Keep it simple, fool

Today, I went looking for inspiration and found a couple of interesting writing essays from this article. One was Fairy Tale is Form, Form is Fairy Tale by Kate Bernheimer, and the other was How to Write with Style by Kurt Vonnegut. One of the common themes I got from both is, simply, simplicity.

Kate Bernheimer.
Snipped from Flavorwire

Bernheimer talks all about fairy tales, which I found perfectly synchronistic, because I just wrote a couple of posts recently about a novel that openly references its fairy tale inspiration. She says that "...one of the most classical forms in the world is that of fairy tales..." and that their techniques (flatness, abstraction, intuitive logic, and normalized magic) are often unfairly maligned for their simplicity and that we can learn a lot from studying them. Bernheimer suggests that dismissing these techniques belies their inherent power, which can be found in the bones of many literary forms:

"...fairy tales hold a key to the door fiercely locked between so-called realism and nonrealism, convention and experimentalism, psychology and abstraction. A key for those who see these as binaries, that is. Seen through the lens of fairy tales, many works of literature can be understood as literary forms sharing techniques."

Vonnegut talks about style and how less is not necessarily more. He reminds the reader that:

"...[T]wo great masters of language, William Shakespeare and James Joyce, wrote

Kurt Vonnegut. Snapped from Flavorwire.

sentences which were almost childlike when their subjects were most profound. 'To be or not to be?' asks Shakespeare's Hamlet. The longest word is three letters long. Joyce, when he was frisky, could put together a sentence as intricate and as glittering as a necklace for Cleopatra, but my favorite sentence in his short story 'Eveline' is this one: 'She was tired.' At that point in the story, no other words could break the heart of a reader as those three words do."

Both articles were good reminders of the basics and what pulls readers into a story--it's not so much the word count as the emotions, the ideas, and the power of the form.

Original expressions: tone-of-voice edition

Based on Roxane Gay's mention in her essay collection, Bad Feminist, I decided to read Pamela Ribon's novel, You Take It From Here (I read the Oyster edition--Simon & Schuster, Inc.: New York, NY; 2012). There's a lot of frank, funny language in the book, and quite honestly, I could have pulled a million examples of fresh, interesting ways to bring ordinary expressions to life. When I went through the examples I highlighted, I found a few that I really liked in particular, and realized they all related to describing a character's tone of voice. Not only are these lines sharp and funny, but they add a deeper dimension to the dialog and the character and create some vivid impressions.

1. A great comparison to the impersonal tone of voice mails; plus, a sense of duality--the message conveys normalcy, but the delivery suggests anything but:

"Danny," she said, her voice oddly calm and stilted, fake chipper, like she was recording an outgoing message for her voice mail. "I would like you to handle this."
--Chapter 9 (25.7% on Oyster edition)

2. The jealousy is palpable in the word "sniffed"; plus, it's magical to read "mucus plug" and "fetal pig" in the same sentence:

"I see y'all went ahead and had Tuesday-night dinner with some new people," Vikki sniffed, the words...coming out of her mouth the way some people say "mucus plug" or "fetal pig."
--Chapter 15 (55.1% on Oyster edition)

3. A delicious character description that builds into an apt simile and a vivid impression that is both visual and aural:

Dr. Fowler's eyes bulged behind round, thin glasses with a yellow tint, and she started each of her sentences in almost a whisper, a mumble that built up steam as she tumbled toward the final punctuation. She sounded like a fleet of police cars on the chase.
--Chapter 18 (61.5% on Oyster edition)

Names: get a bigger bang for your buck

The movie "Maleficent" is out now, and besides admiring Angelina Jolie's razor-charp cheekbones, it had me thinking about how Maleficent is probably one of the better character names I've come across.

Creating character names seems to be kind of like how pharmaceutical companies come up with prescription drug names--you don't want anything too on the money, but with enough suggestion that people get your "message" without you having to lift a finger. The FDA won't let you get away with calling an Rx "Sleepy-time", but they're okay with "Lunesta," which is sort of a combination of the romance language root for "moon" ("lune" or "luna") and "rest" (without the "r", of course.)

Same with characters--it's never good to name a villain "Mistress Black Hat" but a name like "Maleficent" tells you all you really need to know, even before you start reading. Consider all the nice little suggestions in the name--it's contains a bit of all of these:

Jolie as Maleficent, from Eonline.

1. Mal or Malevolent -- "Mal" being french for "bad", and "malevolent" meaning evil or ill-willed in English.
2. Magnificent -- Awesome, extravagant, larger-than-life
3. Millicent -- A girl's name meaning "work" or "strength"
4. Mellifluous -- Of sound, meaning sweet or musical
5. Cent -- This might be a stretch, but "cent" reminds me of "century", which suggests something ancient

The resulting combination hints at a character who is powerful and strong, ancient and dangerous, and possibly even beautiful or delicate. Not bad for four syllables.

Do the Time Warp now: Raise the Red Lantern

I'd always heard about Raise the Red Lantern (a novella by Chinese writer Su Tong), but then my husband brought it home and said, "You have to read this." And I'm glad I did. It's one of those stories that leaves a strong impression long after you read it--partly because of the story, partly because of the imagery, and partly because of its use of time (and space). I'm gonna focus on time for now.

Maybe it was or maybe it wasn't...

It reading other stories of Su Tong's and researching his authorial style, I've learned that he's well known for his technique of introducing uncertainty to past events--primarily, he's used it to cast doubt on the Chinese government's narrative of the Cultural Revolution and the events preceding it. In other words, he resists the black-and-white nature of traditional storytelling. For example, take the opening lines of another of his stories, Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes:

"Perhaps my father was a mute fetus. His profound reticence left my family shrouded in a murky gray fog for fully half a century."

This makes for a shocker of a first sentence (a keeper for fantastic opening lines!), and sets up the murkiness of the narrative that follows--one that not only questions the past, but tells it in a non-linear fashion, moving fluidly in between earlier and later events, and even into the present.

Do the Time Warp

Rocky Horror Picture Show "Time Warp" scene;
snipped from RockyMusic.org

However, in my humble opinion, Su Tong uses his techniques to even greater effect in Raise the Red Lantern (RTRL). With stories like Nineteen Thirty-Four Escapes, his signature "time warps" feel more in-your-face, for lack of a better word. Additionally, they tend to blur the edges of events and narratives, whereas in RTRL, the time warps blend the characters themselves, which makes for an incredibly eerie telling that feels of a piece with the story.

RTRL opens when the orphaned Lotus arrives at the house of Master Chen to become his Fourth Mistress. She soon becomes embroiled in domestic politics with Chen's first three concubines, and also discovers a deserted well near her rooms, known as the Well of Death. The well's history is closely guarded and she's warned not to go near it, but Lotus gradually discovers that it's tied to the death of past Chen family concubines.

The ghosts of past, present, and future

One day, Lotus hears Third Mistress Coral singing near the well. It's a haunting Chinese opera aria, sung from the point of a young girl contemplating suicide. Lotus has already had several run-ins with the well, where she has experienced apparitions, so she decides to ask Coral about it:

"Lotus walked to the side of the abandoned well, bent over, and looked down into it; then suddenly she laughed and said, 'Ghosts, there really are ghosts in here! Do you know who died in this well?'

Coral remained seated at the stone table. She said, 'Who else could it be? One of them was you, and one of them was me.'" (p73, paras 3&4)

It's a subtle manipulation but it's really fine and so, so eerie. Simultaneously, it feels like Coral is speaking from the present (perhaps joking or experiencing a mental break), the past (impersonating a ghost or channeling a spirit), and the future (having a vision of their possible fates).

There are many similar episodes in the story where echoes of the past, present, and future collide, but this is my favorite. I love a good ghostly shiver, but it's even more alarming in light of Su Tong's characteristic theme of recurrence and the idea that individuals are powerless before the past.

Wisteria Tunnel at Japan's Kawachi Fuji Garden;
snipped from sun-surfer.com 

Now you see it, now you don't

In RTRL, this becomes an existential crisis, too, in which not only time, but identity--and maybe even reality--is interchangeable. Take this scene in which Lotus again approaches the well:

"Lotus picked a wisteria leaf off the ground, examined it carefully, and threw it into the well. She watched the leaf float like some sort of ornament on the dark blue surface of the stagnant water, obscuring part of her reflection; she actually could not see her eyes. Lotus walked all the way around the well, but could not find any angle from which to see her entire reflection; she thought it very strange." (p53, para 2)

Lotus has started to conflate herself with the image in the well, and now that image doesn't even have eyes--it's horrific.

Ceci, n'est pas une pipe

If you don't get the joke, click here! Warning: you
probably won't laugh. It's a dumb joke.

At times, Lotus' self-identification also moves beyond humanity or even logic, producing unsettling responses like the following, in which her comments on a flower arrangement point to a crisis of reality:

"Lotus took a few steps forward and said, 'Flowers are not flowers and people are not people; flowers are people and people are flowers; don't you understand such a simple principle?'" (p28, last para)

This is not a technique you can just whip up, because it has to flow seamlessly with and belong to the sense of the story, but it's interesting to read, and opens up possibilities for how to write--what opportunities could you create if you didn't take the timeline of your story for granted? In RTLR, it's magical.

Quotes from: Su, Tong. "Raise the Red Lantern." In: Raise the Red Lantern. Translated by: Duke, Michael S. HarperCollins Publishers Inc.: New York, NY; 2004.

To wit: epigrams

I was away, briefly, so I'm kind of rushed this week and missed my regular posting day--sorry about that. In the meantime, here's a quick salute to the art of epigram writing in stories, because I happen to be reading Jincy Willett's wonderful collection, Jenny and the Jaws of Life.

I attended a writing lecture with Canadian writer Douglas Glover at the Center for Fiction a couple years ago, and he talked about the importance of epigram to stories and how often you find them in good writing. I had never noticed this before, but now I find them everywhere. According to Glover, they function as a sort of shot in the arm to the theme of the story--they help raise questions, introduce paradoxes, and heighten irony, and besides that, they are delightful to read and bump up the quality of the writing.

Jenny and the Jaws of Life is full of fantastic examples, but here are a few of my favorites....

From "Melinda Falling":  "Mother was a good woman with execrable taste."

Also from "Melinda Falling":  "It had often struck me that while we view the pairing of lovers with benign speculation, even envy, there is nothing so baffling, so grotesque, as another man's choice of wife, or a woman's of a husband."

From "My Father, at the Wheel":  "This is a very old story, the one about daughters and fathers. It ends in marriage, and the promise of renewal. So it must be a comedy."

When I look at these examples, it also strikes me that they serve to poke fun at the narrator, whose distance, biases, and judging function become all the more apparent in quips like these. Maybe that's part of the epigram's appeal--it's both witty and unwitting, in the sense that it reveals as much about a narrator's own flaws and disappointments as about how the narrator wants to present him or herself.

Quotes: Sorry, no page numbers again, since this if from my Kindle version, but I've included the short story titles for your reference.

My spidey senses are tingling

Still from Big Ass Spider

One of my favorite things as a reader is when I start getting vibes from the writer that all is not well, and my spidey senses turn on, waiting for the fly in the ointment to be revealed—if the writer’s good, this happens almost unconsciously. I came across a good example this morning, in this scene from Jennifer Weiner’s novel, The Next Best Thing (I was intrigued by a New Yorker article about Weiner, which I posted here.)

Vibe #1: Trouble in paradise? My spidey senses started tingling as soon as I read these first ~150 words—all you need to know is that the main character, Ruth, has had her TV pilot script picked up for production, and that she’s heading with her boyfriend to a celebration dinner thrown by the network that bought it:

“’So tell me the timeline,’ my boyfriend, Gary, said.... I reached for his hand and was pleased and a little relieved when he let me take it and gave me a reassuring squeeze. When we stopped at the light, I looked at him, marveling, as I often did, that he was actually interested in me, that we were actually a couple. Gary had pale skin, dark hair and dark eyes, and a cleft in his chin... He’d gotten dressed up—or at least his version of dressed up—for the occasion, wearing a belt with his jeans, black leather shoes instead of sneakers, and a sportscoat instead of a fleece. True, there was an ink stain on his cuff, but he was here and he was trying, and I felt lucky, loved and lucky...”

As soon as I read this, I knew (well, subconsciously, anyway) that something's fishy with Gary. Here are some of the reasons why, I think. First, there’s a good use of imbalance (tension)—Ruth feels “lucky” that Gary’s interested in her, while he barely puts any effort into dressing up for her big event. Okay, maybe he’s just a schlub—some boyfriends are—but Ruth also shows surprise at his “reassuring squeeze,” which makes Gary seem less than supportive. 

Vibe #2: Literal (and figurative) out-of-stepness. Reading on:

'The timeline for tonight or the timeline for the show?’ I asked. The light turned green. Gary dropped my hand and started walking, so that I had to half run to catch up.

‘Show,’ he said.

‘Okay. Well, let’s see.... We start pre-production next week, and for the next eight weeks I’ll be working on the pilot. I’ll have to cast it, of course, and hire a director, and a DP—a director of photography—and a line producer...” I paused, waiting for him to ask what a line producer did... but Gary didn’t ask. My voice was high and chirpy, slightly breathless from hurrying, as I kept talking....

‘How long will all that take?’ he asked as we walked across Beverly.

Now the plot thickens. Not only is Gary a schlub, but it’s clear he’s not really with Ruth on her journey—in fact, he’s literally leaving her in the dust (a nice touch of irony, because later Ruth notes that she's already surpassing him in material success). Nor, apparently, is he interested in her party—jerk. Again, there’s great tension in Ruth’s hurried speech and Gary’s selective inattention (he’s not interested in the process of the TV show, only the timeline, indicating impatience and doubt about the outcome).

Vibe #3: Is that all there is? Ruth gives Gary a lengthy explanation of next steps, ending with—if all goes well—the eventual premiere of the show. Gary answers with:

'That’s it?” His voice was flat, his tone uninterested, his expression impossible to read in the darkness as he walked with his hands jammed in his pockets and his head down. He looked like a guy being led to the guillotine instead of to a party.

‘That’s it. Then you have to wait to see if you get good reviews, and if you find an audience, and if you get renewed.’

‘It’s a lot of waiting,’ Gary observed.

‘It’s not so bad,’ I said, trying not to sound disappointed.

My Kindle edition!

Vibe #4: Sweet, sweet vindication! Okay, now I feel totally justified for thinking that something was off—Gary is no longer even pretending to try. And now for the payoff—commiseration with Ruth in real-time as his jerkiness sinks in (“All I wanted was for Gary to be happy for me . . .  [but] all he’d done was ask picky questions, pointing out the problems, prodding at the soft spots. . .”) And there’s nothing like a good boy gone bad for either fiction or pillow talk with your favorite character!

(Sorry, I don't have a page number for quoting here—I usually like to give that, but I've been using my Kindle edition. The excerpt comes from Chapter 4.)

What has 2 thumbs and no sense of humor?

Sometimes writers are like serious putty. From xkcd.

Unfortunately—sometimes writers. I love reading fiction that’s also funny, and that’s why I was so happy to read not one, but two, pieces that touched on humor this month—an essay on humor by E. B. White (in Essays of E.B. White), and an interview in The Paris Review with short story writer Marie-Helene Bertino.

In the essay, Some Remarks on Humor, E. B. notes how “serious” writing is often seen to be in conflict with humor—especially unintentional humor—because a serious writer’s worst fear is to have his “architectural scheme” of high emotion toppled by a “snicker.” In summary: “Here, then, is the very nub of the conflict: the careful form of art, and the careless shape of life itself”. (I love this last phrase, “the careless shape of life itself”—I think it perfectly sums up the silly in life.)

And yet, this conflict—in art, as in life—is the source of so many of our emotions. Maybe that explains why, as E.B. writes, humor “plays close to the big hot fire which is the Truth.”

It’s also why I was so glad to read Marie-Helene’s interview because I think she sums up really well what humor can do—not to trivialize human emotion—but to enhance it. In answer to the question of how she manages to integrate both despair and humor in her stories, she says:

“…[H]umor is a key to certain locks that straightforward storytelling can’t open…. Humor brings out… the little nuances—Isn’t the world ridiculous? Isn’t this just absurd? If your house burns down, and you go to the diner because you don’t have a kitchen anymore and they say, ‘Smoking or non,’ and you’re sitting there basically charred and cindered, that’s funny, and it’s also really sad. You can…go a lot further if you’re intercutting severe sadness with humor.”

So, the bottom line? I think it’s something like, don’t be afraid to make with the haha. It can really pay off if handled right—or maybe especially even if handled a little wrong!

Book Review: The Good Thief by Hannah Tinti

So, I’ve been wanting to add a collection of book reviews to this blog—so I could add it to my little literary “database” of stories to keep on tap when inspiration wanes—but I wanted to wait until I found the perfect, much-inspiring book to start with. And, ay carumba, I found the perfect book this week! It’s called The Good Thief, and it’s written by Hannah Tinti.

So, a lot of people disagree with me on this one, but I’m all about the plot—if you don’t have me on the hook, wondering the whole time what’s going to happen next, then I don’t care. I’m the annoying type of nerdy writer-reader who actually pauses at the end of a chapter to ponder the question, What the heck am I reading to find out next? If I don’t know the answer to that, I just speed-read until I get to a juicy bit with a dramatic question or two. 

The Good Thief, however, kept me permanently tuned in, because the end of almost every chapter lands the protagonist, a one-handed orphan boy named Ren (his hand was cut off as a baby, but he doesn’t know how), into the frying pan—or sometimes, even worse, from the frying pan into the fire. Even better, the chapters often end with Ren almost reaching his goal, only to fall into worse trouble. In the first chapters, he’s picked up from the orphanage by a man claiming to be kin—which has been his ultimate dream—only to find out that the man, Benjamin, is a thief with the worst intentions. Ren generally succeeds in the thievery trade, only to be robbed again and again of his favorite possessions and friends. Sorry not to give more specific outcomes here, but the great thing about the book is that there are so many plot ups-and-downs that just summarizing the plot would probably spoil it for most—which in itself testifies to Tinti’s plot mastery.

The other great thing about this book is its mood and tone, which have a lot to do with how enjoyable it is. In a cover blurb, Junot Díaz likens Tinti to a “twenty-first-century Robert Louis Stevenson,” which seems like a good comparison. This very much has a Treasure Island feel—a troubled but basically good narrator in a world of shady characters whose ill luck is often quite endearing. The language is simple, with an ominous streak that just as easily turns whimsical and back to ominous again. 

Here’s a paragraph that’s a good example of both Tinti’s terse-but-tense language and the up-and-down fortunes of the novel. Here, Ren has just found a wishing stone—he’s pleased, but the stone also reminds him of Sebastian, another orphan whom the orphanage volunteered into the army at age 16. In this memory, Sebastian goes AWOL and returns to the gates of the orphanage, only to be denied refuge. He tells Ren his story through the gates before he is discovered and dragged away by army officers:

Ren had seen only one [wishing stone] before—it had belonged to Sebastian. He’d shown it to Ren once, but he wouldn’t let anyone hold it. He was afraid of losing his wish. He was saving it, he said, for a time when he was in trouble, and he’d taken it with him when he left for the army. Later. . . Sebastian told Ren through the swinging door in the gate that someone had stolen the wishing stone while he slept. “I shouldn’t have held on to it,” he wept. “I should have used it as soon as it came into my hands.” (New York, NY: Dial Press Trade Paperbacks; 2009. p16, ¶3)

Last but not least, here’s my rating for the book:  ! ! ! ! ! (5/5 exclamation points)

And for the record, here’s the Captivated Audience rating system:

! = I didn't finish it (or I sped-read it)
! ! = I finished reading it
! ! ! = I enjoyed reading it, but it didn't totally satisfy me
! ! ! ! = I enjoyed reading it, and it was totally satisfying
! ! ! ! ! = I'll read this book more than once