Who's Beowulf?  

"Look, Mark, let's be realistic: the printed word is passé. Films, video rentals, even TV - they're where the action, and the money, are."

Mark's stories were appearing in small magazines with a frequency that surprised him. Initially these publications exhilarated him out of all proportion to their significance. He began to wonder if his writing could actually make money, so he consulted William Cook, a literary agent who had been recommended highly by an editor.

Up to this point Cook had been chatty and commonsensical, not the stereotypical, heavy-handed deal maker. Slightly over 6', his lean frame suggested regular visits to a gym. He wore a dark blue suit that was stylish without appearing ostentatiously expensive. His small-lensed glasses and salt-and-pepper hair, cut rather short, reminded Mark of one of his trendy instructors in graduate school.

"Well, how about the story, then? Do you believe that narratives have any importance today? From the beginning of time people have seemed to need fiction from storytellers."

Since Cook was charging $100 merely to talk with him, Mark figured he'd get his money's worth.

"Sure, but thousands of people with computers are writing good narratives. The successful story has to be authentically imaginative, with an unusual slant or gimmick that might be translated to the screen, at least potentially. I read the ones you sent. Let's talk about this snowman story, okay?"

"Fine."

Cook leaned casually back in his black leather, executive chair and ruffled through the manuscript.

"Okay, now you got this little boy building his first snowman. The narrative is clear, and the description is vivid."

"That's good."

"Now just listen to the climactic part when this bully comes into the kid's yard.

Fitzy seemed to vault over the fence from a standing start, landing without a thud, only a shushing sound and a spray of white. He stalked toward the snowman as Rogie pushed in front. The bigger kid threw a looping punch that knocked Rogie backward and made him understand why cartoons showed people who had been hit seeing stars. As he covered his face, Fitzy stepped forward and landed a blow to the solar plexus. Suddenly Rogie could not breathe, and he didn't want to try. Sitting down was easier. Tears coursed down his cheeks, mixing with the blood from his nose and dripping potions of injury onto his blue, quilted jacket. This assault was incomprehensibly unjust. Among a jumble of unfamiliar and conflicting impulses, he chose a recognizable one. If he could kill the enemy right there, he would.

The invader stood examining Rogie's creation; then he struck the head. Packed snow exploded into the air, and a carrot and an apple slice ornamented the sky for an instant. His movements exhibited a methodical brutality as he destroyed the torso with brutish karate chops, pushes, and kicks. Swaggering to the fence, he turned and pointed:

'Too bad, kid. Your snowman had an accident.'

Then he was gone. Rogie remained sitting as wet cold reached through his clothing, up his legs, to his behind, but his mind still struggled for meaning. Finally the chill reached his spine, he shivered, and his nose throbbed violently. Some fundamental pain can't be understood, only felt.

"Now, Mark, what do you think you were doing in there?"

"I was trying to dramatize, in a very short story, a simple loss of innocence."

"Whew, today in fiction and films, loss of innocence is not about a snowman. It's a rape, or a drug overdose, or maybe an encounter with an extraterrestrial or a demon that has some cosmic religious overtones, like the Exorcist, or the hundred imitations of it. At very least you've got to have more dynamic action on a bigger scale, preferably violent."

"What do you mean, like Beowulf?"

"Who's Beowulf?"

Mark thought of the medieval narrative poem, the first major work in English literature, which he had struggled through during a graduate school seminar. The original Anglo-Saxon was Germanic, harsh, and initially incomprehensible, but gradually the laborious translating became a journey of enchantment. The scenes in the mead hall lighted by the fiercely bright fire in the large hearth glittered in his memory. The warriors, ever respectful of the gift-giving leader, caroused around the banquet table. The night's darkness was beaten back by the flames, but outside, the monster Grendel and later his vengeful mother roamed the bleak moor wreaking devastation and killing all adversaries. Then valiant Beowulf appeared from across the sea and brought glory to himself, destruction to the monsters, and finally his own death.

That people would be enthralled by the story made sense; he was. However, the monsters were not the central attraction. They dramatized the narrative's theme about the magnificent potential of being a human and the grandeur of the battle of life, which all of us ultimately lose to our mortality. Recent fiction, films, and television too often presented the extraterrestrial or the otherworldly as simply lurid entertainment, a frightening but safe escape for the viewer. The best fiction, Mark believed, transported the reader imaginatively to another place, but returned him to himself, not merely diverted, but enlarged and enlightened. Almost magically, it illuminated truths that lay inside the reader, in his experience, and in his past.

"And your stories are too slow. You have to have quick cuts, like the best TV shows, sudden jumps from subplot to subplot. They're what catch the audience and hold them."

"So you're saying that fiction today is about gimmicks, not storytelling."

"Fiction's always used gimmicks to get the reader's attention. A writer has to adapt to the average reader. Today his attention span is almost as short as the TV viewer's. He has a zillion demands on his time. A person sits down to read your story, on a plane or waiting for a ride. Your words and plot have to engage and entertain him, not merely please you."

"Some people must have time. Novels sell."

"Look, guy, almost nobody reads novels. Oh, sure, lots of people buy them and say they do. And maybe a few do, mostly academics, who do it for a living, retired people, summer vacationers. But you quiz the other readers and you'll find that the novels that sell best are the ones that can be easily adapted to the screen, like Stephen King's. People actually 'read' them on film."

"Did you ever read a King novel, William?"

"I tried a couple, but they're way too wordy. The screen guys grab the story line, use his name, and a big film happens, which somehow relates to King. So he's a celeb."

Cook seemed to become inspired by his own insights.

"Hey, consider TV commercials."

"Come on, people hate them."

"I'll grant you some are terrible, but are you aware that much more money is spent to produce thirty seconds of commercials than on the same amount of time for the show itself?"

"Yeah, so I read."

"And do you know that commercials have much more instant dramatic impact? Watch how children are riveted to them, even without understanding their content, because they have so much punch."

"So that's where fiction is going, right? Mini-shorts with alien beings that can become feature length films."

"Well, that's an exaggeration, of course, but hold that thought. You give me something like that, and we'll make some money."

Mark trudged wearily out of the office and onto the elevator to the ground floor. As he walked out of the building, car horns, mostly from cabs, blared with an unsettling stridency, which reverberated up the sides of the gray skyscrapers that threw the street into shadow. He looked at pedestrians hurrying by. Every fifth one seemed to be talking on a cell phone. Very few were casually walking and chatting with another person.

Who indeed was Beowulf, he asked himself.

The need for food and lodgings has inspired the author to be, at various times, college professor, concierge, and cab driver. A Ph.D. in English literature from Lehigh University, Layden currently operate a small consulting group. His publishing credits include the Chiron Review, Northwoods Journal, Scrivener Creative Review. Also, three of his stories, published here in the US, are reproduced on the New Brunswick, Canada website.

http://new-brunswick.net/new-brunswick/writer's%20corner/index.html

Contact Robert Layden at: RELayden@aol.com

March 28, 2002
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