Here’s a fine article about how a writer, Colm Toibin, uses memories of real events, places, and people in his stories—how they relate to reality, how they relate when they’re changed by a story, and how important a true sense of memory is to getting a story to be “right in the mind” and on the page. It’s called “What Is Real Is Imagined.”
On Loneliness: Art, Life, and Fucking Human Beings
By Sonya Chung
How was it that Christopher Fry, and not the man called Shakespeare, wrote the plays? Did he time-shift himself back in time to the year 1600 and compose the plays in retrospect? If so, how did he become so literate in theatre without a former Shakespeare to teach him thus? How is this a good premise for a movie?
I mean, not even Shakespeare himself knew who he was: you can tell by the scripts. “To be, or not to be, that is the question: Whether ’tis nobler in the mind to suffer / The slings and arrows / . . . For in that sleep of death what dreams may come.” This writer had no idea who he was—that’s why he wrote the plays. He wrote them to find out. Every writer is a huge mystery to himself and that’s why he writes. The spark of human imagination is only touched off when imagination and hands come together in the act of writing. The imagination sparks words which sparks memory which sparks more words which sparks dreams which sparks more words which sparks imagination again and again until a writer has a whole bonfire going. And like a bonfire, he does not have control over it, as much as he might hope to. In one sense a writer is merely a man or a woman like any other. In another sense he or she is the entire sum of the imagination and dreams and the experience of writing which is captured by his fingers.
As you can see, the premise matters little: the play is the only thing! Is it a good story? If it is, readers or movie-goers will find it. Will they be entertained? Perhaps. Will they learn anything about the real Shakespeare? No!
davidkrancher.com 