Iain Mavro Coggins

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Iain Mavro Coggins.

Why I Picked the Wine God Over the Centaur

“Caldwell turned and as he turned his ankle received an arrow. The class burst into laughter.”

– John Updike, The Centaur

Dionysus, or Bacchus

This opening line of Updike’s novel about a burnt-out school teacher in many ways typifies the essential roots of American public education. Like me, Updike uses Greek mythology as a metaphorical background to a contemporary novel. Aside from this structural correlation to my own work, however, there is little else in common between The Centaur and Lost Apple. Updike shows the problem of American education: people forced to live by the limitations set by others. In my novel I go about combating this not just American, but human condition.

Chiron the centaur is the archetype of the teacher in Western Civilization. He is noble and god-like (a half-god actually), and yet part beast and thus an outsider. Nevertheless he is indispensable to the fostering of heroes and every king in Greece sends him his kid to his school cave on Mount Pelion: Achilles, Peleus, Asclepius, Jason, etc. Ultimately, Chiron is accidently wounded by a mis-shot arrow of Heracles. It is a cursed wound, one that will not heal, and, being immortal, Chiron is doomed to suffer from it for eternity. Out of mercy, Zeus grants Chiron his request for death and places him among the stars as the constellation Sagittarius. And there he remains, eternal, inaccessible and yet always sought after.

So what is the connection? What do Americans want from education? We want all the prestige that comes with smarts. We want to say we studied in the centaur’s cave. But we want it easy. We don’t actually want to do the work of personal transformation that education entails. For us, education is a product to be bought and sold and that social mindset is an unhealing wound in the hooves of our teachers. And children, moreover, keenly perceive that their lives are not valued simply for what they are. They see that they too are a commodity being readied for the future of the adults’ world. Fundamentally, this is why they disrupt classrooms.

Chiron instructing the young Achilles

So who shot the arrow that caused the wound? It certainly wasn’t the kids. It would be easy to blame the dim-witted politicians and corporate interests who are trying to privatize public schools, but really we must blame ourselves. It was we who strung the bow the moment we decided that education is a means to an end and not the end of all means.

No, I cannot place Chiron among the stars of my readers. I cannot insist that the solution to America’s education problems is to renew our seeking after the same paradigm: education as the ideal to be reached by those who can reach it. I believe in education for all, right now, as we are in our present lives. To make this fundamental shift requires a sharp break with what has always been. It requires Dionysus. Tim Schimmel, the eccentric billionaire and founder of Lost Apple Education Park says, “Dionysus has always been one of my favorite gods….That’s really what it comes down to. It’s funny, you might have expected I would pick Chiron, the wise centaur, teacher of heroes, but instead I chose Dionysus, the twice-born god. Somehow he fits better into the scheme of things around here.”

Dionysus is a newcomer god in Greek myth and history, an outsider who comes in and stirs everyone up for better or worse. When this god and his train of revelers come dancing and singing into town, one had better be ready and willing to join in. The consequences for refusing the god are dire as most poignantly portrayed in The Bacchae of Euripides. Another character from Lost Apple, Blaine Starck, explains the Dionysus/Bacchus connection in the latter chapters of the novel, saying in part, “Bacchus, the god of wine and wine-related orgies, he’s celebrated for bringing viniculture to man, but he in fact introduced all manner of cultivatable fruits, including the apple—quite interesting from the perspective of a teacher, I should think.” I mention the apple here bring awareness to the untapped potential within teachers to not only revolutionize their own lives, but the lives of their students; the former happening simultaneously with the latter.

Silenus, the teacher of Dionysus

I then take a pot shot at teachers for their small-minded self-limiting tendencies; their institutionalized mentalities. Blaine continues, “Silenus, the fat old drunken satyr who was his teacher. He’s the one you always see on the back of a donkey, too sloshed to walk. There’s a kind of poetic justice in depicting a teacher as a drunk on the back of an ass.” As harsh as this may sound, my intention is to draw attention to what we could be and to what we could show our students simply by a change of heart and expansion of vision. This, of course, is all done satirically in the book, but my message is very much present. Over a meal of roast rabbit in a remote hollow, Blaine explains the motives behind Tim Schimmel’s creation of the education park: “Tim sees himself in the role of a Bacchus, a bringer of change, but he’s smart enough to know it can’t be done by himself, or even through himself. Rather, he understands that real change can only come from within individuals’ hearts and minds.”

Paravion Press: Hand-making Books from a Cave in Greece

You know how I love caves, and books, and Greek mythology…. I simply had to share this!

A short article about them Paravion Press: Hand-making Books from a Cave in Greece.

Their website.

 

My Eclectic Tastes

Sure, I write about education and philosophy, but when I’m not I’m usually reading sci-fi and fantasy. Having recently discovered Wattpad.com I am now running into all sorts of interesting things including this amazing book trailer for a novel called Glide by Bill Gourgey. I have never seen a trailer like this. It is movie quality. I also just started the book and it is so far excellent. Give it a look. This guy deserves publicity!

From Boxley to Pomme Perdu: Creating A Fictional Valley

“There is a great deal of history in these old hills.” said Schimmel. “The name was given or at least identified in the 1840’s by a settler who farmed in the valley.”

“Obviously a Frenchman,” said Frank.

“A German, actually—the French part is a mystery that I’m still trying to figure out.”

I am proud to present the improved version of the Lost Apple Education Park map! I present it here along with a topo map of the actual Boxley Valley that was the inspiration for the Pomme Perdu Valley. From the start of this book project I have been studying, sketching and re-designing my map, and at this point, I am happy (although I have still not settled on a compass rose).  This map contains a number of secrets that will be revealed incrementally in the sequels to Lost Apple, and, perhaps, some information of which the characters are unaware.

In case you’re wondering, the Boxley Valley and Buffalo River region are nowhere near the town of Ravenden Springs where the School Cave is located.  The former is located in Newton County and the latter in Randolph County.  My Lost Apple world, set in the imaginary Mockernut County, is a composite of multiple experiences and trips I have taken in the region.  Incidentally, I am not the first person to create a fictional Southern county.  The most famous one I can think of is Faulkner’s Yoknapatawpha County, so I am following in a fine literary tradition (even if I am a Yankee!).

Please enjoy, and for the time being, compare the new map to the old one in the Gallery.

Delays, but good delays!

At the beginning of the week I posted that I would be writing about the centaur and Dionysus motifs in Lost Apple.  Then my editor informed me that he was finished with the ms (a month earlier than expected).  And then the biggest snowstorm in five years pummeled Denver. Translation: a shift in priorities and time to write! So, I will be posting more about Lost Apple and other subjects soon enough, but I must focus on getting the final tweaks taken care of, and starting the e-book formatting process (yikes!).  So, please bear with me!

Chapters back up, and now Chapter 5!

I spent some time getting the improved chapters back up, including chapter 5 for the first time. I may be soon posting other chapters as well, here and at my Red Room and Goodreads pages. In addition to these uploads, I have also been improving and expanding links between my various sites and establishing a new Facebook fan page (there is no longer an Iain Mavro Coggins FB page).  You will also notice an improved profile picture thanks to the magic of Gimp Photo Editor; click it to go to my Facebook.  Please enjoy. Please leave comments. And please tell you’re friends!