Literary Links

Echoes of the Past in Crime Fiction

Clinical psychologist and novelist Lucy Burdette understands exactly what I value most about crime fiction:

we humans are always affected by our history. Our families shape our stories with their presence or absence, their quirks and patterns, their healthy traits and unhealthy, and sometimes their serious trauma. We carry our family forward, consciously or not, and it shapes our present whether we recognize it or we don’t. Personal history is also the stuff that makes crime fiction so fascinating. Some writers pay more attention to the effects of psychological backstory than others, and it takes a bigger role in some sub-genres than others. Sometimes the psychological backstories of the characters are known from the beginning, and sometimes those experiences are unspooled alongside the criminal investigation, or even over a series of books.

Studying science fiction films can help students understand the power societies have to shape our lives

In a series called “Uncommon Courses,” news site The Conversation discusses what it calls “unconventional approaches to teaching.” Here Harry F. Dahms, professor of sociology at the University of Tennessee, explains why he uses science fiction films as the basis for one of his courses: “I chose science fiction films to encourage sociology students to adopt a constructive view of the future. I also wanted them to see the parallels between the underlying messages in these films and many concepts in sociology.”

15 Mysteries and Thrillers with Spooky Settings

Here’s this week’s offering for Halloween reading: “From haunting suspense novels to gothic mysteries, these books with spooky settings will keep you up late into the night.”

What Language Reveals About Us

“Julie Sedivy on the 3 greatest revelations she had while writing her new book Linguaphile.”

Linguaphile is a fusion of science writing and memoir, a genre that tries to make sense of life by examining the ingredients of one particular life. For me these ingredients include my years in the lab as a language scientist but also a lifetime of rich linguistic experiences and pleasures. I wanted to write a book that intertwined these threads. Working on Linguaphile illuminated for me the wholeness of language as a human experience.

Literary Horror Is Hard to Define. That’s the Point

“Or, a list of horror novels that show us true versions of ourselves and the world around us”

I don’t like a lot of horror literature. In particular, I don’t read anything involving werewolves, zombies, or vampires. But Alena Bruzas, author of the recent novel To the Bone, got me thinking with this article. “Literary horror scares us because it tells us something true about ourselves or the world we live in,” she writes. In this way, at least some horror literature hits very close to my notion of Literature & Psychology.

She also says that writing To the Bone, based on the true story of The Starving Time (winter of 1609-1610) when 75% of the settlers in the Jamestown Colony died of starvation, helped her process her own trauma: “I felt compelled to tell the story of a woman who was murdered by her husband because I escaped my own abusive marriage only with the help of my family.” And this aligns with the notion that fiction allows both writers and readers to examine experiences outside of their comfort zones in a safe environment.

So I may have to read a couple of the books on her recommended list and reexamine some of my literary beliefs.

Steinbeck mined her research for “The Grapes of Wrath.” Then her own Dust Bowl novel was squashed

“Migrant camp worker Sanora Babb wrote what could have been the era’s definitive book. Instead she became a footnote”

Iris Jamahl Dunkle, author of a new biography of Sanora Babb, tells the story of how Sanora Babb’s work was taken for granted and unacknowledged by authors and publishers of the Great Depression era.

What Good Is Great Literature?

In this piece, written before the announcement of the winner of this year’s Nobel Prize in Literature, New York Times Book Review critic A.O. Scott takes on the huge subject of literary greatness.

Secrets of Los Alamos: How Family Stories Can Help Inform Historical Fiction

“Rachel Robbins Considers the Roles of Fact, History and Memory in Storytelling”

Rachel Robbins’s grandfather and grandmother lived in secrecy in Los Alamos, New Mexico, while her physicist grandfather worked under Oppenheimer on the Manhattan Project. Robbins tells the story of how a visit to the area with her 72-year-old mother helped both of them understand why their grandfather/father, in his later years, “whispered alone in his living room: ‘I wonder if my children can forgive me for what I’ve done.’” 

There are the stories we tell ourselves about who we are and about who our family is—the ones we recite endlessly and know by heart. They’re like a good movie where you know the ending before you begin. But what happens when you tug at a loose thread and realize your own story is only a façade? Whole family networks can come apart at the seams.

© 2024 by Mary Daniels Brown