Transformations

SHORT STORY MONDAY

"Storytelling reveals meaning without committing the error of defining it."
~Hannah Arendt

Transformations

It began as a novella featuring four characters: Winslow, the caretaker, and his wife Margo, who dreamed of faraway lands; Allison, the devious shrew, and Benjamin, the idiot son. The novel achieved modest fame, then disappeared from the bookstores until Leonard Pogoleski, a Hollywood producer, found it on a shelf at Sheik’s Used Books Store near the corner of Hollywood and Vine.

The movie was not exactly the book. But it was based on the same characters. It naturally highlighted the dreamer Margo, and introduced a new character, her lover Eric Freeman, a musician and romantic.

A second book, based on the film, expanded on the motivations of these characters and introduced several new subplots. This book received modest acclaim while the original saw a bump in sales that lasted more than a year.

Phil Dominick, inspired by the film and turned off by the literary adaptation, created an intriguing follow up story, re-creating the mesmerizing dream sequence which had been absent in the film, and neglected in the post film version of the book. This book received wildly enthusiastic reviews, but a tepid response from the public.

Leon Schwartz, inspired by this latter book, re-worked the relationship between Allison and her idiot son, turning the son into a Christ figure of universal significance, whose martyrdom relieved the world’s suffering. His screenplay, purchased by MGM, was translated into the movie Wonder Wasteland, which bombed in the box office, but was salvaged to become a cult classic in the video market.

A book, loosely based on the screenplay, examined the nature of superficiality and resurrected the theme of meaninglessness from the original novella. This was followed by a sequel in which Gordon Hall is transformed into a villain, etc.

In this manner, over a period of decades all the tales of all time are told, and light produces greater and lesser lights, a constellation of meanings and a dream of possibilities. One seed, many trees.... and the reformation of nations.

Every end is but a new beginning.