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J.W. Eberle

J.W. Eberle

Category Archives: Review

A Lonely Kid’s Best Friend

29 Thursday Dec 2016

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

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A Wizard of Earthsea, amwriting, best friends are books, books, development as a writer, dragon, Earthsea, Earthsea trilogy, fantasy, gebbeth, Gont, inspiration, lonely, lonely kid, Lord of the Rings, middle school, origin story, shadow, Sparrowhawk, Ursula K LeGuin, worldbuilding, writing, Writing Life

earthsea_robbins_01-257x300

I think most writers start out as lonely kids whose best friends are books.

A little over a month ago, my wife and I were packing to visit my family for Thanksgiving. All of my clothes were neatly packed and I was frantically searching our bookshelves for some light airplane reading. Reading an engaging book on a plane is one of my favorite things, so I wanted something good. My index finger came to rest on a small paperback with a cracked spine; a book I hadn’t read in a very, very long time.

When I was eleven years old, my family moved out of state. I changed schools and, in that cruel pre-social media world, lost touch with nearly all of my friends. For two years, I went to a small charter school (there were less than 15 students in my entire grade). I struggled to fit in and when I couldn’t seem to make any friends, I turned inward.

There was a small, white bookcase in my classroom and students were encouraged to borrow books. Being in middle school and being lonely, I naturally gravitated to escapist fiction and picked up a slight book with a dragon on the cover — A Wizard of Earthsea by Ursula K. LeGuin.

LeGuin’s book came to me at the perfect time, as great books often do. Set in an Iron Age world of islands and magic, the story follows the journey of Sparrowhawk, an arrogant young sorcerer who breaks the barrier between life and death and unleashes a malevolent shadow into the world. As he seeks to defeat it, he comes to understand the balance of the universe.

It completely captivated me. It wasn’t an epic fantasy, like The Lord of the Rings, but a personal fantasy; a coming-of-age story about one man learning to master his demons (both figurative and literal).

fff-02-12bmap2bof2bearthsea

Of even more interest to me as a budding writer was the nature of magic in LeGuin’s imagined world. In Earthsea, the key to magic lies in knowing the names of things. To know the true name of a person or a force of nature gives you power over it. In my own life, I was also learning that words were powerful.

A Wizard of Earthsea  was my gateway drug. LeGuin’s trilogy led me to other works of fantasy and science fiction. It also inspired me to write my own stories. If writing were a superpower, those books of fantasy would feature prominently in my origin story. Throughout middle school (and especially in those two years before I transferred to a larger public school), I started to write consistently for the first time in my life.

I had nearly forgotten about A Wizard of Earthsea until I happened upon it while packing my bag. I had nearly forgotten why it was so important to my development as a writer and how it had kept me company when I was a lonely kid in a new town. I don’t intend to forget again.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. His most recent short story, the Evidence for Coal, was published this month by Creative Colloquy in their Christmas update. He can be found on Twitter or on his couch rereading the books that he loved when he was younger. What books inspired you when you were young? Sound off in the comments!

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The Value of a Truly Terrible Book

30 Monday Mar 2015

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

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adventure, amreading, amwriting, bad books, book review, Clive Cussler, Dirk Pitt, fiction, novel, pulp, rant, read, reading, review, Sahara, terrible book, trash fiction, Valhalla Rising, what writers can learn from reading bad books, what writers read, writer, writing, writing examples, Writing Life

I have a lot of books crammed into my little office at home and I’d estimate that I’ve only read about two-thirds of them. The rest are books that I just haven’t gotten around to yet. I’ve spent years collecting these books and dragging them halfway across the country on the off chance that on some rainy day, I’ll pull one off the shelf. This is the story of one of those books.

Ten years ago, I saw the film Sahara. It was an action-adventure about Dirk Pitt, a marine engineer and adventurer who saves the day and discovers a missing Civil War ironclad in the sands of Africa. It was thrilling stuff and despite being universally panned by critics, I liked it. So, I went down to Bookman’s and picked up a copy of one of novels the move was based on, Valhalla Rising.

And it sat on my shelf for the next ten years. Unread.

Then, about a month ago, I picked it up. I remembered liking the film and I liked that there was a viking ship on the cover, so I started to read. And it was awful. What the movie version of Dirk Pitt glossed over, the book revealed in agonizing detail. Pitt in the novel can do no wrong. Everyone around him worships him. Women fling themselves at him and he refuses their advances with long, sexist soliloquies about how he likes to have women cook and clean for him.

The plot is worse: full of impossible twists and turns, leaping from one world-ending crisis to the next (along with some unfortunate villainous plans that are eerily reminiscent of 9/11 — the book was published in August 2001 and features both planes crashing in Manhattan and a separate plot to destroy the World Trade Center). It is completely ridiculous from beginning to end. It’s also not about vikings.

I really didn’t like Valhalla Rising. I didn’t like the characters, the plot or the dialogue. Even the descriptions were poorly written, spending paragraphs explaining the horsepower of a WWII transport plane’s engine or the exact chiseling of Pitt’s face.

Still, I think there is something to be learned from this book. As a writer, I am often tempted to read the greats. When I read the masters of literature, I am struck by the complexity of their masterpieces. It can be hard to deconstruct an excellent work, because all the pieces are so carefully laid into place that I can’t see how they fit together.

On the other hand, when I read a really bad book, I can see the gaps. I see where the author tried something that didn’t quite work; where a line of dialogue fell flat; where a plot line was left dangling. Sometimes, I learn more from failure than from success.

Every writer should read a truly terrible book from time to time. It’s a good gut check of your own sense. You can critique as you go and you will be amazed by how many lessons you learn.

So, go ahead, grab that trashy paperback. You’ll probably learn a few things about the craft. Even if you don’t, let it motivate you. If that person can write a crappy manuscript and get it published, you can, too.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer and avid reader of books both good and bad. You can follow him on Twitter. Apologies to Clive Cussler (even though he did appear as a fictionalized version of himself in his own book, which is weird).

Harper Lee’s Second Novel Will Change Everything

11 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Rants, Review, Writing

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20th century, am writing, American literature, amwriting, art, Atticus, birthday resolutions, classic, culture, Go Set a Watchman, Great American Novel, Harper Lee, Maycomb, mockingbird, novel, ownership, rant, Scout, sequel, To Kill a Mockingbird, writing, Writing Life

“People generally see what they look for, and hear what they listen for.”
– Atticus Finch, To Kill a Mockingbird

Fifty-five years is a long time to wait for a second novel, but more than half a century after her debut, it appears that Harper Lee is publishing a sequel to To Kill a Mockingbird. Go Set a Watchman is set in the 1950s and follows Scout, now grown, as she returns to the tired old town of Maycomb, Alabama. After mulling the news over for the better part of a week, I still don’t know whether to be excited or nervous.

Most of us grew up reading Harper Lee’s seminal first novel. It is a masterpiece; a cornerstone of American literature. It’s no surprise to me that Harper Lee was unable to follow it up. Lightning rarely strikes twice.

So, I find it strange that this second book (or, more accurately, first book, as it was written before Mockingbird) is coming to light now. Now, I don’t know if Lee is being taken advantage of in her old age. I don’t know if the book will even be any good. But no matter what this new book is or isn’t, its publication will forever change the world of To Kill a Mockingbird that we all know and love. Its very existence will change the way future generations will read about the little girl watching her father defend a black man in the Jim Crow South of the 1930s. It will offer a different lens through which to understand the characters and events of Lee’s first book and that worries me.

At the heart of my concern is a question — at what point does a work of art cease to be the property of its creator? When a book becomes one of the greatest works of literature of an entire century, does the author retain the right to add or take away from it? At what point does it become part of our culture? Something bigger than anyone, even its author? Of course it’s Lee’s legacy, but it also belongs to all of us who have read the book and loved it. At what point should a great monument be left alone to be what it is?

A new book will hit the shelves this summer and it will change something. Wherever you are, stand up. To Kill a Mockingbird is passing.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer and reader in Tacoma, WA. You can leave your comments below or find him on Twitter.

Apocalypse Train Through Denmark

07 Thursday Aug 2014

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Film, Review, Writing

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amwriting, apocalypse, art house, Bong Joon-ho, Copenhagen, Destiny City Film Festival, film, filmmaking, Grand Cinema, independent, indie, indie film, Mark Raso, review, scifi, screenwriting, Snowpiercer, story, storytelling, Tacoma, train, writing

This week, I watched two wildly different films. One was the closing night film at the First Annual Destiny City Film Festival. The other was a thriller/allegory with lots of violence and action. One was a carefully-crafted, low-key story about a man who goes searching for his grandfather and the other was a high-intensity rollercoaster ride about class warfare on a train circumnavigating a frozen, lifeless Earth.

On the surface, these two movies have absolutely nothing in common, but when I started to dig deeper and thought about it, the more I realized that they are telling a story that is fundamentally the same. For all their differences, Copenhagen and Snowpiercer use the same storytelling tools.

[This is your only warning: Here be spoilers, matey.]

Mark Raso’s Copenhagen starts with a man on a mission to return to the homeland of his father and track down his grandfather. He is looking for insights into a man he never knew and ultimately, looking for answers about himself. What William finds, however, is a forbidden love and is faced with responsibility for the first time in his life. It’s classic indie fare — long sequences of riding bikes through the cobblestone streets of Denmark’s capital, Europop, muted colors, an unlikeable protagonist who grows into a mature man and a barrel of twentysomething angst simmering just below the surface.

Our second movie is, um, a little different. Bong Joon-ho’s Snowpiercer is a South Korean scifi action film that opens with a dispirited group of refugees from a now-frozen planet riding in the back of a train that circles the world once a year and never stops. It is Titanic on a locomotive, with the rich people in the front and the poor people in the back, but without all the mushy love and romance. Early on, our protagonist shuns the role of the leader even as he prepares to lead a revolution to take over the train and free his people from a life of servitude and mashed-up cockroach food.

This film has all the tropes of apocalyptic science fiction —authoritarianism masquerading as capitalism, a closed world (the train could just as easily have been a spaceship), lots of blood, futuristic drugs, muted colors, bad dialogue, a man who refuses a position of leadership who grows into a mature man and a boxcar of 21st century end-of-the-world angst boiling over.

Completely different.

And yet, at the heart of each film is a coming of age story. In Copenhagen, William can’t grow up until a younger woman shows him a new way of looking at the world. At the climax of this story, William must face a moral choice that will define him. In Snowpiercer, Curtis can’t grow into a wise and just leader until he atones for his part in a slaughter in the desperate early days of the global apocalypse. In the end, Curtis must choose between the role of ruler or martyr.

There are so many ways to tell a story. That’s what I love most about being a writer. There are infinite possibilities. With a few changes in setting and tone, I can go from William standing on the Danish coast where the Baltic Sea and the North Sea meet to a speeding luxury train carrying the last members of humanity. With a few flicks of a pen, I can transform hedonistic, nihilistic William into Captain American killing people with an axe.

Despite their differences, I really enjoyed both films (although, I’ll admit that I had trouble taking Snowpiercer very seriously). From each, I gained a new perspective on a well-worn tale. That’s the versatility of a story.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer and filmmaker in Tacoma, WA. Comment below or follow him on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

Rewriting Hemingway

10 Thursday Jul 2014

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Rants, Review, Writing

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amwriting, creative process, delete, Ernest Hemingway, final draft, first draft, hemingway, Lost Generation, lost work, mystery, new edition, new Hemingway, original, revision, rewriting, The Sun Also Rises, writing, Writing Life, WWI

Last week, news broke of a new release of Ernest Hemingway’s 1926 debut novel The Sun Also Rises. The new edition “restores” the original first chapter of the novel, replacing the iconic opening scenes setting up the protagonist, Robert Cohn, with an introduction to the female lead, the fiery Brett Ashley. Hemingway fans are practically drooling over the chance to see “new” material from the author, who committed suicide in 1961. He’s one of my personal favorite authors, but something about the publishing of these previously discarded pages feels wrong.

If Hemingway deleted his original chapter, it was with good reason. That’s how writing works. You may keep a word, a phrase, a sentence or a dozen pages right up to the end as a placeholder, or simply because your subconscious hasn’t figured out how to improve upon it. The replacement comes to you either in a flash of inspiration or after slow and methodical revision.

I suspect that’s what Papa was up to when he threw out his original (somewhat drab) opening line, “This is a novel about a lady” and substituted the more impressive “Richard Cohn was once middleweight boxing champion of Princeton.” See the difference? The first line sets up the romantic interest that does drive much of the story, but the second line gives us so much more. It gives us the sense that our hero (if he can rightly be called that) is past his peak. He was once a champion, but no more. Later, that line will resonate with the themes of disillusionment, detachment and malaise that characterizes this cast of characters and reflects the post-WWI disenchantment of his generation. That’s a hook written by someone who has had time to mull over his story.

Much of the excitement over this new edition is the opportunity to see the writer at work, in the midst of developing one of those rare Great American Novels. There is value in opening up the creative process, but it could also undermine our appreciation for the finished work. Would we be so in awe of Shakespeare’s dramatic talent if we discovered his crude, rough outline of Hamlet’s “To Be Or Not To Be” soliloquy?

I think most writers, myself included, would be mortified if their first drafts were made available to the public. The early drafts are where we privately struggle with the plot and characters. Those pages are never meant to be read. They are the sandbox of clumsy ideas and half-baked prose, which is carefully shaped into a final form that is ready for the limelight.

When we posthumously publish unfinished works or early drafts of classic books, are we doing the writers a disservice by lifting the curtain on their solitary process? Should we be dragging deleted words out of dusty desks and hard drives? Or should writers take it upon themselves to destroy anything that might one day expose their plot holes and tangents to the world? What do you think?

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. You can comment below, share this story with your friends or follow him on Twitter. If you’re feeling especially daring, you can do all three.

9 Things “How I Met Your Mother” Taught Me About Storytelling

01 Tuesday Apr 2014

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

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am writing, Barney, Bro Code, creative writing, creativity, finale, foreshadowing, Future Ted, HIMYM, How I Met Your Mother, inspiration, life, Lily, list, Marshall, McLarens, narrative device, Robin, story, storytelling, suit up, Ted Mosby, The Mother, writing, Writing Life

After nine seasons, my favorite TV sitcom came to an end last night. After years of twists and turns, Ted Mosby finally met the love of his life and his couch-bound children found out how their father met their mother. For my generation, the CBS comedy has become is cultural touchstone. With its intricate web of puzzle pieces, flashbacks within flashbacks, callbacks and catchphrases, “How I Met Your Mother” chronicled the ups and downs of dating, friendship and twenty-somethinghood in the 21st century.

It also hooked us for one of the longest stories in television. Every episode of its nine-year run brought us one step closer to the ultimate goal: discovering how Ted would meet his future wife, the mysterious Girl With the Yellow Umbrella. While I disagree with the way the writers ultimately chose to end it, the final episode got me thinking about all the clever storytelling devices HIMYM used to spin the tale of one man’s quest for marital bliss.

So, in honor of the finale of the show, here are 9 Things “How I Met Your Mother” taught me about storytelling. Warning: May Contain Spoilers.

"I kept it concise and to the point."9) Kids, I’m going to tell you an incredible story…

When it comes to narration, first person is hard to pull off, but this show did it right. Most episodes of HIMYM are narrated for us by Future Ted. What could’ve been a boring voice that simply related events as they were happening was instead used to great effect to highten the emotion of a scene, provide transitions, draw parallels, provide punchlines and provide a counterpoint to the action. HIMYM’s narrator can see the arc of events to remind us where we’re headed. But he is also an unreliable narrator, mixing up the order of stories, clashing with reality and being biased toward his red cowboy boots, which provided another layer or humor and depth.

8) Haaave you met Ted?

Snappy dialogue is one of the hallmarks of HIMYM. The character’s exchanges are lighning quick and loaded with profound meaning and razor sharp wit. The great writing is what really set the show apart from everything else on at 8 pm on a Monday night. Your dialogue should sizzle. Have fun with it and let your characters play with language. If your descriptions are beautiful, but your dialogue feels stale, canned or otherwise uninteresting, you need to rewrite. Great dialogue can carry much of the plot.

7) Blue French Horn

Part of the fun of HIMYM is in the way the show recalls things that have happened in the past. Audience members paying attention will remember the reference and understand the joke. Some things come back again and again to pay off. Calling back to something that happened waaaay back in chapter two is a good way to keep readers engaged and clue them in that everything is important to the bigger picture. Those little things should be a part of your ending, forming a neat little bookend to your story. When you’re wrapping up your story, look for clues to the eventual resolution in the seeds that you planted back at the beginning; it will feel more satisfying than a resolution that comes out of nowhere.

6) Come again for Big Fudge?

Sure, the story is about Ted, but the writers of HIMYM also fleshed out the supporting characters. They provided backstories, motivations and asides for Marshall, Lily, Robin and Barney that made them feel like real people. They had hopes and dreams beyond being stock characters or one-liner delivering stereotypes. Even Barney, the player of the group, changed over the years and eventually settled down. You have to allow all of your characters to be three-dimensional, not just your protagonist. Giving your minor characters room to grow and change over the course of the narrative gives your story more realism.

5) The Bro Code

In the show, Barney lives his life by the Bro Code, a set of rules that govern the behavior of men. Barney had a rule to cover any situation from how a wingman must conduct himself (ie. “A bro shall always say ‘yes'”) to complicated dating prcedures (ie. “the mom of a bro is always off-limits”). Similarly, the universe your story builds should have a set of guiding principles. Clear rules about what can and cannot happen in your tale will help you fashion an internally-consistent world.

4) The Mother

Throughout the show, we have always known where we would eventually wind up. From the outset, we knew that Ted would be successful in his search for true love. We knew the goal, but we didn’t know how we would get there or who the unnammed Mother was until the very end. All we had were hints scattered along the way like breadcrumbs. When you’re writing, you should know the end and leave hints to help your reader connect the dots.

3)The Slap of a Thousand Exploding Suns

Even the best storytellers get off track now and then. HIMYM was a great television sitcom. It broke new ground with a bold format, but sometimes it got a little too confident. In later seasons, elaborate fantasy sequences (many of them either musical or parodying famous movies) and out-of-character moments weighed heavily on the show. Barney became the star of the show, which started to rely too heavily on its gimmicks and once starry-eyed romantic Ted slumped into pity-party jerk Ted. Far too many episodes went by without the merest hint of the elusive Mother.

Some of the later season outings are hard to watch because the show wandered too far from what it did well. Watch your step as your write your story, to make sure you stay true to what you’ve promised your readers. It’s all too easy to jump the shark. As for throwing in a surprise twist ending? Probably best to avoid it.

2) Wait for it…

The writers of HIMYM understood that suspense keeps your audience coming back. By raising the stakes, dropping a tantilyzing clue or stopping just short of a big reveal, they kept us returning every week for nine years. Thoughtfully crafted suspense and mystery is the key to writing a pageturner, no matter what your genre is. By withholding information and releasing it strategically, your readers won’t be able to put your story down. They’ll care about what happens and want to know how what happens to the characters you’ve created.

1) Love the Journey

In all honesty, Ted probably could’ve told the short version of how he met his wife (involving a yellow umbrella and a series of missed connections) in about ten minutes. But the longform nature of the story, with its tangents and embellishments along the way, is infinitely more satisfying.

By taking our time and letting the story go where it leads, we got to learn about Marshall and Lily starting a family, Barney letting go of his bachelor lifestyle and Robin struggling to balance her personal life with her demanding career. By taking the slow path instead of the fast lane, we were treated to intimate moments and great laughs shared by a close group of friends. The McLaren’s gang feels like family because of how the story was told. We didn’t skip to the end. We lived with the conflict and experienced the setback.

The story itself took on a life of its own. That’s why it isn’t just another show about a group of friends who hang out in a bar. The writers made sure that the journey was just as worthwhile as the destination. They made us care about the characters and not just about the solution to the premise. That’s what makes it so hard to say goodbye. And it’s something we should all remember when, like Ted, we sit down to tell our own story.

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer in Tacoma, WA. When he isn’t wondering how he will fill the Monday night void in his life, you can find him on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

An Open Letter to the Doctor

20 Wednesday Nov 2013

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

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1963, 2013, am writing, blue police box, brave heart, companion, Doctor Who, Doctor Who 50th Anniversary, hero, letter to a fictional character, nonviolent hero, open letter, science fiction, scifi, TARDIS, Time Lord, time vortex, writing, Writing Life

Dear Doctor,

You are a man of many faces who has lived many lifetimes. For over a thousand years, you’ve been traveling through time and space in a ship disguised as a blue police box. But I’ve only been following your exploits for the past year or so. I first met you in your Ninth incarnation, when you were guilt-stricken with blood on your hands. It was clear to me that you were a great man, even if you didn’t know it yourself.

You are unlike any hero I have ever known. In our early travels through space and time, you were a guilty man who doubted himself. You saved entire worlds, but preferred to live in the shadows. You brought out the best qualities of your companions. In your eyes, there were no insignificant people. You reminded me to have a brave heart, even when all looked lost.

You are quick on your feet, eccentric, brilliant and unlike so many of the figures of your genre, you’re quick to show mercy. In a violent universe, you refuse to carry a weapon. You face armies with only your wits and a screwdriver. You were exactly the kind of hero I would’ve idolized in my youth.

You and I have something in common — we’ve both been running our entire lives. What you’re on the run from is a mystery, as you madly dash (allons-y!) from adventure to adventure, saving planets from the Daleks or the Cybermen or the Weeping Angels. Like me, you are plagued by demons and tempted by the darker side of your soul, but you refuse to give in. It gives me courage to fight my own darkness.

I don’t know who you are. You are a Time Lord whose name and past are shrouded in the veil of the time vortex and the ancient history of a forsaken world. You are a madman with a box, but you are also me. You are the highest hopes of what humanity could be. You are hope personified, Doctor. And as you and the TARDIS fly off to face the greatest dangers in the universe, that’s something I’ll keep with me, across all of space and time.

Yours truly,
Jonny Eberle

— 30 —

Jonny Eberle is a writer, Doctor Who fan and all around Anglophile living in Tacoma, WA. When he isn’t dreaming about the stars, he’s writing about going to them or on Twitter. Thanks for reading!

What Langston Hughes Taught Me About The Music of Language

24 Sunday Feb 2013

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

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1920s, am writing, creative writing, creativity, Harlem Renaissance, influence, inspiration, jazz, Langston Hughes, movement, music, personal reflection, poem, poet, poetry, sound, writing, Writing Life

I’ll never forget the first time I read a poem written by Langston Hughes. I was 16, taking a creative writing class at my high school and struggling to make it through the poetry unit of the course. I couldn’t write a decent poem to save my grade and every poem I read seemed more boring and contrived than the last. We had to spend 20 minutes of every period reading poems and it was torture.

And then there was Langston Hughes, peeking out from the bookshelf in an unassuming paperback. The cover promised he was a “master of American verse.” I’d never heard of the guy.

I flipped to a random page and found a poem called “The Weary Blues.” It was beautiful.

Droning a drowsy syncopated tune,
Rocking back and forth to a mellow croon,
     I heard a Negro play.
Down on Lenox Avenue the other night
By the pale dull pallor of an old gas light
     He did a lazy sway . . .
     He did a lazy sway . . .
To the tune o’ those Weary Blues.
With his ebony hands on each ivory key
He made that poor piano moan with melody.
     O Blues!
Swaying to and fro on his rickety stool
He played that sad raggy tune like a musical fool.
     Sweet Blues!
Coming from a black man’s soul.
     O Blues!
In a deep song voice with a melancholy tone
I heard that Negro sing, that old piano moan—
     “Ain’t got nobody in all this world,
       Ain’t got nobody but ma self.
       I’s gwine to quit ma frownin’
       And put ma troubles on the shelf.”
Thump, thump, thump, went his foot on the floor.
He played a few chords then he sang some more—
     “I got the Weary Blues
       And I can’t be satisfied.
       Got the Weary Blues
       And can’t be satisfied—
       I ain’t happy no mo’
       And I wish that I had died.”
And far into the night he crooned that tune.
The stars went out and so did the moon.
The singer stopped playing and went to bed
While the Weary Blues echoed through his head.
He slept like a rock or a man that’s dead.

This poem had life; movement. For the first time, I could hear a voice in the words. The ink on the page swayed. The lines tapped out the beat. It was jazz. I could almost hear that old piano moan — the music was there, preserved on the page for 80 years before reaching my ears. I had no idea language could do that.

Langston Hughes was long dead when I picked up his work, but I could hear him speaking to me. Our experiences were far removed — he was a black poet who escaped the Jim Crow South to become one of the great writers of the Harlem Renaissance of the 1920s; I was a 21st century white teenager in a little Arizona mountain town. But despite the gulf of time and place, I couldn’t shake the sense that Hughes was talked directly to me.

As I sat down to write my own work, both poetry and fiction, I like to think that I’m having a conversation with Hughes. I answer his cadence with my own rhythm; my song answers his.

Writing shouldn’t be so polished that you lose the human voice. Language is dynamic, emotional, musical and I try to capture that music in everything I write, so that you can hear me across what time and space separated us. Langston Hughes taught me that.

Sweat in the Street
By J.W. Eberle
After A. Van Jordan

Sweat pours off the shoulders of the night
in greasy drops that stick to the sidewalk.
puddle around my feet,
soak my socks.

Soul-heavy air clings to my fingertips,
trailing in the gutter
with the other restless perfectionists,
missed deadlines,
abandoned desires.

Sweat pours off the shoulders of the thick, gray hour
between night and day.
The city is hot and foul in the back alleys
with the passed-out homeless and last call vagrants.
The street is a mirror where the artists drown.

— 30 —

My name is Jonny Eberle and I’m a writer, photographer and jazz aficionado in Flagstaff, AZ. Who’s your favorite poet and how did they inspire you? Please comment, share or follow me on Twitter: @jonnyeberle. Thanks for reading.

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Flash Fiction: Big Easy
Writing in Thin Air
An Open Letter to Sherlock Holmes

For the Love of Trek

10 Monday Sep 2012

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, The Future, Writing

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1966, 2012, am writing, Captain Kirk, Dr. McCoy, future, geek, hope, IDIC, inspiration, life, live long and prosper, nerd, peace, review, science fiction, Spock, Star Trek, The Next Generation, TNG, TOS, Trekker, Trekkie, TV, USS Enterprise, vulcan salute, writing

Forty-six years ago, the first episode of a science fiction TV series was broadcast. It was called Star Trek and it was destined to change the world. Half a century later, it is ingrained in our pop culture, lives on in spin-off shows, movies and books and has inspired three generations of thinkers, explorers and dreamers.

It began with a simple, powerful idea — that in the future, humankind could abolish war, poverty, racism and intolerance. We would strive not for money or power but for the betterment of ourselves. It was a radical idea for the late-1960s, when thousands were dying in the jungles and rice paddies of Vietnam, the Civil Rights movement was railing against inequality and two nuclear superpowers stood one phone call away from mutual annihilation. The idea that humanity would survive and thrive into the 23rd century as a peaceful society was a blinding flash of hope in a world so desperately in need of a reason to believe in a better future.

I was introduced The Next Generation during its original run (before I could even read). Then, as I grew older, I discovered The Original Series and its later incarnations. At first, I was drawn to the adventure, the larger than life characters and the explosions. It was only later that I realized there was a message. It wasn’t just the planet/monster of the week that I loved, it was the promise.

I watched a lot of Trek in middle school, shortly after moving to Flagstaff. I was having trouble fitting in and making friends. Star Trek taught me that I had a place in the world and I didn’t have to change — infinite diversity in infinite combinations made the universe go round. It was a soothing salve for the loneliness.

I know it’s just a TV show, but it’s my favorite TV show. Sure, it’s cheesy, but that’s exactly why we Trekkies (and Trekkers) love it so. The struggles faced by the crew of the Enterprise are more or less the same things we all struggle with. But while we get mired in petty fights, they rise above. They are us at our finest; the people we hope to someday be. We want Captain Kirk’s courage, Dr. McCoy’s humanism and Spock’s logic. We, too, want to explore strange new worlds and boldly go where no one has gone before.

And as long as people continue to be inspired by Star Trek and its ideals, I have no doubt that we’ll reach that final frontier.

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An Open Letter to Sherlock Holmes

18 Monday Jun 2012

Posted by Jonny Eberle in Review, Writing

≈ 10 Comments

Tags

221B Baker Street, am writing, childhood hero, detective, fiction, inspiration, letter to fictional character, literature, mystery, novel, open letter, personal reflection, private consulting detective, review, scandal in bohemia, Sherlock Holmes, short story, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, truth, writing, Writing Life

Dear Mr. Holmes,

Despite being thoroughly aware that you’re a fictional character, I must admit I’ve always felt that you and I were kindred spirits. I became a fan of your work shortly after I learned how to read. I don’t know when or where I happened upon that green, leather-bound book with gilded pages containing Dr. Watson’s notes from 19 of your cases, but I cannot underestimate its impact on my life.

Somewhere between the first line of A Scandal in Bohemia and the heart-wrenching final scene in The Final Problem, I decided that I wanted to be you. Being the sidekick or one of the Irregulars wasn’t enough. When my peers wanted to be firefighters or astronauts, I craved the exciting, enigmatic life of a private investigator.

Determined to be my elementary school’s first private consulting detective, I founded my own short-lived agency in the third grade. We only tackled one mystery and to the best of my knowledge the Case of the Compact Disc Thief remains unsolved.

In my eyes, you were superhuman — the good doctor and I were always in awe of your powers of deduction. You were everything I wanted to be: erudite, unflappable, self-assured with no desire for fame or reward money and perfectly at home in a deerstalker cap. I, too, wanted to fight the criminal underbelly of Victorian London. I wanted to be the person Lestrade came to when the case seemed unsolvable. Above all, I wanted the pipe.

But the thing I found most inspirational about you was your fallibility. More than once, you fell prey to your inner darkness. You lost yourself to addiction, obsession and depression. Once, I even feared you were dead. Both of us were misfits. You were like me — a human being with human faults. You were my hero because you could be beaten.

A long time ago, you told me that when you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth. I’ve never given up on my quest to discover the truth and I have your advice to thank for it. I may have retired from professional detective work, but I still relish a good mystery and I enjoy my occasional visits to 221B Baker Street.

Thank you for everything, Mr. Holmes. In my youth, few people were as real to me as you. I will forever consider you among the best and wisest men whom I have ever known.

Very sincerely yours,
Jonny Eberle

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I deduce that you are an intelligent person who is both well-read and tech savvy. This being the case, you should have no trouble following me on Twitter at @jonnyeberle. See what I did there?

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