Adventures in GALing

[AntoniaB]

Ha ha see, great minds think alike :-)

I'm writing a book analyzing the fiction of P. Pullman, a contemporary British writer. If you saw the movie The Golden Compass, that was the first book of a trilogy he wrote although the ending was changed for the film in a not-so-good way, so it displeased those who read the book and generally was seen as ok by those who didn't. He is really only known for that trilogy and his other work is all but ignored by literary critics.

My book aims to change that as I'm interpreting all that stuff, which is basically children's and adolescent books, but I argue that there is much for adults to find in the books that younger, less well-read or less experienced readers will not see. Mainly my theme is innocence and experience, and that the only way for his characters to grow in wisdom and experience is that they have to go on quests or trials or worse, face trauma and betrayal, and depending how they negotiate those things, they can rise or fall. His characters, for the most part, rise, but it's a very difficult journey, of course, but it's like I focus on the necessity of trauma and betrayal as the path to growth.

As you can probably gather, I would not have my theme did XH not betray me. I wanted to write about these books for 7 years and tried and failed many times to come up with something, and it took a trauma for me to see the path.

This is why I am on one level grateful my XH ended our marriage. Crazy, isn't it? If he didn't do what he did, I can guarantee you I'd never have come up with this book idea or had the drive to research and write it. It has been a HUGE therapeutic outlet that is also really solidifying my career and expertise as a critic on this writer.

I think when you GAL (and by you I mean YOU Beingme or any of us) that you have to look for the ripple effects of your actions...if you were hesistant to go back to school or something or never thought of it when married, and then because of what happens in your life you find yourself doing that as part of your GALing, or taking a job you never thought you'd take, or moving somewhere different, it's like this who other branch of the tree you're in gets this shaft of sunlight on it and there are suddenly numerous new things open to you that that sunlight might never have touched on if you were still in your other life. It's a pretty remarkable thing to see how one thing can "change everything", and I guess sometimes when something really good happens now, it comforts me if I follow that trail back to the point of origin and see that it took the breakup to send things in the new direction...