Professor Boris Segerstahl
Director, Thule Institute
Dear Boris,
I have written about the wake and funeral that is taking place for the young girl, but it is really to lengthy to send over via email. Just a couple of pages so I am incorporating the event into a series of short stories and would just as soon not type them more than once.
I still would like to share it with you so if you would send me your mailing address there at the university I will send it off as soon as possible.
Regards,
Conley
Email from Professor Segerstahl
Hi Conley,
This is a long message but be patient and read it. Ignore it, if it does not make sense.
I read your previous message several times. Before I continue I want to tell you that one of my (too many) academic fields is literature, and I have read a lot of American literature. Your message could have been a preliminary synopsis for a novel. Not only for the content, but there is a possibility that you have a capacity to produce a literary style. If the text had been in a quiz, I would have been tempted to say that it tries to show a style somewhere between Tom Wolfe and Ernest Hemingway, with a taste of Claude Simon (a French writer.)
Don’t fall off the chair – you are not there yet. But have you ever thought of writing a novel? I know that authors hate advice from editors, but let me be brave and suggest that the title could be “The Wake” and it starts: “The wake and the funeral have been postponed. The dead body cannot be flown in due to bad weather.” The rest is only hard work, depression, long nights and disappointments, before you possibly end up with a good novel. More than the average reader ever notices. I am sure you could get support and advice from course material that exists on creative writing.
Your synopsis invites stylistic ideas connected to the Latin American school of fantastic realism. I don’t know whether you have access to library services in Hooper Bay
In your most recent message you indicate that you are working on a series of short stories. That is great, if I understand correctly that you already write. A novel is however a completely different animal. Talking about short stories – one of the greatest short stories in American literature (but completely forgotten) is Bernhard Malamud’s “Idiots First”.
Mail is really terribly slow. How about cutting the text about the wake into bits of plain text and send it as a few small messages. I will patch them together when they arrive. I would guess that you use MS Word and communicate over a modem. Save it as plain text and it should be as compact as it can be without compression. If you really want to send as snail-mail, I put in my official signature at the bottom of this message. I really dislike it. It makes me look like a pompous ass (I hope I am not). I have been told that that impression is needed now and then.
I assume we are of approximately the same age. I have been a university professor for 33 years since the age of 29. I will leave the details for a future message. Stay in touch, Boris
One more thing: Service’s writing is nice but not great. He was overrated a hundred years ago. Not his fault. He certainly gave many readers a lot of relaxing entertainment and perhaps even fun.. It is, however, possible that Sam McGee and Dan McGrew are better known than Robert Service.
Professor Boris Segerstahl
Director, Thule Institute
Note to my blog readers: I do not remember sending Boris anything and if I did he never responded. I do know there were several emails but they have been lost through the years and we eventually lost touch. Just recently I sent him an email, but it got bounced back, so I sent a note via snail-mail. We shall see if he gets it or not. If by chance any of you are computer stalkers and can track him down, please let me know.
Snapper, try this link - http://composersforum.ning.com/profile/BorisSegerstaahl
ReplyDeleteHe's also on Facebook.
Jerry