A story song that echoes across centuries (well, 20th and 21st C): Ode to Billie Joe
Bobbie Gentry, a Mississippi singer/songwriter, wrote several great story songs. “Fancy” is my favorite, the story of a poor but beautiful girl being coached by
Tag: writers on writing
“Fellas, it’s been good to know ya.” -The story of “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald”-
So the first “story song” I’d like to discuss is Gordon Lightfoot’s “The Wreck of the Edmund Fitzgerald.” This 1976 folk ballad is in
BFFs—Best Friends 4-ever (literally)
Alicia’s Trollope Posts in Order Here The Palliser series by Anthony Trollope overflows with great characters and relationships, particularly the eponymous Pallisers– Plantagenet and Glencora,
Three Things to Tell Your Teenage Writing Self: #3 A stop sign is just a pause
The advice I wanted most and never got as a teenage writer was not about craft but about the writing business. My English teachers didn’t
Trollope and the Toxic Friend
The Evolution of a Toxic Friendship The Palliser novels of Anthony Trollope are all about power and connections. One common theme of the novels is
Family Friendships with Trollope’s Women
Finally the Bechdel Test! The Bechdel test is the invention of cartoonist Allison Bechdel, who in the 1980s noticed how frequently Hollywood films diminish
Three Things to Tell Your Teenage Writing Self: #1 Don’t bite the basketball
My teenage writing self wanted to write novels. Whole series of novels. I wanted some kid my age to go to the library (I was
Bad Women of Trollope
Trollope’s Bad Women As I’ve shown, Trollope clearly had no preference for the patriarchy. He presented the undoubted reality that men had more power, more
Putting into Words What Cannot Be Put into Words
The late and beloved Ursula Le Guin once wrote that the writer’s job is to “put into words what cannot be put into words.” Writers
Research-reading Trollope: The Garden-Variety Bad Husband
The Garden-Variety Bad Husband Now, after the operatically self-destructive Kennedy and Trevelyan, we come to a more conventionally bad husband, Ferdinand Lopez. He was an
Research-reading Trollope: The Poison of Power
Louis Trevelyan, Domestic Tyrant Trollope understood that men can be the victims of masculine power and violence too. There’s Phineas Finn, for example, who is
Another Trollope Trope: Bad Husbands Self-Destruct
Bad Husbands and the Paradox of Power There are two 21st century terms which apply to Trollope’s 19th-century bad husbands: Toxic masculinity and death by
Trollope, the Postal Pillar-box, and the Fourth Wall
But first, a digression into postal history! (British history and literature are so charmingly replete with such odd anecdotes. Trollope most of all would approve,