I was made to believe that the seven-foot tall Frankenstein’s Monster I ordered would be some sort of animatronic dummy. Or maybe a stationary mannequin–you know, something I could set up just inside my bedroom door to keep my sisters out. Instead I got a large poster of a very cartoony monster. It wasn’t even rolled. They folded it for shipping! I was so disappointed I never even hung it. I figure the 99¢ they owe me, with 50 years or so of interest, is worth pursuing.
Anyway, I definitely think every inch of every page of those old comics and pulp mags were designed with novelty in mind–ads and all. Heck, for me they even inspired wonder. As problematic as they are in hindsight (for the colonialism and racism they include), I was particularly enthralled by the Tintin and Snowy stories. The history! The adventure! I just loved being swept away by the scale and scope. Along the way they always discovered what had seemed unknowable, or lost to history.
Looking back I can see that I was always the kid who wanted to know the thing that no one else knew about an element of history. I loved the concept of finding the “lost clues”–the very human aspects of what came to be accepted as legend. You’ve reminded me that my favorite form of novelty lives on in my life as a storyteller. Thank you.
I think I was taken in by that same Frankenstein poster. That was okay. I was in a phase of gluing together plastic monster models: Dracula, Frankenstein, the Werewolf, etc. Any monster was good.
I know what you mean about adventure, history and “lost clues”. Going somewhere exciting, learning something new, discovering the unknown or an answer to a puzzle or mystery…does it get better? I’ll bet you did magic tricks as a kid, too, am I right?
Welcome back. I look forward to the first Wednesday of the month time slot, once again being yours.
I’ve recently completed a time-slip trilogy, only to discover there’s nothing slippery about time at all.
Time travel is very much like the novelty product, Crazy Glue and its slogan: ‘you can do some crazy things with it!’
The premise of my trilogy was always based on following a pair of telepathic teenage twins into their coming-of-age maturity, living in their eccentric grandmother’s stately home – a sentient structure built atop the successive ruins of ancient Britain. And that their longstanding family’s legacy of producing twins, continues to manifest in a traditional undercurrent of sibling rivalry.
I allowed, like all creepy castles, the grandiose Hall in question would have a ghost or two, after all it’s not called ‘The House of Reincarnations’ for nothing. Not that the twins are aware of this reputation.
They are, however, deeply at odds over metaphysics and science – a fractious recipe for tensions with Grandmama. The girl accepts the joys of living in Wonderland. The boy refuses to believe in the paranormal and explores several scientific theories to explain the phenomena he declares are logical hallucinations. The Hall is disgruntled. Drastic measures are called for.
I almost forgot to mention, that the Hall is decorated with some fairly animated furniture, so one ‘never knows what or ‘who’ they’re going to ‘get’ when they sit in a particular chair or open a door. Or that one of the Hall’s ghosts is a nine-year-old girl who declares the boy wunderkind is her father.
At the end of book three, the child ghost had things to say, so I started writing the prequel. I freaked myself out on page one. What was I thinking? There can never be a prequel to a time-slip adventure… time travel already defies the concept of chronological order.
But that pesky nine-year-old ghost still demands to be heard, which is okay, our present times lean towards unreality checks. So, now I find myself writing a stand-alone-prequel-sequel-summary. A middle-grade Y/A for adults, and, like me, the child ghost is in for a serious awakening.
It reminds me of the phrase in dialogue where a character says this or that happened and adds after a pause… ‘or so I thought’.
Yesterday, a tagline light bulb flashed above my head. ‘Maybe nothing comes from out of the blue… maybe everything does!’
Plenty of novelty in that story! Wow. I love what you said: “Maybe nothing comes from out of the blue…maybe everything does!” Words to write by.
Hi Don —
In one of your webinars about archtypes, you suggested that “the martyr always brings the casserole.” I loved that so much that I “stole” it for one of characters. Result: Yesterday, I crawled into the research rabbit hole investigating bad casseroles from the 1970s.
Were those recipes (the good, the bad and the weird) the novelty factor for housewives of the time? Rather than cook the same meatloaf day after day to put dinner on the table for your family, you could prepare “Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters,” “Salmon Rice Casserole” with pimiento olives or “Pickle Stretcher Salad” with what looks in the picture like lime Jell-O. (Source: “20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes So Awful We Had to Make Them,” RiverfrontTimes.com.)
Excellent column today. (My new second favorite after “We are Unsafe.” Not that I’m ranking all of them.) I’ll be thinking about the novelty factor as I’m revising my climax and resolution scenes in the next few weeks.
Thank you, as always.
Marcie
My mom is famous in our family for the notorious PTA Cookbook, from which she took the recipe for her biggest kitchen fail: hot dog casserole, which swam in a pink sauce that I think was ketchup and mayo. Awful. We will never let her forget it.
Hot dog. Ketchup. Mayo? Casserole?! Oh, my. That does sound perfectly awful. Easy to make, I’ll bet. And points for novelty. And timeless since no one ever forgot it. Good story.
Hi Don,
In one of your recent webinars about archetypes, you suggested that “the Martyr always brings the casserole.” I loved that so much, I “stole” it for one of my characters. Result: Yesterday I crawled into the research rabbit hole to investigate bad casseroles of the 1970s.
Were these recipes — the good, the bad, the weird — the novelty factor for housewives of the time? Rather than make another meatloaf day after day to put dinner on the table for your family, you could surprise them with “Jellied Bouillon with Frankfurters,” “Salmon Rice Casserole” with pimento olives or “Pickle Stretcher Salad” with what looks in the picture like lime Jell-O. (Source: “20 Unholy Recipes: Dishes So Awful We Had to Make Them,” RiverFrontTimes.com.)
Excellent column today. (Possibly my second favorite after “We are Unsafe.” Not that I’m ranking them.) I’ll be thinking about the novelty factor while I’m revising my climax and resolution chapters in the next few weeks.
Thank you, as always.
Marcie
P.S. Apologies if this comment posted twice. The WU comment form apparently ate my first attempt (or maybe it got stuck somewhere in cyberspace?)
Hi Don
In the back of comic books in the 80s was an advertisement for Olympic Sales that always caught my imagination. Kids could get a sales kit and sell items to earn prizes or $1.00 per sale. The ad page was full of the prizes, everything from a Tasco telescope to a combination boombox/tv with a 3 inch black and white screen. The prizes were illustrated in the same style as the comic and long after I lost interest in the story I would go back and stare at those pages.
There are books that I go back and reread for their novelty. (Dune, World War Z, Ready Player One, etc.) When I think about why I enjoy them over and over, it comes down to the novelty providing an opportunity that I don’t have in my normal life. The challenges in the story world are often overwhelming for the characters, but simple enough that I could see myself overcoming them if I stepped in their shoes. In a weird way, it’d be comforting to deal with hordes of zombies, immersive pop-culture-infused quests, or riding the back of a sandworm thru an endless desert if I don’t have to deal with two kids suffering cabin fever from being out of school for more than a year.
At a riverfront park the other day, while my kids were playing, I got handed a flyer telling me it’s time to unmask our kids and let them show their smiles again. Normalcy has become the new novelty.
It’s amazing how readily we enjoy tales of vampires, zombies and more…and how we eventually can also get bored with them. What’s novel becomes routine and loses its appeal. There are a lot of supernatural TV series streaming now and, honestly, a lot of them don’t interest me. Been there, got that bite.
Your point about including novelty in genre stories is well taken! I quit reading fantasy because it became boring. As I was writing fantasy, I was always looking for a new spin to the old tropes and monsters. My series is alternate world, so bringing fantastical elements back and forth from the fantasy world into the “real” world was a fun twist that seems to be novel, as well. A reviewer commented on my crazy creativity, so I think it worked for others, as well. :)
I find the same issue with my current wip, which is a cozy mystery. While there is a lot of wiggle room for novelty in cozies, a problem is that there are already a ton of cozies, written in a gazillion novel ways. Trying to find novelty that isn’t over the top but still interesting is kind of a narrow line! I’ve approached it similarly to how I did when writing fantasy and looked at each of the elements and tried to put a little twist on them. The main community is a uniquely developed Senior Living Center (that I really think an investor should look into because I came up with a great idea that would support seniors at every level of care), the protagonist is a middle-aged woman who works at the Center and the reason for the murder is pretty unusual, I believe. The subplots of the story are intertwined with senior issues, which overlap nicely with my protagonist’s subplot issues, further demonstrating that older people don’t cease to live, or have feeling, dreams or attachments once they reach 65 . In any case, while I’d developed the story quite a while ago, I recently read a book that had several similar elements. The books are very different, but I don’t want to have the appearance of stealing from someone at all, so so I’ve changed a few things and am hoping that I can keep the Soap Shop without being accused of plagiarism!
Cozies can get repetitive, but yours sounds like it has plenty of original elements, and timely ones in senior issues. Looking forward to it.
Thanks for this, Don. It makes perfect sense.
Whether a novel is set somewhere Out There, or in the long-ago, or tomorrow, it needs to be real for the reader. That happens through verisimilitude–making the world presented consistent in all important ways.
But without snake-in-the-can jolts (I see them as extreme, less frequently used variants of what you call micro-tensions), the world on the page stays there. It stops taking over the reader’s imagination. Your suggestions for where to find these snakes is a great short list. Thank you again.
You got it right, thanks Barry.
Found it, James. We’re experiencing a few glitches since switching hosts, but we’re working on all of it. Thanks!
Oh hey Therese, thanks for responding. I just wrote a 3rd comment when the 2nd vanished as well. So, I guess you can erase all of them except the first if you want.
I appreciate your work here.
I’m glad things are beginning to normalize. Thanks, James!
I’m into story questions, as some of you will know, and this post brings a novel story question to my mind. How come a master agent and storyteller apparently has bushels of vintage romance comic books that were aimed at girls stashed somewhere?
Hmmmm.
But seriously, folks, Don once again puts a finger on the pulse of how to craft an engaging story. Thanks.
Ahem. Er…well…no, seriously, there are a number of old and forgotten comic books online, pretty cringe-inducing, some of them.
I don’t see the Whoopie Cushion on your list. My personal favorite!
I remember those back pages of comic books and my older brother’s Mad Magazines. I’m pretty sure I invested in a few items.
Thanks for the suggestions on this post! Looking forward to tomorrow night! (The webinar, that is!)
I figured I had gone far enough with fake vomit. See you at tomorrow’s webinar!
Dear Don,
I learned from you how to make the nearly impossible plausible, and I’m using it to give life to a realistic trilogy that has the almost impossible happen.
It’s a lot of work, and it’s taking me a long time – but it is also an enormous of fun to have that level of control over a story: I have an image in my mind of my Ideal Reader going Noooooooo! as I write every scene.
Thanks!
That is a good response to get from readers! Go for it!
Hiya Master Don:
Ah, the dopamine rush. (Sometime I would love to see the math you spared us, btw.)
The same thing, as it turns out, is what drove the QAnon phenomenon — and is crucial to alternative reality and role playing games.
The rush of seeing through seemingly unrelated data to a new previously concealed truth releases dopamine in an “Aha!” moment. The term of art there is apophenia: the tendency to perceive a connection or meaningful pattern between unrelated or random things (such as objects or ideas). “What psychologists call apophenia—the human tendency to see connections and patterns that are not really there—gives rise to conspiracy theories.” (Merriam-Webster)
I learned about all of this in an article written by a game designer who spelled out how the entire Q craze resembled the same way games work. You plant seemingly unrelated bits of information out there and tell the audience to “do your own research,” and when they make what they think is a breakthrough connection the dopamine rush is very much what you’re describing in your account of novelty.
Obviously, I don’t want to equate novel writing with developing conspiracy theories. But I think that the pleasure of discovering for oneself what a line or a symbol or a scene or a chapter or an entire novel “means” without the author telling us is one of the great joys of reading fiction. It’s one more reason why less is more–it allows the reader to own the text in a personal way, eliciting the joy of the “Aha!” moment.
Wonderful stuff. Hope you and your loved ones are healthy and happy and safe.
Wait, are you saying I’m wrong to be paranoid? That I’m being manipulated? That I’m getting dopamine hits that lie?? Stephen King is not actually my uncle? Jee whiz, way to burst my bubble.
But seriously, I learned something new. Thanks!
I’m reading “Nothing to See Here” by Kevin Wilson (I know, always late to the party- it released in Fall 2019) – talk about a novelty – Ten year olds who spontaneously burst into flames. I love that he’s setting them in a realistic setting with other characters that are quote “normal” – every page is a delight and it’s got me marveling at the insight and ingenuity of thinking of this totally-unexpected twist. Hope to see more novels start playing around with such “what-ifs” because this reader at least is loving the unexpected
Wow, spontaneous combustion? Ten-year-olds? How did I miss that? Thanks for the reads up and here’s to the unexpected.
There are many novel and powerful stories, Don, hidden in the “reduce or increase yourself” messages you found at the backs of comic books aimed at girls, not to mention in the trumpeting of perfect satisfaction in housewifery that you cite. By finding no interest in the messages on girlhood and womanhood being advertised then in favor of the version of boyhood and manhood being advertised–by calling one novel, the other impossible to relate to–you reveal a rather massive blind spot that is distressing, and I urge you to think deeper and outside your comfort zone–as you effectively urge others to do here and in your other work–about what it might be like to have those messages be what you were offered as a young girl. The stories won’t be as fun as chattering teeth, but believe me, there are stories.
You misunderstand. I do think the Compreso-Belt has an interesting meaning, just not one that I can (for now) fit into my thinking about novelty in the novel. It’s meaning seems to me to fall into a different topic area. But then, maybe not? Perhaps it’s more relevant to this craft lesson than I think? What do *you* think? I’d love to hear more!
I appreciate the invitation to say more. What I’m meaning is that the claim that only some of the gendered novelties offered at the backs of old comics are novel misses a lot of potential understandings and stories and even limits the stories one can tell about the one set. I mean, Compreso-Belt? WOW! How much less subtle can one get, and is that really so different from a boy being sold a rocket–she should reduce and be tiny to be acceptable, while he should explode stuff and love it? You find the rocket more exciting, but a girl seeking acceptance might find the promise of shrinking exciting. Both direct young people toward certain futures. (I must immediately buy some old comics and check out these advertisements.) You’ve got a trove of astoundingly direct and easy-to-discern messages. There are always such messages, but ones from the past can be so clear and un-nuanced to our eyes.
I see more novelty in the contrast between the gendered ads than in one set alone. To dismiss half the story, to not want to see or value the other half, nt only devalues what girls are taught but also blinds one to the meaning of the other half. With only the half of the story it’s easy for one to relish, as if it holds nothing but delightful novelty, one misses not only the messages of that preferred half but also the power of contrast.
What do you think of that? I’d love to hear more, too.
“You find the rocket more exciting, but a girl seeking acceptance might find the promise of shrinking exciting.”
Ah! Got it! I see now what you’re saying, and how wonderful. Thank you so much for returning to carry on the conversation. I just learned something! Novelty!
I like the quirk! Don’t think I ever left the sixties, either. Still in my possession: the can of snakes, magic marbles, and a fake perfume box hiding a finger-ensnaring mouse trap. And the ToolMaster just finished building a mechanical wind-up box, where a monster’s hand emerges to flip the switch which has activated its exposure.
Do you watch Still Game? My favorite characters are Methadone Mick and Isa. Most of the time, the former speaks in the Scottish equivalent of Valley-Girl-speak, but he also has rare moments of oratorical brilliance. The contrast makes it super fun, of course.
As for Isa, she’s the classic neighborhood gossip, only her observational skills are so honed she could easily rival Sherlock Holmes for perceptiveness. Come to think of it, she could inspire a spinoff series of cozy mysteries featuring her and the rest of the clan.
Still Game? No, haven’t run across it. Will track it down, many thanks!
Don’t forget Sea Monkeys! That ad was like a portal to another world. I remember staring at it for hours, trying to figure out how it could be true. The monkey was smiling! Did anyone ever get one? My brother once showed me what looked like a dried-out husk of a bug and said it was a Sea Monkey. So disappointing!
I always wished for a black sweatshirt that said “We Print Anything.” Hmm. Maybe I should put that on one of my characters.
My latest novel idea for my novel is a discovery of a forgotten speakeasy club buried beneath the boardwalk. Maybe it’s a place where the locals and the non-locals, the East Siders and the Westies can all come together, once again, for the love of music.
Thanks for the fun memories. It made me think of my father who loved to offer visitors a snake can of peanuts.
When I was a kid, a friend of mine got some of those sea monkeys. Per directions, she put them in a glass of water. Her little brother ended up drinking the sea monkeys by accident. Afterward, we referred to him as the sea monkey cannibal. Fortunately, the *sea monkey cannibal* wasn’t any worse for wear except for the nickname, which stuck.
That’s hysterical! That poor kid. Dreaming of Sea Monkeys on a fantastic journey through his body.
Oh, ouch. The things we ingest as children! Then again, we ingest some pretty toxic stuff as adults, too. It’s late and I’m sipping some now. But seriously, I love the idea of a speakeasy beneath a boardwalk. That’s immediately a place I want to go. To sip, if not for the jazz. Good score on the novelty scale, Ada.
Don,
I remember all those old ads from the comics. I ordered from a number of them. Great memories.
Regarding Mad Magazine, I think you may have misremembered. Mad didn’t start taking paid print ads until 2001.
I’m sure you’re right. Memory conflates things. Just today my sister was asking whether it was Mad Mag writer Frank Jacobs whom our father went to summer camp with. (He died recently.) It wasn’t. It was Don (“Marty”) Martin. Funny.
I missed the memo that my girl reading was supposed to steer me to marriage and a lifetime of happiness in casseroles and clean floors. I enjoy every movie with people in spandex bashing each other until good prevails, while my wonderful partner watches sensitive foreign movies with subtitles. When we watch Big Bang Theory reruns together, I explain the Star Trek references. He’s Penny to my Leonard.
What I got from the spandex clad protagonists of the classic comics that I devoured was the PSA at the back. Superman told me to not litter, to help the vulnerable, to stand up to the bullies, to respect the elders. Wonder Woman advised me to use my voice to raise others up, to be a citizen in the best senses of the word, and to recognize and resist evil.
When I consider the narrative arc I set for my characters, I still feel that influence. Not the ads at the back of the comic that lured me to buy plastic stuff, however charming or alarming, but the public service that made the hero(ine). Here’s the character in spandex, fresh from saving the world, tenderly taking a cat from a tree before rushing off because being late for work puts a secret identity at risk. The details, emotion and subtext humanized the stock story. Of course, in those days I also rocked spandex tights, or so I imagined :-).
You made me see that my protagonist performing public service links to those comic book messages; apophenia in action! Thanks for the inspiration to make that public service more unusual.
I had to look up apophenia but I’m glad I did. I see a connection! Or wait…
Seriously, Wonder Woman is among many superheroes who inspired. Some–as the Sixties progressed–also became more human. I’m a bit burned out on superhero movies right at the moment but those characters have had a place in my heart.
Wonder Woman may be inspiring, but she portrays a favorable goddess inconsistent with the Scripture. Burned out in that respect works.
Incidentally, wristwatches are a 2021 novelty. I pulled mine out of the drawer a few weeks ago. It needs a new battery.
I also had to look up apophenia. Credit and the award go to our friend and teacher David Corbett for using an unusual word first in this thread.