Episode 8: The one where we talk about Christmas and story

Fable & The Verbivore

English - December 24, 2019 06:55 - 34 minutes - 31.6 MB - ★★★★★ - 8 ratings
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Previous Episode: Episode 7: The one where we continue the page turner conversation

Next Episode: Episode 9: The one where we talk about goals, habits, and the New Year

Notes:

The Verbivore mentions that A Christmas Carol helped construct how she saw the world and humanity while growing up. Here is the Charles Dickens quote she was specifically referencing:

“I have always thought of Christmas time, when it has come round, as a good time; a kind, forgiving, charitable time; the only time I know of, in the long calendar of the year, when men and women seem by one consent to open their shut-up hearts freely, and to think of people below them as if they really were fellow passengers to the grave, and not another race of creatures bound on other journeys.”

Fable mentions the poem “The House By the Side of the Road”, and originally attributed it to Longfellow. The author is Sam Walter Foss, and the collection of poems is titled Dreams in Homespun. Here is the poem’s last stanza:

Let me live in my
house by the side of the road
Where the race of men go by-
They are good, they are bad, they are weak, they are strong,
Wise, foolish- so am I.
Then why should I sit in the scorner’s seat
Or hurl the cynic’s ban?-
Let me live in my house by the side of the road
And be a friend to man.

The Verbivore mentioned the concept of “the catcher in the rye” (from the book of the same name written by J. D. Salinger). Here is the quote she is referencing:

“Anyway, I keep picturing all these little kids playing some game in this big field of rye and all. Thousands of little kids, and nobody's around - nobody big, I mean - except me. And I'm standing on the edge of some crazy cliff. What I have to do, I have to catch everybody if they start to go over the cliff - I mean if they're running and they don't look where they're going I have to come out from somewhere and catch them. That's all I do all day. I'd just be the catcher in the rye and all. I know it's crazy, but that's the only thing I'd really like to be.”

The one off Mr. Magoo’s Christmas Carol song that the Verbivore mentions is actually called “Winter Was Warm”.

The idea the Verbivore mentions of writing random story thoughts, characters, and scenes on a notecard comes from Anne Lamott's Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life. She describes keeping one in her pocket at all times, just in case.

Books mentioned:

A Christmas Carol by Charles Dickens

David Copperfield by Charles Dickens

Great Expectations by Charles Dickens

The Night Before Christmas by Clement Moore

Olaf’s Night Before Christmas by Disney Book Group

The Gift of the Magi by O. Henry

How the Grinch Stole Christmas by Dr. Seuss

Horton Hears a Who! by Dr. Seuss

Movies mentioned:

A Christmas Carol starring G. C. Scott

Scrooge starring Albert Finney