The Highly-Illustrated Screenplay Narrative

  THE BUSINESS ARMY  Roosevelt’s first inauguration 2

   Occasionally I post a link to a historical novel I had published at Eclectica Magazine: https://www.eclectica.org/v23n2/harvor.html It’s entitled The Business Army, and it’s about a historically documented attempt to organize a coup d’état in the United States during the early months of Franklin Roosevelt’s presidency. The novel exists in two forms: as a conventional manuscript and as a form of graphic novel I call the Highly Illustrated Screenplay Narrative (a mouthful, I know; I might rework the term). I’ve decided to post a lot of the latter form of the novel. Graphic novels tend to be expanded comic books (I wrote/drew one many years ago, and know the degree of labour involved). Conventional novels, on the other hand, tend to be devoid of art, and also tend to hew to a rather  traditional concept of how narrative should be produced. Yet at the same time, our mass culture has become acutely influenced by the feature film as a vehicle of narrative. We — including literary writers

   Am cleaning out my mom’s bookshelves. The original plan was utilitarian; get rid of all except a handful of special volumes. But finding that hard. It’s a good library, with, unsurprisingly, a strong contingent of Cdn books.  Reading these, though, is a mixed bag. Am currently reading a novel by a prize winning author described as “beloved” on the dust jacket. He died a few yrs ago and was instantly forgotten. Why, exactly? Who knows. However, no great injustice that the novel I’m reading is not still talked abt; it’s abt first love during the 1940s, and while it has its moments, it’s generally a static read. Scenes rarely come alive.  My mom and brother often used to discuss why CanLit struggled being as vital as Am or Brit lit. Reading this novel, two explanations come to mind: one (a point my mom liked to make): Canadian novelists (and their publishers) often fixated with being “worthy”; the novels function as moral lessons, not a mix of entertainment and art. Another is the anem

  EXT. A SMALL KOREAN VILLAGE. AN EARLY SUMMER EVENING, MID-WEEK. A WESTERN MAN is walking down the city's main street. To his left is Haemi Fortress, a medieval Korean fort. Its wall is built of unevenly-matched stones, each lightened by age to a gentle ochre, as if the stone itself has softened. The MAN walking beside this wall has a peaceful expression on his face. But from his body language we can tell he's lonely. VO: Those were the days before I met you. SFX: A light breeze. EXT. THE INNER COURTYARD OF THE FORTRESS. MOMENTS LATER. The Western man sees a group of CHILDREN. They are giggling and playing with each other. Then one of them spots the man. CHILD: 의국인! [Foreigner] SECOND CHILD: [sing-songy] Hello! MAN: [smiling] Hello. ALL CHILDREN: [gleefully] Hello! Hello! MAN: [speaking slowly] Can you speak English? The CHILDREN suddenly start to giggle uproariously. But their amusement is more a symptom of shyness than a desire to carry the game any further. They run away, s

   The World Bardo  S. and I went to a temple today. It’s the fifth anniversary of her mother Shil An’s death. Suki remembers the exact moment it happened. Her eldest brother Su man has been gone four years, and my brother Richard ten. Since S’s family is Buddhist, Buddhist imagery, ritual and cosmology tends to imbue any anniversary that occurs. My brother wasn’t Buddhist, or any religion at all — if anything, he was nihilistically atheist. Yet in the writings he left behind there is a very pronounced emphasis on “eternal return” and the elementary nature of universal cycles. S. and I often talk of how much he would have enjoyed temples if he’d made it to Asia. In the meantime, my father (just as atheist as my brother) lies in a hospital in Toronto. The medical team reassures me he’s stable. But he himself is obviously nervous when we talk every day on the phone. S. and I have plane tickets and we’ll be able to see him in a week. Cycles continue. And are unpredictable.

  THE HIGHLY ILLUSTRATED SCREENPLAY NARRATIVE  * HIGH SCHOOL 5 Int. A basement in a low rent row house. Evening. Tom is watching TV — the news. Broadcaster: Our top story tonight — Mao Ze Dong, the revolutionary who became China’s paramount leader and both ruled and transformed that great nation for several decades, is dead. The entire nation is in mourning. From Beijing, our reporter Brian Henderson…. Cut to: Int. The basement. Thirty minutes later. Tom, tired, his expression impassive, fatigued, rises from his impromptu sofa, the weirdly coloured styrofoam slabs, and turns the TV off. Cut to: Tom, in his bedroom, five minutes later. It’s dark out, and dark inside, too. He does not turn off the light in his room to change into pajamas. He just stares hypnotically out the window. SFX: … The wet buzzy drone of the rain….