I've done three NaNoWriMo novels in my life so far. The first one was a retelling of Dante's Inferno, the idea being that, if I enjoyed that story, I'd use Purgatorio and Paradiso in subsequent years to write a trilogy of The Divine Comedy. Of course, I wasn't simply telling Dante's story with a modern twist: I put the whole thing in space. If you think about it, most of the old mythologies and religious stories have a fantastical element to them already. Shifting from fantasy to science fiction is a relatively small step. (Part of this is inspired by a book, one I haven't read yet, on my shelf called Ilium which is a space-version retelling of The Iliad, though it refers to Homer's poem, so it's not a straightforward approach.)
In my retelling, I have Dante (who started out with a different name, but it was so obvious to me who it was that I switched his name partway through) waking up in a spaceship, headed to a mining colony. He'd fallen asleep at the wheel and, though he tries to land safely, he ends up coming down roughly enough that he wouldn't be able to get off the planet. Besides, he figures out pretty quickly that something dark has been released from the mines beneath the planet: Violent creatures have abducted most of the colony, dragging them far underground. He meets a guy named Vick (the stand-in for Virgil) and together they try to get the colonists back. On the way, he comes across a bunch of alien monstrosities that are loosely based upon some of the punishments of hell that Dante describes in his poem. I also used some of my memories playing the Visceral Games video game, Dante's Inferno, as another way of manipulating the source text. The intrepid duo work their way through my revisualized version of hell, including finding a cadre of safe colonists who are in a surprisingly nice section of the underground (my shout out to the Virtuous Pagans who populate the first circle of hell in Dante's poem) and creatures whose feet look like they're boulders--an allusion to the Prodigal and Miserly in circle four--and so on and so forth. By the end of the retelling, they've blown up a lot of alien bodies, saved some "souls", and accidentally loosed the hive-mind's controller from the bowels of the planet to attack whoever may still be on the surface. I even ended the book with the word "stars", just the way Dante did. In terms of ideas, that's fun. I don't know if I'd call it clever or even interesting, but it was fun for me to focus my energies into twisting a story that was already told. It's also my way of acknowledging one of the greatest writers in the Western Canon in my own, nerdy way. When I finished--as is always the case with NaNoWriMo--I was exhausted from all of the writing I'd done. I decided to coast for a while as a writer and I definitely didn't have any interest in pursuing a sequel at that point. The next year, I wrote a steampunk-style novel for my wife (which, so far as I can tell, she still hasn't finished…oh, well. It's the thought that counts). That one you can read here. The year after that--last year, as a matter of fact--I wrote a novel that takes place in my "PRISM universe", for lack of a better title, where the science fiction elements were already established in a book I'd written the year prior. It was easy for me to adapt what I already knew about the world and put it into a story where people were eaten by creatures that were almost like dinosaurs. It's as close as I've come to a dinosaur story. This one was also enjoyable because I used the Four Corner Opposition style of writing to make the story have a stronger sense of philosophical continuity. If you want to read more, it's right here. This year, I'm thinking--but haven't decided, since it's still a month away--that I should write a retelling of John Milton's Paradise Lost. Not only do I know that story better than I know The Divine Comedy, it's also a better story. For all of Dante's abilities, he wasn't interested in showing a lot of character growth. His poem goes from set piece to set piece--not a bad way to write a poem, honestly--but it meant that there isn't a lot of plot to go around. Not so with Paradise Lost. The structure is enjoyable, with an en medias res beginning and a lot of intrigue between what Satan tries to do to Adam and Eve and how high the stakes are. It's a great way of telling a timeless tale, so I'm thinking of adapting that for myself this year. I went ahead and sketched out an outline of about 800 words already, again shifting the setting to outer space. There are parallels to Inferno, if only because Satan's fall at the beginning of Paradise Lost and Dante walking off of the path in the Dark Wood have strong similarities. Also, malevolent aliens who like eating people is another piece that's the same between the two. Nevertheless, I'm thinking that it would be fun to walk Milton's path, seeing things through twenty-first century eyes. Besides, Milton couldn't get mad at me for making Paradise Lost fanfic: He wrote Bible fanfic and it turned into the greatest poem written in the English language. Surely he wouldn't begrudge me for having some fun with his story, right? Right? ==== Hey, friends. I have been releasing essays on my website for a couple of years now at a pretty steady rate. I'm happy to do so, as it benefits me as a writer and (I hope) you as a reader. I also think that, as a writer, it's okay if I believe that my work has some value monetarily as well as emotionally. To that end, I've created a Ko-Fi account, which is basically a way to give an online tip to a creator whose work you appreciate. The idea is, you can buy them a cup of coffee. (That's what the of the website sounds like, if you're curious.) I'm not charging for any of the content on my website; instead, if you'd like to toss me a cup-le (see what I did there?) of bucks to show your gratitude, that would be cool. I'd totally appreciate that appreciation. If you don't? No problem. We can still be friends. As always, thanks for reading! Have I mentioned the Very Short Introduction series? I was first introduced (lol) to this enormous series back in college. Since then, I've picked up a sparse handful of items, including Postmodernism, Scientific Revolution, Chaos Theory, The Cold War, and Logic.
The thing about these books is that they're not actually introductions. At least, not fully. While they do cover introductory material, they seem to rely on the reader having at least a passing knowledge of what's going on with their topic. The one I just finished reading was one I picked up as a souvenir from Kramerbooks & Afterwords in Washington, D.C. I snagged it because I once was in Paris and didn't buy a book from Shakespeare and Co., a bookstore kitty-corner to the Cathedral of Notre Dame. (My second trip to Paris rectified the oversight). I regretted not purchasing something from an independent bookstore from that trip and I wasn't about to have that happen again. I might never make it back to D.C., so I decided to snag something. In this case, it was an introduction to Dante. Written by Peter Hainsworth and David Robey, Dante: A Very Short Introduction is, at least, brief. It's only 115 pages long, though the font is small and, frankly, the information is densely packed in. It took me a couple of afternoons to read and mark up the book, though the latter half of the process is what slowed me down the most. I've taught Dante's Divine Comedy for…well, starting tomorrow, eleven years. I've read the entire poem once, though I've gone through Inferno a couple of times. (I played the video game, Dante's Inferno, which is…a thing, that's for certain. Maybe I'll reflect on the game (which I haven't played in years) some other time.) The thing is, despite considering Dante as one of the cornerstones of my curriculum, we only spend three or four days reading excerpts from Inferno and the last canto from Paradiso, completely skipping over Purgatorio and if you're suddenly lost on what I'm talking about, that's the issue I have with the book I just read. The thing about these introductory books (I have one about Derrida that is also a slim volume, though it comes from a different publishing company) is that they're trying to do an, essentially, impossible task: Go deep, broad, and fast. It's possible to do two of those things--maybe--but not all three. So Hainsworth and Robey begin with a "famous" exchange between Dante and Ulysses whilst the former is visiting the latter in Hell. See what I mean? If you don't know that Dante is best (let's be honest: exclusively) known for his early fourteenth century work The Comedy (it got the adjective Divine in the sixteenth century), which is one of the most singular pieces of poetry that I've come across. It's a poem that invites the reader to follow a Pilgrim (the character isn't named in the Inferno, the third of the poem that most people know, though he's later called Dante, making the readers to understand that Dante-the-poet was also Dante-the-character) through the afterlife. Beginning in a dark wood, Dante has no choice but to follow his personal hero, Virgil (of Aeneid fame) into the depths of Hell. Throughout the tour--which comprises the thirty-four canti (kind of like chapters) of Inferno--Dante sees all sorts of tortures of people who have sinned and are, therefore, thrust down into the Infernal Realm. By the end, he even sees Satan--a massive, three-headed creature that is chewing on the souls of Judas Iscariot, Brutus, and Cassius. Virgil then leads Dante up and about Mount Purgatory before Dante continues on (now in the care of his lifelong crush (it's complicated) Beatrice) into Heaven, or Paradise. At the height of Paradise, Dante is at last given a vision in which he comprehends the knowledge and love of God. Then the poem ends. Okay, so that, to me, is a very short introduction. And I'm not saying that Hainsworth and Robey don't do a good job with the book--on the contrary, I liked it a lot and I think there's a great amount of distillation and contextualization about the man and his times that I didn't know from beforehand. Instead, I'm saying that this series as a whole has a tendency of presuming that there's maybe more knowledge about the topic than there really is. In the case of Dante, it's a much more enjoyable read if you've already gone through The Divine Comedy yourself--preferably one with well-organized footnotes (the copy I read was The Portable Dante, edited by Mark Musa)--and then check out the analyses, explanations, and history of the poem that the Short Introduction provides. At least, that's what I did. Maybe I'm shortchanging readers: Maybe this book doesn't require familiarity with the content beforehand and it can be useful to anyone who decides to give it a go. I could be wrong. I would say, however, that if you're looking for a worthwhile book to read, you could do a lot worse than Dante. A lot worse. Same with this introduction; while it may have taken me a bit longer than is normal to finish 115 pages of text, I feel like I now understand Dante Alighieri better than I did two weeks ago, before I started reading it. That's one of the things that I love about my job, by the way: It kindles interest in amazing things from throughout history and all over the world, then provides a motive for investing time in learning more about it. I think I'll be able to better teach The Divine Comedy (the small pieces that I'm sharing, that is) because of what I've read. Life-long learner, that's me. |
AuthorWould you like to support my writings? Feel free to buy me a coffee (which I don't drink, but I do drink hot chocolate) at my Ko-Fi page. Thanks! Archives
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