Hi there. Bet you thought I was gone for good. Ta-da! I’m not. MM has been meaning to pop up again, spending a lot of time meaning to, and letting all kinds of perfect entry points pass. New Year’s. President’s Day. And, for Christ’s sake, Easter! What better moment to rise again, after certain death? That one went by too. There’s plenty of excuses: since my last post, I spent a month in (relative) isolation at a Vermont writing retreat, wherein I SOLD MY BOOK and promptly embarked on several months of final editing. Then I got a day job. (Writers: note the order of events…) While keeping the night job, and whatever other job I could find. But excuses are not the point. Finally I arrived at the perfect opportunity, an “evergreen” myth that always needs graphing: the perfect entrance.
The myth of the perfect entrance lurks, just offstage, pacing back and forth, awaiting the cue that may never come. Sort of the reverse of Waiting for Godot. I think I might at any point turn into Mama Rose belting ‘curtain up! light the lights!’ and strutting the stage. Thank God it hasn’t happened yet. This myth is related to the myth of the neat plotline, the easy ending, denouement and deus ex machina. Shelve this myth next to The Myth of Eternal Return on your bookshelf. It may in fact be the same myth–I don’t know, I’m out of mythography practice! So stay tuned…and thank you, dear readers, [curtsey] for your patience.
Posted on April 14, 2010 by Brook – 
4 Comments
Good to see that you have not entirely vanished, MM. I’ve missed you. While you were gone, I found this interesting quote in Tony Horwitz’s history of early America, A Voyage Long and Strange. A reverend says, on page 387, that “Myth is more important than history. History is arbitrary, a collection of facts. Myth we choose, we create, we perpetuate.”
Thanks Richard! I am a big fan of Tony Hurwitz and I remember this quote–from Peter Gomes, longtime Harvard chaplain and a fascinating individual himself. “Myths are more important than history.” This stuck with me particularly because it came near the end of Hurwitz’s long exploration of the Americas between 1492-1620, a myth-ridden era if ever there was one. Hurwitz goes around trying to prove the relative truth or untruth of, say, the story of Plymouth Rock. And it takes him the whole book to realize that perhaps the facts are only a starting point…
And for those of an alternate persuasion… science is the search for truth. The last thing we want to do (expect to do?) is find it.
[…] a long while. Yes, I know it’s been a long while. I apologize. Please see the entry for “Myth of the Perfect Entrance” to understand why I am not all bowing and scraping. Anyway: the story. It’s gleefully […]