I'm so excited to be a stop on the blog tour for my friend (and amazing talent) SC Langgle! Her debut novel, ALICE IN EVERVILLE, is such a fun read that I know you're all gonna enjoy.
SC was kind enough to guest post on my blog today, telling you all about the mythical inspiration and the role of art in her novel. Enjoy, and be sure to check out the giveaway at the end.
Take it away, SC!
The Myth of the
Artist
Alice in Everville is,
in many ways, a very modern book. It
takes place almost entirely at a shopping mall, after all! However, the book’s theme of art as a way to
cope with and understand life, and of destruction being a necessary part of
creativity, was inspired by some very old myths, folktales, and fairy
tales. So for this guest post, I thought
it might be interesting to look a bit more closely at some of the tales and
archetypes that helped me to create the writers, musicians, visual artists, and
also the characters who appreciate/interpret art throughout Alice in Everville. First up is…
Stories from the
Thousand and One Nights
The collection of poems featured in Alice in Everville, which I titled 24,024 Hours, was inspired by the 1001 Nights, a collection of folktales written in Arabic and drawn
from centuries of Asian and North African folklore. What attracted me most was the frame story of
Scheherazade, who has the misfortune of being married to a king who marries and
executes a new bride every night. On her
wedding night, Scheherazade tells the king a story but refuses to finish it
till the next evening, thus forcing the king to postpone her execution. The next night, she begins a new story, and
the process continues for 1001 nights…and by that time the king has decided not
to execute her.
What I love so much about this story is that Scheherazade is
literally telling stories—creating art—in order to save her life. This is an amazing metaphor for the way some
artists feel driven to create, as though their art is a lifeline that allows
them to make sense of and deal with the world.
Next up is…
Arachne
In Greek myth, Arachne is a mortal weaver who boasts that
her skill in weaving is greater than the goddess Athena’s. As anyone familiar with Greek myth knows,
going up against a god is never a good idea, and while there are several different
versions of the story, in all of them Arachne ends up transformed into a
spider. A spider, of course, is a weaver
of webs.
Arachne’s myth is a darker one than Scheherazade’s, since
for Arachne, her art—and especially her pride in her art—leads to
destruction. However, destruction is
also transformation and a rebirth in a new form.
And for my final inspiration, an excellent example of how
art is both creation and destruction…
Penelope from The
Odyssey
In Homer’s epic poem The
Odyssey, Penelope is Odysseus’s wife left waiting for her husband while he
fights in the Trojan War and then undertakes a twenty-year journey to return
home. Penelope has many suitors during
Odysseus’s absence, but she remains faithful to her husband by insisting she
finish weaving a burial shroud for her father-in-law, Laertes, before she
remarries. Every night Penelope unravels
the weaving she did the day before, so she never makes any progress on the
shroud. Eventually Odysseus returns home
and they’re reunited.
Constantly weaving and unweaving, Penelope is symbolically
creating art, taking it apart, and creating again…and that entire act allows
her to survive a long and painful ordeal.
So these are some of the stories that inspired me in Alice in Everville , and really in all
my writing. How do they show up in Alice?
Well, you’ll just have to read it and find out!
A bit about the book:
product description from goodreads.com
A poem can seem like a labyrinth, a maze of words you can lose yourself in. The key is to find a thread to hold on to, to guide you in your reading, to lead you into and out of a labyrinth of words…
Alice Little thinks she’s read every word the world-famous poet Sylvie Plate published before her untimely death…until she discovers a coded message hidden in Sylvie’s final collection of poems--a message that may explain the poet’s mysterious demise.
All she has to do is decipher the code and she knows she can convince her beloved English teacher, Miss A, that Sylvie’s message is real. Unfortunately, she only has one manic day at Everville Mall to do it. And between keeping track of her fountain-splashing, havoc-wreaking sister, finding a new copy of Sylvie’s poems, and…oh yeah…dealing with the blue-eyed, guitar-playing, majorly swoon-worthy Jaden Briar, who keeps popping up everywhere she goes, Alice wonders if she will ever finish deciphering in time.
Buy ALICE IN EVERVILLE
And a bit about the author:
S.C. Langgle is a lifelong lover of words and stories who has never outgrown her preference for children’s and young adult literature. A graduate of the Master of Professional Writing program at the University of Southern California, S.C. is originally from Baltimore, Maryland. She currently lives in Hollywood, California, only a block from Marilyn Monroe’s handprints at Grauman’s Chinese Theater, though she spends more time at home with her computer than mingling with celebrities. Luckily, she has her two adorable dogs—a Chihuahua, Chin-Mae, and a maltipoo, Sasha—to keep her company, and she’d choose them over a gaggle of Hollywood stars any day.
Find out more about SC via:
Blog Tour Stops
Giveaway!
S.C. Langgle will be
offering a $20 dollar gift card and 2 Alice in Everville ARC’s as a
Rafflecopter Giveaway. Bonus entries are available for following the participating
blogs.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
