Does a hero always have to be the good guy?

D. J. Adamson published this article from me in her newsletter, which you can find at http://www.djadamson.com/blog/

Sometimes the bad guy is just more—well—interesting. Think of Hannibal Lecter. During our viewing of the first hobbit film, the audience oohed in delight when Gollum took the stage. We’re way past the “good ole days” when the hero was squeaky clean, like Clark Kent with his starched white shirt, his black framed glasses, and his mild manners. We don’t expect the hero to always speak politely, do good and pick the car up for his grandparents. Oops. See there? Even Superman has a dark secret.

We want some bad in our heroes. We want them to be struggling humans just like we are. Kent Clark is the consummate outsider, copying the ways of his guest planet desperately so he can fit in and get the girl. He’s the nerd’s hero. “See, you picked the captain of the football team and look what a gem you missed in me.” Then there’s Aragorn, the dark and dangerous Strider who turns out to be the hidden king of all the lands—once he finds his courage to face the ultimate temptation of the ring of power.

We want some good in our villains, too. There needs to be some spark of light in them that we can cheer on. We adore Lecter’s good manners, while we roll our eyes at Kent Clark’s. What a delicious combination—a man with impeccable manners and gourmet tastes who eats people who we secretly think deserve it.

Which reminds me of Dexter. He’s another sympathetic mass murderer. Then there’s Gollum, who has struggled with a power much greater than himself and become a ruin. But we can sympathize. Who hasn’t felt overwhelmed by the world at times? Who doesn’t want to believe that even the worst can rise up and ironically save the day?

Beneath the Hallowed Hill_ebook_300dpiI was surprised when my favorite villain took over the second book in my series, Beneath the Hallowed Hill. The best of the dark magicians who serves the Illuminati in their quest to keep control of the world’s power and wealth, Cagliostro is suddenly overcome with longing. For what? For the truth of who he is and his lost love, a beautiful red head whose bell-clear laugh haunts him. He goes in search of these things and in so doing destroys Atlantis, but saves modern-day Glastonbury.

“Stories are equipment for living,” theorist Kenneth Burke declared. We read and watch stories to know about the world and ourselves. The polar opposites of children’s literature just don’t do the job.

Moravian Writers’ Conference

I will be a panelist at the Moravian Writers’ Conference in Bethlehem, PA in June. My panel is called “Writing Moravians:  Stories from the Archives.” I’ll be talking about the research behind my novel The Star Family with writers from Lehigh University and Craig Atwood, from Moravian College. Craig researched the period in Moravian history that inspired me to write The Star Family, and I’m looking forward to talking with him more.

Moravian College

Come join us in Bethlehem the first weekend of June.

My Life with Lessing

Doris Lessing passed away at her home in London on Sunday, November 17, 2013. She was 94.

I really can’t remember exactly when I started reading Doris Lessing or which book it was, but once I started, I never stopped. Lessing seemed to have already gone through experiences I thought were unique to my generation. Yeah, I was young.

Not only was I young and my generation had Pluto in Leo, so we were just a bit full of ourselves, the history that Lessing had lived through had been repressed. Growing up in the 1950s, I didn’t know about feminist history, the bumps of activity in the late 18th, late 19th and early 20th. It was well tucked away under Father Knows Best and Leave It to Beaver.

Communism was the big red menace and we were well into the Cold War by the time I discovered her, so I was raised to believe socialists=communists=evil. The civil rights movement and anti-war movement soon informed me otherwise. Socialism sounded like a decent idea to me; communism wasn’t so bad in theory. Stalin seemed to be the problem. Then us girls got started and feminism took center stage.

I attended a former women’s college, UNC-G, which had been in its time a haven for feminists. The library had a collection of turn-of –the-(20th)-century women’s writings in a locked cage. For a paper once, I needed to read an article in one of the journals. The librarian let me in, muttering about how she usually only allowed graduate students in and to be careful, these were old. I was shocked by the radical stance of these late 19th century authors. They were advocating the same ideas we thought we’d made up—daring thoughts about not marrying, about independence, etc.

Lessing

I shared more than left-wing politics with Doris Lessing. In 1971, I attended a lecture about Vedic meditation. I started TM and liked it. After I graduated, I became a TM teacher, attending hours of lectures from Maharishi Mahesh Yogi about eastern philosophy, meditating for hours as well. Lessing’s characters explored expanded consciousness through psychedelics and meditation. Lessing turned from her knee-jerk rejection of spirituality to a serious search, during which she read all the world’s major religious texts—she never did anything halfway—and became a practicing Sufi.

I loved science fiction. She started writing it, ignoring the literary folks who looked down their noses at this form of literature. Lessing said “space fiction” as it was known in England was the site of the most exciting discussions about the nature of humans and the world.

I have read Lessing all my life, always loving her deep honesty about herself and the world, always learning about history and current affairs, always amazed at her spiritual insights. She was brave. In her last novel, she even erased herself and gave her parents the life they would have had if the WWI had not damaged them as it did. In so doing, they never met and she was never born. That takes guts to enter compassionately and imaginatively into those who formed your psyche and inflicted some deep wounds.

I dreamt about Lessing all night about a month ago. I sat around with her, listened to her talk, and watched her with her family, even slept in her house. Yeah, she had dementia then, but in my dream she was her old irascible self, slightly annoyed and somewhat concerned that I’d be OK without her.

I’ve never met her. I almost got to at the Doris Lessing conference in Leeds in 2007, but she didn’t come. She said she didn’t have the energy. I think she just didn’t like academics. I cut out early and drove down to Glastonbury. I don’t know what she would have thought about that. Nor do I care. She’s a mentor, a wonderful writer, not some guru.

Goodbye, Doris. Thanks for dropping by and giving us so much.