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Aug. 18th, 2011 01:15 pmI've written four ficlets from your prompts:
David
Rachel
Jonah
Eve
My thoughts on the process are mixed. I like some of these ficlets better than others. The David one sort of doesn't work at all.
What "Samson" accomplishes in writing Samson out of the Bible is to reject Biblical heroism for the sake of love. So the question I had to ask for each of these characters is what would I want them to reject and in favor of what. What part of their Biblical lot is unfair and in need of revision?
Eve was in one sense tricky because there are so many ways to do it, so many things that need fixing, but I hit upon an obvious, big one. Though as Lee points out, I still couldn't escape the androcentrism/misogyny of the Hebrew language.
Rachel was obvious. Rachel/Leah conflict is at the root of so much evil in Genesis. I can imagine her choosing to sit the whole thing out, for love of her sister.
Jonah, too, was obvious. His story has a happy ending that he is constantly pulling against. I wanted to show him what he missed out on, without exactly blaming him for it.
But my David story is broken. David was willing to give his life for the Kingdom of God, so I... let him? That doesn't make any sense. The problem was that David is so integral to everything in Tanakh that just writing my initial impulse, an angstfic from his years hiding from Saul where he just gives up and decides to spend his life in Egypt, doesn't go far enough. Even Samson's story isn't as hard to skip out on as David's, and the difficulty of imagining the Judges period without Samson is part of what makes "Samson" so startling. And anyway, what principle would David be standing for if he gave up?
I think the problem is that while Samson's story is about the tension between love and duty, and Spektor brings Samson down on the opposite side from what the Bible does, David's story is about the tension between desire to fulfill duty and capability of fulfilling duty. The only way to subvert that and still be true to his character is to show him failing. And that's awful.
David
Rachel
Jonah
Eve
My thoughts on the process are mixed. I like some of these ficlets better than others. The David one sort of doesn't work at all.
What "Samson" accomplishes in writing Samson out of the Bible is to reject Biblical heroism for the sake of love. So the question I had to ask for each of these characters is what would I want them to reject and in favor of what. What part of their Biblical lot is unfair and in need of revision?
Eve was in one sense tricky because there are so many ways to do it, so many things that need fixing, but I hit upon an obvious, big one. Though as Lee points out, I still couldn't escape the androcentrism/misogyny of the Hebrew language.
Rachel was obvious. Rachel/Leah conflict is at the root of so much evil in Genesis. I can imagine her choosing to sit the whole thing out, for love of her sister.
Jonah, too, was obvious. His story has a happy ending that he is constantly pulling against. I wanted to show him what he missed out on, without exactly blaming him for it.
But my David story is broken. David was willing to give his life for the Kingdom of God, so I... let him? That doesn't make any sense. The problem was that David is so integral to everything in Tanakh that just writing my initial impulse, an angstfic from his years hiding from Saul where he just gives up and decides to spend his life in Egypt, doesn't go far enough. Even Samson's story isn't as hard to skip out on as David's, and the difficulty of imagining the Judges period without Samson is part of what makes "Samson" so startling. And anyway, what principle would David be standing for if he gave up?
I think the problem is that while Samson's story is about the tension between love and duty, and Spektor brings Samson down on the opposite side from what the Bible does, David's story is about the tension between desire to fulfill duty and capability of fulfilling duty. The only way to subvert that and still be true to his character is to show him failing. And that's awful.