Terry Richard Bazes

If I had to describe “Lizard World” in one word, what would it be? “Depraved” comes to mind, possibly “revolting”, but also, undoubtedly “brilliant”. Another word could be “gruesome”, if “hilarious”. “Convoluted” at times, albeit “engrossing”. In truth, it is quite unlike any novel you’ll be reading in some time.

The plot is complex but I’ll try to let you have an idea of it, hopefully without giving away too much. In 1687, a lecherous and rakish English earl, having “had his way” with his cousin Belinda and blinded her brother in an ensuing duel, gets carted off to America for his sins. There, amongst a tribe of “salvidges”, and during an attempt to seduce the chief’s daughter, he comes across an elixir of eternal life. Which works... sort of. In fact, the elixir has a nasty side-effect, as the earl soon discovers when he starts to turn into a reptilian humanoid. Back in England, he takes into his employ a promising young surgeon who excels in experimental interventions. This surgeon – and a regular supply of body parts – are the earl’s only hope of retaining a vague human semblance. Zoom forward to 2007 Florida, where the dentist Smedlow is kidnapped by a bunch of weirdos with nefarious plans, the descendants (we eventually learn) of the Earl’s personal surgeon. Smedlow’s destiny becomes increasingly entwined with that of the earl, and, appropriately, the book moves backwards and forwards with ease between the 17th and 21st Century, between Florida swamps (past and present) and Restoration London. What is most impressive is the way in which Bazes switches styles and argot; the scenes set in the 17th century, in particular, are rendered in a witty pastiche of Defoe and Fielding whilst the contemporary scenes are conveyed through the eyes of multiple protagonists, each represented by a different mode of expression (most notably, the heavy slang of Smedlow’s kidnapper Lemuel Lee).

Lizard World is a daring post-modern literary mash-up: part Gothic/body horror, part historical novel, part crime-story, part comedy. If it were a film it would combine the bloody violence of a John Carpenter movie with the Baroque imagination of Terry Gilliam, the deadpan humour of the Coens with the politically incorrect, gross comedy of the Farrellys. With some Blackadder thrown into the mix. It is not for the faint-hearted, but if you stick the first 70 pages or so, you will be hooked.

What is ultimately most surprising is that underneath the craziness of it all, the book raises a metaphysical query which the reader can easily lose sight of – what is it that makes us who we are? Is it our body, our mind, our soul? Or perhaps our memories and our personal histories? At this point, we might need to call in Terrence Malick as well.
… (plus d'informations)

If I had to describe “Lizard World” in one word, what would it be? “Depraved” comes to mind, possibly “revolting”, but also, undoubtedly “brilliant”. Another word could be “gruesome”, if “hilarious”. “Convoluted” at times, albeit “engrossing”. In truth, it is quite unlike any novel you’ll be reading in some time.

The plot is complex but I’ll try to let you have an idea of it, hopefully without giving away too much. In 1687, a lecherous and rakish English earl, having “had his way” with his cousin Belinda and blinded her brother in an ensuing duel, gets carted off to America for his sins. There, amongst a tribe of “salvidges”, and during an attempt to seduce the chief’s daughter, he comes across an elixir of eternal life. Which works... sort of. In fact, the elixir has a nasty side-effect, as the earl soon discovers when he starts to turn into a reptilian humanoid. Back in England, he takes into his employ a promising young surgeon who excels in experimental interventions. This surgeon – and a regular supply of body parts – are the earl’s only hope of retaining a vague human semblance. Zoom forward to 2007 Florida, where the dentist Smedlow is kidnapped by a bunch of weirdos with nefarious plans, the descendants (we eventually learn) of the Earl’s personal surgeon. Smedlow’s destiny becomes increasingly entwined with that of the earl, and, appropriately, the book moves backwards and forwards with ease between the 17th and 21st Century, between Florida swamps (past and present) and Restoration London. What is most impressive is the way in which Bazes switches styles and argot; the scenes set in the 17th century, in particular, are rendered in a witty pastiche of Defoe and Fielding whilst the contemporary scenes are conveyed through the eyes of multiple protagonists, each represented by a different mode of expression (most notably, the heavy slang of Smedlow’s kidnapper Lemuel Lee).

Lizard World is a daring post-modern literary mash-up: part Gothic/body horror, part historical novel, part crime-story, part comedy. If it were a film it would combine the bloody violence of a John Carpenter movie with the Baroque imagination of Terry Gilliam, the deadpan humour of the Coens with the politically incorrect, gross comedy of the Farrellys. With some Blackadder thrown into the mix. It is not for the faint-hearted, but if you stick the first 70 pages or so, you will be hooked.

What is ultimately most surprising is that underneath the craziness of it all, the book raises a metaphysical query which the reader can easily lose sight of – what is it that makes us who we are? Is it our body, our mind, our soul? Or perhaps our memories and our personal histories? At this point, we might need to call in Terrence Malick as well.
… (plus d'informations)

The title of this small, valuable book immediately suggests its intended audience - aspiring fiction writers - although intense fiction readers would also find it worth their time. It is pitched closer to literary criticism than a "how to" manual, so it is not like one of those screenwriting guides that tells you that you must concoct a sub-crisis on page 46 of your script. (And thank heaven for that, because those screenwriting books are a scourge against creativity in Hollywood. If you ever wonder why all the big-budget movies you see seem vaguely the same no matter what their genre, it's because they are.)

Terry Richard Bazes, a novelist himself, and the holder of a PhD in English Literature, is more sensitive than that, and less prescriptive. He is putting forward neither a General Theory of Fiction (again, thank heaven) nor a writing formula. Rather, he is looking at three acknowledged classics of their genres - Ian Fleming's Dr. No, Jane Austen's Pride and Prejudice, and Evelyn Waugh's A Handful of Dust - and extrapolating certain similarities of approach in their plotting, which center on the notion of plotting backward from climaxes so that each step that leads up to them is effective, and false ends that do not lead up to them are eliminated.

Now, this analysis would not work for every good novel, or at least not in so bald a way. Since this is a book about plotting, it privileges plot as the key element in fiction-writing: "A great plot is a page-turning machine." That is true as far as it goes, but readers whose interests in fiction go beyond plot may feel that Bazes is giving short shrift to characterization, atmosphere, prose, and so on. I felt this specifically when Bazes discussed "minor characters," whom he tends to see as purely functional. I don' think that the minor characters in Austen, for one, read quite so mechanistically as that.

Still, one can't complain that a short book is focussed on what its title says it will be focussed on, especially when there is such abundant good sense and sharp close-reading technique along the way. A lot of the basic ideas here go back to Aristotle's Poetics, although Bazes relies more heavily on Gustav Freytag's famous pyramid of plot structure. I have always had an issue with how Freytag's ideas are diagrammed, which I wish that Bazes had dealt with. A typical Freytag pyramid is shaped like a perfect triangle with a rising action leading to a climax, and a falling action that drops away it. This gives the impression that the climax takes place at the mid-point of the narrative, and the rising and falling actions are given equal space. But that is very seldom the case. More typically, the rising action is gradual and takes up 75% of the story or more; the falling action is precipitous and swift and takes up 25% of the story or less. The tendency in movies especially - and now popular novels follow movies' lead - is to compress post-climactic action ruthlessly.

A particular strength of Bazes' essay is the deliberate disparity among the three texts he analyzes. You can't get much more different than Dr. No and Pride and Prejudice! Bazes wants that strong contrast between an action-oriented text with virtually no internal characterization and a psychologically-oriented text with deep characterization, in order to demonstrate that notwithstanding their immense differences, the two novels use plenty of the same plotting techniques. The contrast is indeed an effective one, although it must be said that although it is easy to follow Bazes' analysis of Dr. No whether you have read the book or not, it is much less easy to follow the discussion of Pride and Prejudice if you have not gotten that book under your belt (and recently at that).

Tossing in A Handful of Dust, a comic novel with a cruel edge and a nasty resolution, is a cheeky move and also works to the book's benefit. As with Dr. No, the discussion of this book is crystalline whether you have read it or not (and if you haven't, you'll want to afterwards).

Plot Fiction like the Masters deserves a place in the budding novelist's arsenal.… (plus d'informations)

Book Title: "Lizard World"
Author: Terry Richard Bazes
Published By: Livingston Press
Age Recommended: 18 +
Reviewed By: Kitty Bullard
Raven Rating: 5

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Review: A mixture of English and American humor with an equal amount of the macabre thrown in for good measure; a few scaly beasts, both reptilian and human in nature; depraved swamp people clinging to their long gone heritage; and an old journal with a dark secret hidden among its brittle pages, makes for one heck of an amazing tale. I was sent a copy of this wonderful novel after having requested it from Shelf Awareness and I can honestly say that I am beyond happy I took the advantage. Terry Richard Bazes is an amazing storyteller with the grand ability to pull you in from the very first page.

“Lizard World” is a raucous tale of human/animal splicing that dates back to a time when surgery was still an extremely risky business, though when an explorer takes it upon himself to believe foolish Old World lore and partakes of an elixir rumored to keep one young and immortal there is little else to be done to save him from the horror of his predicament. A fantastic mix of macabre humor at its best! Get a copy! You will greatly enjoy this book!

Read more: http://www.greatmindsthinkaloud.proboards.com/index.cgi?action=display&board...… (plus d'informations)