Mark Phillips' Pages: Workbook: 9/4/03: This story has possibilities, but it reads now like a rough draft with ideas notated in the margins.

Jacob Lawrence, "Harriet and the Promised Land No. 4. A Mother Tells the Story of Moses," (1967) — Jacob Lawrence, *Harriet and the Promised Land No. 4. A Mother Tells the Story of Moses* (1967)

September 4, 2003:

This story has possibilities, but it reads now like a rough draft with ideas notated in the margins. The starkly alternating style seems somehow gimmicky and unfinished.

The theme (messianic retribution against the follies of mankind), however, is clear. It is not a new theme (there are none), but it is important. For this reason, I would like to see the author re-work the story, with the thematic devices (UFOs) worked into the story instead of being held apart.

The anecdote of the woman abductee has a strange and mystical quality to it. The author might keep this in mind as he re-writes the story. And it is important for stories dealing with prophecy and doom that no irrelevant devices be included that might diminish the resonance. Every detail - band musicians, highways, geographical details, gas station attendants, everything - must further the theme. If it doesn't, then don't include it.

This story will require some work and thought to write successfully, but I am confident that the mind that contrived to root human retribution (and it's corollary, the possibility of salvation) in its own mystical past will be equal to the task.

To be honest, I have no interest in "story". This is maybe some kind of birth defect, I dunno. The literary ideology of "story" strikes me as backward-looking and peculiar.

Rather than a "story", the piece is a simple formal experiment in which two independent narratives are brought into juxtaposition in a way which, hopefully, introduces new resonances between them. Here they're simply interleaved. The goal is to try to imply a richer content than is actually present in either of the two narratives in isolation. Whether it works, I dunno.

It certainly fails in at least one respect, because its intended theme is most certainly not messianic retribution. Rather, the way people retreat into fantasy in the face of overwhelming defeat. I'm thinking of Terry Gilliam's Brazil as I write this.

Failure's ok. The important thing is to try the experiment and see what happens.