K. Marvin Bruce

Movies are stories.  Of course, many movies are based on the work of writers in the form of novels or, sometimes, short stories.  Borrowing the plot, a director and screenwriter take over and retell the story visually.  Often the original written form is better. Serial television shows are the same.  Since writers of television programs can’t know season-by-season whether their program will be renewed, it has to be, almost by definition, open-ended.  When a new season begins a character may have shifted or become someone else, and we, the viewers must play along. My current television story is Sleepy Hollow .  It is very different, of course, than the tale written by Washington Irving.  By the end of season one, even, it was clear that the writers had changed their minds as to who some of the characters were.  Henry Parrish was not originally the horseman of war. I have no way of knowing that, but as a writer I can sense it.  As ...

Two of America’s earliest authors were Washington Irving and Edgar Allan Poe.  They established the first stages of what would become the American prose tradition, and both can be classified, in some ways, as originators of the Neo-Gothic. Irving was a bit older than Poe.  Although his personal life had its share of ups and downs, he made his literary fame with his satirical retelling of the history of New York.  He became an overnight sensation.  Some thought him the funniest writer ever. Running out of money while living in England, he began publishing his series of “Sketches” or short stories.  Among them his most famous works, “Rip Van Winkle” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”  The latter, according to some, established the spooky autumnal scene as the perfect venue for the scary story. Irving met John Allan while in London.  Edgar was traveling with his step-father there, but may have been too young at the time to know that he’d met ...