So, I've been mired in reading my first-pass pages for The Confessions of Catherine de Medici. These are the actual typeset pages of the book, still unbound; basically, this is my final opportunity to correct typos, editorial inconsistencies, etc. and of course I'm finding far more of these than I'd thought there would be (amazing what typesetting will reveal!)
In the meantime, I missed last week's book trailer Sunday, as I'd just landed back in the US after 10 days in Guatemala. I'll post trip pics soon, but for now I'm delighted to feature the trailer for Elizabeth Chadwick's latest release in the US, The Greatest Knight. I think this is a very dynamic and dramatic trailer that fits the book's subject perfectly. Enjoy!
Sunday, November 15, 2009
Tuesday, November 10, 2009
RAGE OF ACHILLES Winner!
The winner for the RAGE OF ACHILLES giveaway is:
Linda!!
Congratulations! Please send your full mailing address to cwgortner [at] earthlink.net, so I can forward it to Terence Hawkins' publicist. Thanks to all of you who entered and thanks so much to Terence for his marvelous guest post and time spent here at Historical Boys.
Linda!!
Congratulations! Please send your full mailing address to cwgortner [at] earthlink.net, so I can forward it to Terence Hawkins' publicist. Thanks to all of you who entered and thanks so much to Terence for his marvelous guest post and time spent here at Historical Boys.
Tuesday, November 3, 2009
Guest post and giveaway from Terence Hawkins, author of THE RAGE OF ACHILLES
Historical Boys is proud to welcome Terence Hawkins, author of the novel The Rage of Achilles. Praised by Tom Perotta, author of Little Children, as a "a genuinely fresh take on a classic text," this modern retelling of Homer's The Iliad has tells the story of Achilles, Paris, Agamemnon, and of the countless Trojans, Achaeans, warriors and peasants caught up in the conflict, their families torn apart by a decade-long war.
In celebration of the novel's publication, Mr Hawkin's publisher has kindly offered a book to giveaway. If you'd like to enter for a chance to win, please leave a comment. A random winner will be drawn from comments on November 10.
Now, please join me in welcoming Terence Hawkins!
The Rage of Achilles was intended as a realistic account of The Iliad. The natural first question is whether I think the Iliad is history or fiction. And the natural answer is both. The structure of the Iliad itself demonstrates that it was composed neither at one time nor by one person; rather, its creation spanned generations of bards. In some of its books, for example, iron is treated as a precious metal, which it unquestionably was in the earlier Bronze Age; in other books, however, it’s common enough for use as arrowheads. Also, a barbarian invasion and subsequent dark age separated the Trojan War from what we think of as classical Greece. So for a lot of reasons it’s entirely reasonable to place little faith in the Iliad as an historic record.
But it’s equally reasonable to believe that the Trojan War actually occurred. Archaeologists have discovered ruins at Hisarlik in Turkey that they’ve identified as Troy-multiple Troys, destroyed and rebuilt successively over thousands of years. One level, labeled Troy VIIa, shows evidence of having fallen at human hands-skeletal fragments with broken jaws and skulls, bronze arrowheads, signs of fire. This level has been dated to 1190 BCE, close to the time assigned to the war by the classical Greeks. It therefore seems safe to conclude that the Iliad is an unreliable account of an actual event. So an historical novelist has a free hand. Or so it would appear.
There is, of course, a problem. The gods. I wanted to stay as close to the original text as possible without violating the limited historical knowledge we have. But in the original almost every action is driven by divine intervention from a nasty and capricious pantheon. How to write a realistic novel in which every development is a holy practical joke? The answer is Julian Jaynes. As I started writing I remembered having read a review of a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a title as facially specious as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Which I not only possess but heartily recommend. In any event, Jaynes’ hypothesizes that the development of complex language provoked hemispheric dominance, so that the portion of the brain containing the speech center essentially overpowered the other half . Hemispheric dominance allowed abstract reasoning and the development of the modern self-observing consciousness. Until that point, Jaynes believed that humans were automata reacting to messages between halves of the brain, messages they perceived as the voices of the gods. Relying on both internal and extrinsic linguistic evidence, Jaynes placed this epochal transition at about the time of the Iliad.
Crazy? Maybe. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said that the idea was either a complete crock or the greatest intellectual revolution of the twentieth century. The jury’s still out. (Interestingly, Jaynes also speculated that because both schizophrenia and religious experiences tend to involve “hearing voices”, both are the product of a malfunction of hemispheric dominance. As I worked on the book I spoke to religious friends who said they’d heard God’s voice; all described it as so loud and clear that they were startled that those around them didn’t hear it as well.) But in any event, the idea gave me a solution that was not a cheat: In The Rage of Achilles, the gods appear not as actors, but as hallucinations driving men to act, often not in their best interest. And it also allowed me to portray Odysseus as what he may have been-the first modern man, who realized that the voice in his head was only his own.
Another question was one of detail. I had in mind two opposite models, both favorites: Gore Vidal’s Julian, in which most attention was focused not on appearance or the mechanics of daily life in early Byzantium but the political, religious, and military considerations that occupied his character’s minds; on the other, George Garrett’s The Death of the Fox, so effortlessly rich in period that it might be a text. Here the decision was made for me by the comparative poverty of knowledge of Bronze Age Mycenae. If I were writing about Marlborough’s wars it would be easy enough to go to a museum to look at a dummy in russet velvet with a Steenkirk cravat stuffed through a buttonhole trimmed with Brandenberg braid. But Troy three thousand years ago? Not so much. So my decision, ultimately, was to allow the story itself, rather than the period in which it is set, to control the book.
Oh yeah-sex and violence. In the original the former appears not at all; the latter is as stylized as Kabuki. As to the latter the work’s first audience knew what war with edged weapons was like-been there, done that-so it was unnecessary for the bards to describe it. We, fortunately, don’t know what it feels like in the shoulder to pry a sword out of a head you’ve just split open. So in order to recreate the immediacy that the work first had I had to imagine it. Let me hasten to emphasize imagine-no headless corpses in my freezer. As to the former, the original was driven by sex: Paris, after all, didn’t commit the unspeakable crime of a breach of hospitality and kidnap Helen to gaze at her from afar. Boy wanted her, bad. And of course the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus has been sanitized beyond reason, as though anything but what it was would have been natural in a bisexual cultural that had had an army on a foreign beach for ten years. All that said, the Iliad is a story of almost indescribable richness and humanity. I can’t hope I’ve done it justice; I do hope I’ve done it no offence.
Tere
nce Hawkins was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Yale. His work has appeared in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Keyhole, Pindeldyboz, Ape Culture, Eclectica, Megaera, the Binnacle, and the New Haven Register. It has also appeared on Connecticut Public Radio. He is a trial lawyer in Connecticut. You can visit him at: http://terencehawkins.net/.
In celebration of the novel's publication, Mr Hawkin's publisher has kindly offered a book to giveaway. If you'd like to enter for a chance to win, please leave a comment. A random winner will be drawn from comments on November 10.
Now, please join me in welcoming Terence Hawkins!
The Rage of Achilles was intended as a realistic account of The Iliad. The natural first question is whether I think the Iliad is history or fiction. And the natural answer is both. The structure of the Iliad itself demonstrates that it was composed neither at one time nor by one person; rather, its creation spanned generations of bards. In some of its books, for example, iron is treated as a precious metal, which it unquestionably was in the earlier Bronze Age; in other books, however, it’s common enough for use as arrowheads. Also, a barbarian invasion and subsequent dark age separated the Trojan War from what we think of as classical Greece. So for a lot of reasons it’s entirely reasonable to place little faith in the Iliad as an historic record.
But it’s equally reasonable to believe that the Trojan War actually occurred. Archaeologists have discovered ruins at Hisarlik in Turkey that they’ve identified as Troy-multiple Troys, destroyed and rebuilt successively over thousands of years. One level, labeled Troy VIIa, shows evidence of having fallen at human hands-skeletal fragments with broken jaws and skulls, bronze arrowheads, signs of fire. This level has been dated to 1190 BCE, close to the time assigned to the war by the classical Greeks. It therefore seems safe to conclude that the Iliad is an unreliable account of an actual event. So an historical novelist has a free hand. Or so it would appear.
There is, of course, a problem. The gods. I wanted to stay as close to the original text as possible without violating the limited historical knowledge we have. But in the original almost every action is driven by divine intervention from a nasty and capricious pantheon. How to write a realistic novel in which every development is a holy practical joke? The answer is Julian Jaynes. As I started writing I remembered having read a review of a book called The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind, a title as facially specious as Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds. Which I not only possess but heartily recommend. In any event, Jaynes’ hypothesizes that the development of complex language provoked hemispheric dominance, so that the portion of the brain containing the speech center essentially overpowered the other half . Hemispheric dominance allowed abstract reasoning and the development of the modern self-observing consciousness. Until that point, Jaynes believed that humans were automata reacting to messages between halves of the brain, messages they perceived as the voices of the gods. Relying on both internal and extrinsic linguistic evidence, Jaynes placed this epochal transition at about the time of the Iliad.
Crazy? Maybe. In The God Delusion, Richard Dawkins said that the idea was either a complete crock or the greatest intellectual revolution of the twentieth century. The jury’s still out. (Interestingly, Jaynes also speculated that because both schizophrenia and religious experiences tend to involve “hearing voices”, both are the product of a malfunction of hemispheric dominance. As I worked on the book I spoke to religious friends who said they’d heard God’s voice; all described it as so loud and clear that they were startled that those around them didn’t hear it as well.) But in any event, the idea gave me a solution that was not a cheat: In The Rage of Achilles, the gods appear not as actors, but as hallucinations driving men to act, often not in their best interest. And it also allowed me to portray Odysseus as what he may have been-the first modern man, who realized that the voice in his head was only his own.
Another question was one of detail. I had in mind two opposite models, both favorites: Gore Vidal’s Julian, in which most attention was focused not on appearance or the mechanics of daily life in early Byzantium but the political, religious, and military considerations that occupied his character’s minds; on the other, George Garrett’s The Death of the Fox, so effortlessly rich in period that it might be a text. Here the decision was made for me by the comparative poverty of knowledge of Bronze Age Mycenae. If I were writing about Marlborough’s wars it would be easy enough to go to a museum to look at a dummy in russet velvet with a Steenkirk cravat stuffed through a buttonhole trimmed with Brandenberg braid. But Troy three thousand years ago? Not so much. So my decision, ultimately, was to allow the story itself, rather than the period in which it is set, to control the book.
Oh yeah-sex and violence. In the original the former appears not at all; the latter is as stylized as Kabuki. As to the latter the work’s first audience knew what war with edged weapons was like-been there, done that-so it was unnecessary for the bards to describe it. We, fortunately, don’t know what it feels like in the shoulder to pry a sword out of a head you’ve just split open. So in order to recreate the immediacy that the work first had I had to imagine it. Let me hasten to emphasize imagine-no headless corpses in my freezer. As to the former, the original was driven by sex: Paris, after all, didn’t commit the unspeakable crime of a breach of hospitality and kidnap Helen to gaze at her from afar. Boy wanted her, bad. And of course the relationship between Achilles and Patroclus has been sanitized beyond reason, as though anything but what it was would have been natural in a bisexual cultural that had had an army on a foreign beach for ten years. All that said, the Iliad is a story of almost indescribable richness and humanity. I can’t hope I’ve done it justice; I do hope I’ve done it no offence.
Tere
nce Hawkins was born in Uniontown, Pennsylvania, and graduated from Yale. His work has appeared in Poor Mojo's Almanac(k), Keyhole, Pindeldyboz, Ape Culture, Eclectica, Megaera, the Binnacle, and the New Haven Register. It has also appeared on Connecticut Public Radio. He is a trial lawyer in Connecticut. You can visit him at: http://terencehawkins.net/.
Sunday, November 1, 2009
Book Trailer Sunday: CLEOPATRA'S DAUGHTER
Sometimes, an author really gives us a cinematic trailer! My dear friend, the fabulous Michelle Moran, author of the national bestseller Nefertiti and its stand-alone sequel The Heretic Queen went the Hollywood route for the trailer for her most recent novel, Cleopatra's Daughter. This trailer is like a mini-movie, with live action, costumes, and sets. Enjoy!
Sunday, October 25, 2009
Book Trailer Sunday: Jeri Westerson's Medieval Noir Series
Nowadays, every author is being asked to have a book trailer. Sometimes the publisher pays for it; more often, the author does. Book trailers are absolute requirements for marketing, we're told, yet to date, no one - not the authors nor the publishers - are quite sure just how effective these audio-visual tools really are. I don't have any new insights to offer (though I do have a fantastic book trailer for THE LAST QUEEN) but I have decided that after so many authors go through so much effort and expense to get these trailers made, the least I can do is share them with my blog readers. So, I'm going to start a new feature here on Historical Boys called Book Trailer Sunday, in which I'll post my favorite book trailers, hopefully to incite more of us to watch these often marvelously inventive videos, and then go out and get the book!
This week, I'm featuring Jeri Westerson's splendid new video for her Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series. Enjoy!!
This week, I'm featuring Jeri Westerson's splendid new video for her Crispin Guest Medieval Noir series. Enjoy!!
Friday, October 23, 2009
Sevilla, Part 2
The Alcazares Reales of Sevilla, or the royal palace complex, is one of the hid
den treasures of this intoxicating city. Overshadowed by the internationally renowned splendor of the Alhambra, few people realize before they step foot inside the complex that it is, in fact, a sublime and gorgeously well preserved example of the Moorish architectur
al tradition, as well as the Christian one that followed. The photograph to the right shows the entwining of these civilizations in the foundations, as well as columns from the original Roman site. The left shows the medieval fortress entrance; the entire complex is surrounded by walls dating back to the 11th century.
den treasures of this intoxicating city. Overshadowed by the internationally renowned splendor of the Alhambra, few people realize before they step foot inside the complex that it is, in fact, a sublime and gorgeously well preserved example of the Moorish architectur
al tradition, as well as the Christian one that followed. The photograph to the right shows the entwining of these civilizations in the foundations, as well as columns from the original Roman site. The left shows the medieval fortress entrance; the entire complex is surrounded by walls dating back to the 11th century.
The palace compound began to take shape during the 711 conquest by the Moors, who used the compound as their primary royal residence from 720 onward. When King Fernando III conquered Sevilla in 1238, it became a Christian palace and fortress. Such famous Spanish kings as Alfonso X the Wise, Pedro the Cruel, and Isabella of Castile all resided in the Royal Alcaza
r of Sevilla. The palace was the scene of Charles V's marriage to Isabel of Portugal, and the Infanta Elena, daughter of Spain's current King Juan Carlos I, held her wedding reception here. The photo to the left shows the gold-vaulted and embossed ceiling of the grand salon, or hall, where many of the palace's pivotal events took place.
r of Sevilla. The palace was the scene of Charles V's marriage to Isabel of Portugal, and the Infanta Elena, daughter of Spain's current King Juan Carlos I, held her wedding reception here. The photo to the left shows the gold-vaulted and embossed ceiling of the grand salon, or hall, where many of the palace's pivotal events took place.The entire palace complex exudes mystique and sensuous echo
es of the past; I could well believe that the infamous King Pedro preferred this residence above all others, creating a haven of silk and cinnabar within the royal apartments where he sought to escape the ceasele
ss intrigues of his nobility. With splendid gardens, painted ceilings and corridors, festooned with stalacite tracery and cool watery passageways, the Royal Alcazares of Sevilla are a world apart, permeated by a long-gone majesty that reminds us of a time of blood and luxury, iron and alabastar; a time when the fractured kingdoms of Spain created some of the most beautiful buildings ever seen.
es of the past; I could well believe that the infamous King Pedro preferred this residence above all others, creating a haven of silk and cinnabar within the royal apartments where he sought to escape the ceasele
ss intrigues of his nobility. With splendid gardens, painted ceilings and corridors, festooned with stalacite tracery and cool watery passageways, the Royal Alcazares of Sevilla are a world apart, permeated by a long-gone majesty that reminds us of a time of blood and luxury, iron and alabastar; a time when the fractured kingdoms of Spain created some of the most beautiful buildings ever seen.Friday, October 16, 2009
Next Stop: Sevilla
Taking a day-trip to Sevilla is like taking a day-trip to New York. Sure, you can see a lot, but you'll miss a lot more. Unfortunately, we only had a day in Sevilla, but it's definitely a city I'll visit again and stay in much longer. Truly breathtaking, Sevilla is worthy of its reputation as one of the great architectural beauties. So much so, I'll be doing two separate posts on the city, of which this the first. I must add that Sevilla's legendary heat was also palpable during our visit; though already late September, the sun fell like an anvil on 
this gorgeous city steeped in the past, which basks on the banks of the River Guadalquivir.They say that Sevilla simmers but at night it becomes an intoxicating cauldron filled with dama de noche, a fragrant flower vine that grows everywhere on trees in Andalucia and emits its perfume only at night; and, of course, with the scent of oranges. The trees grow in the streets, and while their fruit is sour and unpalatable, the Seville orange's scent is so intense, it was coveted in ancient times for its use in body-oils.
Sevilla has been inhabitated since the 9th century; Carthaginians, Roman
s, Visigoths, Moors, and Christians have all at one time called this city home. It was named Hispalis by Julius Cesar; toward the end of the Roman Empire, it was one of
the most important cities of Empire and center of Christian activity in the Iberian Peninsula before its conquest by the Moors in 711. The Plaza de Espana in the photo to the right, built in 1929, honors both Spain and the city's incredible historical past with mosaics surrounding an impressive palisade.
Like most Spanish cities, Sevilla had a rich centuries-long tradition of Jewish livelihood and wealth, which was tragically lost under the reign of the Catholic
monarchs. The quarter has greatly changed and now houses some of the most expensive real estate in the city. Still, as you walk through its narrow streets, past brightly painted houses with Moorish-arched windows hidden by celosias (shutters) you can feel the ghostly remnant of a time when different faiths and races thrived in harmony in Spain, creating one of the most splendid and evanescent civilizations the world has ever seen.The Cathedral of Sevilla is the largest Gothic cathedral in the world, spanning several blocks and festooned with gargoyles, turrets and buttresses. Built upon t
he remains of a
central mosque, the Cathedral carries its Islamic foundations within the orangerie outside its gates and decorative brickwork. Since 1568, the Cathedral's tower has been crowned by an airy belfry with a bronze weather vane known as El Giraldillo, which has lent its name to the tower La Giralda, known as one of the most famous belltowers in Christendom.
he remains of a
central mosque, the Cathedral carries its Islamic foundations within the orangerie outside its gates and decorative brickwork. Since 1568, the Cathedral's tower has been crowned by an airy belfry with a bronze weather vane known as El Giraldillo, which has lent its name to the tower La Giralda, known as one of the most famous belltowers in Christendom. I'll post next
about the incredible Royal Alcazares of Sevilla. For now, I leave you here with a photo of a palace in the casco viejo, or historic
about the incredible Royal Alcazares of Sevilla. For now, I leave you here with a photo of a palace in the casco viejo, or historic 
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